The epistemological authority of an ESL teacher in science education

© 2000 Dr. Sophia ArkoudisThis thesis investigates the epistemological authority of an ESL teacher in science education. The state of Victoria, Australia, reflecting a world-wide trend in English speaking countries, has adopted a policy of mainstreaming ESL within the secondary school context. One of the ways this policy has been implemented in government secondary schools in Victoria is by ESL specialists and mainstream teachers jointly planning the curriculum. There has been very little research into how an ESL and a mainstream teacher actually negotiate pedagogic understandings when planning together. This thesis explores the planning relationship with a view to enhancing policies of mainstreaming. The central data in the study are the two planning conversations of two teachers, one on the topic of genetics and the other on motion. The conversations are analysed using positioning theory and appraisal theory within a transformational model of social action. It is argued that positioning theory, with its focus on personal identity formation, offers an analysis of agency and structure, but not of the language used in the conversation. Appraisal theory, with its focus on the linguistic resources used by the teachers to negotiate meaning, allows for a detailed linguistic analysis which assists the positioning analysis. The analysis offers insights into how the teachers maintain and sustain their planning conversations, within a secondary school context. The analysis of the planning conversations reveals overwhelmingly the difficulties and sources of tension that can emerge in a planning relationship between a science specialist and an ESL specialist, even when they enjoy a good working relationship. There are genuine dilemmas and difficulties in attempting to bring together the different and competing epistemological assumptions of the two teachers, who ome from very different disciplinary discourse communities. It is argued that the attempt by the two subject specialists to work together and 'fuse their horizons' is difficult. This is partly because the two discourse communities they represent are very different, and partly because one such community - namely science - enjoys considerably greater power in the working relationship. Overall the findings of this thesis indicate the considerable difficulties in the way of achieving successful mainstreaming of ESL in the secondary school context. The policy directives about mainstreaming have assumed that it is a simple process of the ESLteacher sharing teaching strategies with the mainstream teacher. The study will demonstrate that negotiating pedagogic understandings is a profound journey of epistemological reconstruction, the nature of which had not been anticipated by the policy makers. This is because the two teachers' views of language and teaching are negotiated through their subject disciplinary prejudices and biases. The study offers a model that theorises the personal professional development project implicit within the mainstreaming of ESL policy