Politics Matter: Discourses Around Teacher Ideology and Identity

• In Event: A Diffractive Approach to Analyzing Qualitative Data Using Different Theoretical Lenses

Abstract

Educational reform is a permanent feature in the landscape of schooling. In particular, specific attention has been garnered towards math and science education, curriculum, and instruction. This research project investigates perceptions and practices of informal science teaching in relation to teacher identity. This paper foregrounds and acknowledges the historicity of science education within broader understandings (socio-political history) of colonialism, capitalism and imperialism as Western modern science has developed and disseminated out of this expansionist and didactic mode. The purpose of this paper will be to investigate teacher conceptions and positionality to informal and formal science teaching as a political project. This paper will analyze teacher perception science education and society through in a dialectical approach.

The research was anchored by three analytical questions: What do teachers’ descriptions of and dialogues about informal or formal science learning, curriculum and schooling reveal about their ideologies and identities/positionalities/social practices? How do teachers problematize the purpose of science education and society adjusting stance, positionality, subjectivity and teacher identity? In what ways do these revelations connect to (historical,agentive subject) history, power, and social relations within the institution of schooling?
The aforementioned questions were nested in and extended from bricolage of theories. The overarching theory being dialectical materialism. This theory rests on the foundation that all matter is in motion or in process (development) and can be conceptualized through contradiction (or the unity of opposites) (Au, 2007). Middle range theories situated notions of identity, subjectivity and agency within social practices. For example, Avraamidou (2014) notes “teacher learning and development are viewed as a process of identity construction through social participation” (p. 825) A third theoretical layer, regarding silences and critical discourse analysis, was utilized to interpret teacher interviews. Poland and Pederson (1998) theorizes “The need for basis for understanding both silences and talk that is not limited to talk itself invites an examination of the role of context and, more specifically, the many structures of talk and interaction” (pp. 293). Morison, T. & Macleod, C. (2014) assert that “veiled silences are a discursive function of masking, and thus perpetuating, unspoken—indeed, even unspeakable—normative frameworks” (pp. 14). Each level of theoretical work, analysis and interpretation was cultivated in communion with research colleagues, allowing for a broadening of ideas and scholarship. This paper will highlight some affordances and challenges to this process.

Author

• Atasi Das, The Graduate Center, CUNY