Making teaching fit: embodiment, gender and performance in Beginning
Teachers’ working lives
Annette Braun, Institute of Education, University of London
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference,
University of Warwick, 6-9 September 2006
Please do not quote without permission.
Comments welcome!
Annette Braun: a.braun@ioe.ac.uk
Abstract
This paper explores some of the gendered social realities negotiated by Beginning
Teachers in the constitution of their new professional identities. Using Butler’s
concept of performativity and Bourdieu’s idea of habitus as complementary
theoretical frameworks, interview data relating to the physical experience of learning
to embody a teacher persona is examined. Two main themes emerge from the data:
the appropriately gendered body and the gendered authoritative body. In the school
environment, visible signifiers of the appropriately gendered body (dress, grooming,
mannerisms) are performed and manipulated to fit within the parameters of an
acceptable masculinity and femininity. The gendered authoritative body is imagined
as a commanding, physically in charge teacher that is sexed as male. It is suggested
that the privileging of certain gendered performances and particular bodies reinforce a
gendered, classed and raced hierarchy within the profession that presents an obstacle
in the quest for a more heterogeneous teacher population.
Keywords: Beginning Teachers, embodiment, gender, identity, performativity
1
Introduction
A Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) course presents a ten month period
in which graduates are meant to acquire the skills and experiences that entitles them to
call themselves a teacher, albeit a newly qualified one (NQT). As perhaps with all
professional or occupational courses, such a teacher training year represents a time of
transition and crisis – crisis in the sense of an impasse or juncture at which an ‘old’
identity has to be shed and a new one has to be claimed. In the following, I aim to
explore some of the gendered subject positions that that are constitutive of Beginning
Teachers’1 professional identity formation.
This paper forms part of a larger study on the social processes involved in graduates,
in particularly young women graduates, becoming teachers at the beginning of the 21st
century and the positioned nature of that choice. Research on current entry into the
teaching profession has largely focussed on motivations and incentives (Johnston et
al., 1999; Kyriacou & Coulthard, 2000; Reid & Thornton, 2000; Cockburn & Haydn,
2004), neglecting questions of biographical pathways, identity formation and
transformations. For research that situates the ‘choice’ to become a teacher and the
practices of being one in teachers’ lived experiences, one often has to look at
historical research with biographical elements, in particularly the work on women
teachers (e.g. Edwards, 2001).
Teacher biographies can give substance to other
historical accounts of teaching by adding personal insights and sometimes poignancy.
These are stories that run alongside the historical development of the profession: from
the expansion of the education system in the 19th century in the wake of a new
industrial age where a growing number of women were recruited particularly as
teachers for young children, over the respectability that teaching afforded to
unmarried women in the early 20th century, to the lifting of the marriage ban and the
trend for a large proportion of female university graduates to go into teaching which
could be observed until well into the second half of the 20th century (Bradley, 1986;
Oram, 1989; Miller, 1992; Preston, 1995; Dale & Egerton, 1997).
Teacher
biographies thus serve as a trajectory along which women’s lives and work, their
changing status and positioning in personal, social and economic terms can be
observed and analysed.
By eliciting biographical stories from teacher training
1
Schools and teacher training institutions now tend to use the term Beginning Teacher rather than
student teacher.
2
students today, as they are undergoing the transformation from previous professional
or student identities to that of teacher, I am hoping to capture a moment in their lives
that illuminates the wider context and regulatory regimes that accompany teachers’
current professional identities.
Moore (2004) in a recent book on what makes a ‘good’ teacher criticises the dominant
discourses in teacher training today as limiting and reductionist. He identifies two
‘official’ discourses that can be found in policy documents and teacher training
curricula: the reflective practitioner, emphasising teacher’s own evaluations of their
practice; and the competent craftsperson who is being equipped with a set of
classroom management, planning and assessment skills.
Additionally, a popular
discourse of the ‘good’ teacher as a charismatic and caring subject is encountered by
Beginning Teachers in films, books and the media as well as in perceptions of family
and friends. Whilst the official discourses profess to come with a set of skills that can
be taught, acquired and mastered, the charismatic subject discourse frames teaching as
a matter of simply having ‘what it takes’ – a teacher being born, rather than made.
Each of these separate discourses can be unhelpful for Beginning Teachers in their
own way, preventing, according to Moore, a ‘genuine understanding’ of teaching and
learning theories, the role played by teachers and pupil’s own histories and
positioning, and the social and cultural contexts that are part of every learning
situation (Moore, 2004, 5-7). This paper provides an exploration of the gendered
social realities that are negotiated by Beginning Teachers in the constitution of their
new professional identity. I will concentrate on one particular aspect of the data: that
of the physical embodiment of the teacher persona.
The study
The paper draws on in-depth, loosely structured interviews with 18 secondary PGCE
students studying in London at the end of their teacher training year. Interviews were
carried out in the summer of 2005 and they covered the biographical and other
narratives that led up to interviewees embarking on a postgraduate teacher training
course and the early experiences they have had as Beginning Teachers in placement
3
schools.2 12 of the interviewees were female, six were male. They were qualifying in
one of four subject areas: social sciences (eight interviewees, specialising in
sociology, history or psychology), six studied maths, three sciences and one English.
The sample comprised 11 Beginning Teachers for whom teaching was their first
career (ranging in age from 22 to 25), for the other seven, teaching was a second or
third career (aged between 25 and 38). The majority of the interviewees were white
British (14) and four were from a British Asian background.
Interviewees’ accounts of their time as Beginning Teachers were stories about fitting
in, not fitting in and trying to fit in. Some felt instantly at home in their new roles,
Luke repeatedly declaring ‘I like the school environment’; some struggled and were
questioning their decision ‘I kind of think when I’m a teacher, I’m this big fake and
this big fraud’ (Isabel); and many tried to reconcile the kind of person they thought
they were with the one they felt they had to become ‘I’m not dominant, […] maybe
[pupils] see that as weakness’ (Emily). At the heart of these questions about identity
and practice lies the problem of subjectivity and agency. Becoming and being a
teacher involves a process of learning to embody a teacher identity in the various
school environments: the school corridors, staff rooms and classrooms. Standing in
front of a class of 30 students is being highly visible. Arguably, the first thing on
display and noticed by students and staff when walking into a school or a classroom
as a Beginning Teacher is not one’s subject knowledge, dedication to teaching or
caring attitude towards young people, it is one’s body and appearance. Of course, any
first impressions made on those grounds may well not last very long, but to some
extent the reality of one’s body represents a first hurdle (or aid) in filling the teacher
role. Without being explicitly asked about it, several of the Beginning Teachers in the
study referred to the physical experience of walking into a school or a classroom.
Wolkowitz (2006) in her recent book ‘Bodies at Work’ finds that to date, research
concerned with the sociology of work and sociological scholarship on the body and
embodiment have largely been separate from each other, as if work does not involve
bodies and bodies don’t work. Studies that consider embodiment in managerial and
professional work are particularly rare, perhaps unsurprisingly, as these occupations
are meant to involve mind- rather than body-work. Using two different analytical
2
Beginning Teachers spend two periods of twelve weeks in two different placement schools as part of
the PGCE course.
4
approaches: ideas of embodiment and habitus; and the concept of performativity, I am
asking here which of these approaches is most helpful in understanding the gendered,
corporeal themes that emerge from the data.
Performing or embodying identities?
Bodily appearance and demeanour have frequently been analysed in terms of
embodiment and habitus (e.g. Skeggs, 1997). In fact, most of the studies Wolkowitz
reviews for her book (2006) lean on Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to explore the
specific dispositions (for example with regards to class) that make the working body,
and the worker as a whole, fit the particulars of the employment. Bourdieu explains
habitus as ‘the system of structured, structuring dispositions’ that construct the
‘objects of knowledge’, habitus is ‘constituted in practice and always oriented towards
practical funtions’ (Bourdieu, 1990, 52).
‘Objects of knowledge’ include bodily
conduct, competence and stance, as well as ways of speaking, vocabulary and accent.
For Bourdieu, social structures are inscribed into bodies, though habitus can change as
individuals as social actors move across the social field. The resources available to
individuals for this social development are framed as ‘capitals’, the main being social,
economic and cultural. It is the capitals of the primary social group into which we are
socialised as children, in particularly class, that forms our initial habitus. One of the
criticisms of this approach is that Bourdieu ascribes too much weight to childhood
habitus and thus underrates the possibility to pass as someone else as adults.
According to Lovell, his markers of habitus, that emphasise ‘corporeal sedimentation:
in bodily hexis, speech, taste, and in the “feel for the game” which appears to be a
natural gift’, are ‘almost impossible to learn or to consciously imitate, or for that
matter to eradicate [as in Bourdieu’s scheme] they never come fully under selfsurveillance and control’ (Lovell, 2000, 14).
This is in some ways diagonally opposite to the second analytical approach I want to
discuss which frames gendered corporeal themes as an ongoing process of
signification and performance. The idea that gendered identities are performed or
rather performative is prominently associated with Butler (1990, 1993). She contends
that gender is an act that depends for its very existence on being performed and
5
performativity is thus the process by which discourses produce what they name.3
Butler gives gender a central place in her discourse-based theory that investigates the
modes by which we are transformed into subjects. She argues that whilst we are
constituted by discourse, this is not the same as being determined by it, where
determination would rule out agency. As all signification requires repetition and
sedimentation over time, the possibility of agency lies in variation to that repetition.
Using sex, desire and sexuality as her analytical corner stones, Butler points to
discontinuities in the construction of gender when considering diverse heterosexual,
bisexual, gay and lesbian contexts.
She concludes that the regulatory ideal –
heterosexual coherence – is a fiction that regulates the very arena it claims to
describe. It is within this fictional gender identity that a series of bodily acts and
gestures serve to fulfil one’s desire for identification and coherence.
There are
parallels here with Foucault’s later work on power relations (1977; 1985) where he
locates the subject in the discursive practices of ‘disciplinary regimes’ and
‘technologies of the self’.
This approach has had the opposite criticism than
Bourdieu’s habitus levelled against it, while the latter can be seen as overdetermining,
Butler’s ‘politics of the performative’ can be read as voluntarist, underestimating the
solidity of the social conditions that frame the performative and curtail subversion or
more broadly agency in general (Lovell, 2000).
Both these approaches, with their opposing strengths and weaknesses, hold attractive
ideas for the analysis of the data in terms of the body/work nexus. Although, as
Wolkowitz points out, their application is not always easy as they were not designed
with work and employment as a central concern (2006).
The teacher body
The interview data linked to the physical experience of becoming and being a teacher
centred around two main themes: the appropriately gendered body and the gendered
authoritative body.
3
The term discourse being used in the Foucaultian sense as being constituted of four basic elements:
the objects about which statements are made; the places of speaking from which statements are
articulated; the concepts involved in their formulation; and the themes and theories developed by
discourse (Foucault, 1972).
6
The appropriately gendered body
The appropriately gendered body resides within the allowed parameters of acceptable
masculinity and femininity. In the school environment, it is signified via the visible
physical attributes of the body itself, dress, grooming and mannerisms. Some of
these, in particularly dress and grooming, can be readily manipulated, as the quotes
below by Holly and Emily show:
And the only thing that was on my mind before I went into a school was, I’m
so short, I better get some high heels. I better, you know, I better make sure I
tie my hair, I better put make-up on, I better make myself look older. (Holly)
[I] wouldn’t wear a top like this to school [points to her relatively low cut vneck], I’d wear something across. (Emily)
Adjusting ones appearance to fit a particular professional role or context is of course a
mainstay of our identity management in the workplace. Arguably, women seem to be
required to do a lot more of it, as various studies on gender and the workplace have
observed over the years (e.g. Hochschild, 1983; Adkins, 1995; MacDowell, 1995;
Wolkowitz, 2006). A socially regulated norm is employed to discern just what is
acceptable, e.g. anything that could be construed as sexual, such as a low cut top, is
not. On the other hand, emphasis is given to femininity, shoes with heels and make
up. In the two remarks above it is unclear whether it is school management, other
staff or pupils who serve as the regulatory power. Schools are unusual in this respect,
in that the successful public management of one’s school persona requires the playing
to two – opposing – audiences: other adults on the one hand and students/teenagers on
the other. In the following account by Zoe it is pupils, or rather female pupils, who
present a problem for her as a young and pretty teacher:
I don’t know, if you’re young and attractive or something as well as they [the
female pupils] are, and you kind of go in and walk yourself around as a
teacher, as you would, they kind of think ‘Hang on!’ and sort of push you and
push you. (Zoe)
Zoe refers to the process of acquiring and filling her new role as ‘walking yourself
around as a teacher’, thus explicitly referencing and acknowledging that being a
teacher requires its performance in public, or rather the school environment. Zoe’s
reaction to her comment was interesting, as soon as she said it, she blushed and
seemed somewhat embarrassed about having referred to herself as attractive. Perhaps
7
she became aware that making reference to one’s own prettiness, however truthful,
may be construed as somewhat immodest and thus unfeminine. The performance of
femininity is clearly a difficult tightrope to walk, and women often feel unable to
express succinctly just what it is they think is required of them, possibly because the
actuality of their bodies (and those of other women) quite literally stand in the way.
Despite this, the Beginning Teachers I interviewed were clearly adept at reading,
using and manipulating dress and grooming as external markers of femininity and
professionalism. Whilst what they were describing could be interpreted as using
habitus, arguing that the knowledge about how to dress for example, originates in the
cultural capital generated by a middle class upbringing and/or education, I would
argue that the concept of performativity has greater explanatory power in this context.
I met with Holly, Emily, Zoe and my other interviewees when they were in ‘civvies’,
no neat hairstyle, make up and wearing whatever top they fancied and they described
to me how they were using dress and grooming strategically as instruments in their
transformation to a professional teacher persona. The emphasis was on identity as a
process, as becoming and on an acceptable femininity as being performed, its cultural
construction made visible.
This is where Butler places agency, a place where
performance meets with performativity and change can be affected via the ‘politics of
the performative’ by the spirited performance of an alternative. Holly soon gave up
on the heels, make up and tying of hair, stating: ‘I’ve since realised that it doesn’t
make two odds. [] As long as I know what I’m teaching is relevant and valuable, than
they’ve got to respect me for knowing it.’ (Holly).
These particular modes of
femininity thus serve merely as a prop and they can be ignored if authority and
identity is available through other channels, such as respect given because of
knowledge.
As gender tends to be defined in relational terms (what it means to be female is read
in relation to what it means to be male and vice versa), a reading of the body as not
entirely conforming with normative, mainstream ideas of femininity and masculinity
frequently results in the questioning of one’s gender identity and sexuality. Outward
appearance that may not accord with accepted gender norms has long been identified
as a source of discrimination in employment positions for gay men and lesbians
(Butler, 1990; McDowell, 1995; Skidmore, 1999).
Equally, schools have been
recognised as highly heteronormative environments (Sparkes, 1994; Kehily, 2001;
8
Nixon & Givens, 2004). Here Robert is being asked whether certain attributes help or
hinder him in the classroom, and he answers with reference to some of his
mannerisms and how these are being construed as gay by pupils:
AB: Do you think things like not being straight out of college, not being
really young or whatever, having a northern accent, do you think these things
help? Hinder?
R: I mean what hinders me is the fact that I mince around a lot, so they all
think I’m gay [laughs]. They all think I’m a gay teacher. And I’m not, and
they all think I am. And then, cause I mince, I’ve got this thing that I just sort
of, I mince around with my pen like this [makes circular movements with his
hand], and they’re just like, all of the kids, ‘Oh Sir, are you gay?’ and I’m like
‘no’. But I mean I always get that, and that hinders you, cause they’re all …
you know what kids are like, and that’s definitely a hindrance. But I’m trying
to be a bit more masculine. [laughs]
So being perceived as ‘a gay teacher’ is definitely undesirable and it is important to
create the impression of greater masculinity by not ‘mincing’ and waving one’s
hands. It also helps to set up a counter-image of a successful heterosexual male, i.e.
one with a girlfriend: ‘So I always just have to drop a comment there, about “my
girlfriend this, my girlfriend there” or whatever, and then they know and it’s fine.’
(Robert). This arguably complicit approach in combating homophobia from pupils
obviously leaves ‘real’ gay teachers high and dry if they are not willing or able to pass
as straight. One of the gay Beginning Teachers I interviewed had a particularly
difficult time at his placement schools, reporting that wherever he went he could ‘hear
[pupils] saying things behind my back [] and so for most of the time I walked around,
I was followed by this torrent of [homophobic] abuse’ (Jamie). Jamie was not ‘out’ in
his placement schools and the positioning of him as gay by both staff and pupils was
based on assumptions. Presumably it was some of his mannerisms which he said
pupils ‘were tacking the mickey out of’, as well as a somewhat effeminate
appearance, (although not more so than Robert above or many other twentysomething trendy, urban men of all sexualities!) that were perceived as camp and thus
gay. Jamie did not perform a counter identity as heterosexual or tried in any way to
appear ‘more masculine’ or ‘less gay’, with the penalising result of experiencing
distressing and ever-present abuse in the school environment.
9
Women are of course also affected by heteronormative and gendered discourses in
schools that are projected upon bodies. In the following interview extract, Holly
describes how she is managing her identity as a successful female rugby player, both
at school and in the wider outside world:
H: To be perfectly honest, I don’t openly tell people that I play rugby, I do
wait, I do say I’m into sport. […] I don’t want to go out there, ‘Yeah I play
rugby, I’m big, I’m butch, I can eat you for breakfast’. […] So just saying I’m
into sport kind of describes me, and if somebody asks me a bit more about it,
then yeah, I’m into rugby, but that’s not what I go out there saying.
AB: Ok. Because you had bad experiences with saying it?
H: Not that, I don’t know, I just, I don’t feel the need, I just don’t feel the
need to say it, you know what I mean? […] But it’s not that I’m worried about
people’s reaction, it’s just I don’t feel the need, because being a rugby player
does have a certain reputation, and you do get looked at differently, people do
sort of go, ‘Ugh!’, you know.
A number of researchers have observed that being a woman and playing sports,
especially ‘male’ ones like football and rugby, frequently leads to a questioning of
one’s femininity and ultimately sexuality (Sparkes, 1994; Clarke, 2002; Nixon &
Givens, 2004). Neither wanting to renounce a big part of her identity, nor being able
to deny the athletic physicality of her body, Holly opts to admit to a half-truth – being
into sport – but won’t mention rugby until later in the conversation or encounter.
Holly does not expand on the image that people may have in mind when they go
‘Ugh!’ at the news that she plays rugby, though it clearly results in her performing an
identity that downplays this aspect of her person, personality and body. As with the
argument made about dress and grooming, in relation to mannerisms and also with
regards to the performance of an effeminate, masculine or athletic body, it is again
Butler’s concept of performativity that seems to shed most light on the dominant
discourses, power relations and processes at play. Interviewees describe how they are
actively using and manipulating (and are manipulated by) the discourses they
experience as positioning them in a certain way in the school environment. While
Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and the idea of different capitals can go some way in
explaining some of these positionings as, for example, more or less desirable, it’s tacit
awareness of bodily practices arguably can not fully account for their active
employment described in interviewees’ accounts. It appears that there is a certain
‘allowed’ or ‘ideal’ body that is perceived to go best with the teacher ‘I’. None of the
10
Beginning Teachers actually have or occupy that body, rather they perform an
approximation of it, a suitably masculine/feminine, raced, classed, sized and
sexualised image, conjured up by an array of bodily gestures and performances.
The gendered authoritative body
An interesting area where teacher authority, gender and the body meet is size, and a
surprising number of female interviewees mentioned an acute awareness of their size
when they are in schools. The image that is being evoked is that of the small,
vulnerable, female Beginning Teacher facing towering male pupils:
The first thing that I was thinking to myself was, ‘I’m five foot, I’ve got Year
7s who are bigger than me, how am I going to deal with this?’ (Iram)
Being shorter than every single student has of course been the butt of jokes in
my lessons […] I have yet to really tell off a person who is a lot taller than me
whilst they are standing up […] I should always get them to sit down and then
talk to them. (Sophie)
And then the year 11 boys, they were incredibly intimidating because they
were so huge, and I’m not particularly tall, and I just felt amazingly threatened
by them. (Pam)
I think because I’m quite petite, when I was in the mixed school I felt,
especially because it was quite a tough school as well, I felt quite intimidated,
especially by those big, sort of huge 15-year olds, and I’m sort of half their
size. (Iris)
Contrasting the statements above with that of Jagdish, a male, well-built and tall
Beginning Teacher who asserts: ‘My physical appearance, the way I look, the way I
talk, I think that helps, you know, a lot.’, one could speculate that lacking in the sort
of masculinity that comes with size, women’s bodies lack embodied authority in the
school environment. Moreover, none of the male interviewees, even those who were
clearly smaller and less solid than Jagdish, mentioned size as a source of concern.
Women teachers bring the physical vulnerability they experience in the wider world
into school, where it may even be experienced more acutely, as it contrasts with the
image of the teacher as authority figure and physically in charge. Below Aaina, a
very petite female Beginning Teacher, describes an assault she has experienced in one
of her placement schools and which ultimately resulted in her leaving the placement
prematurely and prevented her from finishing the PGCE course within the original
11
time frame. It is an extreme illustration of how her physical presence was completely
ignored by the students who literally pushed her out of the way:
I asked two boys to stay behind [] And they refused to stay behind, and I was
near the door, [] and they pushed past me, basically pushed my back into the
handle, and the board is right there, so my head went into the board, but it hurt
my neck, rather than my head. (Aaina)
Overall, the interview data reveal an image of a commanding, physically in charge
teacher that is sexed as male:
-
Zoe describes a male senior teacher whom she admired a great deal as a ‘very
big, intimidating person, very big disciplinarian’;
-
Holly S. argues that she learned to have a presence with pupils from her
teacher father, from whom children know that ‘if you get caught by Mr [S.]
then you’re in trouble’;
-
And Siobhan states, ‘I think a good, this sounds terrible, but a good
headmaster is one that the students don’t ever want to see. You know in terms
of he is very scary.’
It appears that the authoritative body is embodied rather than performed. Beginning
Teachers who state that they have few problems with classroom management make
reference to being ‘naturally bossy’ (Luke) or having ‘a loud voice which always
helps’ (Holly). By the same token, interviewees who talk about not having ‘great
classroom presence’ feel a need to ‘get louder [] and bigger in some way’ (Pam).
Interviewees make use of dispositions they feel are innate, rooted social identities that
have been acquired through practice, Bourdieu’s definition of habitus. Being ‘big’
and ‘loud’ may well present a struggle for women more than men, as often they have
been socialised to be quiet and not to take up too much space. In a newspaper article
about the experience of attending a ‘rock camp’ designed to get more women to play
in bands, journalist Laura Barton describes her first experience of playing bass with
an amplifier as follows: ‘I am petrified; being loud is one of my biggest fears. In
almost every part of my life I conduct myself as unobtrusively as possible: I speak
quietly, eat quietly, don't slam any doors.’ (2006). While I don’t know whether any of
my interviewees were harbouring ambitions to become rock stars, taking centre stage
in a classroom undoubtedly requires an ability to fill that space.
12
As Bourdieu’s theory predict, the cultural and social capitals that come with class also
play a central part in the dispositions that enable embodiment. Iris, for example, who
was schooled in an independent school and who experienced herself as too petite in a
mixed and ‘tough’ comprehensive school, ended up accepting a job offer in an outer
London all-girls grammar school. There she felt she could relate to pupils ‘on the
same sort of female level’ (Iris) and she appreciated the fact that it was the sort of
middle class environment she herself experienced when growing up.
Similarly,
Jagdish accepted a teaching post in a comprehensive school in the inner city, working
class and quite deprived neighbourhood where he has been brought up and went to
school, reasoning that:
I’d like to see myself as a role model, being young, being through what
they’ve been, being brought up in London, understanding where they come
from. [] And they know, they know I’m a Londoner, they know I was brought
up around here, cause I told them. The way I speak, the way I talk to them,
it’s not that I talk to them in street language, it’s just the way I am. (Jagdish)
Jagdish paints a picture of himself as belonging in this school, he does not have to
work on this belonging, he feels he knows where pupils are coming from because this
is also his background, he speaks ‘their language’ and can just be (‘the way I am’).
Bourdieu’s objects of knowledge which constitute habitus that are evoked in this
account are a shared history and context as well as speech.
Bourdieu’s notion of habitus and embodiment can serve as a helpful tool of analysis
with regards to the gendered authoritative body. It appears that certain dispositions,
such as an imposing (male?) physical presence can help in facilitating classroom
presence. The multiple signifiers of class, embodied in bodily conduct, speech and
shared reference points and determining certain sets of social and cultural capitals also
aid (or hinder) the exercise of authority. This seems to be context-dependent, whilst
Iris’s middle class background and being able to relate to pupils on ‘a female level’
was experienced by her as unhelpful in her placement schools, she expects these to
stand her in good stead in the all-girls grammar school where she is starting work.
Could these dispositions just as well be described as performative, rather than
embodied? In contrast to the data presented in the sections on the appropriately
gendered body, the data linked to the idea of an authoritative body does not refer to an
active and deliberate performance or acting out of embodied authority. Agency in
13
manipulating one’s body to become more authoritative being either absent or severely
curtailed by bodily limits or by the value ascribed to certain bodily characteristics. In
her 1997 book ‘Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative’ Butler suggests that
if Bourdieu’s work is considered in relation to her theory, then habitus becomes a
‘tacit performative’, its bodily dispositions both describing and producing normative
conventions. It is of course possible to reframe the idea of embodied dispositions in
this way, but as my main interest lies with the data and what they tell us about the
gendered corporeal experiences involved in becoming a teacher, I feel I do not have to
decide on either Butler or Bourdieu to the exclusion of the other, and have thus opted
to use both as a set of theoretical spotlights.
Concluding thoughts
This paper provided an exploration of the gendered social realities that are negotiated
by Beginning Teachers in the constitution of their new professional identities in
relation to the physical experience of learning to embody a teacher persona in the
school environment. Using Butler’s concept of performativity and Bourdieu’s idea of
habitus as two complementary rather than opposing theoretical frameworks, data
centring around two main themes were examined: the appropriately gendered body
and the gendered authoritative body. In the school environment, the appropriately
gendered body was signified via the visible physical attributes of the body itself,
dress, grooming and mannerisms. These were performed and manipulated to fit
within the parameters of a perceived acceptable masculinity and femininity. The
gendered authoritative body was associated with an image of a commanding,
physically in charge teacher that was sexed as male.
In the introduction I cited Moore’s (2004) argument that teachers and pupils’ histories
and positioning, as well as wider social and cultural contexts are part of every
learning situation.
The data discussed here has shown that these are not just
‘background factors’ that have to somehow be taken into account or factored in when
considering teacher training, they are in fact active and contested agents, instrumental
and formative of the training situation itself. Also, the privileging of certain gendered
performances
(appropriately
feminine/masculine)
and
particular
bodies
(an
authoritative body as male) may well reinforce a certain gendered, classed and raced
hierarchy within the profession that presents an obstacle in the quest for a more
14
heterogeneous teacher population.
Non-completion of secondary teacher training
courses is running at 20% and more in many colleges and universities, according to a
recent report by the Training and Development Agency for Schools (BBC, 01/08/06).
Thus teacher education can ill afford to ignore the complexity of gendered (and other)
discourses in schools and the need for Beginning Teachers to negotiate and master
these. A PGCE course is much more than a straightforward one-year course in the
acquisition of a set of professional skills, as Jamie, one of the interviewees put it:
The PGCE year is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I think it’s the most
difficult, most taxing thing, because it really, it involves so many different
faculties, you know: academically, organisationally, emotionally, physically.
And nothing I’d ever done had used all of those different faculties all at once
[…] it’s like your personality is being on trial. (Jamie)
15
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