Item – Theses Canada

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OCLC number
645750406
Link(s) to full text
LAC copy
LAC copy
Author
MacDonald, Frederick Joseph,1963-
Title
Suspended in perpetuity? : teacher professional identity in a time of educational reform.
Degree
Ph. D. -- University of Toronto, 2006
Publisher
Ottawa : Library and Archives Canada = Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, [2009]
Description
5 microfiches
Notes
Includes bibliographical references.
Abstract
Drawing upon Foucauldian poststructuralist theories of discourse, governmentality and identity, this study employs critical discourse analysis techniques to examine teacher professional identity within the context of educational reform between 1995 and 2004 in the province of Ontario. Problematizing notions of profession(al)(ism)(ization) in teaching and conceptions of teacher identity, the study examines the contextual production, sustenance and consequences of public, media, government, teacher organizations and collegial and administrative representations of teachers and teaching as they manifest as effects of power and as they are positioned and ascribed to and within particular normalizing discourses and practices. The data set for the study consists of the transcripts of 14 interviews and other textual data including newspaper columns, letters to the editor, government news releases and policy documents, internet web-sites and teacher-produced materials. The study reveals that many of the discourses that constitute teaching construct particular subject positions for teachers to occupy that are frequently and highly incongruent with the perceptions that teachers have of themselves. The study reveals that the normalizing power of deeply-rooted and firmly-held assumptions about what it means to be a teacher continue to govern and sustain particular mentalities that effectively keep teachers under perpetual scrutiny and surveillance. Despite some teachers' efforts to reject, resist and subvert these discourses, teachers' professional identities remain under perpetual negotiation and revision. Theoretically, this study makes a specific contribution to the literature on teacher professional identity and more generally to the ways in which individuals make meaning. By destabilizing the notion of an essentialized professional identity in teaching, this study has begun an examination of the ' apriori' assumptions that are taken as commonsense when referring to teachers as professionals and teaching as a profession. The study suggests it is important to continue exploration of the nature of and ways in which teachers (and others) respond to the discourses and their inherent power relations that construct teachers' work and the effects these have on teacher identity and the evolution of the teaching profession.
ISBN
9780494399835
049439983X