Práctica 1

In the following chapters, 'multiple times' are explored in a variety o f contexts and settings. Placing time into the central conceptual frame has methodological implications. These are examined in chapter 2, which also reviews research processes. It was very important to make the methods explicit, especially in situations where relationships among participants, and between participants and researcher, were fleeting, transitory and/or opportunistic, and where supply teaching had been largely excluded as a topic for investigation. Temporal issues

arc also considered as aspects of logistical solutions to problems of observation at multiple sites for relatively short periods. As importantly, a focus upon time as a methodological device gave access to public and private worlds. In this respect, diaries were particularly important, and this chapter considers the strengths and weaknesses of diary use.

Making visible the lives and work of supply teachers also necessitated making explicit the many implicit aspects of time in education, reflected in this study through the ways in which 'historically sedimented knowledge' (Adam, 1992, p.28) coloured the perceptions and understandings about the phenomena under discussion. Research look place during a period of changing relations between LEAs, schools, and supply teachers. Chapter 3 explores the language used to frame supply teachers and supply leaching, set against a temporal span of wider educational change and concerns about availability and quality. Questioning past assumptions, in particular those reflected in the literature on supply teaching, and in response to requests for information, the likely effects of retaining stereotypical assumptions upon current and future prospects for supply teachers (and teachers in general) arc considered.

In chapter 4 frameworks for analysis move towards the ways in which supply teachers and teaching were being defined and interpreted at the level of primary school practice. In recent years, sociologists have focused increasingly on teaching as work, and upon the relationship between teacher identity and commitment. For those in discontinuous employment, the terms were problemaliscd, with permanent teachers 'positioning' themselves at a distance from teachers who had fixed or

limited locational and temporal 'commitment'. Here, the interpretative traditions of Mead are used to explore identities in relation to the continual development of the self. In posing questions about the relationship between temporally constrained teaching, commitment, and identities, basic issues about the nature and context of permanent as well as temporary teacher identities arc made visible, and with them common and distinct features of both kinds of teaching.

Links between what supply teachers 'are' and what supply teachers 'do' arc explored further in chapter 5, where the construction of supply teachers' work is investigated in relation to interconnections between supply leaching, the curriculum, and the organisational dynamics of a large secondary school. In the latter, first steps were being taken to recognise substitute teaching as a curriculum, staff, and school development issue. Aspects of this recognition, illustrative of the normative, critical, and interpretative approaches introduced earlier, are recorded and discussed. When linked to a range of beliefs and activities surrounding teacher substitution, conclusions point to the relevance and immediacy of developing further understandings about the temporal opportunities and constraints of teaching and learning which supply work exemplifies, but arc found in all forms of teacher work in mass schooling systems.

Temporal connections in lives which move rapidly between public and private spheres, and between different public spheres, is the central focus of chapter 6, which uses data from diaries and interviews to explore the motivation of individuals who did supply work. A synthesis of multiple experiences and times makes visible aspects of lives and work that drew on flexibility and internal

resources, frequently in the absence of colleagues with whom identities might be nurtured, and experiences shared. Various interpretations of the advantages and disadvantages of supply teaching are seen in terms of connections between the personal, social, educational, and work 'co-ordinates' (Woods, 1990a) of supply teachers' lives. Overall, the findings presented in this chapter confirm that the social and sociological meanings of supply work vary in accordance with the sociographic backgrounds of supply teachers, and the meanings applied by them. Gendered experience, moreover, is not uniform, and temporal relations between employment, locations, marriage, parenthood, interests and beliefs are shown to be complex, ongoing, and dialectical. Aspects of that complexity are sketched out as supply teacher models which take account of diversity and fragmentation (Figure xv, p.201).

In chapter 7, the role of pupils in constructing and interpreting supply teaching experience is the theme pursued. Much of the negotiation involved in developing relationships between pupils and teachers occurs over extended time spans. Not so for supply work, where there has also been a scarcity of data on pupils' accounts of substitution. This chapter draws on fieldwork in two secondary schools to ask: in what ways were supply teachers, and the work of teachers and pupils being defined by pupils, and to what extent did distinctive pupil and teacher responses evolve in relation to teacher absence and substitution? Pupils' accounts illustrate that supply teaching has a number of features in common with teacher and pupil strategics described previously as 'occupational therapy' (Woods, 1984). Here, both pupils and teachers passed lime in order to be seen not to waste it. Distinctive features of shifting and transient teacher-pupil relations, however, also

distinguishes supply work from other kinds of tcaehing for 'survival'. Findings from this chapter reinforce those of earlier chapters, namely the need to take more account of well-considered strategics for leaching and learning in temporally constrained situations, and give less attention to equating busyness with pupil work. In the short term, human costs are borne by supply teachers as they derive some of the meanings of supply work from their daily interactions with pupils; in the longer term, the costs of ignoring distinctive patterns of teacher-pupil relations are borne by pupils.

In the final chapter, retrospective and prospective approaches are taken to explore implications arising from the research as a whole. Sociological and educational dimensions are outlined: for sociologists with interests in time, school organisations, teaching, and gendered occupations, and for educationalists primarily concerned with the management of school systems, professional development and training, and most importantly, for supply teachers themselves. In such ways, the rcchccking and development of relations between theory, consciousness, and experience make supply teachers and teaching visible. Visibility offers at least prospects for the recognition and continuing analysis of the lives of workers at education's periphery.

If the voices heard in this thesis suggest that the work of those who make daily contributions to schtxtling are worthy of further investigation, the methodological challenges of the task need to lie clarified. These form the basis of the next chapter.

C h a p te r 2

Moving Targets: methodological issues in researching supply