Research on Becoming an English Teacher: Through Lacan’s Looking Glass 9780367077006, 9780429022166

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Research on Becoming an English Teacher

Research on Becoming an English Teacher considers the process of becoming a teacher from a variety of perspectives, where the ambition is to consider how people can change themselves within that process. By pursuing an approach influenced by the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, the authors consider practitioner research as an approach to professional and personal development, and how it might be understood as a strategy within both teaching and teacher education. Taking English teaching as the main example, this book explores the processes and discourses that shape the experience of English teaching in schools. Chapters consider the origin and development of English education, practice and theory in English education, the process of becoming a teacher in school-based environments and creating an analytical space for learning narratives in teacher education. This book will be of interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of teacher education, curriculum studies, educational theory and educational psychology. Tony Brown is Professor of Mathematics Education at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Mike Dore is a Deputy Headteacher at Parrswood, a large 11–18 high school in Manchester, UK. Christopher Hanley is Senior Lecturer in secondary education at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.

Routledge Research in Teacher Education

The Routledge Research in Teacher Education series presents the latest research on Teacher Education and also provides a forum to discuss the latest practices and challenges in the field. Teachable Moments and the Science of Education Greg Seals Dimensions and Emerging Themes in Teaching Practicum A Global Perspective Edited by Melek Çakmak and Müge Gündüz Teaching, Learning, and Leading with Schools and Communities Field-based Teacher Education Edited by Amy Heineke and Ann Marie Ryan Teacher Education in the Trump Era and Beyond Preparing New Teachers in a Contentious Political Climate Edited by Laura Baecher, Megan Blumenreich, Shira Eve Epstein, and Julie R. Horwitz Values and Professional Knowledge in Teacher Education Nick Mead Professional Development through Mentoring Novice ESL Teachers’ Identity Formation Juliana Othman and Fatiha Senom Research on Becoming an English Teacher Through Lacan’s Looking Glass Tony Brown, Mike Dore and Christopher Hanley For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Research-in-Teacher-Education/book-series/RRTE

Research on Becoming an English Teacher Through Lacan’s Looking Glass Tony Brown, Mike Dore and Christopher Hanley

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Tony Brown, Mike Dore and Christopher Hanley The right of Tony Brown, Mike Dore and Christopher Hanley to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-07700-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-02216-6 (ebk) Typeset in Galliard by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

ContentsContents

About the authorsvi PART 1

Introduction1 1 Reading and writing oneself as a teacher

3

2 The psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan

19

PART 2

Teaching English in schools today39 3 The origins and development of English education

41

4 The practice of English education

56

5 Theory and complexity in English education

76

PART 3

Becoming an English teacher in England89 6 Creating an analytical space for learning narratives in teacher education

91

7 Masters of knowledge or knowing slaves?: shifting tutor alignments

109

8 Coda

121

References124 Index133

About the authors

About the authorsAbout the authors

Tony Brown is Professor of Mathematics Education at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), UK. His work is primarily concerned with considering mathematics education and teacher education through the lens of contemporary social theory. He has written eight previous books and many journal articles in these areas. Tony has also had a long-standing interest in professionally oriented research, typically carried out by practitioners working on doctoral studies. His own students have researched areas as diverse as mathematics education, science education, teacher education, emergency medicine, police training, emotion in special needs education, educational links with industry, English education, race and ethnicity, popular music education, global education, early-years education, school leadership and digital media. Seven of these doctoral projects have led to book publications by the authors. Tony’s most recent book, Teacher Education in England, appeared in this series in 2018, where the report on which it was based was presented at a parliamentary seminar at the House of Lords. Originally from London, Tony trained in Canterbury and Exeter before returning to central London, where he taught mathematics for three years at Holland Park School. The next three years were spent as a mathematics teacher educator for Volunteer Services Overseas in Dominica in the Caribbean. In 1987, he completed his PhD at Southampton University, UK, which focussed on language usage in mathematics classrooms, based on data collected in Dominica and London. After a spell as the mathematics coordinator in a middle school in the Isle of Wight, Tony moved to MMU in 1989, becoming a professor in 2000. During 2003 and 2004, Tony was based at the University of Waikato, where he was the first Professor of Mathematics Education in New Zealand. Mike Dore is Deputy Headteacher at Parrswood, a large 11–18 high school in Manchester, UK. He has worked as a high school English teacher for the past eighteen years, and has a number of interests including Shakespeare, eighteenth-century satire, Emily Brontë, literacy and Lacanian theory. Mike completed his Doctorate in 2017, which looked at English as a school subject and how Jacques Lacan’s theories can challenge practitioners to think of English in different ways. Originally from Bradford in West Yorkshire, Mike studied

About the authors vii at the University of Wales Aberystwyth, Leeds University, Warwick University and Manchester Metropolitan University. Beginning his teaching career in Bradford, he moved to Stockport in 2003 and taught at high schools in Macclesfield and Manchester. He was accredited as a Specialist Leader in Education in 2018 to work with other schools in English, literacy, and leadership. Christopher Hanley is a senior lecturer in secondary education at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. His work is primarily concerned with English studies in education and educational philosophy in doctoral studies. His published works address these areas and range of other interests, including international education, the history of education, the construction of emotion in education, curriculum and citizenship education. Chris is Course Director of the Doctor of Education course. His other teaching commitments have centred on students pursuing Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) English routes, a range of professionally oriented masters’ routes and professional doctorates. Chris has a particular interest in literary and philosophical studies in education. His forthcoming book links the life and works of George Orwell with current education issues (Routledge). Originally from Salford, UK, Chris trained to be a teacher at MMU. He taught in schools and colleges in the north west of England for eleven years before taking a full-time post at MMU. He completed his PhD in 2006 at the University of Leeds, UK, in the School of English. Between 2005 and 2010, Chris also lectured on undergraduate English courses at the universities of Leeds and Bolton, UK.

Part 1

Introduction

IntroductionReading and writing oneself as a teacher

1 Reading and writing oneself as a teacher

During a visit to the Academia art gallery in Venice, Tony’s then 7-year-old daughter Imogen was rather taken by Tintoretto’s painting entitled “Creation of the Animals”, depicting animals on the land, birds in the sky and fish in the sea overseen by an elderly God floating in the foreground. She was alarmed by an apparent omission in God’s creation: “Where are the dinosaurs?” Her awareness of cultural history could detect the limits of Tintoretto’s worldview that had been shaped by assumptions that have been revised, if not sharpened, in more recent times. Dinosaurs are largely a twentieth-century human construction, with our ancestors having been mostly ignorant of them. Our fantasies of our historical roots have moved on a little and thus changed our understandings of how we fit into what are now more widely seen as evolutionary processes. Her 9-year-old brother Elliot, meanwhile, evidenced his politically correct upbringing in admitting that he had not realised that God was a man. Presumably, he had imagined God to be some other sort of transcendental entity! Our modes of depicting deities in images or texts more generally can be quite fluid, having changed through the years, along with our senses of how we are formed ourselves. Deities are a bit like the TV character Doctor Who in assuming a new form of identity every few years, except deities were ahead of the game when it came to including women. These days we seem to take more responsibility ourselves for what we become, and claim less reliance on someone creating us. The whole thrust of the modernist project has been towards reducing reliance on the sacred and the supernatural for explaining who we are. We may speculate on the many ways in which cultural histories have been revised since the painting was created in the sixteenth century, and thus on how individuals understand and describe themselves fitting into the world that we inhabit, but inevitably to do this we use words that originated in earlier times for different purposes. We all have common-sense understandings of the world in which we live, but for how long do those understandings have validity? It is so very easy to be seduced by the various languages and styles of speech that hold currency in our day as though they have some sturdier truth or longer-term validity. Yet tradition can make strong demands. Or rather, strong demands can be made in the name of supposed traditional values, which can serve as a brake on adjustment to new conditions or revised values more pertinent to a new generation.

4  Introduction Teaching, the theme of this book, has often been governed by a variety of alternative versions of common sense as to what a teacher should be or could be. Consequentially, becoming a teacher requires real personal change often associated with intense emotional demands in meeting the diverse expectations of others or in asserting new understandings of oneself. How might we tackle this challenge directly by offering an approach to understanding these changes as an important dimension of the learning process entailed in developing capability in the classroom and with its associated administrative paraphernalia? We shall be arguing that by incorporating reflective research into a teacher’s education, opportunities can be opened to build the teacher’s emerging sense of self into their evolving understanding of the professional demands that they face. We aim to show how a teacher’s emerging understanding of who they are can be stitched into the fabric of reflective activity carried out as part of initial teacher education for student teachers, or within continuing professional development programmes for teachers who are already practising. In the approaches that we shall explore, teacher education is centred on the production of self in newly emerging environments. Such reflective activity is not new to teacher education. Drawing on various traditions of practice-based research, we consider how such styles of research might be more fully integrated into teacher education and how teacher education might be rethought to incorporate a more central role for the teacher’s sense of their own personal becoming. We suggest, however, that the more strident selfaware individual getting things done, who was often depicted in early versions of action research in education, might be more usefully replaced by an individual rather less sure of his or her personal and social boundaries – or perhaps rather, by an individual who sees self-exploration as an exciting challenge, whereby that exploration produces something or someone new. It is for this reason that we turn to psychoanalytic theory. Our specific theme to be pursued relates to how individuals understand and capture personal experience, perhaps as reflective writing, as part of their initiation into sharing experiences with others. Here, the teacher’s sense of self is understood as being related to how they understand their task of becoming part of the teaching community and sharing its various ways of describing the world. Yet, such processes cannot have clear outcomes, since a strict separation between the individual and the external world can never be achieved. As an actor, I can never be fully sure of my influence on others. Nor can I be sure of how much I am being influenced by others. Maybe I can take a guess and act on that guess, but we can never be fully confident of how we fit into the world around us and how the world will respond to us. We shall be guided by Sigmund Freud and his latter-day interpreter Jacques Lacan in working to better understand how individuals explore their connection to the world and the uncertainties that arise in this quest. As Freud puts it: An adult’s sense of self cannot have been the same from the beginning. It must have undergone a process of development. . . . Pathology acquaints us with a great many conditions in which the boundary between the ego

Reading and writing oneself as a teacher 5 and the external world becomes uncertain or the borderlines are incorrectly drawn. There are cases in which parts of a person’s body, indeed parts of his mental life – perceptions, thoughts, feelings – seem alien, divorced from the ego, and others in which he attributes to the external world what has clearly arisen in the ego and ought to be recognised by it. Hence, even the sense of self is subject to disturbances, and the limits of the self are not constant. (Freud, 2002, p. 5) In an analogy with a psychoanalytic process, the teacher, in this book, is seen to be reflecting on their practice, displaying similarities to a client engaged in a sequence of psychoanalytic sessions, making sense of their world through talking about it and reflexively pointing to herself through the perspectives revealed. In psychoanalysis, the client constructs herself through building a story of who she is, a story that guides her in her actions. Likewise, reflective writing within practitioner research comprises reporting, generating and deceiving, whilst actively redefining the teacher’s understanding of herself. The reflective research intervenes in its central object, namely the person carrying out the research. Here, the teacher researcher metaphorically lies back on a couch and talks of her life, her motivations, fears and aspirations, where the words – spoken as if to a psychoanalyst – somehow become more real and tangible as they are spoken. As such, these depictions emerge as points of reference and guiding principles for how the teacher lives her life thereafter. That is, the story that the teacher tells of her reflected experiences shapes her actual experience by providing a framework against which she understands what she is doing. The words and the way they are put together become a tangible part of her personal history. Nevertheless, this reification of lived experience can deceive as well as enlighten. Some versions of self are more comfortable than others, and a client may choose a version that she is drawn to for reasons that may seem unclear. Meanwhile, society itself has expectations of how teachers should conduct themselves, and promotes specific understandings of normality. Such socially derived understandings of oneself here provide a backdrop to teachers making sense of their own lives during their training and in their later professional work as teachers. The challenge, however, is not for the teacher to get to know their own identity, but rather to build it: Self-identity has to be created and recreated on a more active basis than before. This explains why therapy and counselling of all kinds have become so popular in Western countries. When he initiated modern psychoanalysis, Freud thought that he was establishing a scientific treatment for neurosis. What he was in effect doing was constructing a method for the renewal of self-identity . . . what happens in psychoanalysis is that the individual revisits his or her past in order to create more autonomy for the future. Much the same is true in the self-help groups that have become so common in Western societies. At Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, for instance, individuals recount their life histories, and receive support from others present in stating

6  Introduction their desire to change. They recover from their addiction essentially through re-writing the story line of their lives. (Giddens, 1999, p. 5) Yet, as we shall see, for Lacan, reflective accounts declared in analysis necessarily miss the reality they seek to portray – yet they can stimulate alternative forms of satisfaction that produce new realities. As such, we are all motivated by desire, a desire that often mistakes its object. Here, the narratives we offer within reflective writing never catch up with us, but that need not stop us from trying. And our misses can nevertheless be informative about who we are or where we are. We may fail, but we can learn to fail better! Lacan sees the human subject as caught in a never-ending attempt to capture an understanding of oneself in relation to the world in which one lives. The human subject is always incomplete and remains so, where identifications of oneself are captured in a supposed image, an image of which, Lacan insists, we should always be wary. Here the individual is forever on a quest to complete the picture she has of herself in relation to the world around her and the others who also inhabit it. She responds to the fantasy she has of the Other and the fantasy she imagines the Other having of her. The identity thus created evolves through a series of interpretations (and misrecognitions) through interactions with others.

Practitioner research: alternative understandings of human subjectivity The key object of this book is to examine how both student and practising teachers can carry out practitioner research into their everyday practice towards developing that practice. The written product of this reflective inquiry comprises building a narrative layer in which the researcher acts as her own analyst (Brown & England, 2004; Brown, 2008a; Brown & Jones, 2001). The images constructed in this process provide material for the researcher to interrogate herself. In this perspective, the flow of narrative is an ongoing construction of a reflective and constructive, yet disruptive, layer that feeds whilst growing alongside the life it seeks to portray. Narratives hold our desires in place, even if they do not take us to the place that satisfies them. The stories we tell do not pin down life for inspection, but rather stimulate this life for future growth. So, reflective writing can be viewed as a stimulator of desire through which our life unfolds. Yet there is also a risk that we begin to believe the stories we tell, as though they provide the final answer. There is a cost for the individual in gearing into the shared outer world. Through expressing oneself through social codes, procedures, etc., personal and social boundaries are reshaped – and hence, cause a troubling compulsion to settle these boundaries. Let us unfold a route that takes to this understanding of the human subject. A common understanding of practitioner research in education that has prevailed from the early days of such work situates the researcher as a human reflecting on her immersion in some supposed research environment. The plan,

Reading and writing oneself as a teacher 7 implement and evaluate cycle is but one of the many manifestations of a hermeneutic approach to research, often attributed to Hans-Georg Gadamer, which comprises action, reflection on that action and thus revised action (e.g. Elliott, 1991), with an oscillation between understanding and explaining that understanding in words (the hermeneutic circle). Observation Plan action Carry out action Reflect on action Plan action Carry out action Reflect on action Plan action Carry out action Reflect on action Plan action Carry out action Reflect on action Plan action Carry out action Reflect on action Reflections, however, are not merely a function of action. The situation of the researcher itself affects how research is conceived, how events are constructed and how they are then reported on through time. Action research strategies can support practitioners in education when the researcher is often concerned with providing a convincing account of his or her connectedness to the situation he or she is studying. Here, teachers explore their connectedness to the world to build a better understanding of how ideas shape practice and learning. The purpose of such research is often to generate new and fresh perspectives that enable courses of action that might not have been detected so easily prior to the research. The research task then is to disrupt as well as to confirm what we see. The researcher affects how research is conceived, how events are constructed and then how they are reported through time. In this hermeneutic (or interpretive) process, I imagine myself as someone trying to make sense of the world. I will have various thoughts in my mind. At some point, I may wish to share my thoughts in words spoken or written. But as I say something, I may be disappointed with how my thoughts appear once converted into words. And through my attempts to reconcile what I thought with what I said or wrote, my understanding of the world might then be modified. So, when I feel ready to speak again, there may be some shift in the way in which I express myself, as, in a sense, a different person is speaking. And so on, in a manifestation of the hermeneutic circle, understandings and explanations continue to disturb each other perhaps for as long as I live (Ricoeur, 1981). In this

8  Introduction account of the hermeneutic circle, one might suppose an individual who is visible to him- or herself and well able to detect the ways in which explanatory words fail to adjust accordingly. The human subject predicated in this understanding is one who thinks and therefore must be someone. The reflective task is conceptualised in terms of improvement from deficiencies that are self-evident. This version of events, however, lacks some key elements that have emerged in more recent theoretical work in which the visibility of oneself to oneself is less evident and the very notion of oneself arises through rather different procedures. The German social theorist Jurgen Habermas proposed revisions to Gadamer’s model by pinpointing the failure of language to do an honest job. Language is inherited and is replete with many distortions resulting from alternative modes of usage. Such distortions may have arisen, for example, from a government insisting on classifying educational practices according to the demands of assessment, or from historically derived modes of description ill-suited to contemporary practices. In such Habermasian perspectives, our task is to detect these distortions and then remove them (Brown & Roberts, 2000). Habermas (e.g. 1976a) was following Freud’s psychoanalysis in supposing that models of understanding were created to facilitate a cure, such as the removal of linguistic distortions to get a better understanding and a release from the torment of deficient rationalisations. As with Freud, however, this might suppose that we could reach undistorted communication as an ideal model of life is achieved – and ideals have a poor track record of long-term survival. In a famous debate, however, the French philosopher Foucault (e.g. 1997) was somewhat unconvinced by Habermas’ capacity to get a consensus as to where such distortions would arise, and shifted the task on to the individual resisting domination in its various forms at every opportunity. As we have seen, the reflective stories that the researcher tells provide material for analysis. Yet the “reflections” are performative, not mere neutral reflections. They intervene in the life being reported. The story changes the person carrying out the research. The story can make things happen through representing situations in novel ways. But the story is also a mask. This process comprises an ongoing redefinition of self and of the world that shapes itself around that self. In this account, human identity is never fixed, and you are never able to say what you want to say because the words are not your own – or at least, ownership is in a state of permanent dispute. Poststructuralist theory, such as Foucault’s, alerts us to the problems of working according to models of which we are not always aware. There is a cost for the individual in gearing into the shared outer world, since the individual, knowingly or unknowingly, makes herself recognisable through the linguistic resources available. These resources harbour specific ways of making sense of the world that may or may not suit the best interests of all individuals. Similarly, the reflective research process intervenes in its object, but an object that defies final resolution since there is no conclusive framework. We can always frame our situation in a different way, yet we have only partial control over how others complete the picture. Stories about who I am come into being and get fixed as accounts of who I am, even when they prevent movement to a new story

Reading and writing oneself as a teacher 9 that might suit me better in new circumstances. We can sometimes ignore the fact that stories are failing us, as perhaps we have not yet learnt other stories with which to replace them. Stories of our past tell us who we are. But if we can tell the stories of the past differently, we can open new futures. We have the power to rewrite the storyline of our lives. By rewriting who we are, we can have the capacity to effect changes in our practices. In this book, we will occasionally draw on Lacan’s most prominent contemporary commentator, the Slovenian philosopher and social theorist Slavoj Žižek. Žižek (1989) argues, however, that the opposition between Habermas and Foucault has been superseded by a more contemporary formulation in which Althusser and Lacan are contrasted. The Marxian philosopher Althusser (1971) was one of Foucault’s teachers. He had already asked how it could be that individuals spot the discourses that happened to be interpellating them such that they could plot their escape. Althusser felt that the aspiration to a happy conclusion where everything would be resolved was the biggest fraud of all. Following Marx, he saw alienation as endemic to our very existence. We never fully occupy the stories that purport to describe or guide us. It is at this point that Lacan presents himself into this debate. Lacan’s route from Freud differs to the route taken by Habermas. As seen, whilst Habermas aspires to some sort of resolution where we aim at removing “systematically distorted language” from our social lives, Lacan’s account avoids Freud’s penchant for victory narratives in the form of psychoanalytic resolutions. For Lacan, psychoanalytic work is more of a continual and permanent aspect of self-realising, or a recurrent response to perceived expectations or demands. The gap never will be closed. Unlike Althusser depicting a given subject struggling with given circumstances, Lacan described a process that comprises an ongoing redefinition of self and of the world that shapes itself around that self. In this account, human identity is never fixed, and furthermore, you are never able to say what you want to say because the words are not your own. Or at least ownership is in a state of permanent dispute. This drives the subject to keep on talking, to offer yet more accounts, to re-frame her intentions again and again successively, always anticipating the true version of her life, but never quite getting there, failing, but being brave enough to fail again – but in a better way. And it is in this rewriting that her sense of self evolves through the narratives that she offers, motivated by desires that aspire to renewal and drives that find pleasure in repetition.

Some introductory anecdotes on assembling the characteristics of being a teacher We aim to better understand how practitioner research within teacher education might affect a teacher’s sense of who they are and the world in which they operate. Our main examples throughout the book will be of student or practising English teachers. For new English graduates entering teacher training, major changes seem inevitable as they transfer their attention from undergraduate studies – perhaps learning about Mrs Dalloway having a troublesome day – to

10  Introduction confronting a real live 14-year-old with an attitude problem towards phonics. We consider how the stories such teachers tell contribute to an evolving sense of self, but a self that is implicated in alternative understandings of social worlds. A key element of the teachers’ research was a focus on their understandings of who they were in professional settings and how they built analytical apparatus around accounts of their own actions, towards developing those actions and building a more sophisticated account of their subjectivity. Some preliminary examples will illustrate the awkwardness the teachers experience in building conceptions of self through reflective work as personal ideas are processed in social space.

Entering the world of children Rebecca Grant was in her second year of teaching English when she had two short articles published anonymously in national newspapers describing her experiences of encountering children’s views in her classroom. We include extracts from each of them. 1 I decided to dedicate a Year 7 lesson (11 and 12 year olds) to a poetry competition run by Oxfam and End Hunger UK. It asks students to write about food poverty, and the charities hope to use the poems to lobby MPs [Members of Parliament]. About a third of children live in poverty in the town I teach in, so I thought that the issue would be relevant and engaging if handled sensitively. The kids did find it relevant and engaging. But they completely missed the point. I’m genuinely worried that I’ll have to enter a pile of poems about benefits cheats and homeless scroungers. I don’t think this is what Oxfam had in mind. Programmes like Benefits Street and hysterical articles about “shameless” welfare fraudsters in the Sun attract reams of criticism from middle-class liberals, but that’s really not who they are aimed at. My kids love Benefits Street. It is so hyperbolised that it allows children to reject the label of “poor”. If their street isn’t quite that bad, they feel more secure and can safely disassociate from the narrative of poverty perpetuated by the right-wing media. Terms such as “on benefits” and “council housed” have become so derogatory that children refuse to identify with them, and use them against each other as slurs. Kids experience a kind of cognitive dissonance, where they must denounce a part of their existence to evade the abuse levelled at people quite – but not quite – like them. “I saw this programme about people on benefits!” they will say whilst bolting down their free school meal. “Whenever they got their benefits, they just went to Starbucks with their friends. They should be saving up for a house”. (I’m a millennial, debt-laden renter, and we had an interesting discussion about whether I should be allowed in Starbucks. Apparently, it’s fine.)

Reading and writing oneself as a teacher 11 I saw another example of this tension recently in a bitter slanging match between two students. “At least I don’t live on a council estate like you do”, spat one girl. “Your nan lives on a council estate”, her adversary retorted. An accusation of perceived poverty was the most hurtful insult this furious teenager could hurl – but her own reality was not far away. The vitriol turns inwards; their own social standing is so precarious that they must always find someone to look down on. Poverty is a spectrum.1 2 Do I need a passport to get to Liverpool? What’s a postcard? Is Cornwall real? These are all questions I’ve been asked by (often bright) GCSE students that wouldn’t be out of place in a “10 hilarious questions asked by kids” listicle. For me, though, they reveal pupils’ lack of exposure to activities and concepts outside their everyday lives. I teach in a town with high levels of poverty and disadvantage. School trips are not only prohibitively expensive (for the school and for parents) but take time away from the core curriculum. With teachers under enormous pressure to deliver on test results, spending hours organising learning experiences that can’t easily be measured isn’t an appealing prospect. You can’t shoehorn in three assessment for learning episodes if students are running around a farm. You might expect this lack of experience to affect subjects like geography, but even in English the impact is huge. Poems, especially, often rely on natural imagery to which my students haven’t been exposed. Take the line from a GCSE set poem that describes a son becoming independent from his father “like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem”. I had to bring in plants to demonstrate what a stem was. Another poem depicts a frightened woman “flying like a hare”. My students (quite reasonably, they thought) pointed out that hair doesn’t fly. These are the pupils who feel comfortable speaking up. How many children sit silently baffled when we read a poem about swans but feel too selfconscious to ask what a swan is? When every other word has to be looked up or explained, there is an additional cognitive burden for the most disadvantaged students. It’s like studying an entire literature syllabus in a foreign language – while native speakers spot and analyse the subtleties of the text, my bottom set struggles even to make sense of the surface meanings. What they are familiar with is the pressure to pass exams. But without a broad range of experiences, there are barriers here too. Exams often discriminate against working class students through the texts chosen for comprehension tasks. Students can be thrown by extracts on kayaking or mountaineering – middle class entrants, who may have been on adventure holidays with their families, will be in their element. Students who lack those reference points can be put off further study. They come to believe it’s not for them.2

12  Introduction We enjoyed these two pieces. They nicely depict how Rebecca’s fantasies of teaching emerged prior to her commencing training and how these fantasies were reshaped through her actual experience in schools. We contacted Rebecca and asked her if she might be interested in contributing a short piece to our book on the emotional challenges of becoming an English teacher. For example, we asked how her expectations had been modified as she passed through successive challenges on her own path into teaching. When I was 17, I had a bit of a ding-dong with my A Level English teacher about the Gothic. I objected to the syllabus’s classification of it as a “genre”, particularly its inclusion of Dr Faustus in the Gothic exam. I viewed this as anachronistic – surely the Gothic was defined by its chronological specificity, as a reaction to the scientific Enlightenment, a fetishisation of the Medieval at a time when Classical forms were being upheld as ideal. My teacher was a capable academic who was nonetheless trying to explain tricky concepts to a class of mixed-ability teenagers with varying attention spans; he made us list “features of the Gothic” which included castles, vampires and darkness. I was irritated, and certainly irritatingly vocal in expressing this. I vowed that, should I ever teach the Gothic, I would never rely on such a reductive definition. Five years later, and I’m standing at the front of a classroom, drawing a mind map on the whiteboard: “features of the Gothic”: darkness, vampires, castles. My seventeen year-old self is dismayed at my lack of academic integrity, but her voice is very, very quiet compared to the klaxon-like demands of 32 adolescents. My betrayals continue. I tell children that sonnets have twelve syllables in a line without explaining the importance of the iambic pair. I make outrageously sweeping generalisations about post-war politics. I don’t care very much. It’s not just academically that I have to navigate a liminal space between principle and pragmatism. As a free-thinking undergraduate, I would have been appalled that children should be punished for forgetting a pen or wearing the wrong shoes. Now I am an avid de-meriter and will confiscate a phone as soon as see it. I don’t have any easy solutions for these conflicts of my personal convictions with school policies. I squirm when I spend the weekend constructing a righteous essay for my MA about overly draconian approaches in dealing with working-class children, then issue a detention for a lost jotter the following day. The day-to-day realities of school life have also challenged assumptions and ideas that I absorbed during my (scant) teacher training with Teach First [a fast track route into teaching for highly qualified graduates]. When I was first told where I had been placed, I was advised by my “Leadership Development Officer” to live in one of the posher surrounding towns. The location of my school was painted as a lawless hellhole, and I’m pretty ashamed to recall that I was almost surprised on arrival when I found a fairly averagelooking town with flowers growing in front gardens and traffic regulations

Reading and writing oneself as a teacher 13 being obeyed. (I now live there, and I really like it.) Teach First encourage their “elite graduates” to see themselves as a cut above – bright young visionaries crusading in to “turn around” departments and schools. I now find this centring of middle-class sentiments and values, along with the suggestion that local staff are somehow deficient, pretty objectionable. As a trainee employed as a full-time teacher, I was naturally the least qualified and most needy member of my department. The idealism of Teach First, as well as my pre-existing thoughts about education and power, have had to be reconfigured as I have sought to align my (evolving) values with pragmatism and policies. It’s a constantly shifting ground. Rebecca’s analysis helpfully pinpoints the need to confront demands that are constantly shifting and subject to persistent recalibration, reconfiguration and changing perspective. In becoming a teacher, it is necessary to both see yourself differently and to change who you are, many times over – from assuming the perspective as a past pupil, who knows what it is to be a pupil, to an aspirational student teacher not yet ready to dispense with that grounding in his or her own school experience, to a practising teacher seeing classrooms of children as entities to be managed more holistically, according to new survival instincts and embryonic professional motivations. In a second example, we find another teacher further into her career explicitly addressing issues of personal change through psychoanalytic perspectives, as introduced within a masters’ course.

Developing emotional resilience3 Emma was reviewing some situations in which she had been talking to her teaching colleagues as part of her masters research. In discussion with fellow course members, she had sought to characterise various aspects of her professional self. She mentioned things such as shyness, conscientiousness, independence, selfcontainedness, kindness, sincerity, etc. She was also aware of saying such things about herself to colleagues in various situations. The following statement from her reflective diary encapsulates her sense of self in these terms: “My identity comes from a misrepresentation, a false persuasion of self that will stay with me as the ideal ego for the remainder of my life. I thus produce a fiction of myself”. In conversation with other course members, Emma reflected on how in many situations, in her professional life and on the course, she described herself to others as “shy”. She felt that this had become unhelpfully fixed as part of the fiction of herself that she had identified. She reflected on how in listening to others, she increasingly found herself asking the question, “Why are you telling me this?” In the light of her reflections, however, she then turned the question around on herself and asked why it was that she was telling others that she was shy. Her conclusion was that it resulted in people being different in their attitudes towards her. Perhaps in some ways this was as may be expected. That is, it resulted in people being gentler towards her. There were, however, other aspects to these

14  Introduction altered responses. Emma became aware that she sometimes said, “I am shy”, strategically. If, for example, she declared her shyness in our college sessions, it, she realised, became an effective strategy in capturing space for attention and thus being more influential in meetings. As she became aware of herself doing this in college sessions, she turned her attention to how she was acting in a similar fashion within her everyday professional life. And indeed, she did locate situations where she was conscious of using overt expressions of unease as an approach to disarming colleagues and opening space for her own actions. Emma’s statement “I am shy” can be understood in different ways. Lacan (2002, Seminar 1, pp. 8–9) considers statements such as “I am lying” and “I think, therefore I am” in terms of how their meaning is carried if they are understood performatively. That is, when they are uttered, the utterance conceals oblique goals that transcend the literal content. Perhaps in the first instance, “I am shy” is said sincerely. It is a reflective statement that in some ways encapsulates how the teacher understands the situation from her perspective. That is, she sees herself as shy and reports this as part of the reflective landscape she sees as relevant to her research. Or is it even, on this first occasion, in the first utterance, an experiment with a specific social gambit, a performance of an adopted understanding of self, perhaps both in the professional situation and in her report of this at a college session? Later, however, Emma became explicitly aware of how it was functioning as a strategy, rather than merely being brave enough to say it. She realized that it affected those around her such that her own space for action was modified, by disarming colleagues or eliciting sympathy from fellow students on the course. In her own sense of self, she understood herself as shy. She did have the option of sticking with this story and reporting on her research environment where her shyness was one of the elements making up this environment. The subjectivity of practitioner research frequently introduces this sort of quandary where there is a need to decide how much a personal assessment fixes the reality of the space being described. Yet her own analysis of the situation did result in her asking herself the question, “Why am I saying this?” What exactly did she want from the other person? How did her statement affect the situation being described? And in becoming aware of her statement being more than a statement of fact, but instead being a statement that produced a social effect, her sense of the world in which she was operating shifted. That is, her sense of self, and her sense of the world, both shifted. This move, however, also introduced a gap between the world as predicated by the authentic and sincere statement “I am shy” and the world in which the teacher became aware of this statement’s social effect. The recognition by the teacher of this gap offered a lever to make this gap yet wider where the teacher became more aware of the functioning of her own stories and the opportunities that this recognition provided. This resisted Emma’s own sense of self where she was shy. She began to recognise that she could operate on her own stories about herself, and as a result change the research landscape she was surveying. As she later expressed it: I have been subconsciously selective in what I have absorbed from my cultural contexts through life’s journey, taking and weaving particular truths from

Reading and writing oneself as a teacher 15 unconscious desires. Our own ways of being then, link us to the past. Ironically, what is absent is perhaps what I should be interested in, but the ways in which each makes their own out of what they are given, are unpredictable. This quote points to the teacher’s awareness of her own ideological immersion and how her sense of self has now been processed her own analysis of the situation. In switching between “I am shy” being said “sincerely” and it being said as a tactic, the teacher is seemingly caught between a desire to live life anew and a drive to stick with locally proven strategies, where this switching is formative of both the individual experimenting (or resigning) and the social space perceived to be housing this oscillation. There is some slippage between language used in personal reflection and that used in socially constructed space. This hints at some lack of clarity about whether language was being used sincerely or not. Indeed, the term “sincerity” implies a self-knowledge that may not have been readily available to the individuals concerned. They get to know themselves through this sort of experimentation – a shift of attention (Mason, 2002) from seeing “I am shy” as a sincere statement and seeing it as a tactic. Emma took time to reflect on how a feeling of unease with colleagues gave rise to an expression of this unease, which then affected the space she had seen as the source of that unease. And through this route, the nature of the uneasiness was transformed. There was a time dimension through which the feeling was recast as a tool. This tool shaped a new reflection in which the seeming dichotomy of sincere or not was effaced since the expression, combined with reflection on it, had changed both the individual and the space she occupied. Emma became aware of how their use of language transformed the parameters that had given rise to this use, and as a result, the teachers she caught in an uncertain space. Nevertheless, this uncertainty and associated linguistic instability provides an opportunity to experiment with different ways of making sense. And it is the outcomes of such experimentation with different ways of saying things that shapes the portrayals of self that gear into the outer world. For Emma, the act of saying “I’m shy” became a set piece in her strategies of emotional exchange that ultimately stimulated an opportunity to inspect her own use of language. As we shall see in the next chapter, for Lacan, in any enunciation, there can be a lack of clarity as to from where the subject is speaking and the suppositions she is making about to whom she is speaking. That is, what fantasy does the speaker have of her own speaking subject and of whom she is speaking? And what does she think that that listener expects? And thus, the attitude shifts with this sliding between subject positions variously ironic, cynical, sincere, correct, deluded, etc. The very enunciation activates a shift in who is speaking. The speaker has an imaginary sense of self of speaking from a position to a position, but both positions are multiply contingent. How then might I research my own learning? That is, how do I understand the pedagogy involved in my own process of becoming a teacher? Which aspects of our practice are researchable? How does one understand one’s own connection to one’s own professional situation? How can I make “research” part of my

16  Introduction learning experience in becoming a teacher? The book addresses such questions through a range of situations in schools and universities.

Chapter outline The book will continue as follows: In Chapter 2, Tony outlines some of the ideas that characterise Lacan’s work. For Lacan, the story we tell never quite lives up to the expectations we might have for it. Rather, we learn about how the story fails, and our challenge is to learn about how we might fail the next time – but in a better way. Discussion is offered in connection to Lacan’s constructions of oneself: Imaginary (image of oneself), Symbolic (depiction of oneself in stories) and Real (the ineffable stage on which the Imaginary and Symbolic are enacted). The chapter also considers Lacan’s use of Freud’s notions of desire and drive in the construction and enactment of teacher motivations. Attention is also given to Lacan’s notion of the four fundamental discourses that shape lives: master (governing), university (educating), hysteric (protesting) and analytic (resisting). The chapter concludes with a discussion of how subjectivity might be understood against such backdrops. Part 2 focuses on English teaching in schools, and considers the teaching of English in secondary schools from the perspective of a classroom teacher. In Chapter 3, the book continues with Mike discussing how we might understand the teaching of English today. Beginning with a discussion of how English as a subject discipline came into being, the chapter looks at the developments and influences upon English since its inception in the early twentieth century. The chapter looks in detail at different views and approaches to English and considers how they have shaped how the subject is thought of and taught. In this chapter questions are considered to interrogate what is English as a subject and how does it affect those involved in teaching and learning it. In thinking about these issues, the chapter also considers notions of the “subject” as the “apparent author of meaning” (Althusser, 1971, p. 122) and the role of “discourse” in English education. In Chapter 4, Mike focuses on the practice of English as a high school discipline, whereby teachers and students need to navigate complex demands to enact practice. Here, issues of English education are looked at through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis and the “four discourses” in particular. Each of Lacan’s “four discourses” is explained in terms of school-based English education with examples from classroom practice to illustrate. The main areas of discussion in the chapter are around text choice in curricula; the problematic notion of “enjoyment” of English; English as a cure for deficits in grammar and usage; notions of “Britishness” or national narrative, and a detailed analysis of a famous scene from the 1989 film Dead Poets Society to illustrate how Lacanian theory is relevant to teaching and learning English. The purpose in this chapter is to demonstrate how English in the classroom can be seen in different ways by Lacanian theory and how these ideas can contribute to the debate.

Reading and writing oneself as a teacher 17 In Chapter 5, Mike looks at more theoretical concerns regarding teaching English in high school through the use of Lacanian concepts. Here, English teaching is considered in terms of notions of desire (what we are instructed to prize) and how it shifts, fantasy as a mythical object that shapes our desire, and the Lacanian mirror as something that both reveals and hides ourselves. In English classrooms, the problem arises of lack, where tensions are felt between the intention and the effect, leaving students with potential dissatisfaction or even painful experiences. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how Lacanian theory can enable English practitioners to rethink the purpose and practice of English to ameliorate many of the inequities and make school English a more radical and representative experience. Part 3 considers university English teacher education and offers empirical and theoretical discussion of university-based teacher education. Chapter 6 asks: What might a distinct university contribution to teacher education look like? Chris and Tony track a group of prospective teachers making the transition from undergraduate to teacher on a one-year school-based postgraduate course taught by Chris. A practitioner research methodological framework is employed, whereby teacher learning is understood as a process of developing and evaluating self-representations. Students persistently revised a story of “Who I am becoming” referenced to evolving notions of pedagogic subject knowledge. University sessions provided a platform for students to share and discuss their experiences in schools and reflect upon the research process as it occurred. Our findings suggest this approach enables student teachers to account for their learning in more nuanced and sophisticated ways where time for university-based reflection is restricted. The theoretical perspective draws on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. Subjectivity is conceptualised not as fixed but persistently reproduced in an increasingly analytical developmental perspective. Data comprises reflective and analytical material produced by students at successive stages of the course, where this material provides temporal reference points for them in tracking and asserting their own development. The chapter provides a methodological framework for teacher education informed by critically reflective constructions of the process through which individuals become teachers. Chapter 7 presents a theorisation of pedagogic knowledge formation, as a continuous attempt to understand the positions in discourse we occupy. It documents some participatory practitioner research by teacher educators centred on a course development initiative for student teachers of English. Students researched their experiences of becoming a teacher within a course that was largely schoolbased, whilst their tutors researched their own involvement in the process (the main focus of this chapter). Drawing on Lacanian theory, tutors are depicted as learning subjects having more or less certainty or doubt about the knowledge they possess. In attempting to understand this interplay of certainty and doubt, tutors arrive at stronger conceptualisations of learning. Through this approach, the chapter provides a theoretically informed conception of professional knowledge as involving a process of renewing ideas about learning, and in meeting or resisting external demands. The book concludes with a coda.

18  Introduction

Notes 1 Quoted with permission from the inews. The full piece can be found at: https:// inews.co.uk/opinion/columnists/school-benefits-street-food-poverty/ 2 Quoted with permission from the Guardian. The full piece can be found at: www. theguardian.com/teacher-network/2018/apr/14/secret-teacher-my-studentsknow-all-about-exams-but-little-of-the-wider-world 3 This section describing Emma draws on material previously published as Brown (2008a).

2 The psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan IntroductionThe psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan

A prominent geneticist was recently interviewed on national radio about his recent book, wherein he reported that DNA decides most of our personal characteristics. He was rather sniffy about the work of Freud from a scientific point of view. He joked that these days, Freud is mainly studied in English departments. I was rather perplexed by this apparent dismissal of psychoanalysis in favour of genetic analysis, as I have always been rather disappointed by genetic analysis of my own personality. Such analysis somehow does not shed much light on what I am trying to achieve and why I am trying to achieve certain things. Literature, on the other hand, has provided me with many resources in making sense of who I am and how we as humans more generally make decisions. The nuanced approach to studying literature in English departments or more social scientifically oriented fields provides rich understandings of the human condition that transcend results achieved through scientific analysis. Psychoanalytical thinking, as understood by Freud and Lacan, is predicated on a reality centred on two people talking in a doctor-client relation for the benefit of the client. This benefit can be understood in various ways. This chapter introduces aspects of Lacanian psychoanalysis towards unfolding some alternative accounts of human subjectivity that underpin this book. Put rather simplistically, Sigmund Freud, the originator of psychoanalysis, saw the benefit of psychoanalytic consultancies as being about achieving a resolution, possibly a cure, by helping the subject to overcome distortions in their attempts to make sense of the world. These distortions, he claimed, were caused by unconscious forces having unexpected or undetected impacts on everyday actions. The unconscious was an ever-present phenomenon in such work but, according to Freud, this was like an iceberg making only a small part of itself visible. The task of psychoanalysis was to better understand how and why it functioned. Freud’s work passed through many phases and his influence is diverse, spanning many conflicting interpretations through successive intellectual eras. Whilst originally motivated by activating neurological shifts in his patients, Freud’s legacy might be better understood in retrospect in terms of enabling patients to reassess their pasts with view to opening up and making visible alternative paths for the future by opening new storylines. That is, the treatment was later interpreted as being predicated on the idea of the patient building new stories about themselves,

20  Introduction highlighting alternative elements of their past in telling the story of who they were now, thus opening alternative futures for themselves. Freud’s own patients were often seen as having developed unhelpful accounts of their histories that piloted them through both the real and imagined obstacles of their lives. For the “ego psychology school” in the post-war United States, led by émigré analysts including Freud’s daughter Anna after her father’s death, the ego was understood as a biological entity to be strengthened in line with a supposed model of good citizenship – a preferred endpoint, or cure. That is, the analytical process had an endpoint in mind shaped by socially preferred ways of living, to rid the patient of the unhelpful accounts he or she had of themselves. In contrast, Jacques Lacan (e.g. 2006), who became the most famous – albeit controversial – psychoanalyst to follow in Freud’s path, promoted the shift from bio-scientific to narrative emphases in interpreting Freud’s work. The task for Lacan was not to remove supposed distortions in speech in the style of Sigmund and then Anna Freud, but rather to learn from speech to see what it revealed. Such speech was scanned for symptoms of what Lacan called “the truth of desire”. Lacan (1990) in a TV broadcast once famously declared, “I always speak the truth”. By this he meant that whatever he, or anyone else, says reveals things about the speaker about which the speaker is not necessarily aware; not so much distorted, then, as shaped by experience and aspiration. By understanding how emotional flows of a patient were activated, Lacan could, as an analyst, better understand how these shaped the patient’s actions that geared into the outer world. In this way, actions were explained. These actions, however, were not corrected against a model that was supposed to be correct in advance. Psychoanalytical theory is not new to the field of education. Deborah Britzman (1998, 2003) has used the work of Anna Freud and Melanie Klein to investigate problematical and ambivalent aspects of teaching. Meanwhile, Pitt and Britzman (2003, p. 756) have argued that a growing body of psychoanalytic educational research, through its emphasis on concepts such as the unconscious, phantasy, affect and sexuality, has worked “to unseat the authorial capabilities of expression to account exhaustively for qualities of experience, to view history as a causal process, and to separate reality from phantasy”. Over thirty years ago, Henriques, Hollway, Urwin, Venn, and Walkerdine (1984), Shoshona Felman (1987) and others have taken the work of Lacan to explore issues of pedagogy and learning. The authors in a book edited by Sharon Todd (1997) discussed the place of desire and fantasy in teaching and learning. Other authors broaching this territory include Brown, Hardy, and Wilson (1993), Appel (1996), Pitt (1998), Jagodzinski (2001), England and Brown (2001), Atkinson (2002, 2004, 2011, 2017), Brown and England (2004, 2005), Brown, Atkinson, and England (2006), Brown et al. (2007), Brown and McNamara (2005, 2011) and Brown (2011). More recently, Deborah Britzman (2015), Tamara Bibby (2011) and Matthew Clarke (in press) have produced books looking at different aspects of psychoanalysis in the context of education. Practitioner research in education as understood in this book is concerned with providing a convincing account of the teacher researcher’s connectedness to

The psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan 21 the situation he or she is studying. Thus, psychoanalysis can provide both a tool and a theoretical framework to such research. The task of psychoanalysis is to disrupt as well as to confirm what we see. Similarly, the reflective research process intervenes in its object. That is, the process of research transforms the human subject it sets out to document. In the sections that follow, there is an attempt at using a psychoanalytic frame to provide a way of looking at research data that might open the possibility of such fresh perspectives where notions of subjectivity become rather more complex. The purpose of such research is often to generate new and fresh perspectives that enable courses of actions that might not have been detected so easily prior to the research. And unlike so much research today, the conclusions of the research are not specified in advance in ideals like “effective teacher”, “raising standards”, etc. The sections of this chapter each tackle terms from Lacan’s theoretical armoury.

Imaginary, Symbolic and Real1 In Lacan’s model of psychoanalysis, there is a cost attached to conceptions of psychology that process and understand the human through prescribed registers. In these models, people would be judged through an idealised and restrictive account of what they should be, as though a broader truth could be captured in those local circumstances. Psychology as a discipline has commonly worked in the name of the supposed normality of the status quo (e.g. Parker, 2007). For example, in much early educational research, Jean Piaget’s influence painted an idealised version of the developing child, against which the individual child would be gauged in teacher practices, in much the same way that Lev Vygotsky painted an idealised version of society, of which a child would surely want to be a member (Bibby, 2011). The shaping of the individual through inherited or imposed artefacts, tools or words, Lacan argued, could begin to misrepresent the human’s sense of self by insisting that it be processed through some preferred registers. This demanded or supposed compliance with a false caricature, which resulted in the individual being spoken about through the filter of ideologies, served some people better than others. Lacan insisted that there is always a failure of fit between the psyche and the discursive tool kit. That is, there is a gap. This gap prevents the individual having a completed sense of him- or herself as expressed through any given discursive register, and for Lacan, this gap located and activated desire. This desire was brought about by a promise of perfection, or new exciting territories beyond any clearly defined limits. This desire, however, often mistakes its object or lacks a well-defined object. For example, the child misunderstands what would be achieved in getting a better understanding of Shakespeare, and this misunderstanding affects the nature of the child’s motivation to study Shakespeare. We may well have fantasies of who we are and fantasies of the world that we occupy, fantasies emanating from different aspects of our fragmented selves. But for Lacan, there was always something beyond these fantasies and this supplement interferes with the operation of our fantasies. These fantasies structure our reality but never fully account for this reality.

22  Introduction More generally, Lacan saw the human subject as having a conception of herself located in a fantasy of that self. That is, human subjects do not have access to their true selves. They are decentred. Rather, they play according to a fantasy of who they are or of who they think they should be. Lacan argued that these fantasies are deluded, symptomatic of an order that he called the Imaginary to be introduced now. A pivotal element of Lacan’s theoretical apparatus was that we and the world in which we live are typically defined by caricatures, or by our last best guesses of who we are and what the world is like, as processed through the current or prevalent analytical apparatus that we use. Lacan introduced the notion of “the mirror phase” to fill in an apparent gap in Freud’s analysis of how the ego is formed (Lacan, 2006, pp. 75–81). As seen, Freud (2002, p. 5) had earlier made the obvious point that: “an adult’s sense of self cannot have been the same from the beginning. It must have undergone a process of development”. Freud argued that some new “psychical action” must take place to constitute the ego. He did not say what this psychical action was. As indicated, Freud saw much of a baby’s sense of where her body ended and where the world started as clearly undecided. What happens to create a more mature account of these limits? Even adults have uncertainties about who they are, their personal limits and how the world affects their actions. Yet how does this sense of self start to firm up and assume some more stable characteristics? Further, much of a baby’s sense of where her body ends and where the world starts is still an area for exploration. Yet what happens to create a more mature account of this sense of self. Also, so often, Freud’s own adult patients had developed unhelpful accounts of their histories that piloted them through both the real and imagined obstacles of their lives. Lacan proposed a more tangible “psychical action” to fill this apparent gap in Freud’s account. He saw this action relating to the child building an understanding of herself. This understanding was encapsulated in the child assuming an “image” of who she was. Lacan’s account of this firming up was seen as being centred on a process akin to the young child looking into a mirror and saying “that’s me”. Future experiences were then oriented around that sense of self. Yet that self was most certainly a caricature, at best a holding device for an ego that would never be fully complete. And as such, this caricature was a deluded sense of self and Lacan had no interest in strengthening this through analysis. This conception, however, results in a transformation of that image to contain just those bits that the child supposes it to be. The child, in seeing “herself” in the mirror, is identifying with an image outside of herself, in characterising the image as being “me”. This brings to her body a unity that she had not previously conceived. Here the notion of the mirror need not be taken too literally, it could be that the child recognises “herself” in another child. This marks the stage at which the child becomes able to conceptualise herself as complete, with more clearly defined limits. Lacan’s idea of the mirror phase was beautifully captured as the Mirror of Erised in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and its subsequent cinema adaption. Harry sees himself in the mirror being comforted by his now dead parents,

The psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan 23 whilst his friend Ron Weasley sees himself as Quidditch champion and Head Boy. These alternative responses point to an insurmountable gap in the former and a somewhat frivolous one in the latter, neither of which promise a successful therapeutic outcome in terms of meeting desire. As Professor Dumbledore puts it in the cinema adaption: “The happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror; that is, he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is. . . . It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest desire of our hearts. . . . However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge nor truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible”. The importance of the mirror is in what it misses, rather than in what it succeeds in reflecting. If the psychoanalyst enables the patient to generate a lot of stories, it may be possible to detect a pattern of territory that gets avoided to perhaps reveal a point of tension. The assertion of “that’s me” comprises the assertion of the ego. For Lacan, however, the ego is “an inauthentic agency functioning to conceal a disturbing lack of unity” (Leader & Groves, 1995, p. 24). The mirror image promotes a deluded sense of self. As seen, Lacan had no interest in strengthening the ego through analysis. He saw the process of analysis as enabling the patient to “speak the truth”, enabling the analyst to detect a pattern of territory that gets avoided. The analyst then may examine if it is linked to repression of themes that the client would rather avoid. The gap between reality and fantasy, Lacan asserts, partly results from the human baby being born too early, committing her to a long dependency on her parents and thus a susceptibility to the structures (prevalent discourses, modes of behaviour, etc.) that govern her fellow humans. Lacan (2006) further suggested that the very act of her parents naming her throws her into a complex social network where a place for her has been prescribed in so many ways and the growing human’s assertions of self will always be a response to this initial set of expectations. And in turn her responses reflexively create through time an evolving account of the external world to which she continues to respond. The Lacanian philosopher Slavoj Žižek (2000, p. ix) offers an example to illustrate this. He suggested that the director Woody Allen, in the wake of his separation from Mia Farrow, appeared in broadcasts to be like one of his own neurotic and insecure film characters. Žižek asked whether we could assume that Allen had put his own character into the films. Žižek answered his own question in the negative, preferring to suggest that Allen was in fact copying a certain model that he had elaborated in his movies. He argued that real life was imitating symbolic patterns expressed at their purest in art. New teachers, for example, craft their actions according to the strictures of school and government requirements and, like their employers and regulators, begin to assess their own performance (find pleasure even) in those terms. Ultimately, their practices are only noticed to the extent that they conform to the official image. There is a common requirement that students translate their experiential involvement in the world through unfamiliar linguistic or symbolic registers. And as in Žižek’s assessment of Woody Allen, they get accustomed (or not) to occupying a mode of being defined by a language outside

24  Introduction of themselves. As Žižek (2001, p. 75) puts it in describing a similar example, “he does not immediately display his innermost stance; it is rather that, in a reflective attitude, he ‘plays himself’ ”. Psychoanalytic theory emphasises relational conceptions of the human subject. In Lacan’s formulation, teacher and student cannot be understood in isolation from each other. Rather like the relationship between analyst and analysand (patient), they are co-formative, each seeking something from the other. Their specific relationship is symptomatic but also generative of the culture in which they reside. Lacan’s notion of subject is based on three orders: the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real. In short, the human subject can only start with his own illusions, or those that we share (the Imaginary), which he makes sense of through the Symbolic (which traps him in a borrowed language that confers inclusion and constraint), which never quite captures the Real. To summarise, the Imaginary comprises self-identification, or rather, the creation of images of oneself. The notion of a young child looking into a mirror is Lacan’s iconic example. Seeing a whole self, an image of completeness, gives the child a sense of mastery. It produces an inside and outside to oneself, a “me” and “not me”. But this has some cost, since the child is identifying with an image outside of himself. The crucial point here is that the individual, looking in on himself, sees an image (a fantasy) of his self. Not the “real me”, as it were. This identification, however, lays a foundation for a more symbolic engagement with the world. Bhabha (1994, p. 77) pinpoints this: “The Imaginary is the transformation that takes place in the subject at the formative mirror phase, when it assumes a discrete image, which allows it to postulate a series of equivalences, samenesses, identities, between the objects of the surrounding world”. The image of self, as characterised by a name, fixes an egocentric image of the world shaped around that image of self. The Imaginary then can be summarised as the individual looking in on a fantasy self to create a sense of unity. But, more broadly, the entire human race occupies fantasies of itself, which the whole of academia does not succeed in fully documenting or displacing. The Symbolic, meanwhile, encapsulates this individual looking out to a fantasy world, where his vision is mediated through ideological framings. The identification with this fantasy is alienating, however. I cannot fully connect with it since it operates within a “previously formed language” (Althusser, 1971, p. 213). I can surf the Symbolic, but cannot quite grasp it. I have various ways of representing myself in the everyday world, such as my national insurance number, email address, car registration number, body mass index, GPS coordinates, job title, shoe size, marital status, age, gender, nationality, exam results, known allergies, IQ, subscriptions, phone number, consumer preferences, genetic profile, my favourite football team, etc. But no matter how many such symbols or categories that I provide, I never quite succeed in presenting my whole self, or maybe just key characteristics for specific situations, where my credit card number is best for so many situations! The Real is the space in which the Imaginary and Symbolic are enacted. The fantasies built within the Imaginary and the Symbolic fail to capture, the self or

The psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan 25 the world. The self and the world are an assumed binary divide, but they are a couple that imply each other and structure the space in a specific way (self/rest of world). This brings into play a space for desire motivated by the supposed possibility of closing the gaps between the Imaginary and the Symbolic and the Real that hosts these fantasies. The Real, by definition, resists symbolisation. The resources of language cannot mop up the whole of experience. We are cushioned such that our rationales for what we are doing are always at some distance from the actuality of our actions since “our vision of reality is anamorphically distorted . . . which accounts for the very multiplicity of appearances of the same underlying Real” (Žižek, 2006, p. 24, Žižek’s emphasis). “This means that, ultimately, the status of the Real is purely parallactic and, as such, non-substantial; has no substantial density in itself, it is just a gap between two points of perspective, perceptible only in the shift from one to the other (ibid). As Žižek (1996, p. 194) reflects: “when I speak, I always constitute a virtual place of enunciation from which I speak, yet this is never directly ‘me’ ”. There is a difference between what you say and what you do but, as seen, for Žižek, it is what you do that delineates the fantasies that govern who you are but the form of your behaviour escapes you; you can never be quite sure how what you do will be interpreted by others in language. In fitting a research or scientific model to reality, there remains an unknown element that resists any sense that reality can be successfully processed and fully accounted for through a structural filter. Successive attempts to revise the filter merely alert me to alternative failings, and it is through these failures that we learn something about the Real: In a first move the Real is the impossible hard core which we cannot confront directly, but only through the lens of a multitude of symbolic fictions, virtual formations. In a second move, this very hard core is purely virtual, actually non-existent, an X which can be reconstructed only retroactively, from the multitude of symbolic formations which are “all that there actually is”. (Žižek, 2006, p. 24) Lacan’s system of thought combines Imaginary, Symbolic and Real in a Borromean knot of mutual dependency, where no element is privileged and each has a contingent status. Each order affects the other two orders. Within teaching, at the Imaginary level, we have signifiers in the social space of learning activity each shaped and characterised by its name: “student”, “teacher”, “teacher accreditation criterion”. Each object has a name and sense attached to that name (Imaginary). That sense, however, is different for each person, teacher or pupil, at different times, in different circumstances, within alternative curriculum documents, in different countries, etc. Any role such terms have in a wider symbolic network is filtered through the Imaginary perspective on them, even though that symbolic network is at least partly generative of the individual human subject. Each individual person has a different sense of how any object is positioned in relation to the discursive network. Such terms relating to perceived

26  Introduction objects can be suggestive of character and function, but sensual aspects can shield alternative or more generalistic aspects. At the Symbolic level, these words are articulated according to the multiple sets of cultural rules that prevail, such as a teacher giving a task to a student and expecting a specific style of response. Different discourses (e.g. Gothic, British values, correct use of grammar) make use of different sets of words or use similar words differently. Other examples might include grammatical rules followed blindly, cultural rules that allow partners to communicate, and unconscious prohibitions that stand in the way of certain paths of action (e.g. not wanting to be seen as being too clever in class, not wanting to reveal sensitivities, keeping up proper appearances, etc.). The Symbolic provides a yardstick against which I can measure myself and understand myself in relation to the social frame; that is, the self is not egocentric, but defined in response to social expectations. This dimension may obscure access to clear meanings, yet such suppositions of clear or static meanings require reductive accounts of the life we are seeking to capture and serve. The meaning of words is constantly in flux, refusing to settle for the purposes of unambiguous communication shaped around such clear or static meanings. The rules and conventions (the Symbolic order) that govern activity are context dependent insofar as in different domains (school, university), different questions are asked, different things are emphasised, different assessment instruments are applied, different fashions prevail, different objects are invoked and the very use of the English language evolves. Yet, the understanding of the social space as the enactment of these rules does not mop up everything. There are other factors governing what we do: emotion, intelligence, mode of compliance/resistance of pupil, school context, conceptions of learning relation; the quest to please the teacher; the satisfaction derived from connecting with a teacher, etc. For example, my own sense of self – that is, my ego – however, is necessarily a function of how I see the world. The dual fantasies of myself and of the world are inseparable in Lacan’s model. These fantasies are processed respectively through the Imaginary and the Symbolic. So then, what does a reflective researcher see when they look into the mirror, and how much control do they have over what they see? Lacan’s notion of the mirror locates an Imaginary identification that we should be cautious in promoting. We should not trust what we see in the mirror. Nevertheless, an examination of how the mirror works can be quite informative. The reflective stories that the researcher tells provide material for analysis. Yet the “reflections” are performative, not mere neutral reflections. They represent engagement in the social life being reported. Analysis can be directed at examining the nature of the truth told and how this truth might conceal or activate other stories. The status of this story needs to be considered carefully, insofar as there are difficulties in supposing that the story is in some way representative of the person. The story is also performative or generative of the reality it seeks to depict. The story can have material effects without necessarily having positive content. The story is also as a mask. The chain of writings produced in reflective enquiry can create an illusion

The psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan 27 that there is an underlying content with a direct one to one relationship between the things we see and the words we say. The articulation of multiple reflective extracts perhaps creates an illusion that they surround a singular person at the centre and a straightforwardly interpretable situation. Lacan’s slogan is the we should be wary of the image. When the analysand says “I”, the analyst should be mistrustful.

Desire and drive2 There is a crucial distinction to be made between the Freudian notions of desire and drive (Žižek, 2006). By contrasting these two notions, we seek to distinguish between alternative modes of research enterprise; one in which researcher reflection locates and cultivates a gap between what one says and what one wants to say, and another where the researcher insists on closure between these. We take each of these terms in turn, explaining their meaning and discussing them in relation to the fitting of research accounts.

Desire The notion of desire, perhaps better translated as “wish”, explains my motivation in terms of something that I want to acquire, even if I am not quite sure what this thing exactly is. In human sexuality, for instance, we may know desire as a promise for the future, an unexplainable and seemingly youthful sparkle that draws us towards someone for a satisfaction not quite specified in advance. Indeed, the mystery element is part of the appeal. Desire might also be expressed in relation to how I wish my future life to unfold more generally. Yet this desire and the way it shapes my progress into the future can never quite be captured. There is something beyond my reach that excites me, a surplus beyond that which I can express in words. Or, perhaps alternatively, if I take the desired outcome to be the yardstick, this surplus might be seen as a lack. That is, there is something that prevents me reaching the desired outcome. My explanation of how I could get what I want always misses something. This quandary, of course, applies to my developing sense of self and any work I might do on understanding what that is. I may have a sense of who I am striving to be. Perhaps, however, this is a positive reading of myself that I am trying to actualise in my current actions. I have a sense of the world and how my idealised self fits into this. My sense of where I am going is pleasurably tainted by the promise it holds. My sense of self – that is, my ego – however, is necessarily a function of how I see the world. My fantasy of self, my Imaginary identification, is the delusory mirror image I have of myself. Meanwhile, my fantasy of the world is processed though the Symbolic, the ideological apparatus that surrounds and engulfs me. Desire is present in both of the fantasies as the gap (or the surplus) that separates the fantasy from the reality it seeks to capture. Lacan sees both fantasy and gap (surplus) as positive elements. The fantasy structures the reality that the individual perceives and lives. The gap serves as the motivation (a performative

28  Introduction flavouring) that gives the fantasy meaning. For Lacan, the world “outside” of these two fantasies, the Real, is an “outside” beyond the scope of the individual’s grasp. The Real, by definition, resists any symbolic account. It is “that which remains the same in all possible (symbolic) universes” (Žižek, 2006, p. 26). The mutual formation of Imaginary and Symbolic shapes itself around the resistance of this Real. We can never quite capture ourselves in language, but it is this “surplus of the Real over every symbolization that functions as the object-cause of desire” (Žižek, 1989, p. 3).

Drive In the first instance, Freud introduced “drive” as a central term in human sexuality to ensure a distinction with “instinct” as present in the animal world. For Freud, “instinct” is a term that “implies a relatively fixed and innate relationship to an object” (Evans, 1997, p. 46). Drives, however, are contingent on the person’s life history, and thus vary according to biographical circumstances. But as Žižek points out, drive also contrasts with desire. In Žižek’s account, drive is a learnt acceptance, or an attitude, where the missing element that activates desire cannot, or need not, be captured. Drive is the fatalistic acceptance of the loss of desire. As Evans (1997, pp. 46–47) puts it, “the real purpose of the drive is not some mythical goal of full satisfaction, but to return to its circular path, and the real source of enjoyment is the repetitive movement of this closed circuit”. In Freud’s notion of the death drive, for example, desire has been deadened and the model of life that we pursue becomes a substitute for the fantasy that we never quite achieved. The death drive is a sacrifice of desire. It might almost be simplified as “going through the motions” and enjoying it as such, giving up on innovations that might disrupt existing routines and habits. One almost imagines an elderly colleague repeating lectures for years on end and resisting any institutional changes with a weary cry of “we tried that before”. Žižek suggests that fetishistic satisfaction may be achieved by working to formulae, templates, set pieces, models, regulative frameworks, etc., as with Emma saying “I’m shy” in the last chapter. Žižek sees such behaviour as a manifestation of drive where “we get caught into a closed, self-propelling loop of repeating the same gesture and finding satisfaction in it” (Žižek, 2006, p. 63). This this points to what Žižek (2006, p. 7) calls the “parallax nature of the gap between desire and drive”, a vivacious self-image tempered by the cool functioning of the Symbolic order (e.g. following social codes or habits) which then produces transgressive excitements. This parallax is not a “polarity of opposites”, since Imaginary and Symbolic are mutually formative (ibid). Desire and drive are implicated as sense of self and sense of world shape up in relation to each other. Fukuyama’s (1992) notion of The End of History caused a theoretical stir on its publication and is as an example of such a tendency. That is, the book supposed a final model of human society had been achieved and there was no need for further structural renewal to the liberal democracy that had already arrived and proven itself to be the most resilient of political arrangements. Further, changes,

The psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan 29 according to Fukuyama, were mere fine-tuning. The research model, understood as a model that had got it right, would be replacing the life that it had previously sought to capture. Or perhaps the researcher’s investment in the model might simply brush aside evidence that works against this. In this mode, work would be undertaken according to the model as though it really was a full account of the reality we are supposedly seeking. There is no gap. Reality is reshaped to fit the model. As such, desire and drive are alternative attitudes and not necessarily sequential modes. Lacan refuses firm distinctions between inside and outside, drive and desire which might be seen as two sides of a Möbius strip, or alternative routes on a torus (Lacan, 2002). They are mutually opposite, yet with a clear path between them. Žižek (2006, p. 7) presents it thus: let us imagine an individual trying to perform some simple manual task – say grab an object which repeatedly eludes him: the moment he changes his attitude, starting to find pleasure in just repeating the failed task, squeezing the object which, again and again, eludes him, he shifts from desire to drive.

Lacan’s schemata of the four discourses3 The theoretical ambitions of this book are centred on building a sense of how alternative discursive priorities variously work through teacher and teacher educator practice. It takes the premise that motives are harnessed by identification with arbitrary discourses (retention of university values, the need to support practice, the promotion of research, the need to comply with directives to retain “outstanding” status, etc.). Analysis of the data to be presented in the next section will examine how these identifications link to specific modes of practice, e.g. the assertion of the academic dimensions of training, the development or retention of humanistically defined pedagogical processes, the smooth operation of administrative frameworks, etc. Meanwhile, policy documents define the parameters of teacher practice to the extent that participation in teaching and teacher education becomes a form of bureaucratic compliance monitored by an inspection regime that insists upon this taking place. Such identifications and compliances, however, may result in some emotional cost to the individual with associated awkwardness. Yet, there is some chance that the individual may succeed in regaining some personal composure through formulating a more systematically considered response to these conflicting demands. Lacanian psychoanalytic theory portrays a subject divided between what she is doing and what she says she is doing. This division is located differently for different people, and the type of division determines who you are, who we are, and how power and dis/pleasure function to secure alignment or non-alignment with alternative discursive formulations. The individual is constituted according to the composition and mode of their identifications. Lacan’s (2007) conception of society is dominated by the practice or use of language, where “when I say use of language I do not mean we use it – it is language that uses us” (p. 66). Further, “discourse can clearly subsist without words. It subsists in certain fundamental

30  Introduction relations which would literally, not be able to be maintained without language” (p. 13). He continues: “nothing has been abstracted from any reality. On the contrary it’s already inscribed in what functions as this reality” (p. 14). Žižek (1989, p. 175) contrasts Lacan’s notion of a divided human subject with Foucault’s late work, which was concerned with articulating the different modes by which individuals assume their subject positions. In Foucault’s analysis, the subject creatively surfs from one subject position within a discourse to another to produce different effects, to craft a technology of self. Whereas, Žižek suggests, Lacan focuses on a subject who exceeds discourses, “the failure of its representation is its positive condition”. That is, the human subject thrives though not being pinned down in a clear definitive statement, leaving personal space to resist regulative impositions. Lacan’s schemata of the four discourses are referenced to: 1) systems of knowledge (university), 2) discourses of control or governance (master) 3) the alienated or divided subject split between alternative discursive modes (hysteric), and 4) systematic resistance to oppressive power structures (analytic). For this book, the schemata are drawn on in conceptualising how teachers craft their sense of being with reference to the discursive orders that determine their subjectivities. It provides a helpful model in depicting the “schizophrenic” subject positions that university teacher educators are obliged to confront. For example, the individual will form identifications with political, academic or administrative discourses that shape that individual’s thought, affect, enjoyment and the meanings that he or she assigns to different situations. It is through this route that the book will theorise how the changing policy environment variously affects individuals and how they understand their mode of professional participation. We shall take these discourses in turn.

University discourse The university discourse comprises systematic knowledge. For individuals to understand this discourse, they need to be receptive to the idea of pre-constituted knowledge. This requires that the individual empties “themselves of any knowledge that might interfere with the knowledge in the discourse becoming an amorphous, non-articulated substance . . . to be articulated by discourse” (Bracher, 1994, p. 109). That is, they are produced as a divided subject since this interpellation captures just part of them; for example, a teacher educator appreciated merely to the degree that their practice complies with inspectorial criteria. It “is admissible only insofar as you already participate in a certain structured discourse” (Lacan, 2007, p. 37), but part of their selves is left out in this encounter, a gap, marking the divide. In turn, others may gauge the degree of this individual’s submission according to given criteria and judge their performance according to their degree of alignment. For instance, a trainee mathematics teacher may be assessed in their ability to teach fractions in a step-by-step fashion according to a curriculum schema that specifies prescribed developmental stages of a child’s learning, as in Piaget’s model. Other aspects of their teaching, such as

The psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan 31 their humanist mode of interaction, may not register on this scale. A new entrant to the profession of teacher education, meanwhile, might be able to play off one version of university discourse against another (e.g. practical versus academic expertise) as teacher education boundaries lose definition. One of our colleagues specifically criticised a new policy of staff needing PhDs. She favoured a more school-based expertise in universities: the vast majority of people in schools don’t have a masters’ never mind a doctorate and so it worries me that we will not get experienced teachers in. . . . I think there are some great people in the schools that we should headhunt but none of them will meet that criteria. This production of the divided subject, however, is not the whole story as Lacan portrays systems of knowledge as being in the service of alternative master discourses shaping the situation in question: “the master’s discourse can be said to be congruent with, or equivalent to, what comes and functions . . . in the university discourse” (Lacan, 2007, p. 102). That is, the subjective production results from participation in a form of knowledge that is motivated by some underlying interest (mode of sponsorship, pedagogical preference, kinship, etc.).

Master discourse Alternatively, we could centre our attention on master discourses directly. Neoliberal trends have resulted in governments around the world shaping education according to economic conditions (Zeichner, 2010). The British government operates various master discourses in the service of its policy ambitions to reshape education according to market parameters. This discourse works through demanding compliance to certain operational or administrative protocols in the name of customary or desired practices. In Lacan’s framework, which draws on the Hegelian master-slave dialectic, master discourses are selectively linked to elements of wider (mythical) knowledge. The “master’s knowledge is entirely autonomous with respect to mythical knowledge” (Lacan, 2007, p. 90). The master merely asserts his preferred version of reality, as though it is supported by systematic knowledge, “master-ized” discourse as opposed to “mastered” (p. 103). “It is all about finding the position that makes it possible for knowledge to become the master’s knowledge” (p. 22). Recently, the TV news featured a headline comprising a minister’s seemingly uncontroversial statement that standards in state schools must improve. Further interrogation, however, revealed that by this, he meant that state schools should be more like private schools. His assertion was seen in some quarters as producing a mismatch with reality where things aren’t quite how we are being told to see them, releasing space for questioning or resistance. Moreover, behind this notional master is a split subject suppressing aspects of reality in the name of asserting a clear instruction. Politicians sometimes place great importance on being “very clear” to avoid any charge of weakness or confusion, perhaps through fear that it might undermine their capacity for

32  Introduction governance. They are obliged to suspend doubt and make decisions to select one form of systematic knowledge rather than another, which by “virtue of its very structure, masked the division of the subject” (p. 103). In doing this, however, “he does not know what he wants” (p. 32) or what he will get in return. There is a gap between demand and response.

Hysteric discourse Meanwhile, the individual may successfully act according to the master discourse. Yet there is a similar gap between performance and the awareness or articulation of that performance. Žižek (2006) argues that ideology operates through the maintenance of this gap between alternative identificatory modes. For example, Brown (2008a) depicts a head teacher exploring her own complicity in policy rollout as she moved between resisting policy intellectually and implementing it faithfully in a material sense. Similarly, “relationship maintenance” might be viewed as an insidious way of getting tutors to act in line with the required behaviour on the way to teacher education having a lower university input. The tutors may protest vocally, but nevertheless materialise their own oppression through their very actions in supporting schools. The actions, in turn, equip schools with the wherewithal to replace universities whilst disenabling university tutors from protecting their patch through their more traditionally defined skill base. It may, however, be that the individual begins to sense this gap. The hysteric discourse is provoked in the subject by a confusing element intrinsic to the demand being expressed in the master discourse. The respondent may be troubled by the demand, a niggling feeling maybe: What do you want of me? I must protest as this does not seem right! “Why am I what you . . . are saying that I am?” (Žižek, 1989, p. 113). The subject addresses the master, and the mismatch between demand and response hints at an aspect of knowledge that the master discourse has concealed. The subject had been spurred on by the niggle marking a gap that had provoked unease with being completely compliant with the demand being made.

Analytic discourse Lacan’s (2007, p. 70) notion of the analytic discourse is modelled on a Freudian psychoanalytic encounter, where the “subject of discourse does not know himself as the subject holding the discourse”. Analysis is directed at disrupting or resisting master discourses enacted in the service of oppressive regimes: “this master’s discourse has only one counterpoint, the analytic discourse” (p. 87). One goes into analysis with the intention of discovering the unconscious forces that interfere with conscious actions, or the gap between them. For example, alternative systems of knowledge may conflict with each other and cause disturbance to the subject. The analyst addresses the subject with view to identifying the master discourses working through them. Through this process, a master discourse can be revolutionised, turned over, as the analytic resolution works itself through. “Knowledge then, is placed in the center, in the dock, by psychoanalytic experience” (p. 30). The analyst

The psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan 33 address is underpinned by systematic knowledge, which is ultimately referenced to new coordinates, that is, held in place by new highlighted features that Lacan calls master signifiers, e.g. “standards . . . must improve” (p. 92). Lacan’s four discourses allow four locations for analysis to confront the divided subject. The four diverse attitudes toward research in teacher education depicted here are consequential to a more turbulent understanding of the universities’ contribution to teacher education. Perhaps ultimately, the new role of universities, in England at least, is to provide a platform from where both tutors and trainees can critically analyse the issues arising in school practice. This new focus would be on building generic analytical capability that supports learning by the trainees in association with their school-based mentors. The challenge would entail supporting trainees in becoming more independent research-active teachers through building a productive critical relationship between university sessions and their developing practice in school. Here universities would assist trainees in developing practitioner-oriented research and connecting it with the broader body of research knowledge. That is, reflective practice would comprise a creative ongoing process of practitioner research that progressively defines the parameters of teaching, whilst negotiating a path through the external demands that trainees will surely encounter. Collaborative, reflexive, practitioner-oriented action research would underpin successive re-conceptualisations of practice towards enhancing trainees’ abilities to claim intellectual space in these regulative times. New priorities have shifted teacher education towards schools, and may require aspiring teacher educators to remain in school, or to change their practice to meet the new demands. For some, however, it seems these demands are too great, such that it may result in them being changed themselves through retirement, with new bodies assuming their erstwhile subject position.

Subject4 Encapsulations of subject knowledge are undergoing significant change in England at present as a result of substantial structural changes to both curriculum and teacher education processes, but also, teacher educator embodiments of subject knowledge have altered through newly defined job descriptions reconfiguring different areas of subject knowledge (Brown, 2018). We are also concerned with how the new configurations of subject knowledge shape the people representing them or how teachers are only seen to the extent that they are presenting subject knowledge in the required way. A teacher educator may begin primarily as a subject specialist representing that subject knowledge to a trainee. This, however, is different than a teacher educator incorporating a reduced aspect of this specialism whilst undertaking a much wider teacher educator role, but now addressing that specialism to a trainee who has a much more peripheral interest in securing that specialism. Identifications with these new relationships transform teacher educator, subject knowledge and trainee. A teacher educator, understood according to a specific prescription of what a teacher educator should be, represents a piece of subject knowledge to a trainee, who is also understood and assessed according

34  Introduction to whether they have received that piece of subject knowledge. An aspect of the teacher educator represents an aspect of the subject to an aspect of the trainee. The register being employed discounts more holistic notions of “teacher educator”, “subject knowledge” and “trainee”, and rather processes them in line with the prevalent ideology. Now we turn, however, to the word subject being used in a different way, where rather than considering the subject knowledge, as in the subject of English, to a concept more directly in Lacan’s remit, namely the (human) subject. The word human, however, is parenthesised, as the very notion of human has been troubled in many areas of contemporary philosophy where the key attributes of what it is to be human have been brought into question. Indeed, the very word “human” is repositioned in anti- or post-humanist philosophies (e.g. Foucault, Badiou, Deleuze, Barad). To theoretically analyse how human subject identifications with subject knowledge might be understood, we shall again draw on the work of Lacan. As seen, for Lacan (2007), “university discourse” defining knowledge is underpinned by a “master discourse” asserting a version of events conducive to the master’s will. The operation of these discourses makes unsettling demands on human subjects (producing an “hysteric discourse” of protest), who might challenge these demands through developing an “analytic discourse” that examines the functioning of the other discourses with a view to replacing them. For example, some teachers see research knowledge as expert knowledge or facts to be complied with, whilst others preferred alignment with notions of exploratory research generating knowledge through practice (Brown, 2018). Here we focus on how discursive identifications shape teacher and teacher educator identities and the structural encapsulations of subject knowledge. Lacan can “frighten the horses” with his use of language, and analyses of his work in the field of education have typically been tackled through secondary sources. Our analysis here will engage with Žižek’s brief interpretation of just one paragraph from a Lacan seminar that focuses on how human subjects derive structurally from the symbolic universe. Lacan (1977b, p. 207) states in his characteristically slippery way, that the whole ambiguity of the sign derives from the fact that it represents something for someone. This someone may be many things, it may be the entire universe, in as much as we have known for some time that information circulates in it. . . . Any node in which signs are concentrated, in so far as they represent something, may be taken for someone. What must be stressed at the outset is that a signifier is that which represents a subject for another signifier. Žižek (1998, p. 74) suggests that Lacan’s famous last sentence might be understood through an example of a chart at the end of a hospital bed. The old-style hospital bed has at its feet, out of the patient’s sight, a small display board on which different charts and documents are stuck specifying

The psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan 35 the patient’s temperature, blood pressure, medicaments, and so on. This display represents the patient – for whom? Not simply and directly for other subjects (say, for the nurses and doctors who regularly check this panel), but primarily for other signifiers, for the symbolic network of medical knowledge in which the data on the panel must be inserted to obtain their meaning. One can easily imagine a computerised system where the reading of the data on the panel proceeds automatically, so that what the doctor obtains and reads are not these data but directly the conclusions that, according to the system of medical knowledge, follow from these and other data. The signifier, a graph maybe, represents the (human) subject, a patient in the bed, for another signifier, a doctor or nurse reading the graph with a view to it affecting a specific dimension of their subsequent actions. That is, we are not attending to patient or medic as holistic (human) subjects. An education analogy can be readily found. A child in a lesson can only express his or her understanding using the symbolic apparatus that they have available, either as they have learnt it or how their teacher will recognise it, if it is spoken now. Often, teachers only hear the child’s explanation to the extent that it aligns itself with the assessment regime. Atkinson (2011, p. 25) provides the example of “school reports where the comments do not represent the learner directly for teachers and parents but primarily for the symbolic network of disciplinary and pedagogic knowledge according to which the learner is positioned and appears as a pedagogised subject.” And for all the emotion and insight teachers experience, they may only be accredited if they demonstrate externally defined competencies. For instance, teachers might be understood and recognised by their employers only insofar as they fulfil the remit of a government policy directive. That is, they are seen as no more than a statistic. From a more structural perspective, Stephens (2007, p. 32) reported on his involvement as an education authority manager in a Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy whereby his work was prescribed by a central government directive: “Overall the targets set in 2000 are aimed at . . . ensuring that at least 25% of pupils in every school and 38% in every local education authority can achieve five or more GCSEs a grades A*—C (British 16+ examination)”. Such targets at the time were supplemented by policy apparatus – for schools: National Curriculum, teaching Strategies, Standardised Attainment Tests, Standardised training programme for teachers administering the Strategies, Government Inspections; for training colleges: National Curriculum for Initial Training, Numeracy Skills Tests for teachers, Government Inspections. Within such a frame, children’s work may only have been appreciated to the extent that it fitted within the teacher’s immediate objectives as defined within such apparatus. As another example of an external demand on teachers: “Teacher education in England now requires that student teachers follow practices that do not undermine “fundamental British values” where these practices are assessed against a set of ethics and behaviour standards” (Sant & Hanley, 2018, p. 319). One might ask about the degree to which these values align with English values and how that

36  Introduction affects trainees’ emerging conceptions of what it is to be an English teacher, both what it should be and what it might be. Is a teacher of English inevitably an agent of English values? But who defines such values, and whom do they serve? And who do they marginalise? We shall see in later chapters how the subject of English in schools today works to a traditional remit, often defining English literature through reference to specific historical understandings of what counts as good literature, with dead white men having disproportionate representation. In the paper cited, Chris describes some explorations with his own Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) Secondary English students as to how they negotiate the demand to support British values in their initial training. He examined how student teachers in England responded to the demands of educating a national citizenry, and analysed the political understandings that influenced their pedagogical interpretations. For instance, one of the interviewees, Ciara, explained that Britishness involves “being overly polite, being accepting of other cultures and identities. Britishness is encouraging a diverse community, being open to different cultures” (p. 330). Some of the students acknowledged the existence of alternative discourses on Britishness which they did not define hierarchically. Britishness here was understood as an open identity, an empty signifier that allowed the simultaneous existence of multiple discourses. For instance, Alistair explained: “I don’t think there’d be a shared definition for Britishness, I think it’s all a personal choice of what Britishness is to you”. In these participants’ understandings, Britishness is constructed through an ‘ethno-symbolic approach in which some elements of myths of the past are rediscovered in the present. For instance, Monica explained: “I think Britishness, in its most basic sense, is being British. It has connotations of drinking tea and eating cake, despite the fact that these foodstuffs originate from India”. What Monica suggests is how a myth from the past (tea and cake) is reinterpreted as part of present discourses on Britishness. In the line of ethno-symbolism, these students do not understand this reinterpretation to be limiting, but rather to be one of the (stable) narratives interacting with more (disruptive) up-to-date understandings. As stated by Alistair, Britishness is “constantly changing and adding in more . . . acceptance connotations, but constricting it to and interweaving it with the traditional Britishness definition”. Problematising, in these students’ cases, did not represent taking a neutral stance. “Kids”, Monica explained: are going to leave school and they’re going to become part of society, it’s trying to implement just a tolerable society where they can get on and they know the difference between right and wrong, they know how to interact with people from different lives and different situations and different backgrounds and they’re not just stuck in like a bubble that is a small area. (Sant & Hanley, 2018, pp. 330–331) The nation represents an outside of the “bubble” area which is, in contrast, understood to be less diverse. In Monica’s account, the coexistence in this national community requires certain common bounds that can be educated

The psychoanalysis of Freud and Lacan 37 through school practices. Crudely, an emphasis on dead white men in the school curriculum for English may not speak to the diversity of childhood in contemporary schools as experienced by the students above. The subjectification of human subjects to the subject of English cannot assume consistency in how the term “subject” is understood. To return to Lacan’s paragraph, in short, a specific sign relation only works or applies within a particular discursive register. The ambiguity is located in how we understand the subjectivity or identities of such actors when filtered through such limited registers. The “someone” or “subject” is, in a sense, in any instance, discourse specific. They only register as entities in certain modes of discourse. This reduction clearly functions in the context of teachers and learners engaging in subject knowledge where terminology can assume very specific meanings. Yet, the convenience of stabilising a supposed meaning of a word or symbol for the purposes of education or governance will privilege some interests over others. The “ambiguity” to which Lacan refers is centred on how the “someone” is predicated in signifying activity. What aspect of the whole person is activated (or brought into being) in any given semiotic configuration? That is: How are they created as subjects? Which discursive aspect responds, or appears, and why? It is this more extensive engagement with discursive networks and their production of subjectivity that fuels Lacan’s concerns. This connection is hinted at in Lacan’s curious suggestion that the “someone” could be the “entire universe”. This term is made yet more obscure by the clause “in as much as we have known for some time that information circulates in it”. Our connectivity to the internet perhaps provides an interpretation of this sentence since this virtual space re-centres our sense of self, our sense of reach and our scope of receptivity. Being wired into this network echoes our connectivity to the network which affects how we process information, make gestures, affect others, etc. Contemporary understandings of subjectivity centred on human immersion in discursive and signifying activity provide a backdrop to Lacan’s pre-internet assertion that someone might provide access to the entire network of discursive activity. Everyone is implicated in the discursive construction of society, and everyone draws on that construction. And thus: “Any node in which signs are concentrated, in so far as they represent something, may be taken for a someone”. Yet between the “entire universe” (which we take to mean the universe of the discursive domain as defined by participation in it) and the example we have offered of a medic with a specific brief, or a child meeting assessment criteria, or a subject conforming to British values, there are many possibilities, each defined by their specific mode of engagements with the discursively created world. For example, teacher educators, teachers and trainees are shaped by assessment structures or curriculum specifications or codes of conduct. They each describe their own practice in the terms and categories of university assessment. That is, in some instances, trainees understood themselves through the new market-oriented metrics whereby they aimed to deliver a goodvalue quality product. The trainees understood themselves in relation to the metric commensurate to the discourse that is productive of a specific field of meaning as regards how subject knowledge is understood. As one trainee plaintively put

38  Introduction it: “I do hope that I am more than a product”. Such findings are in line with broader concerns relating to the commodification of education more generally, both in terms of social relationships to ourselves and others and to knowledge itself (Ball, 2004). Those people involved in the training process – university teacher educators, professional/subject/class mentors and trainees – have different perspectives on how subject knowledge elements of training are being satisfied. Some universitybased teacher educators expressed that subject pedagogy forms a distinctive part of the university input (Brown, 2018). They positioned this area as something that the university should and could defend, believing that schools do not have the capacity or expertise to deliver these elements themselves. However, other university-based teacher educators, particularly those with considerable experience, spoke of how they had witnessed their role dramatically decrease in terms of defining English subject knowledge and be reshaped by outside demands to such an extent that they felt misplaced and ill-equipped to meet new demands. Their subjectivity as teachers had been clipped so that it only registered according to their conformity to the new arrangements.

Notes 1 This section draws on material previously published as Brown (2008b). 2 This section draws on material previously published as Brown (2008a). 3 This section draws on material previously published as Brown, Rowley, and Smith (2014). 4 This section draws on material previously published as Brown, Rowley, and Smith (2015).

Part 2

Teaching English in schools today Teaching English in schools todayOrigins and development of English education

3 The origins and development of English education

Teaching English can be a wonderful experience: helping students to engage with the pathos of war poetry; the vicarious thrills of the Gothic horror novel and the moments when pupils really understand something and seem to grow a little taller with flowering confidence. However, teaching English can also be far more problematic and political than many would believe. In many ways, thinking through how to square these conflicts is a key focus of this book. Your view of English will have been shaped by many contributory factors: your own schooling, what you like and dislike reading, your core purpose and your response to the expectations placed upon you through training and practice. Historically, what constitutes the discipline of high school English (initially a replacement for Classics of Greco-Roman literature) and its function is deeply contested: from the need to teach grammar as social purity to the induction into “high culture” through reading canonical literature to the functional ability to survive the information-saturated modern world. English appears to contain many conflicting and contestable notions of teaching, learning, policy, practice, enactment and accountability. Ultimately, the choice of any language to describe or categorise is political, and it is interesting to explore the heterogeneity of the subject and test the boundaries of how competing discourses and pressures shape what actually happens in a high school English classroom. Perhaps the most romantic view of teaching English is offered by Peter Weir’s 1989 film Dead Poets Society. Set in 1959 in America, Todd Anderson and his classmates are challenged in a private boarding school to tear up the status quo and live deliberately by the inimitable English master Mr Keating (poignantly played by the late Robin Williams). In the film’s most famous sequence, Mr Keating encourages his charges to “squeeze the marrow out of life” and rebel against the straight jacket of public school education by ripping out the chapter on “reading poetry” by Dr J Evans Pritchard. This act of intellectual rebellion is delightful and challenging. Were you taught by a Mr or Mrs Keating? Are you the next Mr or Mrs Keating? Would Mr or Mrs Keating be tolerated in a high school? The film scene is interesting in that it provides an insight into two very different views of English teaching: a traditional approach whereby we have to learn prescribed received wisdom as content, and a maverick approach whereby we have to find our own

42  Teaching English in schools today voice. Is it possible to do both as an English teacher? What competing expectations may support or spoil such an ambition? These are all questions worth asking as we take an analytical and theoretical approach to the teaching of English and the process of becoming an English teacher. It is hoped that the ideas in this book will help the reader to think about English critically, develop their understanding of theoretical concepts and be inspired to revel in the complications and opportunities involved in teaching and researching English education. In a wider context, education can be certain of only one thing: change. Perhaps recent changes have been too numerous and too concurrent, and have left teachers, students and parents feeling they are in a tailspin. The redesigning of British curricula and examinations in English in 2015 prescribed numerous fundamental changes. Most significantly: the removal of coursework, the narrowing of literary variety to very canonical texts, one tier of entry so that every student sits the same exam with the same question wording and difficulty, removal of speaking and listening (as it was felt that this component was artificially inflating grades), a stronger focus on accuracy and prescriptivism, grades replaced by a 1–9 number system (one being a G grade and 8/9 being an A* grade) and more challenging examinations. That is a lot of change in one fell swoop, and the government was heavily criticised for being too ambitious and rushed in its scope. This in turn led to much debate within the field of English education and more widely regarding the feasibility and likely effects of such changes. As Britain recovered slowly from the economic recession of 2008, the focus of future economic stability seemed to turn to educational reform. The core subjects of English, mathematics and science were increasingly seen as vehicles for employability, skills and economic stability. As the position of the UK in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)1 tables had fallen, data was used as justification for more fundamental changes: those of accuracy, prescriptivism, British literature and tougher exams. English became more noticeably political than ever before, and became the battleground for national identity. Historically speaking, there have been problems with homogenous curricula as an antidote to crises. Various national strategies have cost millions of pounds and have appeared and disappeared according to political fashions. The 2014 Confederation of British Industry report (conducted in partnership with Pearson education) entitled “Gateway to Growth”, argues that the future economic status of the country is dependent upon the raising of perceived low literacy standards. The report uses phrases such as Britain needs a “role in the global marketplace . . . [as] many businesses are not satisfied with the attitudes and skills of school leavers, including [their] communication skills (52% of consulted employers)” (p. 2). Such a statement places high school English departments at the epicentre of economic risk. The report goes on to highlight that the UK had fallen from 17th in the world for reading in 2006 to 23rd in 2012, and argues that this is a sign that English teaching has neglected the basics in favour of less demanding curriculum content and skill development. Such a statistic is used as evidence to support the assertion that “employers want the education system to better prepare young people for life outside the school gates . . . [and] reflect

Origins and development of English education 43 the needs of the labour market” (6). As a counter narrative, Duckworth (2015) asserts that “education for work positions education as a commodity . . . [it] pays no regard to issues of economic, political and social equality” (www.bera.ac.uk). A contestation seems to exist between the needs of the economic system and the desires of the individual in a social world. Further to this, the system itself produces its “master signifiers” (rules and expectations) – but these can be challenged, just as Mr Keating does. Consequently, the constant changes and reforms present teachers with major challenges. Successive British governments have operated a top-down system of change that promotes political imperatives; these changes have been so regular that one might see change as the focus of reform in itself. Indeed, if educational reform is now a master discourse (Brown, 2018), then the conceptions of “accuracy”, “Britishness” and “culture” have all become masters to the everyday practice of the English teacher: created and demanded by governmental policy and its inspection regime. The politicisation of education in response to society is not new: originally, the subject of English was conceived as a less academic replacement for Classics, the study of which was aimed at rhetoric and the teaching of quality of argument and impressive diatribic verbosity. At its inception, English education was given a duty to “purify and disinfect” the language of the poorer classes (Sampson, 1924, p. 28), and the current refocus on grammar could be attributed to an attempted remedy for perceived language degeneration, where English teachers are “failed guardians of language propriety” (Myhill, 2011, p. 74).2 This way of seeing English is supported by governmental policy and the statistical data of official discourses. These voices are the institutionalised versions of the forces that are hidden – but pervasive – in official versions of English practice. OfSTED, governors, teachers, students and parents all have a politic interest in English practice, with no shortage of opinions on how and what is taught. Inevitably, such pressures from all sides have a significant impact on what English is, what it becomes and how it is taught. In this way, it could be argued that English is one of the most political of all subjects, given that it plays a central role in local, national and international measurements. Perhaps this designation is simply because the core skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening are so fundamental to intellectual development. More probably, however, more contentious competing discourses are at play. English has always been an ideological battleground containing “controversial domains of nationalism, politics . . . curriculum control” (Goodwyn, 2011. p. 20). Consequently, such debates have resulted in many contesting definitions for English teachers, from “the preachers of culture” (Mathieson, 1975) to “critical dissenters” and “old grammarians” (Marshall, 2000). Indeed, such debates are ongoing. Interestingly, the Cambridge Assessment (2013) report into English suggests that cultural imperatives, the Cox Report (1989), the National Literacy Strategy (1998), and the functional English agenda has given English an identity crisis. The Cox Report (1989) proposed five models of English teaching: a personal growth view, cross-curricular approach, adult-needs emphasis, a

44  Teaching English in schools today cultural heritage model and a cultural analysis view. Fleming and Stevens (2015) debate whether such views of English teaching are adequate as guiding principles, or whether Goodwyn (1997) is more accurate when he argues that such principles “do not have a comfortable or neutral relationship with each other; neither are they politically or historically innocent” (p. 39). From primary phonics to secondary school grammar, the identity of English has become synonymous with a standards agenda. Indeed, it could be argued that we have returned, in curriculum terms, to the Newbolt Report (1921) with its recommendations on language, literature and prescriptivist grammar as a preserver of national standards and culture. Perhaps this is not surprising when you consider OfSTED’s (2011) report “Removing Barriers to Literacy”, which cites limited vocabulary, low aspirations and lack of cultural experience as the root cause of poor achievement in English. The link from this to poverty is also made by many official reports. This intimation of English as an equalising and moral practice will require further exploration. It is relatively easy to create a list of problems and issues around English as a high school subject, but it proves to be more difficult to ask clear questions about how English can be theoretically considered and enacted in the practices of teaching. Initial questions might include: What happens in English classrooms to enact the curriculum? What does this practice do to the teachers of it? What does this practice do to the students? What opportunities are offered by such practice? What threats does it pose? What is the nature of English as a school subject? What is English in schools today, and what could it become? What wider issues are at work both in and out of schools that shape what we understand by doing English at high school? Whose versions of English are prevailing, and how can these be disrupted and reimagined? How can English teaching develop? What guidance could new English teachers be given? How can English teachers consider theory to inform their practices? Without wishing to conflate complex terminology, the use of the word “subject” itself is a very complicated term. Psychoanalytical theory suggests that the use of the word “I” is deeply problematic: it is not clear who the “I” is in terms of role, approach or how conscious someone is of their own influence. If we take the view that it is impossible for someone to be objective, then part of thinking about English teaching is to take account of and for the subjective nature of being a teacher. Consequently, the opportunity to interrogate our own ideas and attitudes whilst listening to the other voices in the conversation about English can be a fascinating process for educationalists, prompting them to ask: What transformations do pupils and teachers go through as we do “English”? Everything we do can be seen as an intellectual construction. Ergo, everything is created by the views of someone and the views that shape this can be conscious and unconscious. As Rabinow (p. 14) suggests: “reason is a political problem and it is necessary to see whose reason is prevailing and with what consequences”. Such a position allows us to think about what is being won and lost in high school English practice. The contestable notions of what is a subject (in the sense of a high school discipline) and what are subjects (in terms of people involved in it) are deeply

Origins and development of English education 45 problematic, yet fascinating. A fuller discussion of the issues surrounding such terminology will follow in later chapters. For now, let us consider two interesting questions: • •

What holds the “subject” of high school English in place? What holds “subjects” in place in high school English?

The idea of something being “held” in place requires clarification for the reader. Far from being a fixed position, the “holding” is more dynamic. If we see the function of high school English in a particular way, then this disavows many other versions of English – and this has consequences for what is decided upon and enacted in a classroom. A simpler way of looking at it might be to say that choice inevitably leads to preferment of something and the exclusion of another. This notion of holding shows how choices are made and how they are sustained within classroom practice. Of course, we should also be aware that our own way of looking is an essential part of the analysis we can consider (but not eliminate) when we think about and discuss the teaching of English. A new UK national curriculum is now in its third year, with the subject of English being redesigned with a “back to basics” approach (Goouch, 2011). This has led to the implementation of contentious plans to put classic literature (at least two Shakespeare plays and Romantic poetry) at the forefront of the early secondary curriculum, qualifying it by stating that this is the knowledge that employers want (BBC News, 2014). With the national context politicising English even further, the tension between what is being taught and why it is being taught becomes more problematic. When we teach English, we have to teach a version of it. Whether that version is dictated to us in a very particular way or not is dependent upon the contextual circumstances of politics, educational fashions and received wisdom about practices. Recognising that what you do and what you become part of is an interesting and complex challenge. A literary parallel can be found in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847), where Cathy cannot separate herself from her lover by stating “Nelly, I am Heathcliff”. This self-recognition in another creates a fused identity of comforting reflection. This book is interested in looking at the mirror of English education and see how more disrupted our identities can become as it is reimagined and awakened. Traditionally, we may describe English as an emancipatory subject: giving pupils freedom and understanding, but such definitions are fraught with difficulties. After Foucault, Ball (2013) refers to emancipatory aims as a “new ontology of learning and a very elaborate technology of the self” (p. 133), but argues that this leads to a deeper and more intense subjectivisation, where performativity becomes a “new moral system” (p. 138). Thus, it is possible to see how an emancipatory intention creates more power games to be played and navigated through professional life. Indeed, Ball goes on to suggest that concepts (like literate, accurate, cultural and sophisticated) are treated commonly as neutral, but, he argues, they are intensely political.

46  Teaching English in schools today This presents a significant difficulty for the English teacher, where political multiplicity surrounds each piece of language. Indeed, Freire (1985) describes how English teachers work bureaucratically rather than artistically. Ergo, English teachers can tick the boxes of what is required, but that this compliance may deny the creative side of teaching the subject. In terms of the expectations of school as an institution, there are expectations of monitoring, accountability and adherence. To what extent this adherence crushes other ways of doing English that are potentially more exciting and effective is of compelling interest. Many English teachers may see their role and purpose within very traditional parameters: as the enforcer of comprehension, linguistic correctness with a dash of high culture for good measure. Clearly, such notions are not without their problems and tensions. Therefore, one focus of this book is to unpick versions of English and explore how we can understand them through student experiences. It is fascinating to explore questions like: What is it like to be in a secondary school English class at this significant moment in reform? What is being attended to and won or lost for students? What possibilities and constraints exist in this political space for the players in this theatre? When we conduct research into English teaching, we can gather participant opinions of their experiences. Of equal importance are insights into deeper factors, such as: What effect does government policy have on English teachers? How does the institution affect student experience? What unspoken things happen in lessons? What is being offered and denied by current practice? Wall and Perrin (2015), reading Žižek, describe how a lens can help to notice things that are often taken for granted, and that how we represent something gives insights into the phenomena and that particular way of seeing. This idea of the unconscious and unnoticed factors underneath everyday action and reaction will be considered throughout the book. This book represents an attempt to move beyond curriculum paraphernalia and arguments over how to teach English and into a more interesting and problematic story of what English looks like and what this tells us about the possibilities, limitations, agency and disavowals of the lenses of looking. A researcher must always account for their individual presence in research, as they can never be neutral. In accounting for presence, we cannot remove it for the purpose of an impossible objectivity, but to make allowance for it as a necessary part of the analysis. Our school experiences of English and our attitudes to reading are informed initially by our background. When we theorise and research English, it can be an important step to capture our story of how and why we came to be a teacher/ researcher of English. Here is an example of a research journal entry by one of the authors of this book: Coming from a working-class family with a brother and an elder sister, we had some books in the house, but they mainly came from the local library, which we visited religiously every week. My mother loves reading, but what you might call “trashy” novels. My father read the paper and occasionally

Origins and development of English education 47 favourite Sherlock Holmes stories. I was always into horror and adventure fiction. By quite a young age I had read many “classic” books. Although I found them quite hard to understand, I had the feeling that if I could get my head around this level of reading, then I had a good chance of doing well at school and being the first in my family to attend university. I was taken to places of historic and literary interest and spent a lot of my childhood in museums. I know that I find popular culture hard to assimilate with more middle-class culture and I recognise how difficult students can find the subject if they do not read regularly or take an interest in history and politics. I am finding more and more that my lessons involve explanations of things that I knew as a young kid. I do struggle sometimes to understand why some students don’t enjoy English. But then, when I think about it, I loved English (I suppose initially) because I felt that I was good at it. It was the opposite for me in Maths lessons though. (Journal Entry, June 2014) We can often see what our attitudes and views are when we capture them in writing. Roseboro (2008) suggests that we all have these “normative assumptions” and these “prevent us from understanding [that they] . . . are deeply contextualised and historicized” (p. 93). In other words, whether consciously cognizant of them or not, we base our practices on what we consider to be the standardised and correct way of doing something. Such perceptions have their roots in the shared values and contexts of such practice. One focus of this book is to examine what holds the “subject” of English in place and what holds “subjects” in place. In addressing these questions, there is a double purpose. First, to explore the processes and discourses that shape the experience of high school English; second, and concurrently, to look at how English practice can test and reimagine the current constraints to make the best of a potentially very narrow experience. As Fleming and Stevens (2015) assert, the world of targets, data and prescription has no place for human complexity (p. 8). Indeed, the real nature of the subject has to be discovered and reinvented ever anew by those most intensively involved. Fleming and Stevens advocate that unthinking obedience to prescribed content is reductive to the creative opportunities available within any restricted prescription. Such an approach demands that English teachers take a more active role in their own subjectivity. The concept of the “self” or “subjectivity” is a very complex and well-debated idea. Descartes’ seventeenth-century supposition of “I think, therefore I am” offers a self-fulfilling position of power, but seems to lack agency through its adherence to discourse. This is because it is not always possible to see the chains that control us, let alone remove them through will alone. Louis Althusser (1918–1990) differs from Lacan (1901–1981) and Althusser’s student Foucault (1926–1984) in his discussion of subjectivity. Althusser (1971) states that “[a] knowing subject is an individual conceived of as a sovereign, relational and unified consciousness, in control of language and meaning. The ‘I’ that thinks and speaks. . . [is the] apparent author of meaning” (p. 122). Therefore, a subject

48  Teaching English in schools today can be the agent and subject of ideological practices, particularly ideological state apparatuses of school, profession and group; whereas Lacan might see such views as all too clean: a subject can be a creator of and conditioned by ideology, but the discourses might be much harder to discern, categorise and resist. When we teach and research English education, we should not overlook how complex it can be to look at what is happening in an empirical world: phenomena and causes are not always visible or researchable. An interesting aside in terms of subjectivity and discourse is the gender issue in English. Traditionally, girls outperform boys in English, and explanations for this have ranged from the emotional development of girls to the abstract meanings of language which may be more suited to certain students. However, Judith Butler (1997) may see this as being a totally performative aspect (chosen performance): gender by social construction. Similarly, the author Angela Carter (1979) refers to the social fiction of femininity. Identities are constructed by and within discourses and subject position is not a stable identity, they can be choices or resistance against something else (Davies & Harre, 1990).3 Another key term to discuss at this point is that of “discourse”. Originating from Latin meaning “running to and from”, the meaning of the term is the centre of some debate. A key description of discourse is offered by Foucault (1972), who asserts that discourses are “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (p. 49). Therefore, it is not an unmediated access to reality, and there is no position outside of discourse. We can see how the focus upon descriptors, developmental stages and standards are impositions created by and for what Lacan calls the Master and University discourses. Further explanation of these terms and their relevance is developed in later chapters of this book. English, more than most school subjects, courts much opinion and controversy over how it should be taught and why. The “humanist” approach to teaching English is arguably the most common. Such a conceptualisation is based upon the exploration through literature and language of the essential experience of being human. Such a paradigm finds its opponent in the exploration of Marxism, Feminism New Historicism (cultural theory) and more radical critical approaches. Such an approach is suggested by English scholars such as Leavis and Bradley, who use Shakespearean tragedy as a springboard for discussing literature on the level of the commonality and ubiquity of human experience through a model of practical criticism. Let us look at how unconscious ideas can manifest themselves during thinking and research. Included here is a journal entry from one of the author’s doctoral research project: More disruptions in my practice are occurring as I began to see problems with the latent assumptions behind habituous practice. During a lesson on the villainy of Iago4 and whether he deserves any audience sympathy, I was keen to impress upon the students that Iago is a narrative construction painted through dramaturgy, monologue, and dialogue. This confused students who had strong opinions based upon their human reactions to his Machiavellian ensnarement of the fellow dramatis personae. However, literature must

Origins and development of English education 49 surely have a human element where we experience sympathy and or antipathy towards such constructions and inevitably experience something about the nature of being alive with all its joys, pains, pleasures and strife. (Journal Entry, July 2015) On reflection, such an entry serves to illustrate two points. First, here is a very romantic epistemology of English belonging to that of Mr Keating in the Dead Poets Society mode, whereby literature is vicarious human experience. In such a mode, language becomes the transmitter of pathos (emotion) and ethos (ethics), rather than logos (logic). Such a position presents difficulties, as it presumes empathy as the core skill of accessing and developing in English as a subject. Arguably, such concepts are more ephemeral and linked to individual psychology, history, values, ethics and worldview. Concomitantly, maybe every aspect of human behaviour is also dependent upon this. Second, although characters can enter the collective consciousness of readers and audiences, it is not without difficulty to teach the concept of mimesis (imitation of the real world through art). As our reading and awareness of the complexities of English practice grows, so do the tensions. A significant alternative method for teaching English is the linguistic approach. Semiotic theory is concerned with the codes of a language, what De Saussure (1916) calls “langue”, is systematic and synchronic (language at a specific point in time) and can be isolated from “parole”, which has diachronic functions (how language has evolved through time). Such conceptions privilege the units of meaning over a holistic view of literature as a cohesive unit, and show the tension between word-, sentence- and text-level concerns in the practice and methods of teaching English as a school discipline. For example, notions of prescriptivist and descriptivist grammar provide theories that indicate the current thinking of educational policy makers and their response to the use and abuse of language. Theorists such as Durkheim (1911) offer very interesting ideas regarding this way of seeing English: stating that education systems are mirrors of society, designed to “express their needs” and create a workforce to suit its needs. Of course, a central tension in English and the standards agenda at present is the valorising of high-stakes testing to judge the educational landscape as economic value in PISA rankings (mentioned earlier). Such demands upon teachers are significant, and invite more detailed analysis of how this is currently shaping secondary English and influencing the practice of it. One fascinating theory related to this is Karl Marx’s (1867) concept of “automatisches subject” (automatic subjectivity), where agents bring about a self-fulfilling process of subjectivity – often unknowingly to themselves. Such an idea can be applied to the practice of English teaching: there is an end-game of exams that professionals qualify with their compliance, although it may cause them unrest and be contrary to their values or paradigm of what English teaching should or ought to be. Similarly, it could be argued that some students succeed because they enjoy the system, or they are able to identify with it.

50  Teaching English in schools today

What is English education? A Cockatrice hast thou hatched to the world. Duchess of York in 4.1.55 from Shakespeare’s Richard III (1592) The practical conceptions of English, as a high school subject, could be described as a cockatrice: a mythical beast comprised of a two-legged dragon with a rooster’s head. Ergo, it characterises the split identity and concurrent hybridous multiplicity of the nature of English. This multiplicity of conceptions seems to range from the pragmatic functions of literacy to the essential humanist view of teaching understanding to the induction into cultural capital to preserve a national narrative to the pleasure and enjoyment of reading, and the synthesis of language and literary texts with cultural theory and critical approaches. I wish to suggest that far from being exclusive positions, these conceptualisations are part of an interplay that reveal decisions, enactments, discourses and effects upon “subjects”. As English is packaged up in discursive styles for different purposes, it affects what people do. Certain epistemologies and discourses of English are designed to fit certain models/functions – and in such models, there are identities and epistemologies that are marginalised. As an agent in practice and research, we should be aware of how we influence and how we are influenced by these prevailing discourses. As conflicting discourses compete within the subject, it seems timely to take a fresh look at how the discipline of English is functioning. The subject of English could also be described as a living contradiction: the world of work demands wider and more functional skills, whereas English has seen a narrowing of assessment foci to discourage the perceived gaming of the system.5 It could be argued that English is now suffering from a reductive invert model whereby the assessment drives all in a model of results accountability over a student-centred one. Other debates centre around Bernstein’s (1971) theory of elaborate and restricted codes, and whether the purpose of English has become to induct students into a class rich elaborate code at the expense of real understanding (Davison, 2011). In this way, “the oppressed are required to climb the ladder . . . [and the] higher they get, the more they resemble the oppressors” in a classic Animal Farm denouement (MacSwan & McLaren, 1997, p. 334). Of course, one tension here is Bourdieu’s (2007) notion that “different social groups have different social capital” and English is ridden with class complications (Davison, 2011, p. 171). Some claim this means that English is a game that some students have already won or lost upon their induction into formal education as English aims at Trudghill’s (1972) theory of overt prestige, where standard forms of English and elaborate codes are celebrated and others disavowed. Nonetheless, debates centre around what English education is doing and what for. Clearly, a tension exists between changing curriculum restraints being exacerbated by increasing assessment restraints as teachers teach for the test in five years’ time, and neglect other discourses.

Origins and development of English education 51

Whose English? As well as considering what we are doing when we teach English and what the students are being asked to do, we must also consider who we are doing it for. Schools exist in a convoluted system of pleasing many masters that are both internal and external to the classroom and institution. Allow me to use a literaryhistorical example to illustrate my point. When Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë opened their ill-fated school in 1844 at Haworth, they could be said to attempting to fulfil three purposes: first, to obtain an income in keeping with limited female opportunities during the period; second, to provide the local populace with a chance of education, which had been so transformative for their father Patrick’s opportunities; and third, to give the local populace the basic skills of reading, writing, arithmetic and discipline to be functional and employable in the local wool factories that had sprung up along the hills of Bradford in West Yorkshire. Seen in this way, education may fulfil the needs of economic production. Of course, education for intellectual improvement and personal growth is a counter-imperative. But, arguably it has been a secondary imperative for the lower classes whom could be said to have been “kept in their place” by what William Blake (1795) refers to as the “mind forged manacles” of class acquiescence. In this way, what version of English is being taught must be followed by a secondary question: For whom, and for what purpose? The 2014 refresh of the National Curriculum in English claimed to “promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written language, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment”. Yet, “below the surface of such apparently contestable and transparent statements lie all sorts of conflicting opinions, ideologies, methodologies and philosophies” (Fleming & Stevens, 2015, p. 91). High school English departments are used to constant change. The new curriculum purports to free teachers pedagogically and remove levels, yet still measure progress. Also, it makes broad brush statements about the skills and range of material to be taught, including the rather mysterious “seminal world literature” requirement (The National Curriculum in England, 2013). A look back over the history of what English has been and for what purposes follows to enable us to situate the debates. The Newbolt Report (1921) and The Problem of Grammar by George Sampson (1924), although more liberal in their approach than many would believe, are stalwart on the need for purification of English. As Fleming and Stevens (2015) assert, the reports contain both “romantic ideas about creative imagination and a lack of tolerance of diversification of language” (p. 4). Over half a century later, the 1975 Bullock Report offered a more psychologically introverted definition: seeing language in terms of thinking and meaning, not just communication. Similarly, the Kingman Report of 1988 argued for a division between knowledge about language and language in use: “the starting point for English teachers in the classroom must then be the use of language, with technical terminology and the study of conventions of language playing a supportive rather than a dominant role” (Fleming & Stevens, 2015, p. 7).

52  Teaching English in schools today This goes some way to explain why as a school student, I have no recollection of any grammar or technical terminology in my English lessons. So lacking was my knowledge about grammar that I had to fill in such gaps by studying linguistics alongside my literature studies as an undergraduate and then as a student teacher. Such debates demonstrate how English is charged with the solving of many issues and the fulfilment of many demands. Of course, the view of English as a panacea for complex social and political issues is very problematic, although successive governments often try to use it for such purposes. Traditionally, government policy in Britain has seen homogenous initiatives dispensed like medicine. Yet, they take little account of the dynamic nature of social complexities in children, teachers, classrooms, schools, communities and society. Perhaps, more than any other subject, English is best placed to take account of these contextual variances.

Ideologies of English English has many different ideologies at play and many debates regarding the functions of it. Teachers of English have been encouraged at GCSE (age 14–16) and A level (age 16–18) to favour cultural critical views in examination contexts, with a focus upon psychological, Marxist and feminist readings. What is taught in English classrooms is further contested by the different prejudices of what the English teacher knows or values. There is also the possibility of an uncritical fall-back position from one’s own schooling. Given the nature of English as a process subject, rather than exclusively a content one, there is much variation in the knowledge and interests of the individual English teacher. Thus, it is often argued that the texts we have studied become the ones that we think should be studied, in a self-aggrandising way. English as a discipline originally addressed the demand of learning rhetoric: to express yourself with force and originality to convey your ideas. Similarly, an early justification of English was that you should read material that challenges you, even though may not like it at first. Two major schools of thought regarding the epistemology of English and its purpose can be summarised by contrasting the ideas of Hazlitt and Coleridge with those of Leavis and Eliot. Hazlitt/ Coleridge’s much earlier position (circa 1810) fronted the notion of personal pleasure in reading literature. Such a view was significantly influenced by Greek and Roman models of quality, where literature of high value was seen to give a personal giddy and vertiginous intellectual pleasure. In contrast, Leavis/Eliot promoted the new critical approach to English in the 1920s whereby reading was to establish a critical mind and nothing to do with pleasure. The approach can be summarised as: it is good for you to read challenging books and you may not enjoy it, but tough – intellectual development is the key. A turn-of-the-century philosophy also had influence in the 1960s. The Frankfurt school6 is a critical theory of self-conscious social critique. This position encouraged readers to read against the text and is the opposite of hailing quality: it promotes the idea that culture is not your friend. An example of this might be

Origins and development of English education 53 that in studying Shakespeare, we need to look at what Shakespeare is not addressing: the absences and silences. Indeed, it could be argued that the processes of pleasure are now replacing literature as a category: film as culture because culture is porous and still ideological, whether literary or not. A further theory is offered by Bloom (1994), a critic of the Frankfurt school, who argues that whatever critique is placed upon Shakespeare, Shakespeare is always one step ahead. For example, he argues that feminist criticism of Shakespeare should take account of the progressive nature of the writer, in that he was already writing women better than anyone else. These debates which have shaped the undergraduate and postgraduate discourse are starting to find their way into the high school discourse. English as a discipline and how it is taught is a site of contestation. But what are the characteristics of English? It could be argued that English serves different functions for different groups of students, and herein lie its complexities. For some students, English has the function of helping them to develop critical thinking skills. For others, it could be to enable them to effectively complain about a service they receive in the future using what they have learnt about effective argument and persuasion at high school. Durkheim’s (1911) social theories suggest that education can have many purposes: for some, it has the purely functional purposes of employment and social continuation; for others, to tick a box to pass school; and for some, to engage in a passion or a profession. It seems prudent to stop for a moment to consider the special place that one writer in particular has in the canon, the curriculum and the collective national consciousness: William Shakespeare (1564–1616). Shakespeare . . . few literary names inspire such a mixture of reverence, apathy and revulsion from students, parents and teachers. Many people base such views on their experience of passages when in the lower years of secondary school, and their views are often intrinsically tied to their view of English at high school as either a positive or negative experience. Shakespeare is a secular religion for many, leading to a kind of ritual tribute and deification. For many students, the notions of Shakespeare – as historical artefact, as cultural capital and as linguistically forbidding – present major challenges. It is a classic trope that students are confused by Shakespeare’s language. Shakespearean idiom may well be as obtuse as Beowulf in the future: will Tudor English be taught then as an anachronistic foreign language? For many, the idea that Shakespeare might not be the figurehead of the canon is a difficult one and would represent a “giving in” by acknowledging that it is too difficult for some students. However, this idea is not unlike the reason for the creation of English as a subject: a softening of the demands of classical literature by removing the foreign language barrier. Doubtless, Shakespeare is part of the national imaginary, but to conceive of a literature as nationally bordered creates many areas of conflict. It certainly seems curious that a jobbing playwright who courted controversy and provided material for the most popular entertainment of the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean ages might be seen as dull and irrelevant by some. Or is that me just imposing my intrinsic enjoyment upon others and objecting to heterogeneous opinion? Still, what is clear is that people have strong opinions on what should and should not

54  Teaching English in schools today be studied in English. These are often based upon the books that they studied at school – and thus the canon perpetuates, seldom allowing in new and exciting contemporary literature. Of course, there are dangers of becoming limited in our scope if we are too reverential to our own experiences, see them as absolutes and have internalised them as our own immovable architecture. This also applies in no small measure to the discourses, ideologies and epistemologies within and without us as teacher researchers. It seems reasonable to argue that English represents a myriad of different discourses – and yet, governmental policy charges the subject with the task of moral equalisation. For example, being weak in English can have many root causes, such as poverty or lack of opportunity, cultural capital or aspiration. Yet, policy would dictate that more English schooling is the salvo for such problems. This presents a moral problem if we believe in the power of education to transform people’s lives, yet we engage in and perpetuate a problematic system designed to valorise some and denigrate others. As Westbrook, Bryan, Cooper, Hawking, and O’Malley (2011) assert: “Literacy is intertwined with issues around culture, gender, class and race in a more complex relationship than can be reflected in a neatly packaged set of training materials” (p. 95). Such a position is at odds with official discourses such as the National Literacy Strategy framework (1998–2011) which saw centrally created and disseminated materials with step-by-step instructions on delivery, where a teacher was an intermediary in a lesson delivered by central government. It carried the caveat of remedying deficit and improving standards, but to many felt patronising and sterile. Such considerations show how English can be termed as a problematic, unstable amalgam of contradictory identities. This book looks at some of these problems, and explores how we can become more theoretically aware of them as teachers and researchers.

Notes 1 PISA is a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in member and non-member nations of 15-year-old school pupils’ achievement in reading, mathematics and science. Beginning in 2000 and repeated every three years, it allows countries to measure their performance in an international context. 2 Similarly, Goodwyn (2011) asserts that the 1989–1992 KAL (Knowledge About Language project) was “influenced by prescriptive forces . . . [connecting] correctness in language with moral and social order and its opposite” (p. 25). 3 It is possible to see how identities offer both opportunities and dangers for educational practice. In a 2016 interview, Nick Gibb (the UK Government School’s Minister) suggested that cultural capital was one of the inequalities that schools could address. Arguably, by placing the equalisation of poverty of opportunity at the door of schools we can see how some students are at an immediate advantage / disadvantage. 4 Iago is the racist villain of Shakespeare’s “Othello” (1603), who manages to convince black Othello that his innocent wife Desdemona has made him a cuckold. Othello, full of rage, and believing himself to be saving her in the afterlife, stifles Desdemona with a pillow. Iago often attracts the revulsion of the

Origins and development of English education 55 audience / students, yet Shakespeare has Iago confiding in the audience, through soliloquys, so that we feel complicit in his plot of maniacal jealousy. 5 The removal of speaking and listening from GCSE English assessment recently could be defended by arguing that a separate certificate at age 16 for speaking and listening is a more valuable step. However, many schools intend to complete the tasks for this in year 8 or 9, and given its lack of inclusion in league tables, one must question how oracy has gained any status here. 6 The “Frankfurt school” refers to the interwar dissident movement coming from the Institute of Social Research at Goethe University. The movement sought to discredit both socialism and capitalism as theories that came from the top down. Instead, ideas should be generated from reading against dominant ideas and originate from those outside of government.

4 The practice of English education Teaching English in schools todayThe practice of English education

The practice of teaching English involves the navigation of a range of complex demands. From the needs of students, to the commands of legislation and curricula, teaching can feel like a bureaucratic negotiation. However, teaching is something that has to be enacted: despite the demands and the commands, and the pressure (external and internal), something has to be done. This next chapter looks at how the use of psychoanalysis and Lacan’s “four discourses” can enrich how we see and enact English teaching. Through showing how Lacan’s theories relate to enacting practice, the hope is to demonstrate how English in the classroom can be seen in different ways and how these can contribute to the debate. Lacan is not easy to read or understand. Many commentators note how deliberately opaque and contradictory his ideas can be (Roseboro, 2008; Murray, 2016). As mentioned in Chapter 2, in his Seminar XVII from 1969, Lacan (2007) explains how four types of discourse offer different explanations of how language works in social phenomena: Master, University, Hysteric and Analyst. This theory is important because of the insistence that “all determinations of the subject, and therefore of thought, depends on discourse” (p. 152). Lacan suggests that what makes a discourse is what it is referring to: “the reference of a discourse is what it acknowledges it wants to master” (p. 79). Such an idea is very complex for two main reasons. First, if discourse is aiming to master something, then are all discourses potential master discourses? After pondering this, we may conclude that it depends on power. If a discourse is seeking to subjugate other ideas, then it is operating in the master/slave dialectic. For example, an insistence upon accuracy and standards as an educational model will repress creativity to some extent, either consciously or unconsciously. Second, does a discourse have the intent to master something that is unacknowledged or hidden? Many have pointed to the complexity of Lacan, and yet the difficulty seems not just understanding what is stated, but also what is implied. A significant challenge in reading Lacan is the dense collection of indistinct terms that have multiple meanings throughout his work. One example of this could be Lacan’s statement “[l]anguage is the condition of the unconscious” (p. 41). The noun here provides the crux of the problem: does it mean conditional of/on, or does it refer to the state of it? In English terms, does the use of linguistic signifiers decide

The practice of English education 57 the meaning, or is it describing the meaning? Such a debate is never far from the reader’s mind when reading Lacan’s work. He even provides a caveat for the limitations of his “four discourses” theory: “My little quadrupled schemas . . . are not the Ouija boards of history. It is not necessarily the case that things always happen this way, and that things rotate in the same direction” (p. 188). As a general summary, Roseboro (2008) suggests that the Master discourse creates the subject; the University discourse frames the subject’s knowledge; the Hysteric discourse represents the search for truth of the unconscious and the Analyst discourse brings knowledge into the space of truth. Lacan uses mathematical expressions called mathemes to explain his theory as diagrams. For purposes of economy, he uses symbols to capture central factors or positions that can then be moved around to show how language works differently in different circumstances. The richness of the Lacanian schemas is further enhanced by the four factors of master signifiers (S1), knowledge (S2), the divided subject ($), and the object (a). A brief explanation of what the symbols mean follows to allow the reader to understand how they work. S1 → S 2 S a As Bracher (1994) describes: • The master signifiers (S1) are things that the subject has an identity with, where their value goes without saying. There are many unsaid, but widely obeyed, demands made on schools and English teachers through educational discourses of accuracy, culture, standards, enjoyment and employability, for example. • Knowledge (S2) creates what a subject is: they are interpellated by what types of knowledge are given credence. This comes down to: What is it that I am meant to be doing when I teach English? How do I know this? Where are my reference points for my ontological beliefs and epistemological frames? • The divided subject ($) is what is “operative in all the various ways in which we fail to identify ourselves, grasp ourselves, or coincide with ourselves” (Bracher, 1994, p. 113). Consequently, discourse acts upon and within us to create the division between what we are meant to be and what we feel we are when discourse forces homogeneity and fails to take account of our heterogeneity. • Finally, the object (a) can be seen as the object of desire: what we seek to fill with our fantasies to make up for the feeling of lack. Students in school fulfil the role of being the object of desire for the teacher’s gaze who is compelled to follow the system for credit and success. The questions arise: how is my gaze as an English teacher constituted. and how does it interpellate students as subjects?

58  Teaching English in schools today

Lacan’s four discourses The term “discourse” is problematic. It is used interchangeably between disciplines such as the law, medicine and politics, for example, to refer to their individual system of meaning. For Lacan, discourse appears to be a way of understanding how language functions in a system and its social effects. Lacan offers “four discourses” to show how social systems work. Žižek (1999) provides a useful explanation of the differences between the “four discourses”, stating that the Master names an ideal, the University teaches bureaucratic conformity of the ideal, the Hysteric questions the naming of the ideal and the Analyst focuses on the gap between the naming and the questioning (p. 165).

Master discourse Lacan’s Master discourse takes its origins from the Hegelian master/slave dialectic, where power is contingent upon someone being powerless: every master needs a slave, and vice versa. The Master discourse can be seen as the hidden dominating powers that exist only to reproduce themselves. In terms of education, we can see how children are shaped by the expectations put upon them: schools are compared to other schools; children compare themselves to other children with reference to the metrics that specify what they are compared to what they are supposed to be. Such Master discourses and policies shape education and dictate versions of English that are fashioned from a limited brief promoted by economic competition and regulation. In this discourse, English teaching becomes about choosing texts for national “British values”, where the text becomes a Master discourse for political ideology. Also, concepts such as culture, accuracy, literate, Britishness and employment become drivers of epistemology from above. In Lacan’s Master discourse, there is no room for individual desires or alternative cultures, as these are considered alien to the production and standards models of English education. Lacan’s discourse of the Master outlines how people are rendered as a “divided subject”. That is, we are positioned as being caught between something and nothing. In other words, we are taught to desire something, as it is preferable to nothing, and this makes us divided: a kind of piggy in the middle, if you will. The pressure to succeed at school comes not necessarily from the will to learn, but from the desire to satisfy the “other”. This “divided subject” ($) is represented as a teacher (S1) for students (S2) leading to what remains, the failure (a). In simpler terms, the Master discourse tells you what you should want, even though you can never win even by trying to get it: the system is stacked against you. S1 → S 2 Lacan’s Master discourse schema S a Here master signifiers (S1) produce unquestioned authoritative knowledge (S2) with no room for the individual’s desires (a) and this produces an unfulfilled person ($).

The practice of English education 59 A more complex reading may suggest that someone (whose identity has been determined for them by the master) sees things that are not real (deliberate mirages that are suppressed, not hidden by the identity formation) as they are controlled by a desire (what someone is told to want by their induction into the discourse), whilst they learn knowledge (manufactured truths to be digested and repeated) that produces a loss (a painful disconnect as they realise that being involved in this system has a price that denies their individuality). It is this need to see past the stated and into the multi-inferential which makes Lacan’s work so fascinating and infuriating in equal measure.

University discourse Lacan’s University discourse can be seen as representative of an institution like a school, or a national/politically engendered curriculum. This University discourse presents the illusion of neutral knowledge, but it has expected outcomes and acts as a hidden master (Žižek, 2014a). So in teacher terms, the Master and University discourses tell us what we should freely choose: a paradox that can be seen in contemporary classrooms where the functional employment narrative is used to demand compliance, but dressed up as choice to acquiesce with a system of oppression: you’ll need this to get a job. The University discourse stands for the establishment and determines what needs to be known in systematic knowledge. In this discourse, knowledge is only considered valuable if it fits prescribed guidelines. Potentially, this leaves the subject of this discourse with two choices: conformity or the isolation of rebellion. S2 → a Lacan’s University discourse schema S1 S Here, knowledge (S2) is built upon master messages (S1) which produces a desire in the student (a) to “play the game” and produce a compromised individual ($).

Hysteric discourse Lacan’s Hysteric discourse is concerned with the experiences and conflicting demands made of the alienated/divided subject. In this discourse, the master is questioned, and authoritarian discourse is disrupted. Žižek (2006) describes how in this discourse, there can be a gap between performance and awareness of that performance: where intellectual protest is combined with practical compliance. Here, criticism becomes about questioning the established values and learning to be critically autonomous: enabling students to see and make connections demands not telling, but teaching the “rules of the game” (Scholes, 1985). Fundamentally, understanding cultural codes is not enough for developing the Hysteric discourse, but to understand the attitude taken by such codes. In schools, there are many occasions when students demonstrate a disconnection between

60  Teaching English in schools today their sense of self and the expectations of the University imposition of self, such as finding something boring when the teacher finds it fascinating. This discourse places the subject as the agent who is subversive and gives voice to their sense of alienation/of being left out. S → S1 Lacan’s Hysteric discourse schema a S2 Here the divided subject ($) uses their desires (a) to object to master messages (S1) which produces new alternative knowledge (S2).

Analyst discourse Finally, the Analyst discourse can be described as the enactment of the divided self to produce new master signifiers by the subject. In this discourse, knowledge is placed in the dock by psychoanalytic experience (Lacan, 1977b) and asks students to “critically consider how the world is presented to them and the ways they situate themselves within the world” (Thomas, 2014, p. 30). In beginning with subject’s desires (a), the Analyst discourse: asks the individual to recognise that her own discourse is not fully within her control, but rather involves . . . an ethic of listening for the underlying truth of a message rather than its overt content, and in this way it is oppositional to authoritarian discourses, where overt content is reified and absolutized. (ibid) It is most often seen as the most revolutionary, progressive and empowering form of discourse, as it sees the subject’s desires and anxieties as important in the process of learning. Many argue that the Analyst discourse, taken from the therapeutic function of psychoanalysis, should be a central part of educational practice. One may argue that it is in self-reflective discourse where English becomes more idiosyncratic and personally affective in a way that seeks dissolution from master signifiers. Indeed, Thomas (2014) goes on to assert that Analyst discourse “actively works to empower students’ exposure of oppressive and dictatorial aspects of discursive structures . . . creating a new condition of knowledge . . . the art educator has no knowledge to give students other than analytic knowledge”. a → S Lacan’s Analyst discourse schema S1 S2 Here the subject’s desires (a) are underpinned by knowledge (S2), which addresses the divided self ($) to create new and alternative master messages (S1).

The practice of English education 61 Lacan argues that the nature of Analytic discourse is to rebel against common sense: “this displacement that never ceases, is the very condition of analytic discourse” (p. 147). In rebelling against the status quo, new knowledge is created, and the Master discourse becomes transformed.

Dynamic Lacanian theory Lacan’s discourses not only contain four positions to see how language can structure the world, but also contains fixed positions within the schema of the speaker (agent or master) in the top left, the other (slave/to whom the discourse is addressed) in the top right, the truth (which is often repressed or hidden) in the bottom left, and production (what is created by the interpellation by dominant factors of a discourse) in the bottom right. To simplify, allow me to use an example. Imagine an English teacher is teaching a classic poem to students to demonstrate the quality of the poet and teach poetic appreciation. The teacher is the active dominant agent who is expounding the hidden master truth that quality literature is supposed to be obscure, difficult and forbidding. Indeed, it has been chosen as classic because of such qualities. The student is the receiver of messages in the classroom context, and thus is the addressee of the discourse. By being interpellated with the idea that poetry is obscure, odd, hard and puzzling, the subject can produce a number of effects: a reinforcement that they are not clever or cultured enough to “get it”; being put off by the ambiguity of the language; an affinity with the intellectual elite; the feeling that students have to like it because as Saclecl (1994) suggests, the great “Other” wants it and this demand is good for you in ways you do not yet comprehend; or other effects that create types of subjectivised selves. Furthermore, Salecl also asserts that instruction is the goal of education and any morality or personality forming effects are by products. Such a view suggests that successful teaching is a happy accident that cannot be directly linked back to one factor or a single theory of instruction. Such views are contrary to the medicinal approach of education that the official discourses of English seem to be returning to. So, Lacan’s theory of “four discourses” represents four different ways of knowing and thinking about how discourse works. Bracher (1994) suggests that Lacan offers a “rigorously dialogical structure” that allows us to see the forces that shape, categorise, define and subjectivise us, and allows us to “intervene more effectively”. Also, the relevance to education is that Lacan’s schema helps us to see how “education works, and why it often doesn’t, at least not in the intended manner” (p. 127). Furthermore, Lacan’s schema of “four discourses” allows one to look at classroom empirical evidence and find different ways to think about and challenge the practice of high school English by taking account of the Master discourse; to the institutional practices; to the divided self within education, and the challenging of received wisdom to create new master signifiers that contain the possibility of real change in education. As Bracher suggests, of all rhetorical theories, Lacan’s four discourses offers the “means for explaining how a given text moves people” (p. 126). Lacan’s model is not merely a theory

62  Teaching English in schools today of “what”, but a dynamic theory of “how” socio-linguistic interaction affects people and what can be done to address iniquities and inequities. Here is one such inequity.

Dead poets Psychoanalysis seeks to problematise the core of why people do and say things: essentially, to fully explore the complexity of life. Let us return to a famous scene from the classic film Dead Poets Society (1989), Todd Anderson and his classmates are challenged in a private boarding school in 1959 to tear up the status quo and to live deliberately by the inimitable English master Mr Keating (poignantly played by the late Robin Williams). The scene is interesting in that it provides an insight into two very different views of English teaching: a traditional University discourse approach and a maverick hybrid of Hysteric and Analytical discourse. In Mr Keating’s first full English class, he encourages the students to read the poetry introduction by Dr J. Evans Pritchard PhD. The chapter is read dutifully by Neil and describes how poetry can measured by plotting perfection on the X axis and importance on the Y axis, resulting in a total area of “greatness”. Of course, this is set up for Keating to engage in perfect bathos and call such an approach “excrement”. This deflation is both amusing and shocking for the students. Keating champions the view that students must think for themselves and learn to “savour words and language”. Much to the students’ surprise, they find that their new English teacher is more interested in bringing out their individual passions than filling a bucket for examination purposes. The unfettered joy of this scene lies in its emancipatory intent: Keating believes that students need to be released from prevailing discourse. In applying Lacan’s four discourses theory to this episode, many interesting ideas can be raised: psychoanalysis lets us see things that may appear as given or hidden. The Dr Pritchard article shows how perfection and importance are the intended Master discourses; a reproduced and handed-down imperialistic force of compliance that is despotically dismissive of any individual response. This knowledge claims an assumed dominance that represses the individual and reduces education to something to be digested, assimilated and reproduced: a “pass the parcel” of knowledge that is never unwrapped. For Lacan, these master signifiers are identified with death and castration in that they cut and limit the subject’s individuality. The scene lampoons such knowledge through the highly problematic assertions made: “A Shakespearean sonnet . . . truly great . . . greatness becomes a relatively simple matter”. Ostensibly, reducing something as complex and ambiguous as poetry to a positivist view of graph plotting shows the University discourse at work and its attempts to measure, quantify and categorise. The discourse of the University can be summarised as the “system”, whereby bureaucracy and impersonal knowledge force us to produce ourselves as alienated

The practice of English education 63 and disenfranchised subjects. Therefore, to be successful, pass school and get on, one is forced to “simply study our Mr Pritchard and learn our rhyme and meter”. This submission to power for the purposes of delayed gratification turns subjects into avatars of the Master discourse (Bracher, 1994). Perhaps the most problematic line in the whole of this scene is the idea that pleasure is linked to submission: “as your ability to evaluate . . . so will your enjoyment”. Ergo, pleasure comes from submitting and acquiescing to external power. The object of desire, according to Lacan, is that part of a subject’s being that is left out and produced by a predetermined identity for the subject. Seeing students as objects that must be taught what to desire to conform to the system is highly problematic for Keating, as it should be for all educationalists. Keating’s philosophy could be seen as a maverick hybrid of Hysteric and Analytical discourse. The character denounces the University avatar and the Master as “excrement”, even in front of his superior, Mr McAllister, whose arrival is an attempt to bring the divided self to dominant conformity. Lacan’s Hysteric discourse places the divided subject as the primary agent where the enforced subjectivities are faded to make room for the fringes. However, we must notice that Keating does not destroy Master and University discourses: the boys will have to pass the course. Instead, Keating sees the value of anti-productive activity, over the capitalist need to reproduce the status quo: “learn to think for yourselves again . . . poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for . . . what will your verse be?” Lacan’s theory of Analyst discourse gives primacy to the object of desire and would see a teacher as countering tyranny by employing an ethical treatment of individual responses. Lacan (2007) describes this discourse as “shifting gears”, when a subject seeks to separate themselves from oppressive master signifiers. In this discourse, new knowledge is produced: new master signifiers. In this case, Keating seeks to encourage students to create new master signifiers of the soul, heart and passion of poetry over the transactional system of the existing Master and University discourses. Finally, in Dead Poets Society, most of the students in his class grow to love Keating and demonstrate an act of affection for “Captain, my Captain” at the conclusion of the film when Keating is fired. However, not all of them do. There are students in Keating’s class who are too afraid to follow the Hysteric and Analyst discourses, preferring instead to stay within the game of University and Master discourse to protect their future employability and remove the threat of expulsion or the withholding of their future. These students are unable to connect with these alternative views and instead choose to re-identify with the traditional signifiers. However, the genie is out of the bottle, and the students have an alternative frame with which to think. Life will not be the same for them. Perhaps one purpose of the film is not only to demonstrate how traditional power structures aim to protect their mastery through control, but also how education should be seen as the “lighting of a fire and not the filling of a pail” (Plutarch, 50–120 AD).1

64  Teaching English in schools today

Thematic explorations In exploring how such theories can enrich our understanding of English teaching, what follows are thematic explorations of how theory and practice can be symbiotic. The areas to be explored are: • • • • • •

The misfiring canon: the impact of text choice in English English as employability and standards: functional aspects of English Enjoyment, pleasure and jouissance: enjoyment in English The “Other”: how English can include and exclude English as “marvellous medicine”: English as a cure Britishness and national values: English as cultural imperative

The misfiring canon The “canon” of English literature refers to a mark of quality and tradition that has been the centre of much debate since its original inception by the poet Alexander Pope (1688–1744): the original canon contained expected authors such as Shakespeare and Chaucer. Which texts should be selected for study is often an area of contention. The British government has made dramatic changes recently to the list of approved texts to be studied at GCSE, and these were outlined in the Department of Education (2016) white paper. As an example of Master discourse, the government white paper of 2016 presents many challenges to schools. Of most relevance to the subject of English are the following points: The new national curriculum is forward-looking while equipping children with core knowledge about the best that has been thought and written – balancing three Shakespeare plays and the study of a broad sweep of British history. . . . We have set a new gold standard for reformed GCSEs, which will be more academically demanding. . . . A 21st century education also promotes integration so that young people can play their part in our society. Schools and other education providers have an important role to play in promoting the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual tolerance and respect of those with different faiths and beliefs, while developing the knowledge, critical thinking and character traits that enable pupils to identify and challenge extremist views. (DFE, 2016) In presenting the English curriculum as “the best that has been thought and written”, there is a tension as the subject of English is often characterised as a challenger to established views: students are actively encouraged to think in ways that challenge the status quo. This can result in an uneasy relationship between the coronation of iconic literature/values and the rebellious critique of the values and issues that the texts explore and how they relate to students’ own lives.

The practice of English education 65 It is beyond the scope of this chapter to engage in a full discussion of what makes for quality literature, or literature, as opposed to popular fiction. However, the issues surrounding the debate are worth some consideration. What makes something literary or non-literary? Pop fiction could be considered non-literary, and can be seen as something that gives pleasure without improving the mind; it provides escapism, is crafted in familiar genre conventions and simplifies complex issues. The canon (a word originally used to describe major biblical passages) of English literature has its origins in the notion of the authentic/official/orthodox and having lasting literary value. The eighteenthcentury poet Alexander Pope is credited with establishing one of the first canons, which naturally exclude as much as they include. Traditionally, being European, male, white and dead is a requirement to be considered for the canon. Many find this notion to be imperialistic. Harold Bloom (1994) argues that what qualifies as having literary value must have strangeness (being odd and difficult), have depth, be personally challenging in nature and be complex. Therefore, what Bloom considers literary is something that expands the consciousness of the reader. Consequently, it is possible to be popular and canonical but there are severe tensions between popularism and the canon. Stephen King (whose work is disliked by Bloom) captures the problematic nature of literary value and “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” taste in his forward to Night Shift (1978): Writing is a catch-as-catch-can sort of occupation. All of us seem to come equipped with filters on the floors of our minds, and all the filters having different sizes and meshes. What catches in my filter may run right through yours. What catches yours may pass through mine, no sweat. (Foreword to Night Shift) This debate of what literary texts are studied is a key issue in what holds English in place as a school subject. Many have strong opinions on what should be studied, and these are often based in the prejudices/self-reference of their own experiences. In Britain, it is clear that the reformed English curriculum has removed some of the most popular and traditional literary texts. In seeking to narrow the text choice to the realm of white, male, Victorian and dead, the new curriculum seems to have a disturbing effect. One student remarked: “I loved reading when I was a kid. I still like it now. But I find Dickens, Keats and all that to be really, really dull. We don’t do anything modern anymore”. If we look at this through the lens of Lacan’s discourses, student objections suggest a lack of relevance to their own lived experience. It seems that the intention to reconnect students with culture may not be doing that, but instead alienating students into seeing the text as the other that they are to meant to desire, but struggle to engage with on anything other than compulsion. Here we can see how school students are shaped by the expectations that are placed upon them. In seeing English as tradition and cultural reproduction, we can see how policy promotes a limited brief for English as a subject. The new English curriculum focusses on literature as its prime method of examination

66  Teaching English in schools today text. There is an emphasis on classic literature and studying substantial whole texts in detail, from: Shakespeare; nineteenth century novels; selections of poetry since 1789, including Romantic poetry; and fiction or drama from the British Isles from 1914 onwards. Such a new curriculum demands a reframing of how the subject is enacted and taught. The greater difficulty and wider range – but narrower representation – of texts in the new specifications means that closefocus sentence-level teaching will be insufficient. Students will need to infer or deduce reasonable meanings when faced with unfamiliar words; recognise the layered effects of figurative language; perceive tonal effects like irony, exaggeration, innuendo, and humour. Arguably, this is what the curriculum should be assessing, but it is in opposition to the previous examinations where non-fiction texts tested understanding rather than analysis of form and structure. To summarise, many students show antipathy towards traditional canonical texts, suggesting that they feel “irrelevant” and “remote”. In doing so, they may express preferment for modern literature that is less traditional but “more relevant” and “more enjoyable”. There is a danger that they are reporting a desire to repeat what they feel comfortable with regarding texts that may not have the demands of canonical literature. However, many students who profess themselves as avid readers expressed antipathy for set texts, denouncing them as “not pleasurable at all”. Perhaps this is partly a problem of representation: they do not see their concerns or views represented.

English as employability and standards We often hear in the media employers complain about young people having poor literacy. Doubtless, the skills of a workforce can be linked to the economic success of a business and nation. However, to only see the function of high school English as the production of economic worth and global competition appears to be very reductive. What is evident, rather unsurprisingly, is that the Master discourse, transmitted through the University/institution/school discourse, is succeeding perfectly. In many ways, it is contributing to what Bailly (2009) refers to as the “castratedness of the subject”: that is what the student is desiring is not really being offered, but is deferred into an uncertain temporal space. Such a discourse seems very dominant in English teaching.2 As McMahon (1997) argues: the regime of the signifiers (S1) certainly empowers students within academic fields, particularly successful students, but the signifier (S1) can also be used to keep students in their places . . . [involving] an initiation though pain that thereby “civilise” the desires of the student who would otherwise remain feral. (p. 7) Teachers may find themselves trapped by the fantasy of what others expect versus what we expect of ourselves and how competing pressures give power

The practice of English education 67 only to Master and University discourse, which ultimately holds the rewards of high school English. This concept of “transference” (Britzman, 2009) suggests that the fantasy places the individual in thrall to the Master. In other words, the subject of English can be seen as a control tool to ensure student acquiescence. A deeper struggle with this theory though is that it also applies to us. What we are to others and what they expect of us is fascinatingly complex. If we are expected to shape students in such a way that they dutifully pass their exam and leave, then it is very successful. But, if we wish to encourage students to think for themselves, be autonomous and be independent, then the success may be more limited. If other stakeholders see the English teacher as the one who teaches conformity, then this presents a disturbing epistemology. Other students may see the purpose of English as something less helpful and more indulgent: pedantic expanding on single words . . . over-analysing language is useless . . . to give you a cutting edge. Seeing English as a gratuitous intellectual showboating perhaps gives English its most negative image, where some people who share a cultural interest seek to micro-analyse in a way that turns many students off. This links into what Bailly (2009) refers to as the “institution perpetuating its fantasy of itself – in maintaining, brightly polished, its master signifiers” (p. 159). Therefore, Lacanian theory might suggest that institutions do not only echo the voice of the Master, they also repackage and represent discourses that make themselves seem venerable and special. Returning to McMahon (1997), the University discourse “demand[s] that students empower themselves by learning certain techniques of knowledge production . . . [the] University [discourse] demands that time must not be wasted” (p. 9). Here English teaching can be seen a “disciplinary pressure” whereby fantasy and desire are ignored, and that can lead to disenfranchisement with English education and even student/teacher cynicism of the English teacher’s motives and practices (Filipi, 2011). Lacan’s concept of the divided subject ($) offers an interesting alternative analysis here. It could be argued that the divided subject is not a natural phenomenon in human subjectivity, but that English education seeks to put the split in to students by giving a series of mixed messages: you must conform to speech acts, conventions, rules, laws and habits . . . but you must also retain the creative individuality and idiosyncrasies that will enable you to write creative pieces in exam conditions. McMahon (1997, p. 12) argues that the University’s solution to troublesome or non-conformist behaviours is to “nurture the hysteric back to quiet . . . productivity”. The Hysterical discourse offers the “primacy of the divided self ($) over ultimate desire (a). Hysteria violates textual and disciplinary codes, rules, conventions, modes of production” (Filipi, 2011, p. 6). Perhaps this clash between discourses in English education is most pertinently illuminated through the demand for enjoyment in the new English curriculum.

Enjoyment, pleasure and jouissance Government initiatives often focus upon the extent to which schools encourage, promote and measure “reading for pleasure”. It is vital to note that the notion of

68  Teaching English in schools today enjoyment resists any analysis or reduction, but it still constructs subjects rather than merely explaining the self. The idea of pleasure in teaching and learning English is problematic. Ricoeur’s (1985) theory of the interpellation between the fictional world and life world of the reader raises some interesting points regarding the concept of pleasure in reading literature and teaching English. He asserts that the acquirement of meaning in a literary text is only achieved when the projected world and the life world of the reader meet (p. 160). One should not assume, however, that Ricoeur is simply restating the Barthesian reader response theory, but instead he offers a more philosophically concentrated version of the need for personal engagement with texts to “indicate and to transform the human action” (ibid). It could be argued that this is the pleasure principle in action: allowing fiction to redefine and reconstitute beliefs and paradigms about time, truth and experience. Related to – but more complex than – enjoyment is the Lacanian concept of “jouissance”. It has been seen as a sensation beyond pleasure, a synergy that goes beyond the mechanical, an imperative of the super-ego, lust, enjoyment, something beyond pleasure and a resolving of the tension between discourse and history (Roseboro, 2008; Braunstein, 2003; Fink, 2004). Of course, the use of the term “pleasure” or “enjoyment” is not politically neutral or unproblematic. Žižek (2005) explains how jouissance is experienced in the symbolic order of language: pleasure has to be realised and has to be captured in language to show its realisation. Lacan (2007) refers to jouissance as “the jar of the Danaides . . . it begins with a tickle and ends in a blaze of petrol” (p. 72). Lacan references the Greek myth of the Danaides (whose eternal punishment is to fill leaking jars with water to atone for murdering their husbands) to demonstrate how jouissance is a destructive and alienating practice that shows the gap between desire and its deferral. Lacanian jouissance has no release or catharsis, and so there is no happy ending or enjoyment as such. Such a debate over nomenclature and its import in a term like enjoyment/pleasure/jouissance demonstrates how tensions are created when defining terms to recognise, term and enact them in a school context. Lacan (2007) makes a distinction between “jouissance expected”, a fantasy or illusory and mythicised ideal that can never be achieved, and “jouissance obtained”, a pleasure that falls short of the idealised standard. Thus, the imagined cannot match the intensity of the real and so the subject experiences a “subjective destitution” (a disappointing gap). The issue of reading for pleasure and enjoyment seems loaded with difficulties. It seems unreasonable to write into a curriculum that someone will enjoy something. Many English teachers do their best to make lessons interesting, linking them to modern culture and demonstrating the common human experience within them. However, Pais (2015a, p. 377) suggests “it is an aspiration as pious as it is naïve to assume that students will engage in Mathematics for the satisfaction of exploring Mathematics”. Thus, with English, an equal naïveté exists in assumptions that English will be enjoyed and will give pleasure to students. Indeed, it may be even seen as symbolically violent to do so.

The practice of English education 69

The “Other” A traditional curriculum often represses literature outside of the canon. In turn, this means that anything outside of the established order is seen as inferior and considered popular or vulgar: “Literature [is often] used in secondary education to fabricate and simultaneously dominate, isolate and repress the ‘basic’ language of the dominated classes” (Balibar & Macherey, 1978). In this way, reading literature can be seen as an alienating practice for some students who “find in reading, nothing but the confirmation of their inferiority. Subjection means domination and repression by the literary discourse deemed inarticulate, faulty and inadequate for the expression of complex ideas and feelings” (p. 68). In direct contrast, English is often seen by practitioners as a promoting alternatives voices to intellectually free people from narrow and parochial perspectives. It could be argued that “school is the one place where our major concern is to study what we don’t know, to confront ‘Otherness’ rather than to ignore it or convert it into a simulacrum of ourselves” (Ibid, p. 59). Roseboro (2008) argues that we should see any curriculum as “a set of perspectives . . . [that] reflect a particular set of interests”. Additionally, these interests can facilitate the “construction of identity, marginality and difference” (p. 68). Of course, this “Otherness” and being made to feel excluded is a very real danger in the English curriculum. Roseboro also asserts that “educators are co-constructors of knowledge . . . [and] . . . mediate between objectivity and subjectivity” (p. 69). However, assessment systems often focus on isolating skills and rely on rote learning could be said to reverting back to a reductive conceptualisation of education as recounting knowledge to pass exams. Roseboro calls for the teaching profession to challenge normative assumptions and demands multiple versions of history. Such an approach is not unlike psychoanalytical practice, where the finding and uncovering of the self is bound in language. One example of this approach could be to treat literary texts as analysands to be uncovered and explored, and to aim to expose the injustices and neuroses of versions of English. It seems more pertinent than ever to follow such advice in English curricula: to “learn to hear and understand the alternate discourses of oppressed people” (Roseboro, 2008, p. 81). Rather than closing down debate and presenting a fatalistic vision of how oppressed and trapped English may be by ideological practices, Lacanian theory may offer much hope for transforming practice. Roseboro (2008) uses Lacanian theory to suggest that “stories can serve as metaphors for our own lived experiences and, by using them we can begin to speak the unspeakable because through the story, we create distance” (p. 43). He goes on to suggest that this can lead to the exploration of marginalised groups to challenge dominant discourses of white privilege, patriarchy, sexism and heterosexism. English teachers often consciously aim to front the human experience above that of a curricular cultural imperialism. For example, why not teach the skills needed for an unseen poetry exam through exploration of other cultures? Here we can see an opportunity to shift the holding of English and reframing it in a

70  Teaching English in schools today more representative space. Perhaps one could ask whether the curriculum creates equity of experience or a cultural relativism. Freire (1998) explains how two participants in a literacy programme saw their village in a new way when outside of it: “by taking some distance, they emerged and were thus able to see it as they never had before” (p. 21). For instance, if you were teaching Stevenson’s (1886) The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and linking Jekyll and Hyde to the nature of human hypocrisy, duality and various scandals from UK MP expenses to Mossack Fonseca3: the text could be lifted out of its alienating Victorian epoch and allow students to reflect upon the mystery of human experience and nature. In this way, English education can take on a role akin to psychoanalysis, whereby the unconscious and the unspoken enable a richer understanding of ourselves rather than a valedictory scopophilic “othering” that can turn so many students off literature. Another theoretical concern useful to the discussion is that of the “Other” in a cultural sense. Edward Said’s (1978) theory of “othering” asserts that different cultures can be seen as alien and in need of domination through authority. Said asserts that we should “challenge the notion that difference implies hostility, a frozen reified set of opposed essences” (p. 350). This, in turn, can lead to some texts being chosen purely to tick a box and cover the very minimal diversity requirements of the curriculum. Said warns that one of the dangers of paying lip service to difference is that it ignores the “cultural strength” of the Other and risks fundamental representation (p. 40). By representing culture as occidental (western) and oriental (eastern), there is a marginalising of other eastern literature, culture, history, and ontology. Perhaps Said’s most pertinent comments concern the textual attitudes to the western canon (which texts are considered as the best ones to study): It is a fallacy to assume that the swarming, unpredictable, and problematic mass in which human beings live can be understood on the basis of what books – texts – say; to apply what one learns out of a book literally to reality is to risk folly or ruin. . . . It seems a common human failing to prefer the schematic authority of a text to the disorientations of direct encounters with the human. (p. 93) Therefore, a self-dynamic tradition subsists of textual authority governing what society finds acceptable to reproduce as textual attitudes. Here it seems we are being warned of the dangers of taking our social, moral and cultural codes from selected literature that has ideological effects. Further to this, the theory of “otherness” and Master discourse can be deconstructed by understanding the power dynamics at play in the term “British values”. The notion of school subjects promoting feelings of identity and pride have been common for many years, but they have become more explicit in the recent changes to the British school curriculum. Banks (2013) suggests that “individuals who only know the world from their own cultural perspectives are denied

The practice of English education 71 important parts of the human experience and are culturally and ethnically encapsulated” (p. 3). There is a tension at work when a teacher wishes to be broader, more representative and critically aware than a curriculum allows the English teacher to be. By abandoning American literature in the UK regulars such as To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee, 1960) and Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck, 1937), the only non-British literature is now in the GCSE poetry anthology – and is a marginal part of it. English teachers face fashioning a classroom experience that plays the exam game, but also enriches the cultural awareness and understanding of others. However, space can and must be carved for this. For example, early high school years could develop into a resistant space where multi-cultural voices can be explored. Texts such as Refugee Boy (Zephaniah, 2001), Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Taylor, 1976), The Wheel of Surya (Gavin, 1992), Trumpet (Kay, 1998) and The Fat Black Woman’s Poems (Nichols, 1984) are explorations of different cultural identities in a way that the prescribed literature is not. Consider this response by a 15-year-old British student: Yes, I know we have to do certain texts for the exam, but reading these different books have given me something to cherish. A poem is still a poem. It can still be hard and challenging whether it is 200 years old or written last week, by a Victorian or someone from the West Indies. English is at its best when I feel I can relate to something. I don’t feel that in the examination texts at all. (‘Becky’ – July 2016) In their seminal work The Empire Writes Back, Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin (2005, pp. 2–3, 7, 186) explain how the subject of English presents many areas of contestation: The study of English has always been a densely political and cultural phenomenon, a practice in which language and literature have both been called into service of a profound and embracing nationalism . . . [where] the study of English and the growth of Empire proceeded from a single ideological climate . . . cultural hegemony has been maintained through canonical assumptions about literary activity, and through attitudes to post-colonial literatures which identify them as isolated national off-shoots of English Literature, and which therefore relegate them to marginal and subordinate positions. . . . A canon is not a body of texts per se, but rather a set of reading practises (the enactment of innumerable individual and community assumptions, for example, about genre, about literature, and even about writing). These reading practices, in their turn, are resident in institutional structures, such as educational curricula. Ergo, the imperative is not merely to replace texts to take account of difference, but to challenge reading practices: quite a challenge for high school English

72  Teaching English in schools today teachers and students. In order to attempt this feat of changing reading practices, it seems incumbent upon English teachers to make students aware of the richness of literature and teach them to explicitly question the text and read against the grain. Of course, the challenge of doing this whilst playing the examination and accountability game should not be underestimated, nor should the Lacanian idea that the text itself shapes reading practices.

English as “marvellous medicine” English education can often be seen as a solution to a myriad of complex educational problems and social issues. Often, a strategy for underachieving students is for them to do more English, so that they become normalised or cured. From a Lacanian perspective, the notion of “cure” is to be treated with suspicion. The idea of something being prescribed carries the uneasy aftertaste of something being treated due to inferiority or lack. To illustrate, consider these example student responses to the following question: “Based on what we have studied this term, what do you think is the purpose of English and how does it affect you?” • We don’t all see the same things in the same way, but it seems that we are expected to say certain things in the exam. • How is everyone doing the same narrow texts going to create a more tolerant society? • I don’t take my morality from Jekyll and Hyde, nor does Macbeth make me think again about murder: I already know what is right and wrong. • If you want to be part of the elite, then you have to study elitist things. Just like people say they like opera, even if they don’t because it makes them sound posher. This taps into some interesting debates about the motives and purposes of English. Related to such comments is the theory of Elbow’s What is English (1990), wherein he proposes that English has endemic aims, values and principles at its core. Elbow suggests that these are to: • • • • •

Improve morality Prepare good workers Create an elite Produce good citizens Foster personal growth and offset inequity

What seems paradoxical here is the conflict between offsetting inequity and maintaining an elite: an elite of what – standards, culture or social class? Many school disciplines may aim to promote and refine character, but few are used as a vanguard of national values and consciousness like English. One may argue that there is little benign about a subject that has such valedictory aims and

The practice of English education 73 ambitions; for example, the notion of British values in producing good citizens, which carry implicit moral mores.

Britishness and a national narrative This notion of literature as a shaper of values has led, in part, to pressure on schools. As governments look for soundbite solutions to complex problems, policies like the UK “Prevent” strategy are born. Such a policy seeks to place the identification of extremist views and behaviours upon teachers.4 A further idea was to counteract dissident views by introducing the concept of “British values” as something to be taught and promoted. Consequently, teachers are now charged with teaching British values, as though that is a neutral and unproblematic term. Naturally, the meaning of such a term is fraught with complexities and debates. During a semi-structured interview with a male colleague with over 10 years’ teaching experience, he suggested that it is at best naïve to assume that the same text material will produce the same experience in students. Such a model places historical culture on a pedestal and could be accused of ignoring multiculturalism in favour of idealised pasts. My colleague felt uneasy about Britishness being taught explicitly through literature: “we are preserving stories, but not the language of it; Dickens’ stories are great, but the language is convoluted and often inaccessible for many students. Dickens is not the moral compass of Britain, and it must be very alienating for many students”. Furthermore, he felt that a student’s understanding of history, the Christian Bible, myths and legends were the prevailing culture in achieving well at school and that “lower” forms of culture are seen as “alternative culture” that demand less imagination and effort than reading literature. He reported: “I feel English is stuck in the past: we are inducting students into a middleclass club where prevailing cultures are seen as desirable. We are being told that we must have highly accurate and skilled grammarians who know how to pass exams and value high culture. Sadly, this is likely to be why so many students feel hopeless about the new syllabus and exams.5 A Lacanian view might suggest that the reproduction of the fantasy is perpetuated by the teacher, even though it may sit very uncomfortably with them. This adherence and concurrent dissatisfaction with University discourse (as a marionette of the Master discourse) creates a troubled and split individual who has to struggle with the expectations of their professional role and personal tensions. The notion of Britishness is mentioned several times in official governmental documents. Zephaniah (2014) gives a useful contribution to the debate: If you are going to teach it, you have to pick a version of Britishness . . . one that suits the status quo . . . are you going to teach the real details of slavery? I know you may mention it, but as part of Britishness? As part of where we got where we got today? If the government decide what it is, and this is the

74  Teaching English in schools today version we have got to teach, we just get a sanitised government-approved version. Britishness may mean different things to different people. Perhaps one notable exception in the broad sweep of British history at school is the removal of most of the ethnic British figures, such as the half-Jamaican and half-Scottish Mary Seacole and her role in Crimean War medicine. It can be argued that to define democracy, law, liberty and respect as British is to surrender to cultural relativism, and that there is something essentially British about fairness, respect, equality, and dignity, rather than just human decency independent of any national identity or flag. Similarly, it could be argued that English teaching becomes about choosing texts for national “British values”, where the text becomes a Master discourse for political ideology. “Particular values and ideals are presented as absolute and self-evident truth . . . asserted by authority” (Thomas, 2014, p. 50) and not concerned with other views. This positioning of authoritative views as a kind of “common sense” promotes the discourse of the Master. Such expected obedience to this Master discourse disavows any discontent or divergent opinion, and therefore aims to remain powerful by declaring its wants and needs as common for society to retain its decency: correct content for art learning because of tradition . . . adheres to rigidly prescribed content without concern for why the content matters . . . good students know how to produce what the teacher as proxy for the Master wants to hear. (ibid) Similarly, this sense of playing a game to please the Master is what preserves culture and retains privilege over minority groups and cultures. Habib (2014) asserts that “an exploration of Britishness need not be a hegemonic act where teachers uncritically impose a dominant discourse of Britishness on their students. Instead, teachers can work on ways to give students a safe space to express their identity”. A more radical perspective is offered by Samudzi (2016), who argues that diversity agendas in education hinder justice and equity. Instead, the curriculum must be representative of identities. Such a view is useful in choosing Key Stage 3 texts (11–14 years), where teachers have some autonomy to wrap the subject around student interest and cultural assimilation. However, such a hope appears to be unworkable in the tightly prescribed GCSE curriculum. Perhaps the way to tackle this issue is in the way we teach the texts, rather than the content of what texts we teach. Such a view offers two interesting perspectives: the nature of literature as vicariously lived experience and the making visible of dominant privileged discourses. Roseboro cites Edgerton (1996) in demanding curriculum reform for such a purpose: Literary works of marginalised groups can provide a passage to a shifting of discourse away from conceptions of multiculturalism as something we

The practice of English education 75 “add on” to the curriculum, “do for” marginalised groups, or as a means of to simply “change attitudes”. Such a shift away from is a shift toward a more fluid and thoughtful “discourse of encounters” in its abrogation of the problem of representation – representation as it concerns such entities and notions of identity, culture, and civilisation – and in its problematization of notions of cultural translation. (p. 6) Here we can see how teachers attempt to mitigate such concerns by consciously aiming to front the human experience above that of cultural imperialism and relativism. For example, one may teach the skills of unseen poetry through cultural exploration of literatures other than the dominant and preferentially selected. This shows how teachers can fuse the University and Hysteric discourses to fight for a representative space. However, as mentioned, this can lead to the reduction of representative literature to lower years in high school, where it is not valorised as substantial, artistic or old enough due to its exclusion from terminal assessments later on. Such exclusion creates an issue of alienation. Indeed, Lacan (1949), in referring to locusts, identified the concept of “homoeomorphic identification” of the subject with the “visual action of a similar image” with regards to attraction and reproduction (p. 35). Therefore, students who see their cultural experiences or ambitions as valuing literary culture are more likely to be hailed by it under the teacher’s gaze. Likewise, those who do not see their cultural experiences in this way can experience alienation. In the next chapter, we will delve deeper into how Lacanian theory can help to reshape our conceptions of English teaching.

Notes 1 Apocryphally attributed to W. B. Yeats 1865–1939. 2 Thomas (2014) states that there is “[n]o place for the desires of the subject, or the individual’s unconsciousness . . . no room for subjects to act in any way other than to use the signifiers made available to them by the system to continually reproduce the system” (p. 52). Thus, there is no escape, only reproduction of the status quo: a very closed and narrow trap. 3 Various scandals from some UK Members of Parliament abusing expense payments, to the richest hiding their wealth in off-shore tax exempt accounts in 2013–2015. 4 The “Prevent Strategy” of 2003 to the present day, is part of the UK government’s counter-terrorism strategy known as “Contest”. It was designed to discover and support young people at risk of carrying out terrorist acts. It has attracted wide criticism within teaching, being portrayed as suspicion and mistrust of innocent people. 5 “Having been inculcated with a certain culture and being convinced of its righteousness, even if ambivalent of their chances of success, they wish to proceed with the conveyance of that culture to the more or less initiated” (Kelly, 1992). This could mean that English teachers are preaching their hobbies and/or passions, and could be a kind of symbolic violence.

5 Theory and complexity in English education Teaching English in schools todayTheory and complexity in English education

Now it is worth considering how a more theoretical angle can be taken to explore how English teaching could become a more radical and representative experience. Whilst it appears to be difficult to carve out any resistant space and room for the individual within the practice of English, it is necessary to seek it. This chapter outlines the ways in which Lacanian theory can help English practitioners to identify new ways of seeing and of imagining subjectivity. For many, English is one of the few educational spaces for personal views and questioning of the status quo. In a subject with a radical reputation, it seems incumbent upon English educators to find the space to address and challenge the constraints of the curriculum. Kelly (1992) suggests that: the perennial protests by many students about the “relevance” of curricular materials speaks to this disquiet” and dissatisfaction with the student experience of English. These feelings may well be a part of the resistance out of which a more “exciting and informed study of English might come. (p. 3) However, there are constraints of assessment and curricular; examinations still have to be passed, whether students feel excited and resistant or not. McMahon (1997) cites Lacan’s Analyst discourse and suggests that: the discourse of the Analyst is the regime of the teacher who listens to the students without pre-empting their desires . . . [however] on the dark side [it] is commonly just the Master or the University in disguise . . . a common place didactic strategy to rephrase a student’s utterance in “acceptable” terminology. (p. 12) In its purest intent, the Analyst discourse “places the objet a (the object of desire) as prime over the meaning making systems (S2). The product of the Analyst discourse is the divided subject over the power/structure” (Filipi, 2011,

Theory and complexity in English education 77 p. 8). Also, student desires take precedence over master demands even if they are anti-productive. These are real tensions in English teaching practice: to mediate between the personal and the systemic; to satisfy the individual and the accountability needs, and to aim at personal liberation whilst teaching a seemingly unforgiving conformity. Bracher (1994) asserts that the self is determined by discourse in the social and the psychological order, including “thought, affect, enjoyment, meaning, and even one’s identity and sense of being” (p. 108). Such abstractions seem determined by what knowledge is fronted. Bracher refers to views and actions as being avatars of a primary identification: the reason behind why people say and do what they say and do. Our attentiveness to Master discourses of employability, literacy, culture and accuracy are often evident in English teaching practice. Here some things are being hailed and others are being disavowed: the type of knowledge that is being promoted characterises its avatars. Hence, the unsaid and often barely acknowledged Master discourses can be brought out into the open and their basis for being; their influence upon practice, and their manifestation in a classroom setting can be more deeply understood. Consider the following data from students’ responses: they were asked to write down what they thought English is and what follows represents a collation of a number of views: English is a subject with an identity crisis: I am never sure whether we are doing English, History, Sociology, Psychology, RE or Politics. This doesn’t seem a problem until you realise that what we’re tested on is very narrow. I really don’t feel that creativity is important in English exams and so we do less and less of it as we progress through school. I really feel that it is about standards over creativity now. Another big issue is that of Shakespeare. I feel disconnected from it not only in terms of history and culture, but also of language: if top set students are really struggling with it, how is it for students who find the subject difficult anyway? I can see how studying Shakespeare is seen as a gold standard of the subject, but for me this belief in seeing Shakespeare as a god really undermines the value of contemporary literature from different cultures that have equally important things to say about life. What does modern Britain have to do with this sense of English history that says that dead white middle-class males are the only ones worth listening to? (September 2015) Further to this, Kelly (1992) argues that English curriculums have been slow to reflect a more accurate representation of our pluralistic and globally inter-dependent world. In the face of such biased selection and study of texts, other measures can be enacted to encourage a “reading against” this elitism. . . . Literature classes can become places in which students learn to question representation, voice, text, and

78  Teaching English in schools today context in the development of “readings” of the world and the relationship of literature to that world. (p. 8) Thus, there is a need to challenge parameters and characterise a more Analytic discourse with the teaching of English. Scholes (1985) sees literary interpretation as “ideology”, in that to “teach interpretation of a literary text, we must be prepared to teach the cultural text as well”. Indeed, the “act of interpretation involves . . . seeing the resemblance [and] . . . noting the difference” (p. 34). I take this to mean that we cannot teach interpretations of texts without teaching contextual factors. Contextual factors might refer to ideological representations of history, society, politics, gender, biography and contexts of production and reception. Ergo, ideology is pervasive in everything that we teach in English, especially in teaching literature. This is a useful approach to unpick observations from an English literature lesson. In her short story The Tiger’s Bride, from the book The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter (1979) retells the Beauty and the Beast story in a florid and gender progressive way. In the story, Beauty’s father references Shakespeare’s Othello (1603) to explore his loss: “like the base Indian who threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe” (V.II). Carter intertextualises this, possibly as a way of characterising male folly and iniquity. However, enabling students to see and make connections demands not only telling but teaching the “rules of the interpretive game” (Scholes, 1985, p. 30). Merely noting the cultural codes is not enough, but to understand the attitude taken by such codes by the meaning maker: arguably the reader. This is where the importance of cultural theory enters the arena of English teaching. As Scholes (1985) attests, literary theory exists “in a world of institutional structures and political forces. . . . Texts are places where power and weakness become visible and discussable” (p. 11). Thus, the purpose and function of literary theory on a text is to unblinker people and render the peripherally marginal as palpable. To return to Lacan, these political forces have a complex web of causal factors: master signifiers that are enacted by the institution, struggled over by split subjects and rebelled against by the subject’s desires. As touched on earlier, reason is a political problem and it is necessary to see whose reason is prevailing and with what consequences (Rabinow, in Foucault, 1984, p. 14). Furthermore, Scholes (1985) asserts that the act of reading and understanding demands knowledge of two codes: generic and cultural. Thus, students need to be moved on from “following a narrative . . . within” to “characterise one . . . upon” one. In this way, reading becomes an enactment and something that is created by interpretation from a position of agency. In teaching interpretation, the exploration of historical, social, political and psychological context is often demanded. However, one of the key findings is that the subject of English is partly held in place by the density of its multi-disciplinary nature.

Theory and complexity in English education 79 Of course, such practice can seem simplistic and yet is very complex. It could even be argued that the New Historicist views move away from the reader response theories of Barthes and actually narrow interpretation, rather than enriching it.1 One such theorist who addressed this is Fish (1980), who argues that a text is only ever a creation of interpretive imagination. This creates the interpreter as a powerful agent. Yet, Scholes disagrees and questions just how autonomous an interpreter is able to be. Scholes discredits Fish’s concept of “interpretive communities”, asserting that interpretation is not free, but a collection of ideological codes. For example, in studying Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847), one’s interpretation of Heathcliff may fall into a series of codified norms: Gothic villain, Marxist hero, symbolic of Ireland, post-colonial victim or Byronic romanticism, for example. Barthes (1968), in his work “The Death of the Author”, suggests that “writing is that neutral, complicit, oblique space where our subject slips away” (Rice & Waugh, 1996, p. 118). He claims that the author is a modern figure, born out of the arrogance of individualism and that removing the author: utterly transforms the modern text . . . every text is eternally written here and now . . . a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, bleed and clash . . . a tissue of signs, an intimation that is lost, infinitely deferred . . . a text’s unity lies not in its origin, but in its destination. (p. 119) There appears to be something very compelling about a literary text having a kind of context-free immortality. Moreover, this idea allows a text to be reborn and reinterpreted. However, the opportunity for reinterpretation and rebirth of a text’s meaning does not necessarily mean that interpretations will escape the historical baggage of established and received “wisdom”. But what can be done to ameliorate this perceived mono-culturalism in the practice of English? One such method could be the approaches of literary theory that cast light and shadow on texts in different ways. By teaching the text as something that can change under lenses and perspectives, we, as teachers are being much more responsive to the intellectual ambiguities of texts. In this way, the discourse of the Analyst is useful: to see the text as a patient that can be understood in terms of its subconscious and repressed ideas. For Lacan, the unconscious is structured like a language; a network of social differences. Lacan challenges the Descartian notion of “I think, therefore I am” and suggests that “I am where I think not”: the unconscious is where true selfhood lies. Further to this, Barry (1995) states that Lacan encourages us to reject the conventional view of characterisation in literature because a wholly different reading strategy is demanded: unlike Freud, Lacan does not look for the author; instead, he sees the text as a metaphor, which throws light upon aspects of the unconscious. The difficulty in enacting this theory in an English classroom is that such concepts are very difficult to understand, let alone teach to students. It would need to be done in a very accessible and simplified way.

80  Teaching English in schools today

‘The fantasy’ George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion (2016), first performed in 1913 (subsequently made into the classic musical film My Fair Lady in 1964) uses the Greek myth as its source. In mythology, Pygmalion carves a woman out of ivory and is so fixated with her beauty that he falls in love with the statue. It is a classic tale of the dangers of fantasy and the projections that an individual can place upon the object of their desire. In Shaw’s play, a linguistics professor named Henry Higgins takes the East-End flower girl Eliza Doolittle and wagers that he can turn her into a lady by giving her elocution lessons. The premise of the play is clearly that the only thing that separates the classes is educational opportunity. Although changed somewhat, the principle of the Greek myth is still intact: that what someone else wants or demands of you has a profound impact upon an individual’s sense of self and their behaviours. This is a very useful starting point in considering how Lacanian ideas can help us to understand, in a more complex way, the challenges of subjectivity in teaching and being taught English.

Desire, fantasy, mirror, and lack The theory of transference explores the fantasy of what someone else wants of you. The question arises of what master are you trying to please and why? We could think of it as a Pygmalion transference. In Pygmalion, Higgins succeeds in changing the class of Eliza by giving her education. She becomes what he desires, but loses the idiosyncratic individuality that made her unique. To use ideas from Lacanian and the Slavic theorist Žižek, we are aware that teachers present the object that students are told to desire (reified knowledge) in return for academic credit. Žižek (2001, p. 6) argues that: we are obliged to enjoy. Enjoyment becomes a kind of weird perverted duty . . . desire is for desire itself . . . elusive of surplus . . . we aim at the gold in the middle of the object precisely to enjoy the surface . . . this is what is the anti-metaphysical lesson, which is difficult to accept. Žižek (2001, p. 7) also states that “desire is metonymical, it shifts from one object to another”. In other words, we can see how desire is framed by particular objects: Shakespeare or a poem, for example. If we apply this to English, we can see that, to some extent, an English teacher’s job is to get students to desire the sustaining of desire. The elaborate and forbidding codes of demanding literature take commitment to break down, and many English lessons can become an exercise in narrative simplification and pseudotranslation. To return to Lacan, this desire to persist with the literary, the florid, and the semantically forbidding could be seen as just being perpetuated by a Master discourse: Shakespearean poetry is exclusive, and high culture is the prize. Of course, Lacanian analysis is rarely so simple. Lacan explores how drives are not needs: they are wants, rather than necessities. However, in an employment-,

Theory and complexity in English education 81 capitalist- and accountability-focussed educational economy, wants and needs become difficult to separate. We instruct students what to desire and then they engage in an interplay that shuts many out and allows a few to gain pleasure in it. If the pressure is to force yourself to enjoy it/desire it, and not just learn it, then this could be seen as terroristic force and symbolic violence. Atkinson (2011) refers to how an audit culture has “channelled becoming along prescribed routes” in education. (p. 98). Here assessment loses something of the transformation of studying literature, and instead has a reductive effect that is more liminal, marginal and a fantasy. Perhaps English is more defined by lack than most school disciplines? Perhaps Atkinson is right when he critiques assessment methods as fantasies to cover the lack. Therefore, the existence of such criteria cons us into imagining that there is something within it, when the whole enterprise may be a “moth eaten musical brocade”, to use a metaphor from Larkin’s (1977) poem “Aubade” (a tattered piece of cloth used by Larkin to critique religion as a fantasy). So, literary exam descriptors such as “sophisticated, appreciation, conceptual, sharp and analytical” are symbolic exchanges that are not inherent to the work of students, but are Master institutional impositions that categorise. This categorisation carries the danger of heterogeneous normalisation, producing text-book and insipid expostulations. Such responses lack inherent character, originality and personality, but fulfil the rubrics of the examination game where students achieve, the school receives a stay of execution from inspection regimes and teachers dread their appraisal less. Furthermore, Atkinson argues for a dynamic view that culture should be approached not as independent entities, but as a “series of dynamic relations and transformations” (p. 144), thus reducing the othering and diminishing the power that multiculturalism has over us as we struggle to understand each other and “accept the tension between distance and working together” (p. 145). Such a view does not see Britishness or middle-class culture as given, but as something to be questioned, transformed and reimagined. To apply the theory, English is often seen by governments as a solution for economic, cultural, poverty, aspiration and employment demands. This hailing of English as a medicine captures the fantasy. However, as an English professional, we may disagree with a lot, but do it anyway. Žižek refers to this as “fetishistic disavowal”, when desire, drive and ideology grabs us and we start to enjoy the benefits of what we might disagree with. The difficulty for English practice is that ideology is as unconsciously operable as the water in which the fish swims and very difficult to detect (Bourdieu, 2007). It is interesting to postulate whether English teaching itself is a fantasy: failure is necessary to valorise achievements, and so the reality that educational success is not for all is hidden and implicit within Master discourse. Self-identity is set in relation to others (people and objects), so it is contextually bound: selfconcept/identification/othering. Roseboro (2008) explains how Lacan might see the transformation from “Other” to “I” as identification with subject and its internalisation or recognition of intrinsic value or interest. Thus, the English curriculum can be seen as a mirror that is seeking to transform the “Other” into

82  Teaching English in schools today an “I” when knowledge that is separate or alien becomes internalised as cultural capital. It could be argued that this quest for cultural capital is part of the desire drive for English teachers. In using Lacanian discourse theory as a paradigmatic frame to look at English education, important complications arise, such as the notion of the self-consciousness of the subjects.

English as a mirror Naturally, any social practice such as teaching is complicated by how you see yourself within it. This goes some way towards explaining why some people see themselves as hopeless at mathematics or sport: they have internalised pictures of themselves as incapable, generated by experiences (often long ago), which reflect back at them. This produces a self-consciousness. Fink (2004) states that a Lacanian self-consciousness arises by “internalizing the way the Other sees one, by assimilating the Other’s approving and disapproving looks and comments, one learns to see oneself as the Other knows one” (p. 108). Such an explanation of the mirror and reflection shows how the Hysteric discourse and Analytic discourse can work: the transformation of the subject through the mechanics of social episodes in institutional contexts. Therefore, the mirroring can be done through the enactment of a curriculum model. In exploring the curriculum as a mirror idea, we can see how, like the curriculum, the mirror “belongs to a timeline . . . a story that explains its existence” (Roseboro, 2008, p. 20). Furthermore, encounters with the mirror are context dependent: “whether the child encounters the mirror on her/his own, is placed before the mirror playfully, or left in front of the mirror in disgust would provide different encounters with the mirror and, possibly, different constructions of self” (ibid). This is relevant to the enactment of the curriculum: how does the student encounter the mirror of the subject and the teacher’s gaze? Is the subject being presented as a knowledge pill or as problematic space where we can learn to question? Of course, the political, institutional and professional pressures all impinge upon how English is packaged and presented to students. Roseboro (2008) goes further with the mirror explanation by looking at the Baradian notion of “materiality”.2 In other words, it is not just what the mirror shows, which is only a representation of something else, but what the mirror itself looks like: “the material contexts of the mirror are equally important as the situational contexts . . . material reflectivity”. Consequently, one interesting approach is to “question the construction of the mirror itself” (p. 21). For example, take the recent horror film Oculus (2014). The film follows the story of two siblings who bring back a strange and antiquated mirror that allegedly had caused their father to go mad and murder their mother over a decade ago. Common to modern cinematic horror, the director places the haunted object as the central antagonist of the film. What is strange about it is that the mirror reflects what it wants you to see: illusions that are deceptive to promulgate its own Master discourse of violence and murder. In a less dramatic and less ostentatious way, the English curriculum can be seen as a deceptive

Theory and complexity in English education 83 mirror that strips the subject of agency and lets them see only what the master signifiers want the subject to see. Where students experience the curriculum and its enactment as hegemonic knowledge to be digested, there can be a stronger sense of negativity towards it. Whereas when a more Hysteric and Analytic hermeneutic discourse is employed, students may be able to experience alternative literature and alternative political voices, so that they could “become aware of the contributions of their signifying affiliations . . . to examine repressed aspects of their identities, and critically consider how the world is presented to them and the ways they situate themselves within the world” (Thomas, 2014, p. 55). What happens to the people involved in such discursive packages of the subject is an interesting area. In following Lacan, the subject is always temporal and connected in complex ways to the realm of the Imaginary (the self), the Real (the unspeakable) and the Symbolic (language). Therefore, English as a high school subject and its effect upon subjects is very complex to make determinate claims about. English as a subject is not a stable entity, and is a spiralling dynamic collection of competing discourses that hail and disavow a range of ideas, epistemologies and subjective positions. Intertwined with these competing discourses are political accountabilities and competition between schools. Such competition runs counter to another discourse of collaboration. This means that English departments and schools can feel as if they are in competition with each other for results, whilst seeking to collaborate to provide the collective best experience for students: a tangled web, indeed. As more demands are made upon the subject of English, practitioners and students seem to become less sure about how to meet such demands and retain some of the creative freedoms that English might have traditionally enjoyed, although its politicisation is a constant feature. Some of the recent changes to English education have exacerbated and redrawn some time-immemorial debates of correctness, accuracy, culture and the national imaginary. However, these debates are occurring in a post-Brexit voting world, with significant public spending cuts and national economic wellbeing placed at the door of the teaching profession. Furthermore, there is a tension between “performativity” (the need to be seen to be performing to standards and expectations) and teaching a love of the subject. Moreover, teaching someone to love something is fraught with difficulties. It could be argued that we all have a choice to enjoy or not enjoy, to love or dislike, anything that is presented to us. Whilst English teachers may aspire to teach enjoyment and love, this as a valedictory aim is deeply problematic. Lacanian discourse allows a researcher to see something new and interesting in such debates. By using the discourses of the Master, University, Hysteric and Analyst, the researcher can critique actions and empirical events in a way that moves beyond power and instead looks at the complexities of the social world. This social world must then be challenged so that English seeks to teach a critique of itself. How English positions students and teachers as subjects is coloured by a wide variety of influences, from the national priorities of government, to the local

84  Teaching English in schools today contextualities of schools, to the individual passionate attachments of teachers, to the dynamic of the classroom and the students inhabiting these classrooms. What one thinks about English reveals a story about you, not about English. In applying Lacanian discourse theory, there are many opportunities that can be followed to make the practice of English teaching more democratic, more emancipatory and less symbolically violent. One of the tenets of Lacan’s theory lies in the notion of problematising the “I”: it is not a straightforward identity as the subjective self does not know itself. “We have only to understand the mirror stage as an identification, in the full sense that analysis gives the term; namely, the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image” (Lacan, 1977a, p. 2). Thus, the sense that we make refers to a previous version of ourselves. The warning to “[b]e wary of the image” (p. 2) also suggests that you should never trust the perceived realities, as they are fragments of contextually bound and referential experience that are unstable and constantly shifting. In seeking to respond to the challenges, Fleming and Stevens (2015) offer some useful suggestions for countering the problems with the teaching of English. They offer a hopeful message where the philosophy and method of teachers is the key: English can be seen mechanistically, or as linguistic depth that is communal and rich, occurring in “cultural contexts” (p. 9). Thus, the key is the enactment of the prescription. Given that English lies on shifting sands, then “the real nature of the subject has to be discovered and invented ever anew by those most intensively involved” (p. 12), and given that English is “centrally concerned with values, personal identity, and developing and expressing critical opinion” (p. 7), then “we need, paradoxically, to be rigorous in creating the objective circumstances to allow our pupils’ own subjectivities to take root” (p. 16). It is incumbent upon English teachers to navigate the terrain of new curricula and its enactment in a way that does not cause symbolic violence or position students as divided with the valorisation of knowledge as desire. Given that terminal examinations are a necessary part of schooling and have their place, English has to be about more than just teaching the test. Roseboro (2008) argues that a: Lacanian, post-formal curriculum . . . requires that we seek and identify truths, we work to become integrated beings by hearing the unconscious (that which we do not want to or cannot face), and that we understand the limitations on our constructions of self/identity. (p. 98) Taking this further, Clarke (2012) refers to the Lacanian concept of the Möbius subject, where the constructions of self depart from “pure” identities and blur such boundaries that neoliberal versions of education rely upon. Clarke suggests that the “Möbius educational subject’s simultaneous and paradoxical embodiment of singularity, plurality, and difference exposes the inadequacies of an education grounded in discourses of mastery and instead demands engagement with the other side of education” (p. 57). The relevance for practice here is that there

Theory and complexity in English education 85 must be attention paid to other discourses and other voices that challenge the master signifiers, such as teaching specifically the need to read against the grain of texts and for students to see their own voice as powerful to counteract potentially chaotic conceptions that curricula may promote. With this in mind, how to approach reading in English is an important area to consider and this is addressed by the work of Paul Ricouer (1913–2005) who combines (amongst other things) theory on psychoanalysis, narrative theory and hermeneutics.

Ricoeur’s “fictive experience” of English Although coming from universalism and Kant, as opposed to the relativism of Lacan, Ricouer has written extensively on the nature of reading and English. Ricoeur’s theory of refiguration by the reader suggests that literature changes some people who read it. This is what Ricoeur calls the “fictive experience” (1985, p. 6). This concept consists of the duality of the imaginary and temporary inhabiting of the textual world and a “transcendence within immanence” (ibid), when the reader takes the fictive experience with them into their own world. Whilst it may only change some readers, such a vicarious transformation of a reader’s experience occurs in a real world, much like Brontë’s (1847) transformational simile for Cathy in Wuthering Heights: “I have dreamed dreams in my life that have gone through me like wine through water and altered the colour of my mind” (Chapter IX, p. 5). This produces a different notion of subjectivity to Lacan: Ricouer’s subject is not used by language, but is enriched by it. Here, fiction alters the subject’s perception and has the power to transform it beyond the therapeutic encounter. This refiguration aspect of mimesis is interesting as it suggests a reconstitution and changed worldview that creates what Ricoeur calls an “abyss . . . in our symbolic apprehension of the world” (1984, p. 21). In other words, reading literature is a paradigm-shifting experience. This view of cultural assimilation is suggestive of the reader taking something with them from the act of reading. However, this way of looking at the study of literature is not without its difficulties. In considering Wuthering Heights, Eagleton (2005) asserts that: if you enjoy enough of an economic surplus, then you have the leisure and resources to engage in personal moral or spiritual issues for their own sake. And this is known as culture . . . it can cultivate the resources to indulge in friendship, art, the intellect and humanity as ends in themselves. (p. 139) One of the challenges for English education is how to encourage engagement like this where there is not an economic surplus. As we can see, literature can influence and change our experience and perception of the world. As Ricoeur states: story events take place in the past experience of a narrative voice; for example, in Wuthering Heights, Nelly Dean reflects upon past events from the perspective of experience. This fronts her anachronological

86  Teaching English in schools today prejudice upon Heathcliff’s youth: “But I was completely deceived as you will hear” (Chapter IV, p. 6). Of course, such experiences are fictional and do not refer to an actual past. However, literature is knowingly fictional and operates in a third space and time with an alternative reality that disclaims its own epoch’s existence; whereas history aims at the opposite. In looking at conceptions of English and the reader/response theories of essentialism, the theoretical philosophies of Ricoeur and his concepts of time in fictional narrative are interesting. Ricoeur refers to Aristotle’s concepts of muthos (narrative emplotment) and mimesis (representation) as philosophical problems in reading and understanding literature. In referencing Ricoeur’s work, Dowling (2011) asserts that “literary works are self-contained worlds within their own laws and their own logic, subject to distortion when made to answer to ideologies or doctrines external to themselves” (p. 2). In teaching literature, this represents a significant disturbance. For example, in evaluating the socio-political history of Shakespeare’s Othello regarding race, economy and tragic villainy, we must be wary of the dangers of mimesis. Ricoeur identifies mimesis as having three chronological functions: the mental and sensory capturing of culture, the fixed form of committing such culture to writing and the reconstitution of ideas into the cultural sphere that changes the text and the readers themselves. Thus, ideas external to the text but prevalent in the study of literature point to an epistemology of conflation, where the study of English becomes fused with politics, history, rituals, sociology, psychology and religious knowledge. This might be termed as “context” in English curricula, but can demonstrate a false bolting on of extra information that does not enhance any understanding, but can consume genuine personal engagement. Dowling (2011) uses an example of Roman Catholic practices to highlight the differences between actions and rituals in cultural knowledge. This demonstrates how knowledge about religious practices and rituals become essential in decoding literature. One notable example supported by a narrative was recorded by a 17-year-old student regarding Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (1589): I find one of the biggest barriers to be my lack of knowledge about the bible and the concepts of Catholicism; the differences between it and Protestantism and how the play uses this for comedy. Also, the countless mythological references can be explained, but make the text forbidding. (student narrative, October 2014) This notion of exclusivity that the student is referring to is one reason for literature’s high status and its difficulty being appropriate to advanced-level study. Perhaps we can all recall feeling the same sense of exclusion and inhibition as a student. However, as we develop a sense of professional self, we are distanced from our past, as it is a previous reality. This points to what Žižek would call “fetishistic satisfaction”, when we are compelled to behave in a “closed selfpropelling loop” Brown, (2008a); a kind of blind self-identity whereby we behave without thinking as an automatic comfort zone norm.

Theory and complexity in English education 87 Most interestingly, Ricoeur (1984) refers to the concept of “discordant concordance” whereby the events of plot occur in a co-existent denouement of plot that is prefigured. In other words, there is a sense of plot events in a text which are complimented by the wholeness of it and a grander narrative. Dowling explores how Ricoeur goes further by suggesting that narrative is a shared experience that transcends history, as opposed to history which is tied to an event. The notion of culture and history in English education is a problematic and fascinating one. For example, New Historicist views – such as those proposed by Stephen Greenblatt – suggest the central importance of historical artefacts and knowledge as equally valuable as the text. Such an ideological frame carries assumptions, values and beliefs about the nature and pedagogy of English teaching. Critically, the fringes of new historicism suppose that historical artefacts or accounts are history rather than subjectively constructive realities. One critique of this is that history is written by the victors, and historical documents and artefacts are as open to ideological distortion as any literary work. Furthermore, Žižek might consider such an ideology of artefacts as history as an unconscious fantasy that structures a reality phenomenon. Indeed, one paradigm of literature could be to look for meaning in “metanarratives” that teach grand narratives that are common to all readers. This postmodern term, coined by Lyotard (1979), asserts a mistrust of grand narratives such as progress and enlightenment offered by modernity. Such a postmodern paradigm demonstrates how English as a subject can be subversive and exciting. For example, Eagleton (2005) describes Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) as an ontologically fascinating narrator in Gulliver’s Travels (1726) who makes the familiar unfamiliar by presenting Gulliver as the outsider with an inside knowledge that nothing is absolute and perceived reality is monstrous. Such an effect is achieved through the alienating description of objects and people as disassociated from the narrator. Eagleton suggests that this “constantly shifting . . . vantage point . . . is an implicit critique of a naïve belief in objectivity” (p. 48). Such an example links to the idea of subjectivity. To what extent we are part of the story is an interesting contention. For example, what we say about English is indicative of our values, beliefs and practices, rather than any illuminating theory about English as a subject. One of the tenets of research is to make the comfortable strange and disrupted to construct a more illuminating and compelling story of classroom practice and theoretical conceptions. If we accept the contention that teaching is an art and that art cannot be standardised to be delivered, then it is the idiosyncrasies of practice that make teaching and learning English, in particular, such a personal experience. Government policy may seek to place objectivity upon English, but it seems that English is an intersubjective entity. That is, it “depends upon communication among many . . . [it] has no objective value . . . [yet] billions of people believe in its value” (Harari, 2015, p. 146). Harari takes this further: “[e]very child, teacher and inspector also knows that when forced to choose between the two, [high marks or deep understanding] most schools go for the marks” (p. 170). Despite this attentiveness to neoliberal measurement and accountability, English surely

88  Teaching English in schools today has a moral duty to be more representative of society and promote empathy, tolerance and understanding. Thematically speaking, English looks different when it operates in each of the four discourse areas. From Master discourses of politically engendered aims, to University discourse enactment of the master, to the split subject of the Hysteric discourse and the recognition of individual desire in the Analyst discourse, the practice of English looks radically different depending upon which discourse is valorised. Perhaps it is timely for English teachers to see the value of Analyst discourse as the most progressive view of English. Although the current system seems more prescriptive than ever, there are some opportunities for freedom in the way the prescription is dispensed. It seems more important than ever that English teachers use these opportunities to create a more representative and personal experience in English, despite the constraints of an examination curriculum. Perhaps we should ask further questions, such as: What is the nature of gender politics and how do they affect conceptions of English? How does the English curriculum affect the most and least able? What difference would a more Analystattentive conception of English do to student understanding of the subject? How does English affect students who have English as an additional language? How might Lacan’s “graph of desire” help us to reimagine pleasure and enjoyment of English? What are the implications of English practice for uptake at advanced level? What political transformations will affect English in the future? To what extent does English satisfy the demands of employers? Every year, the efficacy of English teachers and the value of students’ ideas are judged by statistics, accountability and comparative hierarchy. This may not change any time soon, but English seems uniquely placed to find opportunities in practice to be more radical and more representative.

Notes 1 New Historicism sees historical artefacts as equal to literature, as they are both seen as products of their time, whereas Barthes (1915–1980) suggested that the text reads the reader and meanings are individual. This is what Barthes (1968) called “The death of the author”. 2 If we apply Barad’s (2003) term “materiality”, we can see how test results and progress tables can be viewed as just a teleologically produced and constructed reality that reveals more about the mechanism than any “truth” about English. Such a position can be seen in the professional space, where more ephemeral measures such as “confidence” and “learning climate” make claims that are difficult to validate or measure.

Part 3

Becoming an English teacher in England Becoming an English teacher in EnglandLearning narratives in teacher education

6 Creating an analytical space for learning narratives in teacher education1

The practitioner research project to be reported in this chapter tracked a group of English language and literature graduates aspiring to be secondary school teachers of English. Despite the researchers’ involvement in a Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) secondary English course, the research methodology here employed is neither age- nor subject-specific. Our particular circumstances reflect a general interest in what a university-level contribution to teacher development can become (Burn & Mutton, 2015; Rogers, 2011; Sjølie, 2014; Tatto, 2015). Our project was carried out at our own university in the north west of England, where the circumstances of teacher education were undergoing rapid change and time with students was particularly compressed. We present the findings of a three-year research study into how university time and university-based expertise are used to complement school experience whilst providing a distinct developmental opportunity for student teachers. Underpinning this opportunity is a theoretical focus – once again informed by Lacanian psychoanalysis – on the developing teacher as a “subject” of her own learning practices (Brown, Rowley, & Smith, 2014, 2015; Brown, 2018). We therefore represent a distinct university contribution as enabling a subject to demarcate where that process of higher learning occurs and the ways in which it can be significant. In this one-year postgraduate training course, student performance was assessed largely in terms of acquisition of skill-based competencies, reflecting criteria in the national Teachers’ Standards (TS) (2012–2013). In contrast, we concentrate on the “inside” perspective, centring on students’ understanding of the process of becoming a teacher, how they relate to this understanding and ways in which they are able to articulate it. In a reference to a recent international review of teacher education, Tatto and Furlong (2015, p. 146) write: At a time when teacher education is under active development across the four nations of the United Kingdom, an important question for all those seeking to improve the quality of teaching and learning is how to boost the use of research to inform the design, character and content of teacher education programmes.

92  Becoming an English teacher in England Our aim is to demonstrate that students involved in a process of practitioner research, with specific theoretical commitments, developed reflexive-analytical capability applicable across school and university locations. Data for this project were taken from student narrative accounts and reflections, drawing on university and particularly school activity. University sessions provided a platform for the analysis and discussion of data, then stored and made available for subsequent retrieval. Students were able to mark key moments and establish them within a developmental personal trajectory, an evolving story of “Who I am becoming”. This story was continually revised reflecting shifting circumstances at school and university and the responses of peers (who could interpret situations very differently). Students needed to pay close attention to how stories were being told and reflected upon, in order to remain responsive to new possibility. For example, in early discussions, students were often worried about how they were being perceived by pupils, mentors and peers. Over time, most were able to develop a more nuanced vocabulary for self-representation, reflecting their deeper inquiry into the ways in which their opportunities for agency were distributed across roles and situations. Such enhanced understanding implicitly acknowledges our dependency on self-images and how these remain subject to change and renewal (Hanley, 2007). Moreover, the “original” conception may reveal itself to be rather less solid than we supposed. It was important for student teachers to notice how earlier conceptualisations (in this instance, of “who I am” in relation to “how I am seen”) were being revised to reflect fresh understanding, and how this contributed to an altered sense of what was possible in future. Course tutors tasked themselves with capturing this activity and making data available at intervals to students for further analysis and discussion. First, we outline the specific circumstances shaping our enquiry. Next, in the section “Pedagogic subject knowledge”, we theorise our project and connect with wider debates about how teachers develop. As our particular cohorts were English graduates, we apply an English “lens”, though we are not as concerned with English “content” as with the reflexive process through which a beginner teacher identifies herself in her field of practice. This underpins a methodological approach, described next and centring on Lacanian psychoanalysis, in which students portray themselves in professional settings and learn through different identifications with these portrayals. Data are then presented thematically, tracking progressive changes to student identifications. In particular, the trajectory marks a shift from an early desire for “competence” as a teacher to more critical forms of engagement, illustrative of evolving awareness of how individuals can develop within relatively restricted professional spaces. We conclude by discussing the implications for development of teacher education programmes.

Context Teacher development in England is framed in alternative and competing ways, representing a shift away from universities to a vocational route located primarily in schools. This is in contrast to models followed in continental Europe subject to

Learning narratives in teacher education 93 the Bologna process, where many student teachers follow a university course of some four or five years (European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2013). The employment-based model embodied in Initial Teacher Training (ITT) routes such as School Direct currently is in the ascendance over more university-centred approaches (Brown et al., 2014, 2015; Hodgson, 2014). On such ITT routes, student teachers may spend as few as thirty days in university within a one-year teacher education programme. These changes seemingly undercut conceptualisations of teacher education as a form of “higher” learning, particularly the distinct contribution made by universities (Barry, 2014; Ellis, Glackin, Heighes, & Norman, 2013; Winch, Oancea, & Orchard, 2015). Students face a significant challenge in recognising how and where their “higher” learning equips them to succeed as school practitioners (Burn, Childs, & McNichol, 2007). Despite an international consensus that research-centred learning contributes to the development of better teachers, school-based research is less developed in the UK than in countries like Finland, the Netherlands and Singapore (Burn & Mutton, 2015; Tatto, 2015). In the UK, practitioner research in school can be restricted by policy and accountability imperatives that hinder its authentic development and make teachers sceptical about its relevance (Leat, Reid, & Lofthouse, 2015). Conversely, research engagement by teachers can be obstructed by a “tyranny of common-sense” reflecting views of teacher learning that are over-reliant on local knowledge and experiences (Cordingley, 2015, p. 249). Student teachers based in university, but significantly placed in school, face a distinct challenge in attempting to create a coherent set of responses to these contrary requirements. In the theoretical terms of this study, students were involved with competing “Master” discourses based on partial characterisations of how a teacher learns and requiring the students to reference a process of learning in particular ways. For example, the school-based components were assessed in terms of classroom performance and professional aptitudes, whilst success at university was largely dependent on quality of written assignments. They imply different conceptions of who a teacher is and how she develops. Teacher identities were also being shaped by ideological motives so that, for example, students were required by government to teach in ways commensurate with a particular designation of “British values” (Teachers’ Standards, 2012–2013). Far from blindly adopting one advantageous position after another, our findings suggest student teachers can respond with increasingly critical reflexivity to the demands of competing “masters”, variously located in student identifications across school and university contexts. Preliminary research was carried out over two successive one-year courses (2012–2014) with student English teachers (n = 38) enrolled in the universityled PGCE course. In this period, methods were trialled with a view to developing the course and to conducting more systematic research in the following year. When the main research began, in September 2014, student teachers also had the option of following the alternative Schools Direct English route, whereby a little more time was spent in school. The university component, upon which this chapter focuses, however, was shared by students on both conventional PGCE and Schools Direct English routes (n = 21).

94  Becoming an English teacher in England

Thinking about pedagogic subject knowledge What might a distinct university contribution to teacher development look like, and how are we enabled to think about it? Our research centred on an inquiry into pedagogic subject knowledge, the kind of knowledge that is specific to teachers in classrooms (as opposed to the knowledge acquired by English literature graduates, for example). Our priorities reflect recent developments in the UK, where government has highlighted pedagogic subject knowledge as a key area in teacher learning, alongside the importance of university-led research (Carter, 2015, pp. 8–42). “Pedagogic subject knowledge” is not a determinate category, but a focal point for alternative conceptions. We work within a complex understanding of the term, comprising interplay between discipline-specific knowledge and the skill set a teacher needs to operate in particular conditions (Green, 2006; Grossman, Wilson, & Shulman, 1989; Leach & Moon, 1999; Shulman, 1986; Smith, Hodson, & Brown, 2013; Winch et al., 2015). This study’s particular focus is on student teachers’ conceptualisations of their own practices, how they relate to these conceptualisations (“Who am I becoming?”) and the distinct role universities can play in furthering this analytical activity. The tutors were working with a conception of knowledge influenced by psychoanalysis, and particularly the writings of Jacques Lacan (1977a, 1989, 2007, 2008). This conception addresses how individuals learn to work within certain parameters when these parameters assert particular discursive priorities about what can be known. A set of received ideas (or Master discourse) may have diminishing credibility over time. For example, a student might set herself to acquire the skills and knowledge of an “outstanding” teacher, gradually realising that these are subject to institutional constraints, locally enacted and without absolute value. In coming to this realisation, the learner may begin to think of herself not as a single, unified knowing subject, but as the addressee of competing knowledgegenerating structures that position her as a learner in particular ways. Thus the analysis to be developed here makes a further distinction, between the pedagogic praxis of the individual teacher and the “regime of signs” that boundaries her practice and is recognised as the established configuration of the school “subject” (Atkinson, 2011). For example, recent changes to the English National Curriculum emphasise functional literacy, testing and high-stakes assessment, contributing to particular sets of understandings about what “English” is, how it works and should be taught (Stevens, 2012). Evidently having “knowledge” associated with a particular school subject involves sharing beliefs about what is really at stake in a process of learning. However, in a psychoanalytic perspective, there is distinct difference between the beliefs we acknowledge and our true beliefs, which define what we do as opposed to what we say about what we do. In this perspective, a society’s true beliefs about the purposes of learning are unconscious and fundamentally antagonistic (Pais, 2015a). In order to develop the last point, it is important to understand why students’ narratives centred on an idea of “Who I am becoming” rather than “What am I learning?”. The notions “becoming” and “learning” obviously overlap, but they

Learning narratives in teacher education 95 articulate different kinds of belief about how learning takes place and how the subject might respond to an adjusted image of herself. “Who am I becoming?” does not specify in advance what will count as a learning experience in a narrative of self-formation. It might be that real learning occurs when “learning” in the received sense has broken down and the status of our perceptions is radically unclear to us. For example, many students in this study began with an altruistic conception of what teachers do and were motivated by reasons of social inclusion, fairness and equality. These reasons spoke to a conception of education that was drastically altered with greater experience, when students were much more familiar with the discourse of learners as “human capital” (Davies & Hughes, 2009, p. 608), of intrinsic value in relation to exam performances, league tables, etc. These represent fundamentally opposed views of human agency and perhaps cannot be reconciled. There can be something traumatic in recognising that knowledge about the world is at best partial and provisional, giving no ultimate purchase on how things “really are” (Žižek, 2009, p. 3). Our ideas about the world never quite measure up to reality, but in recognising this fact we might well learn something about how to extend ourselves as learners and as people. As Britzman (2003) suggests, the lessons of “education” often do not reveal their impact until much later in life. The “I” of “Who am I becoming?” was therefore a focal point for sustained inquiry, in discussion with peers who often saw things very differently. In psychoanalysis, it is not what we intend to say that carries most significance, but what we reveal through what we say. Fundamental to our intentions is their underlying desire, revealed despite our best attempts to conceal it (Homer, 2005, p. 44). In Lacanian psychoanalysis, “desire” means approximately the same as “wishes” and is evident in the way we speak to certain states of affairs as if they are true. For example, if a student teacher is angry with a pupil, the real focus of her anger is not the pupil as such, but an idea she has of the pupil and the meaning of his behaviour (see Homer, 2005, pp. 60–63). According to this way of seeing things, learners construct fantasies of learning that are the real objects of their desires. These fantasies are stoked by depictions in the media of triumphant teachers, overcoming the odds to turn round difficult pupils’ lives (Hanley, 2007, 2010). At a more prosaic level, we can begin to discern the play of our desires by attending carefully to what we are saying and how others are receiving it. For example, one student might notice how a second student resists her account of an encounter with a “naughty” pupil by putting more emphasis on the first student’s state of mind at the time. Such discussions reveal how we wish others to participate in reality from our perspective and how others exert pressure, either by overtly resisting our way of seeing things or by raising alternatives that better articulate what we want to say. Students were therefore encouraged to weigh their choices of words when depicting their activity and to reflect upon how a sense of self might be premised upon better use and evaluation of language (Ellis, Fox, & Street, 2007). Past events, whose significance was under constant scrutiny, were more important for how they differently enabled the future to come about, than for their latent or

96  Becoming an English teacher in England “repressed” significance – as might have been the case had psychoanalytic theory been more strictly applied (Fink, 1997).

Methodology The research perspective is influenced by hermeneutic phenomenology, involving a focus on “how individuals experience the world and make sense of it rather than any notion of underlying truth” (Brown & Heggs, 2005, p. 293). In this perspective, the research subject’s existence in language is key in determining her relationship with herself and with the world. Following the ideas of Lacan, to be described here, we focus on how the practitioner-researcher’s identity relates to the stories she is willing to tell, and how subjective identifications can change with the development of our personal stories. The research focus is on how individuals form progressively, through time. As seen in earlier chapters, Lacan’s psychoanalytical approach centres on disclosures by an individual that are revelatory of her self-image and how that self-image influences her conduct. Particularly significant is Lacan’s (1949) formulation of the “mirror stage” when the infant identifies with its image reflected in the mirror (or the gaze of the mother). The “mirror” stands metonymically for particular identity positions that await the infant, through which she will process the image of herself. These identifications entail recognition that she is not the reflected image; nevertheless, she will seek reunification with her imaginary self, perhaps throughout her entire adult life. The subject craves a “coherent, singular and unified identity to match the promise held up by the mirror” (Bibby, 2011, p. 34). It is important to note that when moving through successive identifications, the subject is not uncovering an essential or underlying ego; rather, the ego is cumulatively formed and never complete (Bibby, 2011, p. 35). For example, she might have a different sense of self in family situations from professional ones, and different again in friendship situations. None of these capture her entirely, but it might be that she identifies positively with certain selves and works to bring them into actuality (e.g., the image of the successful professional, cemented in her factual existence). In this study, we adopted Lacanian theory to elucidate a process of education research where the student teacher becomes the subject of a process of inquiry, involving an analytical encounter with her self-image. Like the Lacanian subject of psychoanalysis, the practitioner-researcher can identify differently with images of herself and premise a process of personal growth and understanding on this interplay. Particular data are therefore to be regarded as interim assessments of evolving meanings in need of further scrutiny. The spirit of this mode of inquiry is captured in Deborah Britzman’s (2011, p. 51) writing about the early development of psychoanalysis: One learns, Freud came to believe, from identifying with one’s own capacity to be curious about what is most incomplete and take courage from gambling with the unknown. One learns by representing an autobiography of learning. (our emphasis)

Learning narratives in teacher education 97 In this study, students were taking ever more responsibility for locating themselves in discontinuous sequences of action and establishing that perspective as “theirs”. “My” perspective is accordingly distinguished from its surroundings, providing a focal point for biographical narrative, reflexive and analytical work that further cements that perspective. The student is both chief protagonist in her own story and its inventor, where both the story itself and her agency within it are open to further renewal – she is an “agent-in-becoming” (Žižek, 2014b, p. 130). As is intimated by Britzman, if we wish to keeping growing as people, we are required to make judgements or “gamble” with uncertainty, to assert our motives as ours rather than merely expediency and in some essential sense, to accept consequences brought about by our actions. Conversely, inquiry can become entrenched in a position of “not knowing”, shielding the inquirer from more complex forms of engagement. The learner is therefore tasked with recognising how her desire “to know” and “not to know” frame and occupy her learning perspective. It is this desire – to understand herself, her practices and the objects of her perception in particular ways – with which the student is grappling when trying to give an account of her activity that fits “what actually happened?”. The story we tell of ourselves is never quite right; the attempt to capture moments never quite does them justice (Lacan, 1977a). But we can learn about how we see things in attempting to talk about them differently, and as a consequence, may be able to talk about ourselves in ways hitherto unimagined. The main research project was introduced on a pre-course day in July 2014. University sessions fell in two blocks between September and January, with sessions in between running weekly. After January, university sessions were sporadic until May. The data collection took place from July 2014 until May 2015. Six university sessions were selected for generation of key data. Typically, students were asked to gather data before sessions, incorporated in session activities (see below). Session design was guided by our pilot activity, where students’ initial desire to appear competent had become more critically responsive as the year wore on (data from the pilot activity was influential in helping tutors to finalise theoretical and empirical priorities, but is not incorporated in this chapter). Data from the main project comprised written reflections by students (e.g., a response to a classroom situation, thoughts about a depiction in the media, reflections on another student’s writing), collated by tutors. Some university sessions with students were recorded and transcribed. Wherever possible, two or three tutors were present and field notes after sessions were compared. Students began deliberately and systematically noticing how they adjusted to early course requirements, including an introduction to research purposes and methods. They were encouraged to note how they were perceiving new situations, to scrutinise the feelings and ideas that emerged and to consider how best to mark and record this material (Mason, 2002). Students collated written and spoken accounts and other data, pertaining to their developing practice in schools (to give a few examples: a reflection on an encounter with a child, the tension in meeting a mentor’s expectations, a short transcript of a conversation, a piece of work done by a child in their lesson). These data related to particular moments

98  Becoming an English teacher in England and were intended to provide points of reference, or “symbolisation” (DockarDrysdale, 1990, p. 98), to help the students capture a sense of themselves in their locations. This material was gathered at six significant points through the year, and continuously on an informal basis, as circumstances permitted. Throughout the training year, students gained experience of at least three school placements. University criteria for selection of placement comprised an overall judgement of suitability, centring on mentoring arrangements at the school and the academic and pastoral demands students were likely to face. When possible, students were offered contrastive placements over the year. All students undertook brief primary school placements (pupils aged 4–11 years). The vast majority of secondary schools were state-funded comprehensive schools, though recently many more had converted into academies, typically involving an element of private sponsorship with commensurate changes in ethos. Students were required to complete a contextual study of every placement school, involving retrieval of information on student numbers, socio-economic backgrounds, number of free school meals, school systems, staffing structures and the like. Students were asked to supplement this information with detailed reflections upon particular observations, involving, for example, subject pedagogy in a different subject area or a conversation they had had with a mentor or pupil. University sessions became less frequent, but served as a vehicle for criticalreflexive work where students could begin to recognise their strategies for “making sense” of recorded material. This involved structured activities devised by the tutors. For example, in groups of four, students were asked to share data excerpts (e.g., reflections and observations) without deviating from the original word choices they had made. In responding to each other, they were required to first write down their thoughts without seeking clarification or dialogue. Students then read out their responses, each student given equal time without interruption. When trialling this activity, tutors noted that students can be overly concerned with cementing social relationships and presenting a reasonable exterior. Students were therefore tasked with focussing as precisely as possible on the data whilst noticing the desire to supplement or change its meaning, for example by seeking consensus, or adopting favourable interpretations and dismissing alternatives. Other university sessions were similarly (if not so strictly) sequenced. The tutors’ purpose was to enable students to recognise how an image of oneself as learner affects how one participates in learning situations. This dimension of the research was particularly prominent when current journal entries, reflections and so on, were contrasted with data from earlier collection points. It was possible to see how an individual’s strategies for making meaning worked across these contrasts, to reinforce or challenge an earlier identification. This work was dependent on the students’ ability to “notice” where automatic conceptualisations were tying in with prevalent notions of “common sense”. In another example of work at university, students were challenged to recognise their participation in alternative conceptions of “common sense”. This session utilised excerpts from Christopher Nolan’s 2000 movie Memento. As a result of an injury, the protagonist Leonard Shelby has acute memory loss, though his

Learning narratives in teacher education 99 pre-injury identity remains intact. Every few minutes, his mind is emptied of current perceptions and he must begin again, re-constructing a sense of where he is and what his purposes might be (i.e., tracking down his wife’s killer) by deciphering the trail of clues laid by his earlier self, whilst reading the intentions of people immediately before him. In a sense, in Leonard’s world, “common sense” is at intervals effaced and restored slightly differently, on the basis of his latest reading of the clues and supplementary notes used to guide his interpretation. University students were invited to explore ideas in Memento without seeking strict correspondence with their own situations. For example, students had been asked to collect alternative sources of data pertaining to the same professional situation, such as a lesson report by a mentor and student reflections on the same lesson. These involved very different kinds of “common sense” about how the learner relates to an image of learning, for example, through a vocabulary of performance or personal aspiration. As with Leonard in Memento, students were grappling with competing accounts of “what actually happened” without recourse to an absolute source of explanation. Rather, students were asked to concentrate on how data was being framed discursively and to chart these effects, particularly in terms of their developing sensitivity to the “common sense” presuppositions built into different learning situations, and how these might change. We shall now attempt to pick up some of these alternative attitudes to identification through a discussion of some of our data.

Student teacher data The first round of data gathering took place in a pre-course session in June or July and data collection continued from September to June through the English academic year. The data are presented thematically, marking students’ identifications across the data collection points and reflecting students’ development through the training year. All participants are referred to pseudonymously.

Early adjustments Students were tasked with transforming their knowledge over the coming months, into something appropriate for school to be accessed by their pupils. This began with noticing (Mason, 2002) what students felt they currently knew and how this knowledge might be articulated. Initially, this challenge was met with overwhelmingly positive responses; discussion recorded by the tutor illustrated how the beginner teachers conceived of themselves as budding subject pedagogues but also as activists instigating social change. Adam wrote: I hope to show students how English is both relevant and important in their lives. Of course on the most basic level, an understanding of literacy forms a basis for most employment routes. Furthermore, I hope to ignite some passion for literature so that pupils can enjoy being transported to different worlds.

100  Becoming an English teacher in England Adam’s response typifies much of the early debate in which education was seen as central to a more progressive, fairer society. Discussion also concentrated on the personal qualities which students felt a new teacher would need to succeed. Phil wrote: Many of the core attributes I feel I already hold, such as: honesty, integrity, determination. . . . However, I am more certain than ever that the path to becoming the teacher that I wish to be will be challenging, and importantly never completed. Phil’s transcript illustrates how students initially valued personal and moral qualities, seeing these as the foundations upon which technical “know how” could be subsequently laid. At this stage, there was a clear distinction between “personal” characteristics and “instrumental” or technical skills, the latter being necessary for the efficient running of lessons but not valuable in themselves. These ideas were progressively reconceptualised as the course demands increased, and students concentrated more upon technical analysis of their teaching practices. Early university sessions enabled students to develop connections between personal learning histories and essential teacher activities, such as planning, effective use of questioning, modelling and demonstration, and behaviour management. Thereafter, the university input was much reduced, with school-based experience becoming the students’ main focal point. The tutor observed the transformation in some students who were impatient to “get on with it”. One student observed: “In university it’s all about reflection. . . . I was thinking, when am I going to get the answers? In school they don’t ask you what you think about it, you just have to do it”. This comment is illustrative of how theory and practice can become bracketed apart, with students wary of the opaqueness of theory in contrast to self-evident practical responsibilities (Sjølie, 2014). Moreover, student conceptualisations shifted in line with their re-location to schools, so that “the progress I am making” was now definitely referenced to how successful students were in meeting immediate practical demands, with university-based “thinking” less obviously available or useful for making such judgements.

Moving on: practical difficulties The students’ personal pedagogic “orientations” (Grossman et al., 1989) were key in determining how their practice could be formatted (i.e., linguistically and behaviourally) to suit pupils of different abilities. After the first weeks of school practice, students frequently referred to having to “break down” complex ideas into simpler components. Central to this was students’ ability to notice how skilful use of language enabled the connection of ideas at different levels of difficulty. Students often struggled to articulate how undergraduate experiences might assist them in doing this. David observed: “It is hard to explain and teach someone how to write despite being able to do it well myself. Writing feels instinctive and inherent after so many years of practice”. Adele said: “I had not really

Learning narratives in teacher education 101 thought about how hard it is to understand books, analyse language and base opinion upon evidence in text”. These comments reveal the specific challenges of locating what we think we already know, and of doing so in an analytical vocabulary that others can access in order to learn. As postgraduates having already spent some time in school, students could claim substantial expertise. However, as the quotes suggest, these ideas were being reconfigured from the perspective of novices developing new ways of referencing what they know in unfamiliar situations.

Moving on: freedom to be oneself Students recognised that pupils arriving at secondary school have had very different formative experiences. As a result, pupils are working with diverse ideas about how learning takes place in pedagogic situations and the personal qualities a new teacher ought to possess. Charlotte remarked: When I began this course, I just thought we were all going to come out as teacher-bots, all teaching in exactly the same way. But I can already see we are so different, we are going to be such different teachers. We’re different people. Charlotte’s comment reflects a widespread belief amongst students that, in becoming a teacher, you are processed by a technical and professional course apparatus that delivers finished teachers at the other end. Charlotte therefore introduces the notions of “difference” and “different people”, enabling her to re-orientate the story of that early development towards a more diverse conception of becoming a teacher. Conversely, the idea of “difference” takes on significance in being used to express fresh insights, contributing to Charlotte’s ability to imagine an adjusted version of the future (“we are going to be such different teachers”). This is illustrative of the research process described in previous sections of this chapter, whereby earlier conceptions take on new significance – and by doing so, enable the learning subject to re-conceptualise her future activity.

Acknowledging change in the self At the third data gathering session in university, some earlier responses were shared and formed the basis of discussion. Student teachers were asked again about how personal aspirations fitted with their evolving perspectives on pedagogic practice. Invited to conceptualise these changes, students reflected on the immediate pressures in school leaving little opportunity for intellectual adjustment to fresh demands. One student, Kay observed: my placement school employs an accelerated learning approach in all of its planning and lesson delivery, which in its very nature seems to make learning rather clinical and prescriptive. . . . I am learning to look beyond the official documentation that outlines the sort of teacher that I am. The feedback has

102  Becoming an English teacher in England been useful and is essential for my development, but it is equally important to take stock and appreciate how I have developed personally and professionally aside from the paperwork. Students were exploring different kinds of response to “master” (Lacan, 2007) discourses (such as “accelerated learning”) that dictate how the individual accounts for herself and her activity. As is evident in Kay’s extract, there can be friction between different accounts of “Who I am becoming”, reflecting the alternative discursive priorities of school-based practice, the course administration and the student herself. Students often prioritised being able to articulate their experiences in language other than the official or technical. Typically, this involved students adopting a more personalised register attuned to the nuance of individual development, open to revision and renewal at a later juncture (“it is equally important to take stock”). The university sessions were viewed as productive spaces for expressing some of the tensions felt with the respective pull of multiple demands and how these expectations could begin to be reconciled. Rob said: I have felt a gradual shift in myself that is not necessarily evident in my files. It is a more psychological shift, which has changed my entire approach to the course. Rather than seeing it as “How can I pass the PGCE?”, it is now “How can I teach these pupils successfully?” The widening gap between how students were being portrayed by Master discourses and how they were seeing themselves, created a space in which experiences could be re-evaluated. There was growing ambivalence towards any “masterized” (Lacan, 2007, p. 103) or totalised explanation of their development up to that point. Phil said: I am beginning to realise that these (formal assessment) judgements reflect a very small portion of what I’ve actually developed. My attitudes and values have been changed, my emotions have been the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. Above all I feel as though I have changed . . . I am learning to evaluate the importance of feedback, and I am starting to understand that evaluations are not the final resolute word on an event, but instead a significant but subjective snapshot of a continuous sequence of events. Phil is interested in the notion of “events”, which are open-ended occurrences (“a continuous sequence”). In electing to understand his experiences this way, Phil is able to relativise discursive framings that had seemed absolute (“not the final resolute word on an event”). This understanding seems to allow Phil to characterise his experiences in a more personalised register, in both emotional and analytical language that emphasises an emerging reflexivity in relation to professional judgement (“I am learning to evaluate the importance of feedback”).

Learning narratives in teacher education 103

Moving on: affirming the change Students moved to their second (of two) school placement blocks. Students were still keen to discuss personal ideals, but with an adjusted sense of where they could lead. Students wanted to explore how to conceptualise the changes they wished to make so that personal valuations could co-exist with advances in technical skill and fuller engagement with institutional priorities. Charlotte said: This process has had its wobbles and I get anxiety about being able to deliver the aspects of the profession I value so much. I’m becoming more realistic but holding onto my passion and optimism. I’m starting to make decisions about which policy and school driven programmes I want to subscribe to and what doesn’t fit within my beliefs and teaching philosophy. Earlier commitments were being rethought, or reinvented, with reference to new expectations. In Charlotte’s excerpt, personal values are positioned somewhat precariously in relation to increasing performance demands (“I get anxiety about being able to deliver”). Yet Charlotte postulates a new image of herself capable of making decisions about where and when professional demands will be allowed to interfere with personal aspirations. Personal beliefs are confidently purported as a “philosophy”, implying a coherent set of ideas that have been refined by early experiences and can support a more competent self-image through the remainder of the course.

Acknowledging change: articulating my trajectory Students were asking significant questions about the identities they had developed and how future coordinates might be set. Sarah regarded her current situation as framed by persistent uncertainties about the perceptions of others and how these convey a sense of who the student teacher is supposed to be: It is interesting to see how professionals view trainee teachers, in terms of how much progress they are making. This is usually judged upon lesson planning and delivery. However, how well a trainee is progressing, is never judged upon other time spent in school, such as building relationships with staff and students; taking part in other lessons; how a trainee thinks and feels. The meaning of our actions can seem largely decided in advance, but a gap remains, and we are able to relate differently to our subjective perspectives, shifting the terms of our engagement with the world. For Sarah, the assessment component of the course no longer captures her sense of herself satisfactorily. Alternative framings, however, will always be possible. The evaluative attitude she adopts is therefore crucial, allowing her to assert her identity differently (“building relationships . . . taking part . . . how a trainee thinks and feels”). She is conscious of the “planning and delivery” perspective, but wary of its limitations.

104  Becoming an English teacher in England Sarah therefore works with a more nuanced image of herself as a practitioner, her agency distributed across roles and situations, and each of these implicated in a fuller conception of her learning.

Reviewing and re-assessing change Students were able to view transcripts from throughout the year, captured in a range of formats and presented chronologically. These transcripts comprised students’ earlier responses to professional circumstances and to each other’s material. Initially there was a qualitative difference in reaction to the sheer weight of amassed evidence. “That’s not me – it doesn’t even sound like me” was a common kind of initial response. Students often latched onto certain transcripts that seemed to capture something essential, whilst still requiring further comment and interpretation. Significant issues re-appeared in successive transcripts and became the focal point for subsequent discussions. After reading her “teacher-bots” and “process has its wobbles” transcripts (earlier in this chapter), Charlotte said: I stand by that, at first you think that’s what teaching’s going to be like and then you have this real pressure; that’s when you have to decide what you believe in. . . . Looking through the transcripts I’ve seen a process of moving from what I want to be to be a teacher (I think it’s naïveté now!), and then what the school wants to me be, and then what I really want to be, what I won’t give up on. Charlotte works with images of her own development in a practitioner-researcher’s perspective. Reviewing the data, she is able to reference a process of researching her own learning to obstacles that have become more clearly defined with the passage of time (“I think it’s naïveté now!”), whilst cementing the research perspective as “hers” (“what I really want to be”). In this excerpt, Charlotte continues to reflect upon, and to attempt to encapsulate, that which she ultimately wishes or does not wish to be. The cumulative experience of reflecting (“looking through the transcripts”), has refined her ability to perceive and articulate that which is intrinsic to her wishes and continues to motivate her. Here she begins to reflect on an ultimate source of value (“what I won’t give up on”), seeing this as an enduring source of guidance for her ethical aspirations. Other students revealed how their understandings of pedagogic subject knowledge had evolved through the research process. Reflecting on earlier data, Liz argued that she had initially conceptualised subject pedagogy as a “transmission” of information with learners in a passive, assimilative position. She was now aware that earlier convictions had been surpassed and that new understandings were affecting current practice: My understanding has developed a huge amount. When I started I was thinking of [subject pedagogy] as a delivery of information, “I am the hammer,

Learning narratives in teacher education 105 you are the nail”; it was something [tutor] said in an observation that totally changed my approach, now I focus more on what the pupils are thinking and how I can develop this through the lesson. It’s more interactive so I’m asking questions to try to develop their ideas and not just check what they’ve learned. Several students admitted that they had allowed “performance” demands to swamp their thinking at one time or another. The tutors were particularly interested in the images of learning that emerged in these discussions (“I am the hammer, you are the nail”) and how these had been surpassed (“develop their ideas”). In reflecting upon her transcript about “accelerated learning” (earlier in this chapter), Kay came at these issues slightly differently, focussing instead on how learning can be made more accessible to students unfamiliar with abstract thought: now, rather than saying this is the poem, this is the theme, and presenting it in an abstract way, I now present it in a way that is connected to them, with the abstract core at the centre. Having said that, it’s been a huge journey for me to leave the abstract nature of English behind and think of its more functional aspects . . . with your undergraduate degree you come with abstractions, moving through the course I’ve been connecting it to where the students are starting from, their understanding of the world . . . they need to explore things for themselves, make the connections for themselves, you have to give the student the chance to explore, define something before an experienced head puts a certain meaning on it. Kay’s understanding has moved a long way from her earlier reflections on the limitations of accelerated learning. In the earlier quote, Kay saw lesson structure as the obstacle to more open-ended learning. In this later quote, her attention has switched to the ways in which ideas are developed in the pedagogic situations and how these might enable pupils to relate to some of the fundamental abstractions such as “poem” and “theme” that format the subject and set the ways it is approached in class. In both excerpts, Kay alludes to conceptions of the learners and teachers as different kinds of “pedagogized subject” (Atkinson, 2011, p. 23), whose identity is framed by a particular approach to knowledge, encoded and distributed in particular ways matching a local conception of the academic subject. Her progression through the year, anchored in a research process encouraging alterative formulations, enabled her to substantially develop her understanding of pedagogic practice and the centrality of learners to it. Reflecting on the cumulative impact of the research process as a whole, particularly after reviewing excerpts from other students gathered throughout the year, Kay observed: “I’m more solid in that conviction now as a consequence of looking back where I’ve been over the year. I’ll work my hardest to get student an A, but that’s not what matters to me”. Kay occupies an analytical perspective through which the conflicting demands of performance and personal values are reconciled, at least temporarily.

106  Becoming an English teacher in England Rather than dismissing institutional demands as inauthentic (“I’ll work my hardest to get a student an A”), or rubbishing personal ideals as naïve (“that’s not what matters to me”), Kay maintains both sets of demands in a comparative perspective likely to reflect her subsequent attitudes as a practising teacher, attuned both to practical realities and potentialities for future growth.

Conclusion In this chapter, we were concerned with what a distinct university contribution to teacher education can become. Students involved in this study engaged in a process of practitioner research, working with specific theoretical commitments to make maximum use of limited time in university. These commitments can be summarised as enabling a more critically nuanced developmental process in restricted circumstances. Specifically, students are less concerned with the assimilation of particular course “content” than they are with understanding how conceptions of the learner and her practices are configured in a knowledgegenerating perspective. Most significantly, reflecting our Lacanian focus, the learner develops by reflecting upon the persistent mismatch between her selfimage and the changing demands built into real learning situations. In challenging students to analyse how knowledge is perceived and conceptualised (as well as used), tutors saw themselves as fulfilling an ostensible aim of “higher” learning, as well as making best use of university-based expertise. The key finding of this chapter is that students involved in this process of practitioner research developed reflexive-analytical capability applicable across school and university settings. This capability is predicated on students’ increasing ability to recognise how they identify themselves as having a capacity to learn. Students in this study identified themselves learning through, for example, redefining personal aspirations or moving from overly schematic to more nuanced conceptions of pedagogic knowledge. Professionals involved in ITT in other locations might be able to identify such opportunities as they arise in their field of activity. That is, we might re-conceptualise teacher learning as a process of self-formation in response to incommensurate demands, articulated variously across different institutional and cultural locations. We have outlined the specific circumstances of our inquiry, highlighting changes to teacher education in the UK with a notable shift of emphasis away from universities towards apprenticeship models of learning in school. Data have illustrated some of students’ difficulty in meeting the demands of competing “Master discourses” entailing partial characterisations of how teachers learn (as seen, for example, in the discourse of “outstanding” teachers) and how this can be referenced. We have presented a methodology for a process of higher learning in which university serves as a reflexive-analytical space in which students are able to scrutinise how their learning is being referenced and how this might be done differently. Changes, however, do not come easily, and there is more for teacher educators to do in terms of reconceptualising

Learning narratives in teacher education 107 a role for universities, specifically regarding how a process of practitioner research can be supported. This chapter, therefore, contributes to ongoing international debate, previously referenced, about the place of research in programmes of teacher development. In the early sections of this chapter, we alluded to some of the specific obstacles in relation to the UK context. The proposals outlined in this chapter are principally methodological and not restricted to UK circumstances. Rather, our ideas may be internationally relevant, particularly where there is a perceived compression of the university component of teacher education, or reductive conceptions of teacher knowledge are in the ascendancy (see, for example, Gerrard & Farrell, 2014; Wermke & Höstfält, 2014). Also, our ideas might provide a point of reference for those in countries where university education is much longer but not always fully appreciated. We propose a model of teacher knowledge influenced by Lacanian psychoanalysis and predicated on a methodological dynamic, in which students persistently re-evaluate the story of “Who I am becoming”. This reflects our use of university sessions as spaces in which to challenge simplistic ideas about teacher development, reinforced on the one hand by pervasive notions of “common sense” and on the other by student desires for the appearance of competence. We have detailed some of the content and design of university sessions, indicative of the course activity and a starting point for colleagues interested in our work. Tutors saw themselves as asserting the prerogatives of a programme of higher education whereby all knowledge is contestable. Data reveals that students were able to analyse specific enactments of pedagogic subject knowledge, but that they did not relate to these statically. Rather, with greater experience, students were more able to perceive more alternatives. We have highlighted how early idealism was somewhat dampened when students came into closer contact with performance-oriented conceptions of learning. Yet in encountering the change, as we have seen, students were able to reference their learning to more critically nuanced ideas about how learning takes place and to articulate what, to them, was valuable within it. Working in a Lacanian theoretical perspective, we encouraged students to remain attentive to how desires or wishes influenced their perceptions. In particular, students were tasked with noticing how projected fantasies dictated a sense of what was possible and how language might be used to frame things differently. Students faced difficult choices. If they decided to stick with current interpretations, to suture meaning here and not there (Žižek, 1989), what developmental opportunities were being missed? There can be significant risk in a speculative process of inquiry whose outcomes are not guaranteed in advance. Students were asked to remain sensitive to how the desire for certainty influenced narratives of “what really happened”, and how these might be further analysed. The beginner teacher faces a significant challenge to carve out a “subjective space” in which her own story can be developed and its discursive framings progressively renewed (Hodson, Smith, & Brown, 2012). This chapter highlights a

108  Becoming an English teacher in England distinct university contribution, based on a methodological innovation, whereby the beginner teacher successively relocates herself in a developmental story of “Who I am becoming”.

Note 1 This chapter is based on material previously published as Hanley and Brown (2016).

7 Masters of knowledge or knowing slaves? Becoming an English teacher in EnglandMasters of knowledge or knowing slaves?

Shifting tutor alignments1

For Lacan (2008), knowledge can always be renewed. This is not to imply that current knowledge should be viewed with suspicion, as inadequate or inauthentic. Our knowledge is a reflection of the reality we perceive. Rather, in emphasising the need to revise our self-disclosure, Lacan is alluding to the inherited stabilities that guide our lives, sometimes throughout entire lives. Particular forms of discourse, sets of rules and models of thinking inform us about the worlds we occupy (Badiou, 2009). Indeed, much of the regularity we encounter (in the built environment, bodies of professional knowledge, educative discourses, aesthetic styles, modes of school governance), is revelatory of how previous generations perceived and modelled the process of living. Knowledge has accumulated all around us; as inhabitants of social space it is also built into us. Yet we can learn to discern the limitations of such stable arrangements, to question how they define and delimit our thoughts, to reshape the story or image of our own experiences. For such images are always in need of renewal. In Lacan’s words (2008, p. 17), “Truth is always new, and for it to be true it has to be new”, because life as lived always exceeds the models that we try to place upon it. And the failures of these models produce desire to get things right. In Lacan’s account of subjectivity, desire is the motive force propelling us irresistibly towards new ways of understanding our lives and the people we are. Our desire attracts us to the “holes in discourse” (p. 27), in order to rethink, and retell the story of our changing relations to the world. A learner would therefore be experiencing the world as coming into being, encountering elements of this world as part of herself, with this encounter yielding fresh motives for personal growth and renewal. Our depiction of the Lacanian subject, persistently motivated through desire to renew her personal stories, differs from the later work of Foucault addressing the various modes in which the subject positions and defines herself. Here, the subject develops a technology of self by working reflexively across different discursive formations (Foucault, 1997). In contrast, the Lacanian subject always eludes embodiment in discourse; “the failure of its representation is its positive condition” (Žižek, 1989, p. 175). Thus, the Lacanian subject thrives because of this constitutive split between itself and discourse. We present a theorisation of knowledge formation in reference to a project of practitioner research, in which the authors participated as university tutors in

110  Becoming an English teacher in England a one-year postgraduate programme of teacher education in an English university. The research focusses on how the course tutors understand the professional knowledge they deploy with students and each other. According to our theorisation, knowledge is a product of the different positions we occupy in discourse, and our desire to understand these. The main innovation of this chapter lies in our use of Lacanian discourse theory to analyse tutor knowledge. The key argument is that having knowledge should not be understood as simply involving the relationship between knowing “subject” and knowledge-bearing “objects”. Instead, knowledge is a product of our discursive attitude towards it. Thus, knowledge changes depending on whether we approach it with more or less certainty or doubt. The authors were frustrated with recent policy-driven changes in England, which have contributed to a narrowing of the knowledge base of university-based teacher education. Here, university work is often viewed as either “teaching” or “research”, with insufficient communication between the two (Ellis et al., 2013). In contrast, we draw inspiration from the relative integration of practitionerresearcher functions in countries like the Netherlands and Finland (Burn & Mutton, 2015; Krokfors et al., 2011), whilst recognising that in the United States, Australia and elsewhere, greater tension between these functions is apparent (Gerrard & Farrell, 2014; Paugh & Robinson, 2011; Sleeter, 2014; Tatto, 2015). The empirical research for this chapter comprises an ongoing practitioner research project, currently in its fourth year. Data from student teachers is presented elsewhere (Hanley & Brown, 2016). Theoretical accounts of teacher development drawing on a Lacanian perspective have also appeared previously (Brown, 2011; Brown et al., 2006). In this chapter, we provide some data indicative of the university tutors’ perspective. In the next section, we develop the theoretical and policy context of our discussion. We outline circumstances specific to England but contemplating issues of wider concern. We then present a theorisation of new knowledge as comprising either continuity (Habermas) or disjuncture (Foucault) relative to previous understanding. We then put our Lacanian tools to work in redefining that discursive space. Two excerpts from tutor data enable us to elaborate the Lacanian influence in our approach. We then offer some concluding remarks, considering some of the wider implications of our theoretical and empirical findings.

Policy and theoretical context The research took place in England, where teacher education has experienced rapid policy-led change. Government policy promotes models of teacher learning largely located in schools, with universities performing a supplementary role (Carter, 2015). Our aim is to contribute to a re-conceptualisation of the university role in teacher development when time spent with students is particularly compressed. In England, recent iterations of work-based routes into teaching provide for as few as thirty days in university, during a one-year postgraduate course of “training”. This stands in sharp contrast with teacher education programmes in

Masters of knowledge or knowing slaves? 111 mainland Europe subject to the Bologna process, where university-based programmes may extend over four or five years prior to school placement (EC/ EACEA/Eurydice, 2013). Despite the unusual situation in England relative to much of Europe, concerns about reductive conceptions of teacher learning are internationally widespread (e.g. Baltodano, 2012; Evans, 2014; Riveros & Viczko, 2015; Wermke & Höstfält, 2014). A caricature of this learning might depict student teachers as learning “subjects”, learning how to teach through exposure to a particular set of knowledge-bearing “objects” within a regulative apparatus such as the discourse of “standards”. We consider what a less reductive approach to teacher learning might become. Taking our cue from Lacan, we suggest the challenge for the learner is to try to decipher for herself, what a learning situation really requires her to do. For example, one data excerpt (below) is from a planning meeting involving both authors, where teaching material for the next sessions with students was being discussed. Two of the tutors offer competing conceptions of what that material ought to accomplish: one tutor aims at fulfilling supposed student expectations of a learning experience, whilst the other wants those expectations to be challenged, even disoriented. Thus, the tutors have different kinds of knowledge in mind, reflecting their contrasting desires for the educative encounter (see also Lacan, 2007). In the next section, we offer contrasting accounts of how this uncertainty about the purposes of learning can be mediated discursively. In our first perspective, influenced by Habermas, an ever more nuanced understanding of language closes the gap between learning “subject” and “object”. In our second, Foucault’s work challenges the existence of any such linguistic understanding. These thinkers’ formulations are then contrasted with a Lacanian theory of discourse.

Thinking about knowledge and teacher education: Habermas and Foucault In the work of Habermas, we learn about our societies and ourselves through a fuller understanding of how we communicate. Habermas’ work aims at developing a conceptualisation of an ideal state of communication, free of the distorting influences typical of modern, complex societies (Habermas, 1976a, 1981, 1987). In seeking this ideal state, he argues, we should aim to rid our language of subjective bias. As Habermas puts it, ideal communication operates in the “thirdperson” (1987, p. 287). For example, if there is a dispute between two people, there is need of a third, impartial perspective. We can hammer out an impartial perspective by arguing about the validity of rival statements being made, to find out why communication is breaking down and how this should be rectified. Using our shared values and culture as the basis of agreement (p. 229), we can move closer to an ideal point of understanding, free from prejudice and coercion. In a Foucauldian perspective, no such universal application of language is possible or desirable (1997, p. 298). Universalist descriptions of the social world, such as Habermas’, always exclude other interests, perspectives and ways of knowing (1972, p. 229). Foucault’s work employs an “archaeological” or

112  Becoming an English teacher in England “genealogical” method for recovering these excluded elements. For example, in some of his most notable work, Foucault traces the formation of the “mad” subject to its origins in the psychiatric and carceral practices of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (1989, 1997, pp. 289–291). More generally, our identities are predicated on reflexive involvement in contingent circumstances, not positive identification with a universally postulated referent. As Foucault puts it, we are “subjects of what we are doing, thinking, saying” (1997, p. 315). It is this reflexive activity, mediated discursively, that generates a sense of being in the world and not, as with Habermas, a linguistically sensitised relationship with the world itself. The positions adopted by Habermas and Foucault centre on the question of how we locate and confer significance on what we do. With Foucault, the researcher’s task is to mark the separateness and singularity of discursive formations as they occur, in the absence of totality or synthesis. “We must not imagine some unsaid thing, or an unthought, floating about the world, interlacing with all its forms and events” (1972, p. 229). Habermas criticises Foucault for over-stating the importance of contingency. “No place is left for any overarching meaning. . . . Instead the space of history is seamlessly filled by the disordered flaring up and passing away of new formations of discourse” (1987, p. 253, emphasis in original), he argues. With Habermas, the significance of our actions is secured by mutual participation in the lifeworld of others. A recent related research study (Hanley & Brown, 2016), involved groups of English literature and language graduates making the transition from graduate to teacher on a one-year school-based course of teacher education. In relocating discipline-specific knowledge from university to school, students were tasked with recalibrating earlier experiences as students and lovers of English in terms of classroom-based demands. Making the unfamiliar switch from university to school contexts, student teachers face a quandary. Should they hold on to the familiar “academic” identity, or redefine themselves in terms of the new professional environment, where the status of their graduate knowledge is less secure? The emergent identity comprises elements of continuity, where new understanding is assimilated with earlier knowledge (Habermas) and disjuncture, with new understanding requiring new kinds of explanations and conceptualisations. (Foucault). This quandary could also be referenced to Piaget’s concepts, “assimilation” and “accommodation”. Lacan, to whom we now turn, did not subscribe to Piaget’s conception of a learner moving through successive stages of ego-centred development. Lacan understood the actions of children as motivated by a socially expressed demand, so that both the child’s and later the adult’s identities are conditioned by how they perceive and relate to that demand (Lacan, 1977b). In the next section of the chapter, we utilise Lacanian tools in scrutinising how we have been framing our practices as tutors and how these might be thought differently. We are interested in the Lacanian notion that a relationship with a given situation is cemented by a perceived demand, which the subject persistently tries, and fails to satisfy. (Žižek, 1989). Thus, Lacan’s work stands in contrast with both Habermas’ theory of communication and Foucault’s tracing

Masters of knowledge or knowing slaves? 113 of discourses through their contingent historical circumstances and effects. As Verhaeghe (1995) puts it: The Lacanian theory has nothing to do with either of those two. His theory is even in radical opposition to communication theory as such. Indeed, he starts from the assumption that communication is always a failure: moreover, that it has to be a failure, and that’s the reason why we keep on talking. If we understood each other, we would all remain silent. Luckily enough, we don’t understand each other, so we have to speak to one another. The discourses stretch a number of lines along which this impossibility of communication can take place. This brings us to the difference from Foucault’s theory. In his discourse theory, Michel Foucault works with the concrete material of the signifier, which puts the accent on the content of a discourse. Lacan, on the contrary, works beyond the content and places the accent on the formal relationships that each discourse draws through the act of speaking. This implies that the Lacanian discourse theory has to be understood primarily as a formal system, i.e. independent of any spoken word as such. (p. 81. Emphasis in original.) Next, we examine the formal relationships made available through Lacan’s conception of the four discourses, comprising the four positions of Master, University, Hysteric and Analyst. We suggest that learners occupy these positions at different points in a process of learning, reflecting changing motivations in an evolving narrative of “becoming a teacher”. First, we address the more general idea of conceptualising learning as conditioned by formal, or structural (as well as symbolic) relationships.

Occupying the symbolised world We run a teacher research session where students analyse the symbolic spaces beginner teachers occupy. Inevitably, students focus on how these spaces are shaped in their own expectations, reflecting their histories as daughters and sons of parents with certain expectations, as graduates of a western system of education operating within certain priorities, as aspiring teachers wanting to achieve “qualified teacher status”, and so on. One of our purposes with these discussions is to highlight to students the functioning of structure. That is, to help students become sensitised to the impact on their thinking of positions they occupy. Another purpose is to help students to notice the interplay between structural awareness and perhaps more familiar ways of seeing the material, where what matters is specific phenomena and how they respond to them (e.g., what they think and how they feel about what they are doing). The Lacanian conception of the “Other” provides a useful analytical tool for thinking about this process of self-definition in relation to a pre-existing symbolic framework. The “Other”: Is not a world system, but a system of reference for our own experience – this is how it is structured, and we can situate within it the various phenomenal

114  Becoming an English teacher in England manifestations with which we have to deal. We shall not understand a thing unless we take this structure seriously (Lacan, 2000, p. 74). Human interaction continuously reveals the functioning of this “Other”. For example, I can say something with a specific meaning (“I’d like a glass of water”) whilst also asserting a particular state of affairs as being true (I deserve a glass of water; you ought to give it to me; water is wonderful), thereby revealing the structural motivation of my statement. Such underlying affirmations (or denials) may reveal more about us than we intend. For example, I might argue I am a free and independent being, whilst acting like a compliant conformist. And the situation could be reversed, when I flout all prohibitions whilst imagining myself as constricted by circumstances (p. 74). It might be, as Bailly suggests, that in the course of a single conversation, my imaginings are diverted in multiple different directions as I attempt to explain, define, assert and excuse myself. With each change, I am hoping my desire for the conversation will be realised in my occupancy of the new position. Lacan’s notion of the “Four Discourses”, described earlier, provides a structure for understanding such shifting discursive alignments. Lacan suggests that as we move between the four positions, we place ourselves either in accord, or at variance, with however the world is imagined to be, in the sense of both symbolised meaning and underlying structure (Bailly, 2009, p. 78). In the positions of “Master” and “University”, the image we have of the world’s functioning and our places within it might be predicated on an underlying principle of dominance or certainty. Conversely, in the discourses of the “Hysteric” and “Analyst”, the relation between the individual agent and master signifiers or dominant ideas is more ambivalent or open to question. As an illustration of how an agent might operate within these discourses in an educative context, suppose I am debating an issue in public. I may decide the best way to win support for my position is being seen to assert myself with rival speakers, rather than having an informed view of the issue itself (Master). Soon, the truth emerges that I do not have the necessary knowledge and cannot justify the authoritative stance I have adopted. Alternatively, I may adopt a neutral stance to the debate on the assumption that I am simply being reasonable and rational about the issues (University), whilst betraying my desire to dominate through the forms of knowledge (logic, arguments, reasons) deployed to support my position. I may be aware of being undermined or flattered by another speaker so that my own contribution appears insignificant. I may opt to combat the speaker by exposing the hidden politics of their strategy with an alternative politics (Hysteric). Or, I might speak to what is being suppressed, that which makes some things and not others in the debate sayable (Analyst). Our aim is to critically examine the knowledge university tutors employed with students and each other, but to quote Verhaeghe (1995) again, “Lacanian discourse theory has to be understood primarily as a formal system, i.e. independent of any spoken word as such” (p. 81, emphasis in original). In the following

Masters of knowledge or knowing slaves? 115 discussion we acknowledge this gap between Lacan’s view of the conditions of discourse and our application of the Lacanian schema. Data groupings reflect student and tutor desires for educative encounters, but we recognise that “The discourses, existing as a formal structure even before one speaks, are continually interchanging through the interrelationships between their disjunctions” (Verhaeghe, p. 98). For example, in asserting their non-identity with master signifiers, the hysterical subject restores and assumes the master’s function (p. 98). Whilst our aim is to explore the educative possibilities of the analyst’s discourse, we also note that something unique in the subject always exceeds the structure (Alcorn, 1994). We try to do justice to this ambiguity in what follows. Tutors kept reflexive diaries throughout the research period, whilst other data included transcriptions of planning meetings, analysis of taught sessions, reflections on seminars, reviews of teaching materials, responses to interactions with students, etc. Two excerpts are included as illustrative of systematic empirical inquiry into the tutor function.

Working with an image of certainty: the discourses of the master and the university As was suggested earlier, in psychoanalysis, an object of perception does not sit quietly in its perceptual frame. Rather, it pushes at the limitations of the frame, creating a “remainder” that challenges the social and psychological order. But we might resist our perceptions of a remainder, in favour of a conception of the world that shores up what we already believe, further endorsing our certainties. Here, “certainty” relates to an identification with the idealised object of powerful discourses, where we repress our troubling knowledge of a gap (Cho, 2007) between the representation and the truth. And, knowledge thus forms a completely coherent but static, tautological (i.e., self-referential, self-enclosed) system, and it is precisely such a knowledge/ system that, rejecting truth as dynamic, produces the a. (Bracher, 1994, p. 125) The “a” here refers to the “reject”, something misrecognised in the discourse but essential to it (Lacan, 2007, p. 43). For example, the discourse of “human capital” both draws attention to and covers over relations of dominance, in its depiction of learners as engines of economic efficiency (Davies & Hughes, 2009). In Lacan’s schema, the “university” also fulfils a function of the master, by restricting a conception of learning to the activity of a learning subject produced within a closed system of knowledge (Boucher, 2006; Brown et al., 2014). Bureaucracy is an example of how “Individuals are to act, think, and desire only in ways that function to enact, reproduce, or extend The System” (Bracher, 1994, p. 115). As suggested earlier, in teaching sessions, tutors assume an ambivalent relation with the discourse of mastery. Often, our purpose is to surrender authority to students with the aim of challenging received wisdom. Yet these challenges might

116  Becoming an English teacher in England merely be repositioning the students’ expectations of the master. In the following excerpt from a tutor-planning meeting, there is uncertainty about how to proceed. At the beginning of the academic year, tutors re-appraised the forthcoming sessions by questioning their fundamental assumptions about the purposes of learning. The discussion centres on a course of Initial Teacher Training where students were graduates in English language and literature aiming to become secondary teachers of English. Its apparent purpose is to assess current conceptions of English pedagogy. Tutor 1: What affects how English plays out in the classroom? . . . Is it more about the people who do it or is it in the internal workings of the subject itself? What do we want them to understand about what they’re doing. . . . Does English stand alone or do students generate it differently every time they teach? Tutor 2: I can sort of see what you’re saying. They (students) need to see a connect, they have to see that it starts with them, they build it up from their own reading, thinking, whatever else. . . . I want to pin this down to particular conceptual areas . . . authorial intention, reader response theory, grammar, literacy. These reflect contrary impulses we often have in a process of planning. The tutors want to shift student thinking towards messier, more critical appraisals of how teacher identities are formed. What is at stake is not acquired knowledge but cultivating a tolerance for productive uncertainty (analyst). Tutors, however, also wish to be recognised as “knowing subjects” (Fink, 1995, p. 132). That is to say, as experienced tutors we are aware that student learning inheres in an image the learner has of herself as being able to learn, supported by an image she has of particular tasks as appropriate to her inquiry (see also Lacan, 1977b). Doubtless, tutor identifications as “one who knows” are influenced by hysteric insistence on the final authority of the master, and in debating how best to present these ideas to students, we anticipate being future addressees of the hysteric’s discourse. Tutors will hope to nudge students towards more analytic frames of inquiry, (e.g., not “what am I learning?” but “who am I becoming?” (see Chapter 6)). Yet experience suggests even here, the desire for certainty continually re-asserts itself (“the signifier always fails to account for the truth” (Zupančič, 2006, p. 166)). Shortly after this excerpt was recorded, one student told us she was fed up with reflexive work in university sessions, wanting to know instead: “When are you going to tell us how to teach?” Such (hysteric) responses are common and reflect an image of learning as technical mastery, with the role of the learner reduced to passive assimilation. Our reading of such responses is that in seeking to appear competent, students invest in a view of knowledge that is stand-alone and self-sufficient, an infallible basis for classroom routines and procedures. Here the desire of the hysteric might be directed at being an “outstanding teacher” – which each portion of authoritative new knowledge promises, then ultimately fails to deliver. The second tutor’s excerpt reflects this desire for an object to

Masters of knowledge or knowing slaves? 117 sit definitely and authoritatively within its perceptual frame (“authorial intention, reader response theory, grammar, literacy”). However, as Lacan suggests, for a “master” to appear as “master” takes our collusion with its appearance of self-sufficiency, and an argument might be made for the presence of the masterslave dynamic, in the sense provided by Lacan’s reconceptualisation of Hegel, where it is the slave’s and not the master’s function to know what the master wants (Lacan, 2007). Tutors and students might be interpreted as alternating the master-slave positions; the tutors are trying to anticipate the students’ desire to identify with a learning process in particular ways, whereas the students maintain the master’s identity by subscribing to their distribution of knowledge. The pair of tutors’ comments mark something of this ambivalence, reflecting our desire for students to recognise their own (analytic) potential for renewing a perceptual frame, whilst seemingly mapping this inquiry onto already familiar ideas and ways of knowing.

What am I doing here? Discourses of the Hysteric and Analyst The discourses of the “Master” and “University” present contingent discursive formations as certainties. We suggested that a desire for certainty can inhibit learning. We may be shielded from ambiguity and the repressed elements return in the form of dissatisfaction (Clarke, 2012). In contrast, we can forge a more productive relationship with doubt in the positions of “Hysteric” and particularly, “Analyst”. In psychoanalytic practice, the hysteric (male or female) works with an image of herself made more positive through her capacity to question (Lacan, 2007). Conversely, the analyst occupies the discursive position of the “one supposed to know”. That is, she appears to possess knowledge the analysand desires and uses this appearance to enable the analysand to learn through questioning herself (2007, p. 43). In university sessions, tutors used a technique whereby student questions to tutors were answered exclusively with further questions, obliging students to examine what they really wanted to know and how better questioning might lead them there. Asking pertinent questions can be a mere substitute for other forms of mastery (“now ask me a higher-order question!”). However, tutors aimed at particular (analytic) discursive relations, whereby new ideas, perceptions and ideas could emerge around the function of the analyst, with students gradually taking over this function for themselves. A tutor diary entry followed an observation of a student’s teaching in school and subsequent discussion. This excerpt came towards the end of the year’s teaching practice, when the student (Rachel) had also generated a significant amount of reflexive data, relating to her own development into a teacher. At this meeting, she was invited to review all her earlier data in sequence from the start of the academic year, alongside some excerpts from other students. When she (Rachel) saw the excerpts laid end to end, she noticed something powerful. Right the way through the course, ethics and values mattered to

118  Becoming an English teacher in England her above all else. Somehow they were more tangible to her now they’d been tested. Now she said she’d never give them up. I asked her what students “really” think about becoming teachers. Are we the tutors, getting it right? What should we do differently? On reflection, though I frequently ask questions like this, I’m not sure what they are supposed to mean. Am I looking for a solution? A debate? Am I simply seeking reassurance? Rachel looked unsure how to answer. Perhaps she was thinking “will I be graded on my response?” Then she said the course paperwork is very limiting, because it only looks for certain things. It doesn’t really reveal the students as individuals, as people. This was said very gently as though I might be offended to hear the course criticised (if it really was criticism). I guess for students the tutors are, first and foremost, figureheads of the institution. In this excerpt, the tutor wanted to create an analytic, generative space. The tutor’s intention is to enable Rachel to recognise changes that have already occurred (“she noticed something powerful”), and to identify with an image of herself as responding positively to change (“tangible by being tested”). The discursive positions shift when the tutor identifies herself in the role of questioner (hysteric), with Rachel positioned as the one who knows about how students learn (“Are we getting it right?”; “Am I looking for a solution?”). Here Rachel is being addressed as the master, in the sense of discursive prerogative associated with giving “feedback” about an educative process. Rachel may be additionally fulfilling the analyst’s function, of putting her addressee in the position of facing their own split subjectivity – (Bracher, 1994) – the tutor desires to know what the students really thinks but seems to disavow the question in which the desire is framed (“though I frequently ask questions like this, I’m not sure what they are supposed to mean”). It is Rachel, rather than the tutor, who creates the conceptual frame in which this question can be understood (“students as individuals, as people”), and the tutor who, perhaps falling back on received ideas about the motivations of students (university), seems not to really hear her answer (“I guess for students, the tutors are . . .”). Though analytic discourse is not unambiguously present in the data excerpt, we would suggest an avenue for approaching it might include encounters like this, whereby the tutor (and perhaps student) attempt to assume the analyst’s function and much is revealed about what they were attempting from the uncertain results. It is possible to theorise a space where learners begin to recognise how they are positioning the addressee and how this reflects on their own desires for the educative encounter. In particular, we might recognise how the addressee is held accountable for our own sense of wanting knowledge and stable identity. As tutors, we found much of our effort was geared towards helping students to recognise this in their dealings with others, and (less comfortably) exploring this possibility in ideas about the tutor role and purpose. The intention of this work was to encourage a conception of teacher knowledge as being less rigid, less absolute and judgemental, more responsive and perceptive, than it might otherwise be (Bracher, 1994).

Masters of knowledge or knowing slaves? 119

Conclusion In this chapter, we put Lacanian concepts to work in our discussion of university tutor identities, where the formation of pedagogic knowledge involves both students and tutors “adopting a new order of symbolic relations to the world” (Lacan, 2000, p. 78). In reference to Habermas and Foucault, we suggested that new symbolisations can be articulated in terms of continuity or change, when educative objects seem to fit within existing schema or demand alternative kinds of response. In discussion of the last data excerpt, we illustrated how such changes can play out in tutor-student interactions, when neither person is quite sure of the true nature of their collaborative purpose, and learning results from grappling with this uncertainty. Such dialogues can be both reassuring and unsettling, as educative objects continuously reshape themselves to our desires for the educative encounter, whilst ultimately proving elusive. As Lacan says, in one of his more flamboyant moods: I would now like to make clear, astonishing as the formula may seem to you, that its status of being, which is so elusive, so unsubstantial, is given to the unconscious by the procedure of its discoverer. (1977b, p. 33) And Lacan again, The subject does not have to find the object of his desire. . . . He must on the contrary refind the object. . . . Of course, he never does refind it, and this is precisely what the reality principle consists in. The subject never refinds . . . anything but another object that answers more or less satisfactorily to the needs in question. (Lacan, 2000, p. 85, last emphasis added) In fixing our expectations on a particular external object (like “good teacher”), we are committing ourselves to seeking it in particular ways. Yet the intended object and the inquiring perspective will exert pressure upon and unsettle each other, obliging us to reposition the motivational stories that tell us who we are and what it is that we really value. In a Lacanian conception of discourse structure, developed throughout this chapter, we are persistently responding to an impossibly complex demand, staged and enacted by ourselves, in the vicissitudes of our own desire: “What do you really want from me?”. In this chapter, we presented an account of student and tutor activity, as a continuous attempt to define oneself differently through the unfolding of discourse. This attempt was referenced to the discursive functions of the Master, University, Hysteric and Analyst, which differently focus the learner’s desire on educative experiences and understandings. We suggested that a learner sometimes craves certainty (Master, University) above all else, and this impulse fuels her engagement with educative experiences. We also offered an

120  Becoming an English teacher in England alternative view, the key finding of this chapter. As university tutors involved in teacher development, we recognise the importance of doubt in a process of learning (Hysteric, Analyst). That is, a successful learner can establish a productive relationship with doubt by analysing her own sense of learning within limits and how these might be surpassed.

Note 1 This chapter is based on material previously published as Hanley and Brown (2019).

8 Coda

CodaCoda

At the time of us writing, there were many features in the media celebrating the 50th anniversary of the student uprising in Paris in May 1968. Writing shortly after, the literary theorist Roland Barthes reflected on how the protests were centred in a dissatisfaction with the power relations endemic to university education at the time. Just as psychoanalysis, with the work of Lacan, is in the process of extending the Freudian topic into a topology of the subject (the unconscious is never there in its place), so likewise we need to substitute for the magisterial space of the past- which was fundamentally a religious space (the word delivered by the master from the pulpit above with the audience below, the flock, the sheep, the herd) – a less upright, less Euclidean space where no one, neither teacher nor students, would ever be in his final place (Barthes, 1979) It is unclear if the last fifty years demonstrate any progress, if it were possible for us to agree on what might be meant by progress – whether by moving towards prescribed states of affairs (e.g. “effective teaching”, “cure”), or through perpetual renewal. The protests fifty years ago coincided with a radical rethinking of how literary theory was understood with the emergence of a prominent group of thinkers, including Foucault, who marked a shift from structuralism to poststructuralism. Jacques Derrida, another key figure in this movement, identified this shift as an “event” in the history of the concept of structure and the possibility of a transcendental position, or “center”. As he put it: “The center is not the center. The concept of the centered structure . . . is contradictorily coherent. And as always, coherence in contradiction expresses the force of desire” (Derrida, 1978, p. 279). Echoing Lacan, who was writing at much the same time, Derrida was pinpointing the impossibility of stable analysis referenced to fixed points. Perpetual adjustment refuses the setting of fixed goals, thus activating a desire which necessarily mistakes its object. We have always lived in turbulent times, but the turbulence is perhaps now more readily acknowledged in and incorporated into our cultural forms, even in science where “ ‘Truth is always new’, and if it is to be true, it has to be new” Lacan (2008, p. 17). The master has indeed been

122  Coda like Doctor Who in changing appearances in unpredictable ways as he is forced to relocate in time and space. The seeds of this disruption, however, were planted much earlier. “Hegelian dialectics is a kind of hysterical undermining of the Master . . . the immanent self destruction and self over-coming of every metaphysical claim. In short, Hegel’s ‘system’ is nothing but a systematic tour through the failures of philosophical projects” (Žižek, 2017, p. 4). We have learnt how to fail – but we must learn how to fail better. Lacan’s anti-philosophy is the attempt to locate the space/gap outside of philosophies, the detection of “holes in discourse” (Lacan, 2008, p. 27). As a teacher reflecting on or researching my practice, I tell stories of the world, yet learn both through the way in which successive stories shape the world and also through the ways in which they seem to fail me. In the Lacanian account proposed, the task is not so much concerned with getting the story right (to bring about a cure or resolution), but rather it focuses on what can be learnt through making successive substitutions of the stories told. It is not uncommon in a process of cyclical action research, for example, to suppose that actions at a later stage of the research might be more in line with expectations. The process of research has enabled the researcher to better predict outcomes to his strategies. Yet the researcher who arrives at these outcomes is a different person. The relationally defined ego is a function of the stories told and how they variously depict the researcher’s Imaginary and Symbolic identifications. The successive stories that “tell the truth” also transform the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real that hosts them. Teachers are absorbed into the discourses of schooling. Textual analysis as a tool can allow practitioners to understand their own immersion in the discursive landscape. Yet, personal reflections are inevitably processed through the officially sanctioned language required for communication with colleagues. It is as if the official language tricks the teacher into believing that he is critically describing his practice on his own terms, a step that on the one hand appears reasonable to him whilst simultaneously recognising that it runs counter to a professional desire to be “client-oriented”. The tutor’s personal and social boundaries had been reshaped through his compliance. Furthermore, it seems difficult for the tutor himself to know if he is being sincere or not in his reflective writings, as the technical language that is included emerges from practices that whilst in circulation have meanings and restrictions over which he has little control. His reflections swing between personal reflection and compliance with the framework shaping practice. The tutor moves to and fro between consent and denial, but in so doing he enacts at a practical level the very structures that he seeks to question at an ideological level. His attempts to hold on to his own professional aspirations are translated into a social language shaped around this new order, which in a sense fixes the parameters and thereby supports the success of the administrative discourse. Lacan’s looking glass is cracked, sending signals at unexpected angles, and meanwhile: The lesson to be drawn from this concerning the social field is above all that belief, far from being an ‘intimate”, purely mental state, is always

Coda 123 materialized in our effective social activity: belief supports the fantasy which regulates social reality. (Žižek, 1989, p. 36) Žižek’s favourite example of storytelling is cinema, which teaches us how to desire. Fantasy is not opposed to “reality”, nor is it escapist. Rather, it is the subjective frame through which the individual can gain access to reality. Indeed, it structures what we call reality. The individual can only access reality through her capacity to tell stories about it. This, inevitably, reflexively builds something of herself into the reality that she portrays. Teacher education could be understood as cultivating a research attitude. Research is not about fixing knowledge. Rather, reflective research can enable constant renewal; monitoring understanding, predicting practice; writing and rewriting the storyline of one’s professional life towards producing someone new; telling the story of how I became a teacher; telling the story of how I will make things happen, and so producing new futures.

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Index

accommodation 112 action 7, 97 Allen, W. 23 Althusser, L. 9, 47 analytic discourse: alternative identity and 83; course tutors and 117 – 118; knowledge and 57, 60 – 61; language and 56; master signifiers and 33, 60 – 61; object of desire in 63, 76; unconscious and 32 Appel, S. 20 Aristotle 86 Ashcroft, B. 71 assimilation 112 Atkinson, D. 20, 35, 81 “Aubade” (Larkin) 81 automatic subjectivity 49 Bailly, L. 66, 67, 114 Ball, S. 45 Banks, J. 70 Barad, K. 88n2 Barry, P. 79 Barthes, R. 79, 88n1, 121 Bernstein, B. 50 Bhabha, H. 24 Bibby, T. 20 Blake, W. 51 Bloody Chamber, The (Carter) 78 Bloom, H. 53, 65 Bologna process 93, 111 Bourdieu, P. 50 Bracher, M. 57, 61, 77 Bradley, A. C. 48 British values 35 – 36, 43, 58, 70, 73 – 74, 93 Britzman, D. 20, 95 – 97 Brontë, A. 51 Brontë, C. 51

Brontë, E. 45, 51, 79, 85 Brontë, P. 51 Brown, T. 20, 32 Bryan, H. 54 Bullock Report 51 Butler, J. 48 Cambridge Assessment 43 canon 64 – 66, 69 – 70 Carter, A. 48, 78 certainty 115 – 117, 119 Chaucer, G. 64 children 10 – 12 Clarke, M. 20, 84 Coleridge, S. T. 52 Cooper, K. 54 course tutors: analytic discourse and 117 – 118; knowledge and 110, 114, 116 – 119; master discourse and 115 – 117; master/slave dialectic and 117; teacher education and 109 – 110, 114 – 120 Cox Report 43 cultural knowledge 86 – 87 curriculum: British values in 58, 64, 70; canon in 64 – 66, 69 – 70; hegemonic knowledge and 83; as a mirror 82 – 83; multicultural identities in 71, 74 – 75; national 35, 44 – 45, 51, 64 – 66, 69, 94; Otherness in 69 – 71, 81 – 82; reading for pleasure in 67 – 68; subject knowledge in 33; university discourse and 59 Dead Poets Society 41, 62 death drive 28 “Death of the Author, The” (Barthes) 79 Derrida, J. 121

134 Index Descartes, R. 47 desire: Freudian 27; Lacan on 29, 95; object of 36, 57, 76, 80; sense of self and 27 – 28; Žižek on 28 – 29, 80, 123 Devine, N. 20 Dickens, C. 73 discordant concordance 87 discourse: analytic 32 – 33, 56 – 57, 60 – 61, 63, 76, 83, 117 – 118; defining 48; dominant privileged 74 – 75; Foucault on 48; hysteric 32, 56 – 57, 59 – 60, 63, 67, 83; master 31 – 32, 34, 48, 56 – 59, 61 – 63, 67, 74, 77, 80, 115 – 117; teacher education and 29, 35 – 37; teachers and 122; university 30 – 31, 34, 48, 56 – 57, 59, 62, 117 distortions 8, 19 – 20, 86 – 87 divided subject 29 – 31, 58, 60, 67 Doctor Faustus (Marlowe) 86 Dowling, W. 86, 87 drive 27 – 29 Duckworth, V. 43 Durkheim, E. 49, 53 dynamic Lacanian theory 61 – 62 Eagleton, T. 85, 87 Edgerton, S. H. 74 education: audit culture in 81; commodification of 38; curricula change in 42 – 45, 51; divided self in 61; economic purpose of 66 – 67, 81; expectations in 58; politicisation of 43; practitioner research in 6 – 7, 20 – 21; psychoanalytic theory and 20; purpose of 51; see also English education ego 20, 22 – 23 Elbow, P. 72 Eliot, T. S. 52 Empire Writes Back, The (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin) 71 England: governmental policy and 110; teacher education in 33, 35 – 36, 92, 110 – 111; see also Great Britain England, J. 20 English education: British values in 58, 64, 70, 73 – 74; canon in 64 – 66, 69; class complications and 50; conceptions of 50; contestation in 53; as cure 72, 81; emancipatory aims of 45; enactment of curriculum in 44; epistemology of 52; gender and 48, 88; governmental policy

and 43 – 44, 46, 49, 51 – 52, 54, 83, 87; humanist approach to 48 – 49; ideologies of 52 – 54, 78; linguistic approach to 49; monoculturalism in 71, 77 – 79, 84, 88; multi-disciplinary nature of 77 – 79; national curriculum in 45, 51, 64 – 66, 69, 94; pedagogy in 116; purpose of 51 – 52, 67, 72 – 73; as replacement for Classics 41, 43; Shakespeare in 48, 53; standards agenda and 44, 49 – 50; subject and 44 – 45, 47, 83 – 84 English teaching: cultural theory in 52, 78, 84; desire and 80; enactment of 56; Lacanian theory and 56, 61 – 67, 69 – 70, 72 – 73, 76, 80, 83 – 84, 88; master discourse in 61 – 63, 66 – 67, 77; as a mirror 82; models for 43 – 44; multicultural identities and 71; Otherness in 69 – 71; reading for pleasure in 68; reading practices and 71 – 72; research and 46; subjectivity and 47; views of 41 – 46, 62 essentialism 86 Evans, D. 28 Farrow, M. 23 Fat Black Woman’s Poems, The (Nichols) 71 Felman, S. 20 fetishistic disavowal 81 fetishistic satisfaction 86 fictive experience 85 – 86 Fink, B. 82 Fish, S. 79 Fleming, M. 44, 47, 51, 84 Foucault, M.: on discourse 48; emancipatory aims and 45; on language 8 – 9, 111 – 112; poststructuralism and 121; on significance 112 – 113; on subjectivity 47, 109; symbolisations and 119; technology of self and 30 Frankfurt school 52 – 53, 55n6 Freire, P. 46, 70 Freud, A. 20 Freud, S.: on desire 27; on drive 27 – 28; ego and 22; on instinct 28; models of understanding and 8; psychoanalysis and 19 – 20; resolution and 9, 19; self and 4 – 5; on sense of self 22 Fukuyama, F. 28 – 29 Furlong, J. 91

Index  135 Gadamer, H.-G. 7 – 8 Gavin, J. 71 gender 48, 88 Goodwyn, A. 44 Grant, R. 10 – 12 Great Britain: education reform in 42 – 43, 110; values in 35 – 36, 43, 64, 70 Greenblatt, S. 87 Griffiths, G. 71 Gulliver’s Travels (Swift) 87 Habermas, J. 8 – 9, 111 – 112, 119 Habib, S. 74 Harari, Y. 87 Hardy, T. 20 Hawking, V. 54 Hazlitt, W. 52 Hegelian master/slave dialectic 31, 56, 58, 117 Henriques, J. 20 hermeneutic circle 7 – 8 hermeneutic phenomenology 96 Hollway, W. 20 human subjects 34 – 37 hysteric discourse: alternative identity and 32, 83; divided subject and 59 – 60, 63, 67; language and 56; unconscious and 57 Imaginary 22, 24 – 26, 28, 122 Initial Teacher Training (ITT) 93, 106, 116 instinct 28 Jagodzinski, J. 20 jouissance 68 Kant, I. 85 Kay, J. 71 Kelly, U. 76, 77 King, S. 65 Kingman Report 51 Klein, M. 20 knowledge: certainty and 115 – 117; contestation of 107; hegemonic 83; Lacanian 94; mythical 31; practitioner researchers and 109 – 110; subject 33 – 34, 38, 94, 104 – 105; systematic 30 – 33, 59 Lacan, J.: on desire 95; distortions and 20; on divided subject 29 – 31, 58, 60, 67; ego and 23; enunciation and

15; on human subjects 34 – 35, 37; Imaginary and 22, 24 – 26; jouissance and 68; mathemes and 57; mirror phase and 22 – 23, 26, 96; on the Möbius subject 84; performative understanding and 14; psychoanalytic theory and 21 – 33; Real and 24 – 25; on renewal of knowledge 109; self-exploration and 4, 6, 9; on sense of self 21 – 25; Symbolic and 24 – 25; truth and 121 – 122; on the unconscious 79; Žižek and 9, 58 Lacanian discourse theory: agents in 114; analytic discourse 32 – 33, 56 – 57, 60 – 61, 63, 76, 83, 117 – 118; certainty and 115; dynamic 61 – 62; English teaching and 48, 56 – 63, 67, 76 – 88; hysteric discourse 32, 56 – 57, 59 – 60, 63, 67, 83, 117; identity and 84, 112 – 114; jouissance and 68; language and 29 – 30, 56 – 57, 61; master discourse 31 – 32, 34, 48, 56 – 59, 61 – 63, 67, 74, 77, 102, 106, 115 – 117; master signifiers in 33, 57, 60, 63, 78, 83 – 85, 114 – 115; object of desire in 36, 57, 76, 80, 119; purpose and 72 – 73; self-consciousness of subjects and 82; socio-linguistic interaction and 61 – 62; subjectivity and 47 – 48, 76, 109; transformation of practice and 69 – 70; tutor knowledge and 110; university discourse 30 – 31, 34, 48, 56 – 57, 59, 62, 117 language: distortions in 8; Foucault on 111 – 112; Habermas on 111 – 112; Lacanian discourse and 29 – 30, 56 – 57, 61; political multiplicity of 46; semiotic theory and 49; sincerity in 15; social space and 15; subjective bias in 111; Symbolic and 26 Larkin, P. 81 Leavis, F. R. 48, 52 Lee, H. 71 Leslie, E. 20 literary theory 78 – 79 literature: canon in 64 – 66, 69; characterisation in 79; cultural knowledge and 86 – 87; discordant concordance in 87; dominant privileged discourse in 74 – 75; fictive experience of 85 – 86; metanarratives and 87; mimesis and 85 – 86; multicultural identities and

136 Index 71; reading for pleasure and 67; representation in 70, 75; Ricoeur on 85 – 87; subjectivity and 87; values and 73 – 74; as vicariously lived experience 74 Lyotard, F. 87 Marlowe, C. 86 Marx, K. 9, 49 master discourse: creation of subject in 57; divided subject in 58; English teaching and 61 – 63, 66 – 67, 77; Lacan and 31 – 32, 34, 48, 56, 58 – 59; language and 56; master/slave dialectic in 31, 56, 58, 117; mythical knowledge and 31; political ideology and 58, 74; power and 58; systematic knowledge and 31 – 32; teacher education and 93 – 94, 102, 106, 115 – 117; transference and 67, 80 materiality 88n2 mathemes 57 McMahon, C. 66, 67, 76 McNamara, O. 20 Memento 98 – 99 metanarratives 87 mimesis 85 – 86 mirror phase 22 – 23, 26, 96 Möbius subject 84 muthos 86 My Fair Lady 80 mythical knowledge 31 National Curriculum in English 45, 51 National Literacy Strategy 43, 54 Newbolt Report 44, 51 New Historicism 48, 79, 87, 88n1 Nichols, G. 71 Night Shift (King) 65 Nolan, C. 98 Oculus 82 Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck) 71 O’Malley, S. 54 Othello (Shakespeare) 54n4, 78, 86 Otherness: culture and 70; English curricula and 69 – 72; interactions and 114; self-consciousness and 82; selfidentity and 81 – 82, 113 – 114 Pais, A. 68 Paiti, M. 20 Perrin, D. 46 Piaget, J. 21, 30, 112 Pitt, A. 20

political ideology 58, 74 Pope, A. 64 – 65 Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) 36, 91 practitioner research: action research strategies and 7; education and 6 – 7, 20 – 21; Imaginary and 122; individual in 46 – 47; knowledge formation and 109 – 110; mirror phase and 26; psychoanalytic theory and 21; Real and 122; reflective inquiry and 6, 33; subjective identifications of 96 – 97; Symbolic and 122; teacher education and 9 – 10, 91 – 93, 96 – 107 Problem of Grammar, The (Sampson) 51 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 42, 49, 54n1 psychoanalytic theory: desire and 95; education and 20; ego and 20; Freud and 19 – 20, 32; Lacan and 20 – 33; practitioner research and 21; relational conceptions in 24; resolution and 19 Pygmalion (Shaw) 80 Rabinow, P. 44 reading for pleasure 67 – 68 reading practices 71 – 72, 78, 85 Real 24 – 25, 28 – 29, 122 reflective inquiry 6 – 8, 100 reflective stories 8 – 9, 26 – 27 Refugee Boy (Zephaniah) 71 research: disruption and 87; English teaching and 46, 48; hermeneutic approach to 7 – 8; individual in 46; knowledge and 34; Lacanian discourse theory and 83; unconscious and 48; see also practitioner research Ricoeur, P. 68, 85 – 87 Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Taylor) 71 Roseboro, D. 47, 57, 69, 74, 81, 84 Saclecl, R. 61 Said, E. 70 Sampson, G. 51 Samudzi, Z. 74 Saussure, F. de 49 Scholes, R. 78 – 79 self-exploration 4, 6 self-identity 81 semiotic theory 49 sense of self: desire and 27 – 28; Freud on 4 – 5, 22; Lacan on 21 – 25; language and 15; mirror phase and

Index  137 23; student teachers and 94 – 107; teachers and 4 – 6, 10, 13 – 15 Shakespeare, W. 48, 53, 64, 66, 78, 86 Shaw, G. B. 80 Sila’ila’i, E. 20 social space 10, 15, 25 – 26 Steinbeck, J. 71 Stephens, J. 35 Stevens, D. 44, 47, 51, 84 Stevenson, R. L. 70 Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The (Stevenson) 70 student teachers: certainty and 119; common sense conceptions and 98 – 99; course tutors and 114 – 119; difference and 101; identity and 112, 116; master/slave dialectic and 117; pedagogic orientations and 100 – 101; perceptions of 103; reflective inquiry and 100; reflexive-analytical capability and 106; self-representation and 92; sense of self 94 – 107; structure and 113; subject knowledge conceptualisations of 94, 104 – 105; as subject of learning practices 91 – 92, 96 – 98, 111; symbolic spaces of 113 subject: defining 47 – 48; English as 44 – 45, 47; human 34 – 37; Lacan on 47 – 48, 109; pedagogized 105; see also divided subject subjectivity: automatic 49; English teachers and 47; Lacanian theory and 47 – 48, 76, 109; literature and 87 subject knowledge: external demands on 38; student teacher conceptualisations of 94, 104 – 105; teacher education and 33 – 34, 38, 94 Swift, J. 87 Symbolic 24 – 28, 122 systematic knowledge 30 – 33, 59 Tatto, M. 91 Taylor, M. 71 teacher education: alternative discursive priorities in 29, 35 – 37; Bologna process in 93, 111; British values in 35 – 36, 93; course tutors in 109 – 110, 114 – 120; governmental policy and 110; Lacanian discourse theory and 107; master discourse in 93 – 94, 102, 106, 115 – 117; master/slave dialectic in 117; practitioner research in 9 – 10, 33, 91 – 93, 96 – 107; researchcentered 93 – 94, 106 – 107, 123; subject knowledge in 33 – 34, 38, 94;

university role in 110 – 111; vocational model for 92 teachers: challenges of 12 – 13; discourses of 122; emotional resilience and 13 – 15; external demands on 35 – 37, 49, 66; sense of self and 4 – 6, 10, 13 – 15; symbolic spaces of 113; textual analysis and 122; see also student teachers Teachers’ Standards (TS) 91 teacher-student relationships 24 teaching 4, 25 – 26; see also English teaching technology of self 30 textual analysis 122 Thomas, B. 60 Tiffin, H. 71 Tiger’s Bride, The (Carter) 78 Todd, S. 20 To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee) 71 transference 67, 80 Trudghill, P. 50 Trumpet (Kay) 71 Umaki, S. 20 university discourse: Lacan and 30 – 31, 34, 48, 56 – 57, 59, 117; master discourse and 34, 59; systematic knowledge and 30 – 31, 57, 59, 62 Urwin, C. 20 Venn, C. 20 Verhaeghe, P. 113, 114 Vygotsky, L. 21 Walkerdine, V. 20 Wall, T. 46 Weir, P. 41 Westbrook, J. 54 What is English (Elbow) 72 Wheel of Surya, The (Gavin) 71 Williams, J. 20 Wilson, D. 20 Wuthering Heights (Brontë) 45, 79, 85 – 86 Zephaniah, B. 71, 73 Žižek, S.: on desire and drive 28 – 29, 80, 123; on divided subject 25, 30; on fetishistic disavowal 81; on fetishistic satisfaction 86; on human subjects 34 – 35; on hysteric discourse 59; on jouissance 68; on Lacan’s discourses 9, 58; on the Real 25; on relationship maintenance 32; on sense of self 23 – 24