Telling stories: my work as a literacy intervention teacher

This text is a “narrative inquiry” (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000) in which the author presents an account of her experiences as an English teacher working in an Australian public secondary school. The author explores the ways in which her beliefs as an English teacher conflicted with her role as a Literacy Co-ordinator/teacher and how — even though she may have consciously questioned and resisted performing certain ideological work, such as administering standardised tests and sorting students into remedial groups — there was still a sense in which government policies mediated her professional practice, transforming it into something with which she remained deeply at odds. The author's aim was not just to provide an empirical account of how students and teachers experienced these literacy initiatives, but to capture the dominant ideology that is shaping education at the current moment. This is done by examining the Victorian government school publication, Education Times, specifically to demonstrate how the rhetoric of this official publication shaped the author's professional practices and knowledge as an English teacher. Through this narrative the author interrogates taken-for-granted understandings about what counts as “knowledge” in an age of increasing accountability.