The ‘Everyday World’ of Teachers? Deracialised discourses in the sociology of teachers and the teaching profession

Abstract

This article explores the way in which the ‘everyday world’ of teachers and the teaching profession has been discoursively formulated in sociological research. In particular, it is critical of the way certain sociologists have ‘deracialised’ that world. In part, then, the argument complements Sandra Acker's (1983) feminist critique of the sociological literature on teachers. In the first part of the paper I look critically at the discourses of Schoolteacher (Lortie), Teachers’ Work (Connell) and Teachers’ Careers (Sikes, Measor and Woods) and argue that deracialisation is achieved and confirmed in these seminal studies through the processes of ‘globalisation’ and ‘commatization’. Following on from this, I look at the emergence of ‘Images of studies of ethnic minority teachers. I question the efficacy of their challenge to deracialised studies because of their tendency to articulate with the discourse of multiculturalism and, as a consequence, their implicit legitimation of ethnocentric conceptions of ‘the norm’. I conclude by discussing how concepts within the analytical frame of ‘micropolitics’ have the potential to illuminate more clearly and authentically the matrix of power relations within the ‘everyday world’ of teachers.