“It's been 10 years and I still feel like that, even if I’m stressed and frustrated and tired, I still feel this is what I want to do.” An exploration of primary-school teachers’ professional life narratives

Levinson-Obank, Chelsea (2021). “It's been 10 years and I still feel like that, even if I’m stressed and frustrated and tired, I still feel this is what I want to do.” An exploration of primary-school teachers’ professional life narratives. University of Birmingham. Ap.Ed.&ChildPsy.D.

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Abstract

Historical discourses founded in the 1981 Education Act caveats, that inclusion of children with SEND should not be to the detriment of other children, have permeated current policy and legislation, continuing to constrain children’s entitlement to a mainstream education. Meanwhile, successive changes to schools’ systems and policies, introduced to improve accountability and standards in education, have changed teaching practice in England, leading to a ‘performative’ culture and lower levels of well-being reported among teachers (Jerrim et al., 2020).

A narrative approach was used to elicit and analyse primary school teachers’ professional life histories in order to inform a broader contextualised understanding of their perspectives on inclusion. Consistent with the lifespan perspective (Berger, 2017; Fingerman et al., 2011; Lerner et al., 2010), this research considered the multifaceted, multicontextualised and temporally-situated nature of teachers' experiences, drawing on elements of life history work and oral history approaches, using an adapted version of McAdams’ (1993) personal narrative interview schedule.

The ‘Listening Guide’ (LG) (Woodcock, 2016) was used to analyse participants’ narratives. A distinctive feature of this method of analysis is the creation of ‘I poems’, which allow the researcher to tune into how the participant speaks about him/herself (Gilligan et al., 2003). Evident within all participants’ narratives were contrapuntal voices of uncertainty and doubt and of confidence, suggesting that participants’ experiences are perhaps best understood as oscillating between and striving to achieve balance between experiences that enrich and reward, and those that frustrate, undermine and cause stress. The themes elicited from the narratives offer a range of considerations for the practice and training of both teachers and EPs and for future research.

To obtain a copy of this systematic literature review, which is in Volume 2 of the thesis, please email the
author directly at ubira@lists.bham.ac.uk

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ap.Ed.&ChildPsy.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ap.Ed.&ChildPsy.D.

Supervisor(s):