Chronicle of a DYS-Appearance: An Autoethnography of a Teacher in conflict

300 Pages·2015·1.24 MB·English

CHRONICLE OF A DYS-APPEARANCE: AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHY OF A
TEACHER IN CONFLICT

Maria del Carmen Blyth
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Thesis Presented for the Degree of T

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHeY
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in the School of Education
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UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN

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v May 2015
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The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No
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quotation from it or information derived from it is to be

published without full acknowledgeement of the source.
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The thesis is to be used for private study or non-
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commercial research purposes only.

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Published by the Universit y of Cape Town (UCT) in terms
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of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My supervisor, Associate Professor Karin Murris, was instrumental in bringing this thesis to life
and light. Without her encouragement and guidance I would never have attempted to write this
study. She enabled me to be heard and for “epistemic injustice” to be subverted.

The Posthumanist Reading Group provided me with lively and diffractively enlightening
discussions on diffraction, Quantum Mechanics, and the fate of Schrödinger‟s cat.

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DEDICATION

This study is dedicated to four people:
Harry Blyth and Maria Antonia Menendez Mayer who taught me what it is right to do
and what it is good to be;
Gary Lovelock: we “have fought the good fight”;
and Marisa Virtich: we “have kept the faith”.

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ABSTRACT

With the growth in number of international schools from the 50 identified in 1964 to the current
5,000 international schools worldwide with an associated teaching staff of 250,000 predicted to
grow to 10,000 and 500,000 respectively by 2020, the international school is an increasingly
prominent sector of education. Yet despite this standing what is known about how international
schools discipline and silence their dissenting teachers is negligible. Metaphorically speaking,
the problem is that the “black box” of teacher control and correction remains firmly closed in the
international school domain. The aim of this study is to open up the “black box” as it were, to
use my experiences as an educator to shed some light on how organisational structures and the
people working within them can disempower, silence and discipline a dissenting teacher.

Although I have used autoethnography as methodology the study is not purely autoethnographic
but rather a bricolage of methods that through conceptual enquiries of a philosophical nature (on
the emotions, ethics etc.) deepen not only my narrative research but also my understanding of the
issues. Engaging with these diverse philosophical analyses has taken me from questions of
essence that focused on a Cartesian understanding of difference and conflict (us/them;
cause/effect; guilt/innocence; darkness/light) to a posthumanist stance on both and questions of
how conflict can be understood as emergent from intra-actions between apparatuses of material-
discursive practices, conditions both social and material. For conflicts are collisions head on, to
the accompaniment of squealing brakes and breaking glass. And it is important to understand not
why but how such collisions occur if we are to avoid, prevent, or resolve them ethically.

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As such I hope that this study contributes to studies on conflict by showing how discourses,
material conditions, affect, and power can converge to produce situations with serious
consequences for those involved.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................... ii
DEDICATION ........................................................................................................................ iii
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................. iv
FOREWORD: DISAPPEARANCE AND DYS-APPEARANCE .........................................xii
CHAPTER
1. INTRODUCTION: RESPONDING TO AUTHORITY”S DEMANDS .......................... 1
1.1 Background to the Story ............................................................................................... 1
1.2 The Research Problem ................................................................................................. 3
1.3 The Research Aim ........................................................................................................ 5
1.4 The Research Questions ................................................................................................ 6
1.5 Leadership and Management in the International School Context ............................ 7
1.5.1 Introduction................................................................................................................ 7
1.5.2. Diversity .................................................................................................................... 8
1.5.3 Transience ................................................................................................................. 9
1.5.4 Governance ............................................................................................................. 10
1.6 Conceptual Framework .............................................................................................. 13
1.6.1 The Emotional ......................................................................................................... 13
1.6.2 The Moral ............................................................................................................... 16
1.6.3 The Legal ................................................................................................................ 17
1.7 The Research Method: Why Autoethnography? ....................................................... 18
1.8 Ethics ........................................................................................................................... 23
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1.9 Overview of the Chapters ........................................................................................... 24

2. METHODOLOGY OR MOVEMENT IN THOUGHT .................................................. 26
2.1 Introduction: Autoethnography as Methodology ...................................................... 26
2.2 Glass Palaces or Glass Cages? .................................................................................... 29
2.2.1 Why Not Autoethnography? ..................................................................................... 31
2.3 Teachers’ Stories ........................................................................................................ 36
2.3.1 The Stories .............................................................................................................. 37
2.3.1.1 Edward Said: Between Worlds: Edward Said Makes Sense of His Life (1998) .... 39
2.3.1.2 Laurel Richardson: Skirting a Pleated Text: De-Disciplining an Academic Life
(1997) ............................................................................................................................ 43
2.3.1.3 Ken Winograd: The Functions of Teacher Emotions: The Good, The Bad, and The
Ugly (2003) ................................................................................................................... 47
2.4 The Verbal Snapshot - What It Reveals, What It Conceals, and Why I Use It ........ 51
2.5 Summary ...................................................................................................................... 55

3. THE EMOTIONS ............................................................................................................ 59
3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 59
3.1.2 The Prologue .......................................................................................................... 59
3.2 Emotion – An Intellectual and Moral Activity ........................................................... 61
3.2.1 Introduction – Philosophy‟s Attempts to Understand the Emotions ......................... 61
3.2.2 The Emotions and Philosophy in the 20th Century ................................................... 66
3.3 Women and the Emotions .......................................................................................... 70
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3.3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 70
3.3.2 Women and Anger ................................................................................................... 72
3.4 Conclusion.................................................................................................................... 75

4. THE EMOTIONS: WOMEN, SHAME, FEAR, AND ANXIETY ................................. 76
4.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 76
4.1.1 Women and Shame .................................................................................................. 76
4.1.2 Women, Fear, and Anxiety ...................................................................................... 80
4.2 The Emotions, Phronesis and Epistemic Virtue ........................................................ 83
4.3 Schools, Conflict, Emotional Intelligence and the Intelligence of the Emotions ...... 86
4.4 The Emotions as Expressions of the Moral Dimension of a School’s Culture .......... 90

5. THE ETHICAL TEACHER AND THE ETHICAL SCHOOL ..................................... 93
5.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 93
5.2 The Ethical Teacher .................................................................................................... 97
5.3 The Ethical Administrator ....................................................................................... 102
5.3.1 Leadership and Gender ......................................................................................... 103
5.4 The Ethical School: A Symbiotic Relationship ......................................................... 105
5.5 A Moral Education ................................................................................................... 107

6. THE APPARATUSES OF CONFLICT ....................................................................... 110
6.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 110
6.1.1 England & Hong Kong: 1990s through to the early 2000s .................................... 111
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6.2 Hong Kong, an International School, the 1990s ...................................................... 112
6.3 The Role of School Administrators in Public Education: England & Wales
1980s/1990s/early2000s .................................................................................................... 121
6.3.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 121
6.3.2 The Principal ........................................................................................................ 124
6.3.2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................... 124
6.3.2.2 Role and Responsibilities of the Principal in England & Wales ....................... 127
6.3.2.3 Principal Attributes ......................................................................................... 131
6.4 The Importance of the Emotions in Leadership and Administration ..................... 133
6.4.1 The Meaning of Leadership within Schools ........................................................... 136
6.5 Summary .................................................................................................................... 137

7. MY STORY OF A CONFLICT (PART 1) ..................................................................... 140
7.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 140
7.2 Epistemic Injustice ................................................................................................... 143
7.2.1 Fricker on Epistemic Injustice .............................................................................. 143
7.3 The Verbal Snapshots ............................................................................................... 146
7.3.1 Snapshot 1: Request or Demand? ......................................................................... 147
7.3.2 Snapshot 2: When is a Disciplinary not a Disciplinary? ......................................... 150
7.4 Cracks, Crevasses, Fissures and Interstices: Silences and Omissions .................... 159

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