Abstract
In a context where Foundation Phase literacy teachers’ personal literacy often involves operational and technicist practices rather than creative, this paper argues that it is by exposing teachers to experiences of working with different genres of text for an extended time, in different fields, that teachers are able to imagine the possibilities these genres afford. Using a Bourdieusian framework of habitus, field, capital and doxa and applying imagination to the theorisation of these concepts, I examine the effect on a group of rural teachers from Limpopo province of being removed from their classrooms, and being given the opportunity to complete a 4-year Bachelor of Education degree at the University of the Witwatersrand. This case study used reflective journals and focus groups to trace shifts in the ways these teacher-students enacted literacy and thought about teaching literacy. Findings from this study suggest that teachers of literacy can change deeply entrenched ways of thinking about and valuing literacy by reflecting on the discontinuities between old and new ways of practice and, through anticipatory reflection, to imagine possibilities of teaching and enacting literacy differently. This requires critical imagination, awareness and agency. This paper discusses, in particular, Elela’s experience with poetry and Kganya’s experience with a drama script, assessing the effect this had on their personal literacy practices and how they imagine teaching literacy in the future.
Highlights
Imagination is seldom considered in relation to in-service teacher development initiatives for literacy teachers
Teachers are important in making a difference in helping young South Africans become literate in ways that will empower them sufficiently for fields (Bourdieu 1977, 1990) they will encounter in their futures
Using Greene’s work on the importance of releasing the imagination in classrooms and Bland’s four types of imagination, I have interrogated the kinds of literacy experience teachers themselves need to have in their teacher education and professional development to be equipped to create imaginative and imagining classrooms which allow for openness to different points of view, the kindling of learners’ abilities to construct meaningful worlds for themselves and to critically engage with the curriculum
Summary
Imagination is seldom considered in relation to in-service teacher development initiatives for literacy teachers. This paper aims for a more nuanced understanding of how and why some teachers seem to be struggling to teach literacy effectively. It examines the importance of an awakening of the imagination in literacy teachers and the role this plays in helping them to become aware of new possibilities (Greene 1995) in reading and writing genres of text they do not usually work with. I emphasise the importance of imagination on the development of teachers’ own literacy practices, arguing that being in different fields for an extended time helped provide materials and opportunities for using these that Elela and Kganya may not been aware of previously. Imagination provides the key to dismantling established, deeply entrenched ways of teaching literacy and enacting literacy; imagination provides the ‘push’ necessary to shift habitus
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