Abstract
This chapter examines the significance of ‘more than human’ dimensions for teacher professional becoming, using resources provided by actor–network theory (ANT). A form of practice-based theorising, ANT provides a rich array of concepts towards thinking professional becoming differently. Drawing on empirical data, it is argued that professional becoming can, with profit, be conceptualised as a field of practices constituted and enacted by people and tools in complex ecologies or networks. Challenging the established individualised, psychological perspective, where becoming is primarily seen in terms of the intrinsic capabilities or potentialities of people, teacher professional becoming is a matter of material-discursive inter-weavings of people, places, bodies, texts, artefacts and architectures. It occurs in an ‘in-between’ space which, although formed by the ‘interaction’ between learning in the academy and learning in schools, has to be understood as a new reality that cannot be reduced to either of them. Thinking professional becoming in this way invites the dissolution of dichotomies such as professional preparation (‘theory’) and professional practice (‘practice’; ‘application’) and suspension of the means-ends production model of professional education. It also provides for the possibility of making visible, and attending to, forms of power that may otherwise go unrecognised. Implications of this thinking for the field of teacher education are discussed.
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- 1.
Thinking contexts in this ‘agentive’ way shifts the focus from a view of reform as an externally controlled policy initiative for use in education, to how reform is undertaken by individuals and other agents, acting together every day, to transform practice.
- 2.
‘The concept of the assemblage forwarded by Deleuze and Guattari denotes the ‘amalgam of places, bodies, voices, skills, practices, technical devices, theories, social strategies and collective work that together constitute … knowledge/practices’ (Watson and Huntington 2008, p. 272, citing Wright 2005, p. 908). As Law (2009, p. 146) comments, there is little difference between the term agencement − translated as “assemblage” in English − and the term actor-network (heterogeneous network). Thus, I use these terms, or better perhaps, analytical metaphors, largely interchangeably.
- 3.
The turn to performance has been taken in various disciplinary fields, including human geography, cultural studies, contemporary political theory and parts of science, technology and society studies in which actor-network theory ‘sits’.
- 4.
As developed by the human geographer and social scientist, Nigel Thrift, nonrepresentational theory (NRT), or the theory of practices, takes as its leitmotif movement and, like actor-network theory, emphasises practices understood as material bodies of work. Thrift acknowledges the many affinities of NRT with ANT in Non-representational theory: Space, politics, affect (2008, p. 110).
- 5.
- 6.
See for example: http://www.vit.vic.edu.au/files/documents/787_standards.pdf.
- 7.
As argued by Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986), skill acquisition typically proceeds through five skill levels: novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient and expert.
- 8.
Detailed reflection by teachers is a ‘vital instrument for making the connections between experience, theory and practical wisdom’ (Lunenberg and Korthagen 2009, p. 235).
- 9.
Funded through a small Faculty competitive grant, considerations of convenience and cost ultimately determined the study sample. Altogether, one hundred and seventy (170) students took part in this programme from 2001 to 2004. The purpose of the research was to explore the character of the transition to professional practice, which was made by newly qualified teachers, in the context of the professional learning afforded by a problem-based programme of teacher education.
- 10.
At the time of collecting the data, one of these graduates was 27 and the other 26, these ages being fairly typical of teacher candidates today. The average age of these candidates in the professional education programme at the university from which the two graduate teachers graduated is 28.
- 11.
Spanning 2007–2010, this Linkage Project is being conducted in association with the Australian Geography Teachers’ Association (AGTA) with affiliates in five major Australian states, including Partner Investigator status for the Geography Teachers’ Association of Victoria (GTAV) and the teacher registration authority in Victoria (Victorian Institute of Teaching).
- 12.
Purposeful sampling was used to identify accomplished teachers. Members of the Australian Geography Teachers’ Association and its affiliates were invited to nominate teachers who are widely regarded professionally, using various criteria e.g. reputation for accomplishment within the field of Geographic Education; years of experience teaching school geography.
- 13.
For each of 11 classrooms in three major Australian states, two lessons, each lasting around 50 min, have been videotaped using three cameras. One camera focuses on the teacher, a second on individual students as part of a working group and a third on the whole class as seen from the front of the room. Using as catalyst the video record from the whole class camera, with the teacher camera image inserted as a picture-in-picture image in one corner of the display, teachers are invited to make a reconstructive account of the lesson events deemed critical to student learning. Similarly, students are invited to make an account of lesson events, using as stimulus the video record from the teacher camera, with the individual students’ camera image inserted as a picture-in-picture image in one corner of the display.
- 14.
Writing in the Canadian context, Clandinin, Downey and Huber (2009) report that around 20% of beginning teachers leave teaching after years one, two and three. The percentage rises to around 46% in year four.
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Acknowledgments
The project discussed Strengthening standards of teaching through linking standards and teacher learning: The development of professional standards for teaching school geography is funded by the Australian Research Council in conjunction with the Australian Geography Teachers’ Association, the Geography Teachers’ Association of Victoria and the Victorian Institute of Teaching. The research team consists of Dianne Mulcahy, Jeana Kriewaldt, David Clarke and Sarah North of the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne; Nick Hutchinson of the Australian Geography Teachers’ Association; Anne Dempster and Judy Mraz of the Geography Teachers’ Association of Victoria; and Fran Cosgrove of the Victorian Institute of Teaching. I acknowledge the support of the ARC, AGTA, GTAV and the VIT and the contributions of Jeana Kriewaldt and Sarah North who, among other things, conducted the case studies from which the pictures of Simone and Simon were drawn.
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Mulcahy, D. (2011). Teacher Professional Becoming: A Practice-Based, Actor-Network Theory Perspective. In: Scanlon, L. (eds) “Becoming” a Professional. Lifelong Learning Book Series, vol 16. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1378-9_11
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