teachers talking difference: teacher education and the poetics of anti-racism

This article was downloaded by: [University of Cambridge]On: 08 October 2014, At: 00:50Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Teaching EducationPublication details, including instructions for authorsand subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cted20

Teachers Talking Difference:Teacher education and thepoetics of anti-racismNinetta Santoro , Barbara Kamler & Jo-Anne ReidPublished online: 25 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Ninetta Santoro , Barbara Kamler & Jo-Anne Reid (2001) TeachersTalking Difference: Teacher education and the poetics of anti-racism, Teaching Education,12:2, 191-212

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10476210124956

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information(the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor& Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warrantieswhatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purposeof the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are theopinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed byTaylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylorand Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings,demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation toor arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cted20

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10476210124956

forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Teaching Education, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2001

Teachers Talking Difference: teachereducation and the poetics of anti-racismNINETTA SANTORO & BARBARA KAMLERDeakin University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

JO-ANNE REIDUniversity of New England, Armidale, New South Wales, Australia

ABSTRACT This paper reports on a case study which explores the experiences of twoteachers of ethnic difference working in secondary schools in rural Australia. In seeking analternative way of telling their stories, transcript poems have been constructed from dataobtained through semi-structured interviews with the teachers. The poems highlight theteachers’ experiences of marginalisation and racism and their responses to their positioningin mainly white Anglo-Australian school communities. The study raises particular concernsabout the effects of professional and cultural isolation on young and inexperienced teachersof ethnic difference as well as the need to view teacher education as an important site forthe development of greater cultural awareness in “mainstream” teacher education students.

Teacher ethnicity has been a focus in research in North American and Britishcontexts for many years (Zimpher & Ashburn, 1992; Jones, Maguire & Watson,1997; Cochrane-Smith, 1995; Rakhit, 1998). In Australia, there has been littleresearch that examines the experiences of teachers of ethnic difference as leaders,workers or members of their educational communities. Research into educationalpractices related to multiculturalism and cultural difference in Australia has largelyfocused on the experiences of students rather than teachers of ethnic difference. Thefailure of state education systems to provide adequate instruction in the “basicskills” for indigenous students and those of “Languages Other Than English”background has been seen as justi� cation for a focus on supportive curriculum andteaching methods for these groups.

In our view as teacher educators, however, one of the effects of such a focus hasbeen to cover up, or “white-out” any possibility of thinking about the teachingprofession itself as racialised and perhaps discriminatory towards those who aremarked by racial difference. Our aim in this paper, therefore, is to contest thisposition, and to interrogate its implications for teacher education. We argue that,within Australian schools and classrooms, there is a set of discursive practices thatconstructs the teacher around a monocultural, monolingual (“English-speaking”),

ISSN 1047-6210 (print)/ISSN 1470-1286 (online)/01/020191-22Ó Graduate School of Education, University of QueenslandDOI: 10.1080/10476210120068075

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014

192 N. Santoro et al.

Anglo-Australian norm. We argue that this situation is increasingly problematic,given the increasing proportion of teachers who see themselves as “other” than thenorm. However, these members of the teaching population are still largely invisibleto the system and the professional community. We � nd this lack of attention to bea matter of concern because, as Rizvi (1997, p. 94) claims, it “effectively silences thevoices of those who are constructed as culturally different”. Moreover, as Troynaand Rizvi note:

the failure to view the current representations of teaching as raciallyconstituted is not only empirically impoverished, insofar as it turns a blindeye to the diverse cultural, ethnic, and racial mix of the teaching profession,but […] it is also illustrative of what Iris Marion Young (1990) calls […]‘cultural imperialism’. This consists ‘in a group’s being invisible at thesame time that it is marked out and stereotyped’. (1997, p. 263)

According to Rizvi, there are relatively low numbers of bi-cultural, bi-lingualoverseas born teachers in Australian schools, and this is one of the reasons teachersoften fail to “recognise the role schools play in the perpetuation of racism” (1992,p. 73). There are, of course, even fewer Australian Indigenous teachers. In this way,the school system remains very much a bastion of white cultural supremacy withregard to native and immigrant cultures and peoples.

Making Overseas Born and Educated Teachers Visible

In recent years there has been a small but signi� cant increase in the numbers ofteachers who are overseas born and educated, non-native speakers of Englishentering teacher education courses and then the teaching profession. Governmentpolicies on teaching Languages Other Than English (LOTE), have created ademand for teachers who can speak and teach Asian languages in particular(Directorate of School Education, 1993). In many cases it will be native speakers ofAsian languages who most readily meet the language pro� ciency requirements forentry to LOTE teacher education courses. As the numbers of overseas born andeducated non-native speakers of English graduating from our teacher educationcourses continue to increase to meet the demand for LOTE teachers, the need toinvestigate and make visible the experiences of this particular group of teachers ismade all the more urgent (Santoro, 1999).

Since 1996, we have been engaged in a systematic study of teachers who aremarked as different from their professional colleagues on account of race or ethnic-ity. This work developed out of our need to support student teachers entering theprofession and has two parts. The � rst is a demographic study of the population ofteachers who work in government secondary schools who are overseas born, havecompleted at least secondary education overseas, and are non-native speakers ofEnglish (referred to from here as “overseas born”). We surveyed 308 Victoriangovernment secondary schools, the school sector where most of our own teachereducation students are located during Practicum. The information collected fromthe survey was designed to serve a mapping function and to make visible the

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014

Poetics of anti-racism 193

diversity, location and characteristics of overseas born teachers (Santoro, Reid &Kamler, 2001).

The demographic � ndings show that the majority of overseas born teachers liveand work in the metropolitan area of Melbourne (87%). This is not surprising, giventhat the major urban centres contain the greatest culturally and ethnically diversepopulations (Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, 1996). How-ever, the study revealed some unexpected � ndings in relation to the characteristicsof overseas born teachers in rural areas. In comparison with their metropolitan andregional city counterparts, overseas born teachers in rural schools are more likely tobe female, Asian and teachers of LOTE who are also likely to be inexperiencedwithin the Australian education system and employed on a casual rather thanpermanent ongoing basis. They are also likely to be much younger (aged between20–29) than the average Australian teacher age of 45 (Australian Bureau of Statis-tics, 1998).

The second part of our study is a qualitative case study of eight teachers fromrural, regional and metropolitan areas, male and female, both currently and formerlyemployed, with whom we conducted in-depth interviews to investigate the nature oftheir teaching experiences in Victorian schools. At the time of data collection, sixteachers (two from each geographic area of the state) were working as teachers andtwo (both from the metropolitan area) had resigned from the teaching profession.These interviews are all different, of course. Yet our analysis shows clearly that eachof the teachers sees themselves as having engaged in social and professional practicesthat either ignored their racial difference or constituted them as “un-teacherly”because of their non-conformity to the Anglo-Australian norm.

The data on which we base this analysis is a corpus of eight two-hour interviews.Our task in this paper is to make the meanings of that data accessible to otherresearchers and teacher educators as what Ladwig (1994) calls “socially recognisableevidence”. We have room to discuss the experience of only two of the teachers weinterviewed, and we have chosen a young man and an older woman, both of whomwere living and working in rural Victoria at the time of the research. Our selectionof Yoshi and Shanti is grounded in our demographic � nding that surprisingly highnumbers of young Asian teachers of LOTE were located in isolated rural communi-ties in Victoria.

In attempting to report our analysis, however, we found we were unable toadequately represent their experience with quick and pithy grabs from the transcriptdata. Material was spread out across utterances, exchanges, pages of transcript.Meaning was often carried in an intonation, a hesitation, a rephrasing. Theselinguistic data were produced in and through our research interaction; they were not“hard” evidence waiting to be “uncovered”. More importantly, we understand ouranalysis to always have been based on the uncertainty and ambiguity produced outof representing and interpreting the experience of others. We could not deal with itsmeanings easily. We therefore decided to work with a form of data representationthat explicitly recognises the fragility of meaning and the frailty of interpretation.

In this article, we attempt to work with an acceptance of uncertainty, and “inviteambiguity” (Eisner, 1997, p. 7) into the conduct of our research. We attempt to

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014


make clear our inclusion of the emotional and power relations of interpersonalinteraction that characterise the discursive play of racism in the social settings ofschools—thus working, in a particular sense, with the “poetics” of anti-racism. Wetake this term from Threadgold’s (1997) reference to poetics as “work on and withtexts” (Kamler, 1997, p. 442), which allows the discourse analyst to deal with “thecrucial question of representation, the constructedness of our world and ourselves”,to begin “to theorise the making of text”, and to “think very carefully about how thistext is formed and structured” (Kamler, 1997, p. 438). Threadgold’s notion of“poetics” allows us to foreground, for the reader, our own readings of the researchdata. It forces the recognition and acknowledgement that this text is constructed outof our analysis, and that it is always “iterative”—slightly different from the original,subjectively “shifting” each time it is replayed, so that it is a performance of ourrewriting—itself waiting for re-iteration by the reader.

Narrative Research Methodology

In developing a “poetics” of anti-racism, we have been particularly in� uenced bynarrative methods of research. We have drawn, in particular, on the work of Eisner(1997), Richardson (1997a), Gough (1998) Thomson (1998) and Kamler (2001),who explore the potential of narrative to develop alternative ways of knowing andtelling. Richardson (1997a,b) developed the technique of creating poems fromtranscripts, as part of her solution to what she calls “postmodern issues regarding thenature of the ‘data’, the interview as an interactional event, the representation oflives, and the distribution of sociological knowledge” (1997, p. 140).

Kumashiro (1999) also draws on the post-structuralist work of Richardson(1997), Britzman (1995) and Fine (1994) to explore different ways of representingand discussing the words of his research participants. He argues that the use of blockquotations and the script form of interview transcripts allows (and encourages) theassumption that what is presented “conveys to the reader what the participants werereally saying”. This therefore “allows the reader to verify the validity of the re-searcher’s interpretation of and claims about what the participants were reallysaying” (Kumashiro, 1999, pp. 494–495). Alternative forms therefore force thereader, suddenly estranged from the norm, to question the whole production ofresearch as unproblematical reporting. Thomson (1998), like Flax (1992), Gough(1998) and Eisner (1997), argues the need to think about research as a literaryprocess. She experiments with a number of literary devices and techniques for dataselection, analysis and re-presentation in text. By borrowing the techniques ofrepresentation from other genres and disciplines, she disrupts the conventionalsociological genre of third-person narrative, analytic prose and the use of indenteddirect transcript quotations. She describes the process of constructing transcriptpoems this way:

This is a confronting move, it pares down, hones what has been capturedon tape to a narrative that tells both emotionally and intellectually. Itcreates a stand alone text from transcript rather than encasing the tran-

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014


script extracts in commentary. It presents a story rather than having thestory told. It does not present truth, but aims to re-present truthfulness.This approach has been labelled invalid, subjective, trivial, and un-academic because it challenges the conventional norms of sociologicalselection and presentation. Yet all data collection is a process managed andmanipulated by the researcher and all research texts are constructedthrough writing and reading. The method draws attention to the acts of theresearcher in manipulating and selecting and makes them visible, un-natural, needing to be defended and explained. (Thomson, 1998, p. 10)

In this paper we have worked “on and with” the transcript texts in Threadgold’s(1997) sense, to create transcript poems that use the interviewee’s exact words.Kumashiro (1999, p. 495) claims that “poetry’s closer resemblance to (oral) speechmakes it a more useful vehicle for capturing a speaker’s speech and reproducing hisor her power to move the listener”. What Kumashiro is invoking here is anemotional response in the reader of research. This is certainly our aim. As Eisner(1997, p. 8) says, “forms of data representation that contribute to empatheticparticipation in the lives of others are necessary for having one kind of access to theirlives”.

In our interviews with Yoshi and Shanti we invited them to talk about theirprofessional lives in their respective schools. The extent to which their professionallives impacted on their personal lives was also of some signi� cance. In treating ourinterview transcript data as the raw material from which we consciously fashion apoem, we want the reader to gain access to our interpretation of the meaning—toour selection of what we see as the “best” words of the interview in the “best order”.Recognising our own implication in the presentation of the poem as “new” data, weseek to avoid simplistic representations of data as “truth” (Flax, 1992; Eisner, 1997;Reid, 1997). As Richardson notes:

By violating the conventions of how interviews are written up, thoseconventions are uncovered as choices authors make, not rules for writingtruths. The poetic form, moreover, because it plays with connotativestructures and literary devices to convey meaning, commends itself tomultiple and open readings in ways that straight sociological prose does not[…]. Knowledge is thus metaphored and experienced as prismatic, partialand positional, rather than single, total, unequivocal. (Richardson, 1997,p. 143)

To construct the poems, we took the data of the transcripts, re-iterating the wordson the page as an expression of the metaphors and meanings we found in the text,and in the subjective memory of the interviewer. In this process the interviewees,Yoshi and Shanti, having given voice to and consented to our use of their words,were relieved of the responsibility of re-presentation. However, their interview dataitself can not be seen as a representation of any objective truth—it is always, in aBakhtinian sense, � lled with “varying degrees of otherness and varying degrees of

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014


our-own-ness” (Morson & Emerson, 1990, p. 126) and part of an ongoing historicaldialogue of interested and situated knowing. As researchers, we often:

forget that the people who constructed these givens invested them withtheir categories of unconscious construction […] Additionally, lots ofthings have been systematically destroyed, lots of things are secret.(Bourdieu, 1992, p. 44)

Always aware that our own readings of this data derive from very different historiesand situations from those of the “givers”, we asked the following questions of thetranscripts:

What is the dominant story being told?What are the recurring themes?Where is the repetition—of phrase and rhythm?Where are the silences, pauses, hesitations?

We have cut and pasted sentences from the transcribed conversation—neverchanging words—but often paring down, omitting phrases and smoothing the text.We tried as much as possible to keep the intonation and syntactic rhythm of speech.Each of the poems contains only the “voice” of the teacher without the interviewer’sinterruptions, pointers, or queries—our creative role in setting the parameters of theconversation is erased from inspection. The poems are no longer interviews. In theseiterations of Shanti’s and Yoshi’s texts there is a single voice only—and this voicewas not, originally, presenting a poem. The making of the poem, the textual workthat we have done, is the result, in Threadgold’s terms, of our thinking about wherethe person was located in the interview text, about what impact that person’s ideasand beliefs had on us as researchers, and about how they “put [their words]together” (Kamler, 1997, p. 439). Initially, our attention was taken by Yoshi’s andShanti’s almost refrain-like repetition of certain phrases (e.g., I don’t take it personal,I had to call the union). From these, we identi� ed themes of cultural isolation,covert/overt racism and city/country binaries. In the editing for this (dis)play, weexperimented with line breaks and how to divide the lines to recapture points ofemphasis, including the sense of sadness and despair that we found so pervasive insome sections of the interviews.

Yoshi’s Interview Poem

Yoshi is 27, Japanese and lives and works in Meadowside, a rural town 250kilometres east of Melbourne. He � rst came to Australia in 1994 to studyEnglish for 10 months in Sydney before returning to Japan to � nish his economicsdegree. Three years later he came back to Australia to complete a teacher educationdegree. Yoshi applied for many LOTE teaching positions in Sydney schools but hewas unable to obtain a job in the city and accepted a position at Meadowsidesecondary school even though he knew nothing about the town before his arrival. Heis one of two Japanese language teachers at the school and teaches Years 7, 8 and9. He has been at Meadowside for nearly two years, is single and has few friends in

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014


the town. Yoshi describes himself as lucky to have a Japanese girlfriend in the town,who is working in a voluntary exchange capacity with the local government, but hertime in Australia is almost � nished and she will return to Japan soon. On theweekends he sometimes goes � shing or driving in the country, but whenever he can,he goes to Melbourne to buy Japanese food, to see a � lm or meet with Japanesefriends. He says he cannot return to Japan, because he would be unlikely to � nd ajob after such a long period away from the � ercely competitive Japanese job market.Our interview with Yoshi took place in his home. From a 16 page transcript, we havefashioned a 128 line poem in which each stanza is “an abridged version of oneportion of the interview (i.e., “what would otherwise be a block quotation butwithout the ellipses”) (Kumashiro, 1999, p. 496).

Some Asians were here but not manythere’s not many Asiansyou feel people just staring at you.Maybe people around here don’t see city life—relationship with other countries.

Even the parents,Like when I had the parent interviews,the � rst time it was a bit strange.Like when I rungand I mention my nameJust …they stop,they change tone.So (not everyone, I’m talking about some)I’m ringing, I say“I’ve got a concern with your son or daughter’s behaviour in the class-room.”And they ask my name again,I say it,again.

“I’m new and I’m from Japan and I’m a native speaker,I’m teaching Japanese.”

Actually, some parents just say, “Oh.Oh? You teaching Japanese?Now look,my son or my daughter doesn’t like Japanese.’

To me it’s common sense.I wouldn’t say to teacher “Look, my child doesn’t like Japanese”Because they know I am Japanese.To be honestI feel a bit,

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014


not a positive feeling,just …it’s really sad the situation.

Maybe didn’t mean Japanese person,but in my � rst year the kids said“Oh my Dad said he doesn’t like Japanese person.”I didn’t take it personallybecause they are just kids,just 13 or 14 years old.They don’t know anything.But stillI feel maybe parents think like this.

The � rst year some honest staff said “why did you come to Meadowside?”So I said“what do you mean, how do you mean by that?”Then they said“If I were you, single and you were in Sydney,how come you come to Meadowside?”I had no idea what they are talking aboutbecause again, I did not know Meadowside.

To be honest, I like to move to a city.I go to some Australian teachers around the city.Some have students who have got a very positive attitude to Japanese.It is simply that they’ve got more opportunity to communicateOr just talk with some other peopleBut herelike this kind of areait’s a bit hard I think.

The people here.They don’t tell me like racism, comment to me directlybut they sometimesthey’re talking about like aborigines.To me it’s very narrow.It’sverynarrow minded.

When students talk about racism thingsof course I feel bad.Maybe it’s just their background,talk about those sort of topics,maybe parents do.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014


I just wonder why they took Japanese language?They say “what’s the point of doing this?”“Why do we have the Japanese, the language and LOTE?”“I’m not interested.”“I’m not going to Japan.”“I haven’t got Japanese friends.”

Some are very nasty especially the clever ones.They say “we’re studying Japanese, what about your English?”’I don’t know, I feel, I take it more personally,maybe I shouldn’t.They say “you’ve got a very funny accent” and“do Japanese people talk like that all the time?”

They are very very noisy, you know—everyday.So I sort of yell at the students“Be quiet or sit down.”But some just don’t listen.I talked to them very seriously,“Look that comment is not funny, I feel very unhappy with thatso could you stop it please.”They still laughing.

They are so rude to me all the timesI kind of get used to it.They turn up to my class without anythingwithout pencil without book absolutely anything.Of course I don’t like itEven if I was Australian I’d …But I am Japanese.I still sometimes, let’s say at a staff meeting or some other areas,I think I’m really Japanese.I think sometimes we have to push a bit more the students.I think maybe,it’s maybe because I’m Japanese.

I rung the parents.But they don’t turn up to interview,they don’t turn upso I can’t do anything.It’s really frustratingbutICan’tdoanything.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014


I think there should be more school support.I understand.It’s hard to control discipline in this area.I don’t want to talk this ways but iflet’s say,if that was a maths class,maybe, they do something.I don’t knowmaybe because it’s LOTE?

That’s the problem with our school,we just write report after report after reportbecause, our policy is justforgive,forgive,forgive.

Several themes emerge for us in Yoshi’s poem: his sense of professional and personalisolation; his culture shock at the difference of this small country town comparedwith the cosmopolitan life of Sydney, and also Tokyo; his frustration at the ways inwhich the students and their parents regard him and his teaching subject; and thedespair he feels at having little ability to change the situation for himself.

Yoshi identi� es the geographic and cultural isolation of Meadowside as the maincontributing factor to what he describes as the racist attitudes of many of hisstudents and their parents. He regards the rural community in which he has beenlocated as introspective and insular, and attributes the students’ and parents’attitudes to a lack of contact with people of other cultures. His Asian appearanceand accent mark him as “Other” in the dominant Anglo-Australian culture of thetown.

Yoshi’s English is the target of racist remarks from students (They say, “You’ve gota very funny accent” and “Do Japanese people talk like that all the time?”) and hehighlights the frequent questions he receives about the relevance of studyingJapanese (They say, “What’s the point of doing this?”).

While there are efforts to lift the pro� le of LOTE teaching in Australian schools(Department of Education, 1997a), generally, language study is given low priority inschool communities. Often students and parents fail to see the relevance of LOTElearning, particularly in rural areas where there are fewer opportunities for foreignlanguages to be used for genuine communicative purpose. For Yoshi, the problemis compounded because he teaches no subject other than Japanese. His daily workis inextricably entwined with his ethnic identity and sense of self. Even though heoften tries to excuse the student’s behaviour on the basis of their age, he � nds itdif� cult not to take the well-established school discourse of student de� ance anddisrespect for LOTE as anything other than personal criticism.

Yoshi’s frustration with the parents’ disinterest in LOTE is voiced and echoedthrough several cycles of the poem:

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014


I say“I’ve got a concern with your son or daughter’s behaviour in the classroom.”and they ask my name again,I say it again.“I’m new and I’m from Japan and I’m a native speaker,I’m teaching Japanese.”

There are few Anglo-Australian teachers who would need to introduce themselvesin this way to parents—to provide an explanation of why they had been employed toteach. Yoshi problematises his position in the school and justi� es his place there ina similar way to other racially marked professionals. Mirza (1996, p. 136), writing ofher need to justify her position as a black academic in a white establishment, says “IfI was white I would not. My position would be normal.” This need to justify one’sexistence is, she says:

symptomatic of the asymmetrical power imbalance that characterises theracial discourse, that we are always asked to interrogate our blackness; toquestion, search, legitimate, and justify our presence. (Mirza, 1996,p. 136)

For Yoshi, the need to justify teaching LOTE at this particular time, when manyteachers of subjects deemed less-economically important were losing their jobs, mayhave been even more acute. Furthermore, as a beginning teacher, his challenge isintensi� ed by only being assigned the junior levels in the school. These are the yearlevels generally recognised as the most demanding in terms of class managementstrategies (They are so rude to me all the times. I kind of get used to it). That he is nota “native speaker” of English in these situations, of course, more than cancels out hisasset in being a “native speaker” of Japanese.

Yoshi’s resignation is understandable in the absence of any support from theschool community. He is a young teacher working in an isolated community,geographically and culturally, teaching subjects of little perceived value to thestudents and their parents. There is no talk in his transcript of principal ordepartmental support, no way for him to identify his problems as other thanpersonal. His minimalist critique of the school (I think there should be more schoolsupport) seems understated in these circumstances.

His inexperience and the school’s apparent reluctance to effectively address issuesof student discipline compound the dif� culties he faces as a beginning teacher.When he speci� cally sought guidance from his Year Level Coordinator in handlinghis class management problems, he was advised to adopt a more relaxed approachand not to worry because the parents did not have a good attitude towards LOTE.This seems a highly inadequate response to a complex and racialised problem.

While Yoshi is more able to name his frustration (I can’t do anything) than theracism of his students, he is more vocal in his critique of Australian education. Hethinks there is too much tolerance of mediocre student achievement in Australianschools and that teachers are reluctant to demand more of their students. Hisexpression is highly tentative (I think sometimes, I think maybe) and ultimately heturns the critique back on himself, implying that his opinions and expectations about

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014


education standards are “out-of-step” with those of his colleagues rather than theother way around. He attributes his different views to being Japanese. Signi� cantly,it is during staff meetings where there is most likely to be discussion aboutstandards, that he is strongly reminded of his cultural and ethnic difference (I thinkI’m really Japanese).

Shanti’s Interview Poem

Shanti’s Interview poem tells a different story, one that complexi� es the picture ofthe overseas born teacher in Australian rural schools. Shanti has been a teacher ofscience and mathematics since 1983. She is 52 and has a degree in science, havingoriginally studied rubber technology in her native Sri Lanka. After immigrating toEngland, she obtained a Diploma in Education and taught in London for a shorttime, before moving to Australia with her family to escape the racism that was partof everyday life for them. Very soon after their arrival in Australia in 1983, Shanti’shusband obtained a position in an accountant’s of� ce in Springdale, a town about300 kilometres north of Melbourne where she obtained a relieving teaching positionat one of the town’s secondary schools. She and her husband increasingly travel toMelbourne on the weekends to visit their two sons who have both moved to studyat university. Shanti’s interview, conducted in her home, was a long discussionabout her life as a teacher in Springdale, and her coming to maturity as a pro-fessional in a country town, where she, like Yoshi, found a job as a young teacher.Shanti’s 20 page interview transcript has been used to recreate a 150 line poem inwhich she reminisces about several incidents in her professional life which haveshaped her identity as a teacher marked by Sri Lankan ethnicity.

They offered me a job—a country school.There weren’t many colored people around hereI can just remember people knowing who I am.

From my school the support was greatthe coordinators were very goodthey gave me what I had to teach,they helped me understand the system.It didn’t take longmaybe because I was from London.If I’d come from Sri Lanka I would have had a problem.

I speak to friends in Melbourne.There’s a lot of Sri Lankansthey cling together.Our friends said “You won’t last there for long,you’ll be back in Melbourne soon.”Maybe because I was in London I didn’t need the Sri Lankan community.If I’d come straight to Australia I would have found it hard.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014


Maybe I’m a little bit different.One day one girl called me “Black B” …I walked into this classthis girl was talking,I said “stop talking.”She held the note to her friend.I saw the note.I picked it up and read it.

I started crying.

Came home and didn’t want to go back.I rang up the school and spoke to them.She of her own accordance cameand apologizedshe started crying.She was genuine“We shouldn’t have done that to you.”It was probably one of those things they did.It was bad.That was the � rst and last.

My accent—I can understand the kids switch off with different accent.I do that myselfI switch offso I can understand.So, I try my best,put forward the information in different ways.I will explain the work.Worksheets will be there.Always writing will be on the board.I get another student to repeat the instructionsNo one has complained.Parents have been alright.It’s more positive than negative.If they get bored I just tell a story about Sri Lanka.They will listen.Probably they got used to me,

At school they know my standards.Even if two students are kissingthey will move apart.Well, I tell them in classthose are private things (I come from a culture where these things areprivate).They respect that.Fifteen years ago they wouldn’t have done that.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014


Now they are doing it.I like that.I don’t have to tell.They know me.

It’s different nowadaysThe kids don’t want to be pushedthey don’t want to be seenthey don’t want to be pushedthey don’t want to work hard,they don’t feel proud to say they’re the best.

I used to be very rigid because I am Sri Lankan,justice has to be done.But I don’t work in that way anymore.With experienceI accept.I’m not losing anything.That’s something if you’re coming from Sri Lanka you don’t understand.In Sri Lanka the kids are keenthe parents are keenIt doesn’t matter what teaching method you use.Here you have to � nd interesting teaching events.

What I didn’t realise was humour.If you can turn around the situation the clash is gone.In the classroom I don’t let myself get very angryso if I canI use humour.I can be sarcastic too.That doesn’t help.But I do it.

When you hurt a child you don’t feel good.

There was a different principal when I joined the school.The next principal came,he gave me headaches.Lookatmycolour.I never ever came across a person like thatIt still affects me.

He wanted to come into my class to � nd out how I was teaching.No reason.I contacted the union

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014


they had to come.There was excess.He called three people into his of� ce.Three ladies.There were teachers who had come after meI know their type of teaching.They were not called.I was.Three ladies.The other two were white.But they came much later than me.He just said “the three of you are chosen.”I was the only one who’d been there a long timeI suppose I expected it.

I had to call the union.They came and asked him to leave me aloneHe would have driven me crazy.

I knewfrom the startas soon as he moved inthe ways he behaved,the way he spoke to me.I was really uncomfortable.He made me feel so small.Just the ways he talks,the ways he talked to me.Demanding.He won’t say “please”he said, “I want.”

It still affects me.

Sometimes people take me for a weak person.I’m very politethat is our culture.But they don’t realize politeness is different from weakness.Itdoesn’t matter that he was rude.Because of his age and positionI was polite. I could have been rude.

He didn’t expect the union.

Cause like I said,I’m not weakI’m polite,

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014


but not weak.If something wrong is done to me I will � ght against it.Politeness is not weakness.

I tell my kids:If you don’t respect your own culture no-one else will.We have to feel proud.

Current research that explores whiteness as a marker of cultural dominance (Mirza,1996; Gillborn, 1996; hooks, 1990; Bonnett, 1996; Cochrane-Smith, 2000) indi-cates that people of colour are more consciously aware of their ethnicity and racethan white people. Whiteness “has long been the standard against which the Otheris inferior, deviant, exotic or simply noteworthy” (Levine, in Bonnett 1996, pp. 145–146). “Whiteness draws lines around the identities of others, but never inwardtowards itself. By drawing attention to others, it de� ects attention away from itself”(Ryan, 1999, p. 87). Like Yoshi, Shanti also speaks about being positioned as“other” when she � rst came to Springdale. Her age and experience, however, appearto be factors which contributed to her developing a sense of ease as one of very fewpeople of colour in Springdale. She also believes her experience of living in England,where she was introduced to a Western education system and way of life allowed herto exist independently from the Sri Lankan community.

Like Yoshi, Shanti foregrounds her ethnicity as a Sri Lankan teacher rather thansimply as a teacher, but her critique of Australian education standards is morevociferous. She believes Australian teachers accept poor quality work, that studentsdo not value education, that their parents have insuf� ciently high expectations ofthem and that curriculum is not suf� ciently prescriptive, or rigorous. Over the years,however, she describes herself as becoming more � exible, reevaluating her philoso-phies about teaching and learning to “� t in” with the Australian education system.Unlike Yoshi, Shanti’s status in relation to her “English speaking background” issomewhat ambiguous—she has spoken English most of her life, has completed allher schooling in English, and has lived in England. Her story does not speak of anyneed to justify her credentials as a teacher to the school or the community, her storyspeaks of strategies that effectively enable her to get around the problem of “myaccent”—and of more blatant discrimination on the basis of skin colour alone.

Yet in Shanti’s recounting of the “Black bitch story” she demonstrates greateragency than Yoshi in dealing with racist student behaviour. Even though thisincident occurred when Shanti was a much younger teacher, the poem indicates howshe was even then, able to draw on a common language to [speak] to them, gainingaccess to support from the school and genuine remorse from the student. She has ahistory of her own and a set of resources often not available to younger, lessexperienced teachers. The reason she and her husband left London was becausethey were unprepared to tolerate the racism they found there. In answer to thishistory, she was not prepared to accept similar racism in her new workplace.Crucially though, she was able to verbalise this in a way that meant her response tothis instance of racist abuse was supported by the school and the student was ableto acknowledge the incident and apologise.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014


This support, however, is neither unquali� ed nor independent of circumstancewithin the school. Shanti also speaks of the victimisation she suffered when a newschool principal continually undermined her authority in front of colleagues andstudents. This incident is highly signi� cant for us as teacher educators, in that itexempli� es the discourses of institutionalised racism that characterise the experi-ences of many of our student teachers who are marked by ethnic difference(Santoro, 1999). While Shanti does not explicitly name the Principal as racist, herdescription of the other women in danger of being placed “in excess” of staf� ngrequirements clearly marks this as an issue of racism for her: the other two were white.She also names this as an issue of gender: There was excess. He called three people intohis of� ce. Three ladies.

Shanti refuses to be intimidated by the Principal’s actions or to accept herpositioning by him as less powerful because of her gender or race. Other teachers inthe school, who had been appointed after Shanti, and whom she consideredineffective teachers (I know their type of teaching) were not named in excess. Herrepetition of the phrases I’m not weak, I’m polite re� ects an assertion of both herethnicity (I’m very polite that is our culture) and her professional right to lodge aformal complaint through the union on the basis of harassment.

This story is ultimately one of victory for Shanti. The Principal was of� ciallyreprimanded over his racist treatment of her and she did not remain “in excess”.There are still traces in the poem, however, that suggest some dissatisfaction withthis of� cial acknowledgement of the Principal’s racism. From a distance of over tenyears, this incident of overt injustice “still affects” her.

A striking feature of Shanti’s poem for us is the way she foregrounds heradherence to her own cultural values. She maintains strong connections with her SriLankan heritage as a feature of her teaching: If they get bored I just tell a story aboutSri Lanka. She expects students to acknowledge and respect her difference. Well, Itell them in class, “those are private things”. I come from a culture where these things areprivate. They respect that. She emphasises that student attitudes have changed overtime (Fifteen years ago they wouldn’t have done that) and this affords her somepleasure and pride, Now they are doing it. I like that.

Shanti skilfully uses her marginality as a woman marked by ethnic difference, to“work for her” rather than against her in the classroom. bell hooks speaks ofmarginality as often being “a site one stays in, clings to even, because it nourishesone’s capacity to resist. It offers the possibility of radical perspectives from which tosee and create, to imagine alternative new worlds […] the space in the margin is asite of creativity and power]” (hooks, 1990, p. 150). It seems that, over the years,Shanti has moved closer to the “centre” in some ways, but the “space in the margin”is where she is positioned the most powerfully.

The Poetics of Anti-racism

Working “on and with” the text of the interview transcripts from these two overseasborn teachers, we have created interview poems that have forced us, in Threadgold’ssense:

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014


away from looking at � xed texts, towards always looking at the process bywhich texts were made. In one way it meant that you never looked at the� xed text at all, so you were always consciously focussing on how ithappened, but not actually what it was when it had happened. (Thread-gold, in Kamler, 1997, p. 443)

The interview poems are fashioned from Shanti’s and Yoshi’s words about theirexperiences as teachers. They tell similar stories of marginalisation and racism inrural Australia. In selecting their words, and silencing the words of the inter-viewer, we have tried to focus attention on how these events were spoken by them,rather than on the “hard” representation of the interview transcript that we workedfrom. In poetic terms, we have also tried to highlight how our use of the researchinterview has produced its data—acknowledging that the transcript data is alreadya representation of experience produced by the researcher, rather than simplyfound (Kamler, 2001). As iterative texts, too, these poems are in one sensethemselves still not “� xed”: we have “looked at what was there and written itagain”—and our representation invites new readings, allows new meanings to bemade by the reader.

For us, Shanti’s poem tells of the emergence of a professional who is con� dent,self-assured and proud. Over her time at Springdale, she has learnt to operatewithin, between and alongside dominant white Anglo-Australian discourses. She hasworked through issues of class management and pedagogy, has learnt to � nd waysof adapting to an Australian teaching context without sacri� cing her own culturalpractices, and has challenged racist discourses by commanding respect fromstudents and staff.

In contrast, we feel that Yoshi’s story re� ects insecurity and uncertainty, a lack ofresilience and a sense of helplessness. Unlike Shanti, he does not have the “wisdom”that comes with experience and he has not been teaching long enough to workthrough class management issues or to experiment with teaching methodology.In time, he too, may gain greater con� dence, self-esteem and control over hisclassroom practice.

However, it is also clear that there are many factors other than experience whichcharacterise the professional lives of the two teachers. Shanti teaches Science andMathematics, subjects that are regarded as important in Australian schools andcentral to the project of schooling, unlike LOTE, which in many schools is still amarginal subject area. Shanti’s colleagues are supportive, and unlike Yoshi, who isemployed on a contract, her position in the school is permanent. She is � nanciallyand socially established in Springdale and we cannot ignore that, as the wife of anaccountant in a country town, she may have several advantages that Yoshi does notshare. As a well-educated and relatively af� uent member of a rural community, shehas con� dence in a class position that allows her to claim the respect that she feelsshe deserves. Unlike Yoshi, she has lived outside Sri Lanka before arriving inSpringdale and has less need to seek security among other members of her ethniccommunity. She also has the bene� ts of her family close by to provide emotionalsupport and security.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014


Conclusions

The transcript poems suggest a number of implications for teacher education,particularly in relation to the preparation of young overseas born teachers of LOTEwho may � nd work in rural schools where they could be culturally as well asprofessionally isolated. In addition to the stress experienced by most beginningteachers who make the transition to a new career, overseas born LOTE teachers mayalso be forced to deal with racist attitudes from members of their school communi-ties and negative attitudes towards their teaching subject. They will often be workingalone as the school’s only LOTE teacher and without the support available to thoseteachers working in faculties with several colleagues. Furthermore, those overseasborn teachers who are single are unlikely to have the immediate support of familymembers or members of their own ethnic communities, and may face particularproblems of isolation. Overseas born teachers may be more at risk of leaving theteaching profession prematurely than their Australian born counterparts. If they areto remain teaching and make effective contributions to schools, it is essential thatsuch stresses be addressed in teacher education.

Teacher educators need to pay particular attention to developing sound andeffective class management and motivational strategies in their overseas born stu-dents, given the likelihood they will teach junior students in secondary schools whomay also be negative towards the study of foreign language. Additionally, teachereducators need to acknowledge the range and types of experiences and expectationstheir overseas born student teachers bring with them to an Australian teachingcontext. Some overseas born student teachers’ experiences of a Western educationsystem are often limited to a short Practicum and their understandings of everydayschooling practices in Australia may not be comprehensive. Teacher educationcourses often assume this knowledge in their students and fail to make it explicit.

Furthermore, teacher education must be regarded as an important site for thedevelopment of more aware and sensitive understanding of cultural difference.Teacher education cannot simply focus on developing effective teaching skills inoverseas born student teachers, but must be seen as a way to broaden the culturalawareness of our mainstream teacher education students. The Victorian Depart-ment of Education’s Multicultural Policy (Department of Education, 1997b) pro-motes a whole school approach to the development of multicultural perspectives inVictorian schools through curriculum and policy development. It advocates accept-ance of cultural diversity, understandings of the multicultural nature of Australia’spast and present history, communication in intercultural settings, and the develop-ment of skills and understandings based on students’ knowledge and awareness oftheir own cultures and those of others. However, simply including units on“multicultural education” in teacher education courses is not suf� cient—especiallyif ethnicity is constructed as something that pertains to “others”. In many cases,preservice teacher education students complete courses in which there is a multi-cultural component, believing that they have developed understandings of students’diverse cultural characteristics and that they are closer to � nding ways of “dealing”with “these” students. However, student-teachers need to learn more than this—

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014


they need to learn to recognise their privilege as members of white Anglo-Australiandiscourses and the ways in which these positionings shape their practices andrelationships. Unless teachers are able to interrogate oppressive discourses re� ectedin general school and classroom practices and to identify the roles they inadvertentlyplay in “othering” processes, teachers of ethnic difference are likely to remain on themargins.

Finally, we claim the value of using this sort of research methodology and itsoutcomes in the pedagogy of teacher education, and the pedagogy of anti-racism.While the importance of re� ection on “critical incidents” is well documented withinteacher education, the value of the power of poetics—work on and with the texts ofnarrative accounts and observational recounts—is becoming more apparent to us asresearchers and as teachers. Data displayed “differently” in this fashion calls fordifferent readings. As Richardson (1997b, p. 237) writes, “lyric poems have thecapability of reducing the ‘distance’ between the ‘I’ and the ‘Other”’; they can moveus to rethink the boundaries between ourselves and our colleagues, as well as ourstudents. McCoy (2000, p. 249) draws on Richardson, who in turn quotes the poetRobert Frost, to claim that a poem “is the shortest emotional distance between twopoints” (Richardson, 1994, pp. 521–522). She is suggesting, like Cochrane-Smith(2000), that the power of narrative reiteration should be drawn on more and morefor the purposes of “talking our difference” in teacher education. But as Cochrane-Smith (2000, p. 185) notes, there is more to it than just telling stories:

Stories can be negative if they prompt a false sense of sameness andpersonal empathy that is unconnected to historical and institutional racism,to schools as sites for power struggles, or to ownership of the roles privilegeand oppression play in everyday life.

The “poetics” of anti-racism require us to do more than that. Making andremaking texts, consciously attending to how they can be re-presented, and re-formed, may be one way of ensuring that this connection is made for ourselves, andfor our students in teacher education.

References

AUSTRALIAN BUREAU OF STATISTICS (1998). Education and training in Australia. Commonwealth ofAustralia: Canberra.

BONNETT, A. (1996). ‘White studies’: The problems and projects of a new research agenda.Theory, Culture and Society, 13(2), 145–155.

BOURDIEU, P. (1992). Thinking about limits. Theory, Culture and Society, 9(1), 37–49.BRITZMAN, D. (1995). Lost subjects, contested objects: Toward a psychoanalytic inquiry of learning.

Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.COCHRAN-SMITH, M. (1995). Uncertain allies: understanding the boundaries of race and teach-

ing. Harvard Education Review, 65(4), 541–569.COCHRAN-SMITH, M. (2000). Blind vision: Unlearning racism in teacher education. Harvard

Education Review, 70(42), 157–190.DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, VICTORIA (1997a). Languages other than English in Victorian Schools,

1996. Melbourne: Department of Education.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014


DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, VICTORIA (1997b). Multicultural policy for Victorian schools.Melbourne: Department of Education.

DEPARTMENT OF IMMIGRATION AND MULTICULTURAL AFFAIRS (1996). Fact sheets. Canberra:Australian Government Publishing Service.

DIRECTORATE OF SCHOOL EDUCATION AND MINISTERIAL ADVISORY COUNCIL ON LANGUAGES

OTHER THAN ENGLISH (1993). Languages other than English strategy plan. Melbourne:Department of School Education.

EISNER, E. (1997). The promise and perils of alternative forms of data representation. EducationalResearcher, 26(6), 4–10.

FINE, M. (1994). Dis-stance and other stances: Negotiations of power inside feminist research. InA.GITLIN (Ed.), Power and method: Political activism and educational research. New York:Routledge.

FLAX, J. (1992). The end of innocence. In J. BUTLER & J. W. SCOTT (Eds.), Feminists theorize thepolitical. New York: Routledge.

GILLBORN, D. (1996). Student roles and perspectives in antiracist education: A crisis of whiteethnicity. British Education Researcher Journal, 22(2), 165–179.

GOUGH, N. (1998). Narrative and educational inquiry. In J. MOUSLEY, N. GOUGH, M. ROBSON &D. COLQUOHOUN (Eds.), Horizons, images and experiences: The research stories collection(pp. 118–127). Geelong: Deakin University Press.

HOOKS, B. (1990). Yearnings, race, gender and cultural politics. Boston, MA: Southend Press.JONES, C., MAGUIRE, M. & WATSON, B. (1997). The school experience of some ethnic minority

students in London schools during initial teacher training. Journal of Education for Teaching,23(2), 131–144.

KAMLER, B. (1997). An interview with Terry Threadgold on critical discourse analysis. Discourse:studies in the cultural politics of education, 18(3), 437–451.

KAMLER, B. (2001). Relocating the personal: A critical writing pedagogy. Albany, NY: State Univer-sity Press of New York.

KUMASHIRO, K.R. (1999). Supplementing normalcy and otherness: Queer Asian American menre� ect on stereotypes, identity, and oppression. Qualitative Studies in Education, 12(5),491–508.

LADWIG, J.G. (1994). Science, rhetoric and the construction of socially recognisable evidence ineducational research. Australian Educational Researcher, 21(3), 77–96.

MCCOY, K. (2000). White noise—the sound of epidemic: Reading/writing as a climate ofintelligibility around the “crisis” of difference. In E.A. ST. PIERRE & W.S. PILLOW (Eds.),Working the ruins: Feminist poststructural theory and methods in education. New York andLondon: Routledge.

MIRZA, S. (1996). Black educators. Adults learning, 7(6), 136–137.MORSON, G.S. & EMERSON, C. (1990). Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a prosaics. Stanford, CA:

Stanford University Press.RAKHIT, B. (1998). Silenced voices: Life history as an approach to the study of South Asian

women teachers. In P. CONNOLLY & B. TROYNA (Eds.), Researching racism in education.Buckingham and Philadelphia, PA: The Open University Press.

REID, J. (1997). Disciplining data: Power and practice in educational research. AustralianEducational Researcher, 24(3), 57–82.

RICHARDSON, L. (1994). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. DENZIN & Y. LINCOLN (Eds.),Handbook of qualitative research. Newbury Park, CA: California, Sage.

RICHARDSON, L. (1997a). Fields of play. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.RICHARDSON, L. (1997b). Poetic representation. In J. FLOOD, S. BRICE HEATH & D. LAPP (Eds.),

Handbook of research on teaching literacy through the communicative and visual arts. New York:Macmillan/IRE.

RIZVI, F. (1992). Racism, multiculturalism and the cultural politics of teaching. In L. LOGAN &N. DEMPSTER (Eds.), Teachers in Australian schools: Issues for the 1990s. Canberra: AustralianCouncil of Education.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014


RIZVI, F. (1997). Educational leadership and the politics of difference. Melbourne Studies inEducation, 38(1), 91–102.

RYAN, J. (1999). Race and ethnicity in multiethnic schools. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.SANTORO, N. (1999). Relationships of power: An analysis of school practicum discourse. Journal

of Intercultural Studies, 20(1), 31–42.SANTORO, N., REID, J. & KAMLER, B. (2001). Making difference count. Australian Journal of

Education (forthcoming).THOMSON, P. (1998). Narrative inquiry—A personal exploration. Changing Education, 4(4) and

5(1&2), 8–12.THREADGOLD, T. (1997). Feminist poetics: Poeisis, performance, histories. London/New York:

Routledge.TROYNA B. & RIZVI, F. (1997). Racialisation of difference and the cultural politics of teaching. In

B.J. BIDE, T. GOOD & I. GODSON (Eds.), International handbook of teachers and teaching.Amsterdam: Kluwer.

ZIMPHER, N. & ASHBURN, E. (1992). Countering parochialism in teacher candidates. In M.E.DILWORTH (Ed.), Diversity in teacher education: New expectations. San Francisco, CA:Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

ambr

idge

] at

00:

50 0

8 O

ctob

er 2

014

teachers talking difference: teacher education and the poetics of anti-racism

Documents