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Literacy teachers as reflexive agents? Enablers and constraints

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Abstract

The recasting of education as an economic rather than a social good means that governments around the world will continue to pursue agendas to show that schooling systems are effective in raising standards. Literacy is a key area of comparison on the world stage, placing literacy educators under enormous pressure to perform in this culture of accountability and visibility. We use Archer’s theory of reflexivity and morphogenesis to identify the work of nine literacy teachers and leaders in Australia as both enabling and constraining with personal, structural and cultural emergent properties needing to be constantly negotiated. Our findings show that mediation of these emergent properties occurred in different ways. Mostly teachers acted in ways that accepted ‘the way things are’ rather than mobilising as corporate agents or social actors to enact change. We argue that literacy educators can find ways to harness enablements to reclaim their professional autonomy.

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Notes

  1. In Australia there is a National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). School NAPLAN results are publicly available and news media regularly create league tables comparing schools.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Educational Studies, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Mary Ryan

  2. School of Education, University of Southern Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

    Georgina Barton

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  1. Mary Ryan
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  2. Georgina Barton
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Correspondence to Georgina Barton.

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Appendix

Appendix

We are here to talk to you about your educational and pedagogical approaches to literacy learning at your school.

  1. 1.

    Can you explain your understanding of literacy as per your school’s philosophy?

  2. 2.

    Can you tell me about the programs or activities you currently have in relation to literacy learning?

  3. 3.

    What areas of literacy learning are your students generally good at? Need to improve?

  4. 4.

    How would you define ‘success’ in literacy learning at your school?

  5. 5.

    Thinking about some success at your school in regard to literacy learning:

    1. a.

      Why do you think this is successful?

    2. b.

      Has this happened before?

    3. c.

      What are some strategies the school has implemented to enable this?

  6. 6.

    Thinking about a challenge in terms of literacy at your school:

    1. a.

      Why do you think this is a challenge?

    2. b.

      Has this happened before?

    3. c.

      What are some strategies the school has used/tried to fix this?

    4. d.

      What do you think would improve it further?

  7. 7.

    Can you identify any specific groups/clusters/cohorts of students in your school who tend to academically outperform/underperform when compared to others?

    1. a.

      Have you noticed any links between students’ literacy performances and other schooling performances? (e.g. behaviour, attendance)

    2. b.

      What is your understanding of why these performances/underperformances might be manifesting/occurring?

  8. 8.

    How would you define curriculum literacies?

    1. a.

      What are some examples at your school of developing literacy skills across the curriculum?

  9. 9.

    How much choice do you feel that you have in regard to literacy learning and teaching at your school?

    1. a.

      What impacts on these choices?

  10. 10.

    Are there any aspects of your literacy programs or practices that you would like to have more choice about? (If yes) What are they? How would you do it differently?

  11. 11.

    Are there mandated policies or practices around literacy learning at your school? Why are they mandated?

  12. 12.

    Does this match your philosophy?

Any other comments?

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Ryan, M., Barton, G. Literacy teachers as reflexive agents? Enablers and constraints. Aust. Educ. Res. 47, 219–238 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-019-00349-9

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