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Could an actress (Lambeti), a composer
(Karaindrou) and two secondary teachers have
something in common?
Vivi Delikari
The research data
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In this paper we focus on the narration of two secondary
teachers: a woman, teacher of Greek literature and a man,
teacher of Mathematics. They both recognize analogies between
the construction of their identity and that of two well known
artists: one contemporary and active female composer
(Karaindrou) and one – now dead - actress (Elli Lambeti).
The narrations of the two teachers which are parts of the
broader scripts of the interviews that lasted for roughly an hour
and a half, were recorded in August of 2004; they constitute a
part of research material of my doctoral thesis
In my thesis I am concerned with the discourses employed by
the secondary teachers, when they conceptualize the evaluation
practices and choices constructing at the same time professional
identities.
Methodological and theoretical issues
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I apply to the political discourse theory as shaped by Laclau,
Mouffe and Stavrakakis in order to do a kind of critical research
aiming at the development of the awareness of the research
subjects concerning the construction of professional identities,
considering myself as one of the research subjects
Political discourse analysis cannot be used with all sorts of
theoretical contexts
It is not just a method of analyzing data but a theoretical and
methodological whole and the researchers must accept basic
theoretical premises before they use the critical practice of
discourse analysis (Phillips & Morgensen, 2002, 2-4).
It articulates
→ philosophical (ontological and epistemological) premises
about the role of language in the social construction of the
world
→ theoretical models
→ methodological arguments about how to approach the
research field
→ special techniques of analysis
Basic Arguments
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While secondary teachers conceptualize and narrate the ways
through which they evaluate pupils, they experience momentarily
feelings of insecurity when they realize the arbitrary and
contingent character of the evaluative practices and choices
Because of these feelings, teachers articulate a bricolage of
differentiated elements (pedagogical, personal memories,
experiences, legislative guidance, perceptions of their role,
rituals) in order to compensate for and wishing to “forget the
[arbitrary] origins” (Laclau, 1997,99) of the institutionalization
of these practices in use.
I argue that teachers assume “selective affinities” between
themselves and artistic figures as part of this bricolage
(Bernstein,1991,119)
Constructing “resemblances” to an actress
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The teacher of the Greek Literature constructs ‘resemblances’ to
Lambeti and ‘differences’ with ‘other’ women teachers
concerning teaching and evaluating. For example, she claims that:
a) teaching is a charisma, just as well as the art of an actor as Lambeti
b) she has not the “charisma” while two ‘other’ women teachers
do have (only two in a decade of teaching experience, as she points out)
c) Their ‘charisma’ is described in ambivalent and controversial
terms: «is just like seeing the actors getting on stage and the stage accepting
them, although they have not done anything». And she adds «I think what
was really going on, was that the profession was turning into a horrible
substitute of their personal lives. I mean, if I can speak perfectly open, that
their personal life was dissolved, dissolved! They were getting lost in their
personal lives».
d) she used to envy such charismatic people like the two teachers
(forgetting the ambivalence of their ‘charisma’)
Gaps in the construction
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The teacher, despite having stated that she is not charismatic,
identifies herself with charismatic Lambeti claiming that they both
evaluate themselves before evaluating other people.
Instead, the charismatic two women teachers cannot be identified
with charismatic Lambeti, as they evaluated others (i.e. pupils) without
evaluating first their ‘personal’ life
The explanatory role of the charisma is refuted
Thus, the ‘charismatic’ teaching of the two women teachers and
the ‘threat’ that it could constitute for the narrator’ s professional
identity is disdained in the name of their unreliable evaluative
practices
All this construction is paradigmatic about :
a) the arbitrariness and the contingency of the articulated
elements that take place in the conceptualization of the
evaluation processes.
b) the role of the articulated elements in the construction of
‘secure’ professional identity, when the gaps in the identification
and the exclusions, which take place, are masked.
The evaluation of Mathematics
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In his attempt to provide a coherent explanation of his way of
evaluation, the teacher of mathematics points out that a teacher is
certainly affected by a particular student in that whether he is going to give
him (sic) a higher or a lower mark. It isn’t something floating in the air. I
mean, one can’t control it. He gives a better mark to the student, he
sympathizes more.
He says that he sympathizes more those you can have the best
communication with, and the communication in the duration of the lesson is
a part of the subject that you teach. You sympathize more the one you can
have a better communication with, through the subject, in my opinion. Plus
another thing is, that some features of his (sic) character look like yours. Or
look like yours when you were a student…
The evaluation of Mathematics and the charisma of Eleni
Karaindrou
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The teacher recognizes the character of ‘a student’ instinctively (i.e.
his (sic) inclination to schooling) as well as factually (i.e. how sociable he
(sic) is) and on this basis he shapes feelings concerning him that
he expresses in the ‘marks’: I mean, all those things play a certain role
so that you could shape your opinion about the student, thus you are
sentimentally close to him– or not, thus his mark is affected.
According to the teacher, students’ ability to communicate and good
performance in mathematics are innate qualities, just as in the case of
Eleni Karaindrou who became an exceptional composer
without any musical education: In nature, probably…especially in
mathematics in relation to other lessons this is more obvious. I don’t know
why. Why does a child like, say, music? I heard Karaindrou now, say, on
TV, one morning, being asked «was your family related to music in any
way, or did you see…», «no», she says, «I grew up in a village». Well, they
ask, «What music did you listen to? What musical experience did you have
in the village? » «Well, she says, I listened to the rain on the roof, the
rivulets, those things…».
Games of identification
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The teacher conceptualizing his evaluative practices constructs
Mathematics as a lesson close to the art of music
He constructs ‘resemblances’ between some students (male)
who have an innate inclination towards Mathematics and
Karaindrou who has the innate ‘charisma’ of music composition
The teacher argues that he is able to recognize the innate
inclination of the students based on an instinct
What is remaining obscure and unspeakable is :
a) What characteristics concerning the professional identity
does one who recognizes good performance of the students in
terms of ‘charisma’ imagine? For example, how does the
teacher relate his “instinct” with his studies on Mathematics?
b) How does he evaluate the students that he considers as
non-charismatic?
Conclusions
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The charisma conceptualized as a self-evident
characteristic of some artists, naturalized and objectified as
an innate and natural property of a special ability, is used
by the two teachers:
a) to rationalize evaluative practices
b) to obscure the origins of the institutionalization of
these practices and
c) to mask the incomplete identifications and the
exclusions that they presuppose
‘People that do not matter’
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Both teachers conceptualizing their evaluative practices, they
imagine and discursively construct some people that do not matter,
against whom and by virtue of which, teachers construct their
identities: women teachers with a ‘dissolved’ personal life, students who do
not have the charisma,
the abjects, in the words of Butler, which designate those “unlivable”
and “uninhabitable” zones of social life which are nevertheless densely
populated by those who do not enjoy the status of the subject, but whose
living under the sign of the “unlivable” is required to circumscribe the
domain of the subject. This zone of uninhabitability will constitute the
defining limit of the subjects’ domain; it will constitute that site of dreaded
identification against which - and by virtue of which - the domain of the
subject will circumscribe its own claim to autonomy and to life. In this sense,
the subject is constituted through the force of exclusion and abjection, one
which produces a constitutive ‘outside’ to the subject, an abjected outside,
which is, after all, “inside” the subject as its own founding
repudiation…(Butler, 1993,3).