English Teaching: Practice and Critique
Teachers as bricoleurs: Producing plausible readings of curriculum documents
Volume 3 Number 2 September 2004
Eileen Honan (University of Queensland, Australia)
This paper describes teachers as bricoleurs who
are professionals engaging in rigorous theoretical work as they
construct meaningful assemblages of classroom practice. The author uses
examples of two teachers taking up critical literacy discourses in
their teaching and conversations to explain the construction of the
teacher as bricoleur. Drawing on work by Deleuze and Guattari, a
rhizotextual analysis of data is undertaken to explain the connections
between the disparate discourses used by the two teachers and the
documents of the Queensland English Syllabus. This understanding of the
professional work of teachers negates assumptions about teachers as
atheoretical and blind followers of departmental policies and
curriculum directives. The author concludes with a description of one
method for giving teachers the time and reflexive space to
theoretically engage with issues surrounding their professional
practice.