As they embody and articulate the internal dialogue of thoughts and feelings which
shape their interactions, the participants engage in a form of identity work, and
come to recognise themselves and each other differently. As they embody and enact
the underpinning fears, hopes and desires that sit behind the performance of the
teacher–student role-set, they rethink what is possible in teacher–student relations,
and come to understand the two parties as being‘on the same side’rather than as
existing in opposition.
14.2 Working with Theory
Post-structural theory is brought to analysis of teacher development to direct
attention to the ways in which discourses, institutional regimes and dividing
practices work to shape what is possible in relationships.
Post-structural theory offers an ongoing critique of humanism, including the
understanding of the self or subject. Drawn largely from the work of Foucault
( 1980 ) and expanded numerous feminist authors (St. Pierre and Pillow 2000 ; Butler
1993 ; Davies 1993 ), this approach contends that people inherit a way of under-
standing the world established in the discourses or sets of cultural ideas, explana-
tory models and practices that preexist and surround them. Through the concept of
subjectivity, post-structural theories highlight the influence of social norms upon
attitudes, practices and behaviours. However the‘individual’is not understood to
befixed or static within this process of shaping; but rather isfluid, with an ongoing
capacity for change.
Foucault ( 1980 ) argues that the production of our sense of who we are involves
learning key categories that include and exclude. We learn to categorise and play
into binaries such as teacher–student. As people observe the patterns around them,
they internalise social norms and expectations and learn to self-monitor and enact
the categories that pertain to themselves and others. From this theory it can be seen
that teachers and students will be shaped by the practices of the institution as well as
by their notions of what it means to be student or teacher. They will play into (or
resist) their understood positions and confer the appropriate status and expectations
upon the other. Thus to change the teacher–student relationship, it will be important
to address the defining discourses which help to hold them in place.
14.3 Positioning
A key concept garnered from feminist post-structural theory is that of positioning
(see Davies 2006 ). The concept of positioning is a way of understanding the for-
mation of subjectivity as an ongoing process of taking up and/or resisting of the
various subject positions, patterns and storylines available within the discourses and
210 H. Cahill and J. Coffey