Teachers Work And Identity

Abstract

This thesis interrogates the nature of teachers work in relation to their identity within the newlinecontext of ongoing restructuring of school education in India. Political economic questions direct newlineeducation reform and shape discourse on critical issues such as nature of teaching, governance of newlineeducational institutions, notions of educational quality and so on. Teachers work has consequently newlinebeen subject to significant changes in the last decade or so, owing to the ways in which notions of newlinecurriculum, quality, assessment, etc. have been redefined in market driven terms of efficiency, newlineperformance and outcomes. Efforts to regulate education reflect neoliberal tendencies that seek to newlineoffer cost-effective and technicist solutions to complex educational problems. These issues overlay newlinethe extant low status of teachers and teaching, and the severe historical disadvantages that school newlineeducation has yet to overcome. It is well acknowledged that, it is children from marginalised newlinesections of the society that access government schools today and it is important to ask, who is newlineteaching the children of the poor and what kind of education do they get. This research approaches newlinethis broad question with teachers as the starting point of inquiry. This study comprises of a newlinetheoretical strand of inquiry that runs parallel with an empirical strand, each informing and directing newlinethe course of the study. The theoretical inquiry finds that teachers work and identity are newlinereciprocally related to one another. Diverse theoretical approaches converge on the centrality of newlineteacher knowledge upon which their work and identity rests. newlineThe empirical inquiry consists of an ethnographic study of school teachers in a newlinegovernment-aided school. Located within the tradition of interactionist ethnography wherein newlinepeople s perspectives and actions are seen as socially grounded, the objective of the study was to newlineunderstand teachers work lives and the attendant shaping of their identities. It was found that newlineteachers were subject to...