Abstract

DIXON, Kerryn; EXCELL, Lorayne  and  LININGTON, Vivien. "We are workshopped": Problematising foundation phase teachers' identity constructions. SAJCE [online]. 2014, vol.4, n.1, pp.139-155. ISSN 2223-7682.

The new Minimum Requirements for Teacher Education Qualifications (MRTEQ) document outlined by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) envisages a particular type of teacher. These teachers need to be, amongst other things, reflective, committed, critical practitioners with sound content knowledge (DHET 2011). It is with this in mind that a remark made by a foundation phase teacher in Limpopo raised several questions for the research team investigating communities of practice in the foundation phase. The fact that teachers considered themselves to be "workshopped", where something is done to them, is in opposition to the kind of teacher envisaged by government, which sees teachers as pivotal to educational transformation. This paper unpacks the implications of teachers constructing themselves as "workshopped" and its relation to workshops as vehicles through which knowledge is acquired. Using Halliday's (1994) systemic functional linguistics (SFL), two instances of this statement used by teachers are analysed. We consider how the mode of the workshop currently presented as a form of professional development is inimical to knowledge acquisition and how it may even negatively impact a teacher's ability to reflect on pedagogical gaps.

Keywords : Workshop; foundation phase teachers; identity construction; discourse analysis.

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