Embroidering the Signified Teacher: Documents and the Production of Identity in School-Based Indigenous Education

• In Event: 75.052 - Research De/sign: Theory as a Thimble for Tailoring Methodological Excess

Abstract

Purpose
This paper examines the tailoring of document analysis to suggest how documents function in schemes of social interaction and organization within the context of school-based Indigenous education. The relationship between documents and the production of particular teacher identities (e.g., Indigenous cultural expert, rescuer) and the movement of teacher being/becoming therein anchors exploration.

Theoretical Framework
This work contributes to Battiste’s (2013) Indigenous framework for decolonizing educator/ion that involves the “two-prong process” of deconstructing colonization and colonial strategies and reconstructing local education priorities according to Indigenous communities and epistemologies. Indigenous notions of teacher (Archibald, 2008; Cajete, 1994) are woven with Britzman’s (2003) scholarship on learning to teach and becoming teacher in a manner that assumes relational, differential, and contextual (re)construction of identity through discourse. An exploration of the functions, as opposed to meaning, of discourse provides analytical frames to consider the production, organization, and regulation of the linguistic and material conditions that determine what can be said and done. [Thread 1]

Modes of Inquiry
Instead of viewing documents as “containers for words”(Prior, 2008, p. 822), they are positioned as dynamic products and producers of discourse. Prior (2008) argues this reveals, “how [documents] can drive, rather than be driven by, human actors – i.e. the spotlight is on the vita activa of documentation” (p. 826) [Thread 2]. Employing teacher being/becoming as a thimble to tailor Prior’s (2008) method of analyzing “documents as topic” generated the following analytical questions: How do documents function to produce and prohibit particular possibilities for teacher identities in Indigenous education? and How do documents related to Indigenous education shape teachers’ co-construction of emerging personal-professional identities? [Thread 3].

Data Sources
Ten Indigenous and non-Indigenous early career (years 1-5) practicing teachers from two urban school boards participated in a series of three individual, semi-structured interviews and two walking/mapping activities. All teacher participants completed university-based coursework or extended professional development that had Indigenous education as its central focus and were recruited through associated list-serves. Data pertaining to teachers’ relationships with documents was generated throughout, with Interview 3 focused specifically on curricular documents and education policy. Documents referenced and analyzed include: Faculty of Education materials; national, provincial, and local policy; webpages; and locally produced resources for school-based Indigenous education.

Results
Analysis centered on how documents contribute to the production of teacher identity in school-based Indigenous education reveals prevailing subject positions of teacher that are embroidered throughout education materials and policy. Key examples of the signified Teacher (e.g., Indigenous teacher as cultural expert) and connected cultural myths are utilized to support discussion of how early career teachers co-construct and momentarily and imperfectly inhabit, contest, transform, and rupture these normalized fictions through their engagement with documents [Thread 4].

Educational Significance
The oft-overlooked site of how documents function in the co-construction of teacher is illuminated through this theory-method tailoring. Further a fulsome network of Indigenous education through a focus on documents in relation is mapped. This is of particular significance within the emerging context of Indigenous education, whereby reform at various levels/structures is notably shaped by policy and supporting documents and resources.

Author

• Brooke Madden, The University of British Columbia