Repositioning secondary English pre-service teachers as bricoleurs

This thesis investigates the discourses that were present in one teacher education site in Tasmania over a two-year period. This involved both the investigation and analysis of teacher education practices as well as pre-service teachers' responses to such practices. The research is ethnographic, focusing in particular on the discourses produced by Secondary English pre-service teachers in the construction of their subjectivities. This thesis draws from post-critical writing pedagogy, discourse analysis and feminist poststructuralist theory, arguing that subjectivity is fragmented, multiple and fractured rather than fixed and unitary. The research strongly argues that teacher education practices of personalising experience through the use of the genres of narrative, biography and autobiography constrain subjectivity. Furthermore, researching the personal through teacher research and action research 'focuses on the research process rather than the writing process. This research repositions the personal as a product of discourse, rather than personal experience, by repositioning research as writing (Lee 1995/1996, 1998) and discourse analytic techniques as significant in providing Secondary English pre-service teachers with the semiotic space to reconstruct pedagogy. The dominant discursive positions that were made known in relation to the Secondary English pre-service teachers are identified using a grounded theory approach and further elaborated using discourse analysis. The dominant discourses of the teacher education site were also analysed in conjunction with the Secondary English pre-service teachers as part of the emancipatory intention of the study. The initial analysis of data from the first year of the study resulted in the implementation of an interruptor strategy on subjectivity (McWilliam 1995), through the process of research as writing (Lee 1995/1996, 1998), to displace Secondary English pre-service teachers' initial, fixed assumptions of teaching. The deconstructive process of double reading (Grosz 1989; Lather 1996, 2004) as well as collaborative rewriting practices, worked towards displacing, repositioning and in the process redesigning subjectivity and pedagogy. Reciprocity is positioned as a critical and productive part of the study in the displacement and repositioning of subjectivity.