Pedagogy, school culture and teacher learning : Towards more durable and resistant approaches to secondary school literacy

The relational, cultural and contextual view of literacy discussed in this paper has profound and widespread implications for the way teachers think about their students, their families, backgrounds and experiences and the aspirations students hold for the future. Focussing on the theoretical construct of teacher identity, the paper discusses the ways teachers worked and what happened to the culture of their schools when a structured literacy intervention enabled them to develop some agency as educational professionals, when provided with some 'social space' in respect of their literacy practices. The paper concludes that the teachers were involved to varying degrees in embracing changes that represented a move in the direction of a socially just pedagogy - the paper explains why. © 2007 J. Smyth.C