Teacher identity past and present: What can a genealogy of schooling tell us?

ABSTRACT

The evolution of teachers’ identities in Australia highlights the struggles between state and civic over the control of schooling and also the contingent nature of the teacher identity itself. A genealogical analysis of this history makes visible these contingencies, but more importantly suggests that little reckoning has been afforded to teachers’ agency within these social struggles. This gap in understandings of teacher identity, as even potentially agentic, highlights the need for a more nuanced understanding of teachers and their transformative potential. In particular, it calls for a focus on teachers within elite private schools because these costly schools are highly influential as the aspirational model for schooling provision. If teachers’ agency in these neoliberalised spaces were possible, if they could be empowered in their stewardship of the educational enterprise, then their activation would be crucial in any wider reform effort.

KEYWORDS:

• Elite
• private schools
• teachers
• education
• funding
• policy

Acknowledgements

I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge and thank the university for this support over the duration of this remarkable journey. I would also like to acknowledge my supervisory team, Christine Edwards-Groves, Kip Langat and Jane Wilkinson, who have been no less than a source of inspiration to me personally, and without whose guidance I could not have navigated the complexities of this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The ICSEA is a rating for a school calculated on the basis of measures of socio-educational advantage (SEA) of their student and parent cohort in conjunction with the remoteness of the school’s location and the percentage of students they receive who identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders. The SEA measure itself incorporates a range of data including the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ census data as well as parent data from student enrolment records, including the parents’ occupations and education attainment.

Additional information

Funding

This article is drawn from my doctoral study, which was supported by a Charles Sturt University Research Centre scholarship (Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education – RIPPLE).

Notes on contributors

George Variyan

Dr George Variyan has over 15 years' experience in teaching and school leadership in Australia (and internationally). George's research interests include, inter alia, Foucauldian studies, educational leadership, mathematics pedagogy and social justice.