Discourses of (Un)Mastery: Embracing Delinquency in English Language Arts Teacher Education

• In Event: Resisting the Drive Toward Pedagogical Mastery: Challenging Relations of Domination in the Curriculum of Teacher Education

Abstract

 In this paper, we use Singh’s (2018) Unthinking Mastery: Dehumanism and Decolonial Entanglements to illuminate how a discourse of mastery permeates the teacher evaluation apparatus that governs the teaching of English. We argue that if English teachers are to resist relations of domination and oppression, teachers will have to embrace delinquency in their pedagogical practice. 

Drawing from Singh’s argument that forms of mastery we treat as “harmless, worthwhile, even virtuous” are closely connected to “mastery enacted through colonialism” (p. 9), we analyze the teacher evaluation apparatus to identify the forms of mastery that appear “worthwhile” but actually instantiate relations of domination. To do so, we deploy Signh’s description of mastery, which includes the following characteristics: first, mastery is an act of splitting, either by “carving a boundary” or “an infliction or mutilation” (p. 12); second, it involves “the subordination of what is on one side of the border to the power of what is on the other” (p. 13); third, these relations of power are extended into time (p. 14). 

We use Singh’s tripartite description to identify and analyze the discourse of mastery in artifacts representative of the teacher evaluation apparatus that governs the teaching of English. In particular, we analyze a data set that includes the Common Core Standards; national board certification instructions, support materials, and rubrics; and edTPA instructions, support materials, and rubrics. To analyze this data, we conducted a content analysis (Saldaña & Olmasta, 2018) to ask whether a discourse of mastery is present in these documents and, if so, what this discourse of mastery means for English teachers and English teacher educators invested in resisting systems of domination. 

Our analysis illuminates the ways in which a discourse of mastery pervades the teacher evaluation apparatus. The Common Core authors’ defense of the standards, for example, is grounded in a discourse of mastery: standards were only included, they write, when “the best available evidence indicated that mastery was essential for college and career readiness” (Common Core, p. 3). This explanation underscores the fact that the standards are an act of splitting and hierarchizing the split--in this case, splitting knowledge essential for “college and career readiness” from all other knowledge and positioning the college and career knowledge as the more essential knowledge. The edTPA also illuminates this same discourse of mastery, as it holds teacher candidates responsible for keeping track of and grounding their pedagogy in the “levels of mastery” displayed by students (Making Good Choices, p. 15). 

This paper contributes to English education scholarship critical of the standards that govern (Brass, 2016) English teaching. As Pasternek et al. (2014) note, English educators often resist standards because they “violate deeply held principles” (p. 169). Our project suggests that standards are antithetical to the project of a critical English education (Morrell, 2005), one invested in challenging relations of domination. As such, we call on English teachers and English educations to become delinquent (Foucault, 1975; 2019) in the eyes of the teacher evaluation apparatus. 

Authors

• Cori McKenzie, SUNY Cortland
  Presenting Author

• Joseph D. Sweet, University of North Carolina - Pembroke
  Presenting Author