A Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the degree
Doctor Educationis
Faculty of Education and Social Sciences
Mowbray Campus
Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2012 / This thesis uses Reflective Topical Autobiography, as an adapted interpretation of narrative
methodology, to investigate the influences on the construction of the identity of an art
teacher‘s identity over time. The notion of human identity, and theorists who investigate this
notion, initiates the study. The concept of teacher identity, and more specifically, art teacher
identity, is explored. Teacher identity is acknowledged to be an integral part of the teaching
and learning process, and so meaningful teaching, and more specifically, meaningful art
teaching, is discussed.
Questions that arise from this discussion provide the underpinning focus of the data analysis.
What influences contribute to the construction of teacher identity? What role does knowledge
play? What kinds of knowledge are important? How is that knowledge acquired?
In this interpretive study, which is lodged in the qualitative paradigm of research, social
constructionism provides a lens through which to investigate the life and the voice of an art
teacher, as an interpretation of her professional identity construction. That life, and that
voice, are my own. The purpose for this investigation is to attempt to trace the influences that
construct the identity of an art teacher over an extended time, through reflecting on influential
people, places and experiences in the educational and professional context,. Although I
acknowledge that the personal and the professional are enmeshed, emphasis has been
placed on the professional in order to invite greater reader resonance.
Initially, an autobiography provides the broad data, from which incidents are selected that I
believe have been important influences in the construction of my own teacher identity over
time. Data analysis takes the form of further deep reflection on these incidents, in order to
extract their significance and meaning.
The methodology of Reflective Topical Autobiography is followed, reflecting on this carefully
selected data, and these reflections are underpinned with a theoretical base. The
construction of my own teacher identity over time is plotted, exploring significant educational
and personal experiences that have contributed to making me the kind of teacher that I am.
An attempt is made to extract principles of art teacher identity construction. The thesis
concludes with recommendations for teacher education, in which my work is lodged, and with
further recommendations to in-service teachers.
This thesis uses the metaphor of a spiral, which is a process that begins at the centre, and
moves outwards in a circular line. The reason for this choice is that reflection is a process
that looks back, and with experience and new knowledge, enables one to come to a new
understanding of the focus. The looking back, however, is from a different place on the spiral,
and may in fact be from several different places on the spiral. Thus, the looking back, or
reflection from a different place, offers a different perspective of the focus.
Throughout the thesis, the poem Little Gidding, one of the Four Quartets, by T S Eliot (1942),
is used and interpreted through the lens of this study.
The use of artefacts, and in this case, photographs and mandalas that I have made over the
years, offer a form of truth, a kind of substantiation for the written word.
Education in South Africa has progressed through many years of difficulty, and amended or
new curricula with various foci do not seem to address the problems appropriately. Perhaps
a closer investigation of the identity of the teacher, and a stronger emphasis on nurturing this
identity, will help to address some of the problems that seem to result in the poor
preparation, for learners, for a meaningful place in the world beyond the classroom.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:cput/oai:localhost:20.500.11838/1985 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Johnson, Sandra |
| Publisher | Cape Peninsula University of Technology |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/za/ |
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