Teacher stories of collusion and transformation: a feminist pedagogical framework and meta-language for cultural gender justice

This article examines data from two different studies concerning issues of social justice, gender and schooling and specifically the practices of secondary teachers, ‘Mr B’, a teacher from a school in Tasmania, Australia, and ‘Mr C’, a teacher from a school in Bedfordshire in the United Kingdom. Both teachers’ practices and relationships with students are analysed within a feminist interpretation of the Productive Pedagogies model of quality teaching and learning. The two different stories are presented as juxtapositions that serve to illuminate the capacities of pedagogy to, on the one hand, work in ways likely to re-inscribe the discourses of entitlement and privilege that perpetuate cultural gender injustice, and on the other, transform these discourses towards more equitable and just networks of multiple and intersecting differences.

Getting better teachers in the bush

This chapter explores concepts of identity, difference and disadvantage through a self-study that focuses on preparing teachers to teach for diversity. I consider influences of my rural, working class background in a homogeneous setting as it shapes my professional identity as a teacher educator. I begin the self-study by reflecting on my early career and work as a language and literacy teacher educator at a regional university where I began to carefully consider the discursive resources that students in regional and rural settings bring to teacher education a decade ago. A decade on, in a different but somewhat similar university, I am still grappling with ways of raising awareness of diversity and discussing issues of race, social class, gender and ability and implications for teaching and learning. In this chapter I use the process of self-study to examine my own practice as a teacher educator using the implications from my doctoral studies as a focus.

Telling tales: the value of storytelling for early career teachers

This article examines how early career teachers, participants in a research project, make sense of their experiences through storytelling. The teachers’ stories provide a significant counterpoint to the way standards-based reforms construct their professional development, prompting us as teacher educators to think again about what it means for our students to make the transition from initial teacher education into the institutional setting of a school. We draw on Ricoeur’s understanding of narrative to show the complexity of the identity work they perform and how their stories position them as authorities when it comes to the experience of beginning teaching and of negotiating a pathway within existing policy environments. Close attention to the language of these narratives produces rich insights into early career teachers’ experiences and raises questions as to how researchers might solicit and respond to such narratives.

The role of play in teaching English as foreign language in early childhood settings in Indonesia.

This research highlights a teacher’s transformative thinking which has profound implications on how teachers conceptualise child play and learning, thus leads to a way of thinking about English as a foreign language (EFL) could better be supported through the use of play-based pedagogies, especially dramatic play in Indonesian context.