 Abstract | Brokering Changes refers to the ways in which teachers broker their compliance with a new literacy knowledge base for adults. This thesis reports a study of twenty-three members of a cohort of adult literacy teachers working in regional, rural and remote communities throughout Central Queensland from 1996 to 2001. It details the performance and recognition work that these teachers did as they negotiated their way through a large curriculum reform as literacy was redefined from something that was negotiated as useful for the learner to something that is named and mandated by the state.
The theoretical framework engages with interrelated notions of power, discourse and identity with supporting conceptualisations of ideology, work and pedagogy in the production and exercise of disciplinary power as understood through the thinking of Michel Foucault (1984). The methodological approach deploys James Gee’s (1991, 1992, 1993, 1996a, 1996b, 1997, 1999) particular socio-cultural theory of D/discourse. Spoken, written and observed data are analysed using Gee’s (1993, 1999) interrelated linguistic system’s analysis method.
The major finding is that these teachers actively broker the effects of these changes through their professional practices. This study is an important contribution to the literature concerning the professional lives of teachers of adults in an era of fast capital and performance-based government. Significantly, the research provides important insights into the problems faced by teachers who are confronted with the implementation of major curriculum reforms while living far removed from the networks and activities of the system in which they worked.
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