There is a well-established literature that is concerned with the ways in which teachers construct their professional identities. There is also a great deal of research that has traced shifts in teacher identities across a career trajectory, the life-history approach. In the majority of this work the starting point and the finishing place has…

This paper seeks to explore how we may best understand the relationship between teacher identity and national culture. Using Raymond Williams' concept of 'structure of feeling' as a starting point, it is suggested that creative cultural forms of representation of teachers may complement social scientific studies to give a more complete and richer…

This paper draws on findings from a four-year longitudinal research project, commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), which investigated Variations in Teachers' Work, Lives and Effectiveness (VITAE). Drawing on data gathered from 300 teachers working in 100 primary and secondary schools in England, the research identified…

In a context where the lack of male teachers is constructed as a worrying concern for many Western education systems, men who make the decision to become teachers, particularly in early childhood and primary education, are often adulated. However, alongside this adulation sits an expectation to be a "real man". This paper tells the story of John,…

The article examines data collected from six primary schools in the ESRC Project: Primary Teacher Identity, Commitment and Career in Performative Cultures, and compares it to classic analyses of teacher commitment made by Dan Lortie and Jennifer Nias in order to assess continuity and change. The "mission" to teach is still there, as is the…

In this paper the authors draw on a larger project related to diasporic identification in order to explore the concept of transcultural literacy. They argue that transcultural literacy grows out of border-crossing dynamics that extend beyond the binaries of "us" and "them" as these are lived within and between nations. In this way it is responsive…

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has reached a certain degree of canonical status, as it is widely used and applied as a research and analytic tool. However, hitherto it has been taken for granted that CDA can be applied and practised anywhere unproblematically. There is still a dearth of scholarly attention that focuses on the tensions and…

Textuality is often thought of in linguistic terms; for instance, the talk and writing that circulate in the classroom. In this paper I take a multimodal perspective on textuality and context. I draw on illustrative examples from school Science and English to examine how image, colour, gesture, gaze, posture and movement--as well as writing and…

The article explores the conceptualization of learning and context from a number of perspectives and some of the theoretical and methodological issues raised when context is no longer considered as a container, but as a relational effect. It provides an introduction for the articles that follow, insofar as they take up lines of flight from the…

A significant aspect of learning contexts is the way in which semiotic artefacts mediate learning within them. This article reports on the "Literacies for Learning in Further Education" (LfLFE) project in the UK, which has researched the role of texts and associated communicative practices in constructing and mediating teaching and learning;…

This article offers a new perspective on pedagogy and learning culture by emphasizing the key role played by "learning relationships." The first part of the paper describes the theoretical background in the work of Bordieu, and Lave & Wenger, and considers how, through the role of identity, individual relationships reflect the influence of…

This paper starts from the idea that children learn and construct gendered identities within local communities of masculinity and femininity practice, including peer communities. The data presented come from an ESRC-funded study of tomboy identities, which investigated the enabling and constraining factors for girls in taking up and maintaining…

This paper considers how a university teacher uses reflexive writings to explore what might constitute becoming a 'better' teacher within her classroom practices. The writings derive from an encounter with students where they had opportunity to reflect upon notions of childhood as portrayed within the film "East is East". Specifically, the paper…

This paper reports a small-scale investigation into the differences in learning behaviour exhibited by members of an intercultural group undertaking an online course on educational enquiry in support of doctoral research in education. Differences in learning behaviour can be attributed in part to the different cultural and linguistic backgrounds…

The development of education and schooling in modern times emerged from the priorities of religion and politics in the sixteenth-century transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and Reformation. Subsequently, liberal ideas about the maintenance and advancement of life on earth fostered a new dualism, between educational science and…