English Teaching: Practice and Critique
Self-study dilemmas and delights of professional learning: A narrative perspective
Volume 4 Number 2 September 2005
Pamela Feldman (Monash University, Australia)
The following essay explores aspects of my
professional identity as a teacher of English, presenting a focus on
“the reflexive project of the self” (Goodson, 1998). I argue for the
way rich professional learning can occur by keying into a discourse
that values penetrating reflection on classroom practice, teacher
identity, self and professional knowledge, particularly in the wake of
current professional challenges about professional learning. This paper
aims to foreground a space that was, for a time, difficult and invested
with uncertainty. Yet, the opportunity to experience a textually rich
moment of professional growth arose from dilemmas and “chaos” (Parr,
2004, p. 41) as I grappled with a socio-cultural context different from
what I had previously known. The other key focus of the following essay
concerns the way my new context, teaching in an all-girls, Jewish
independent school in Melbourne, prompted me to reconsider the nature
of schools as interpretive communities. As a teacher of literature my
aim is to open up texts to a diverse range of readings, enabling my
students to explore the complexities of language and meaning. This
approach to the teaching of reading is not one promoted by statewide
examinations which tend to reduce texts to the one (examinable)
meaning. Nor is the idea of promoting a multiplicity of interpretations
necessarily associated with religious orthodoxy. I show how I was able
to use the cultural and religious understandings of my students to open
up alternative readings of literary texts in a way that is congruent
with post-structuralist understandings of language and meaning.