English Language Arts and Social Reproduction in Alberta
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University of Alberta Reading Between the Lines and Against the Grain: English Language Arts and Social Reproduction in Alberta by Leslie Anne Vermeer A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Theoretical, Cultural and International Studies in Education Department of Educational Policy Studies © Leslie Anne Vermeer Fall 2012 Edmonton, Alberta Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission. This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of Timothy James Beechey (1954–2011), who represented for me everything that teaching and learning are and can be; and to Bruce Keith and Zachary Keith, because no one earns a doctorate by herself. Abstract Alberta's 2003 High School English Language Arts curriculum produces differential literacies because it grants some students access to high-status cultural knowledge and some students access to merely functional skills. This differential work reflects an important process in sorting, selecting, and stratifying labour and reproducing stable, class-based social structures; such work is a functional consequence of the curriculum, not necessarily recognized or intentional. The process, however, does not occur in isolation and is in fact complementary to other social processes of stratification. Nonetheless, this dissertation argues that by changing the curriculum, emphasizing tactical and strategic literacy, and teaching the practice of critique, we — teachers, students, and citizens — may interrupt the hegemonic action of the dominant ideology and reveal a space for transformative social change. Acknowledgements For their numerous contributions, I would like to thank the members of my defence committee: Dr Randall Wimmer (Educational Policy Studies), Chair; Dr Alvin Finkel (History, Athabasca University), External Examiner; Dr Lois Harder (Political Science), Member; Dr Janice Wallace (Educational Policy Studies), Member; Dr Margaret L. Iveson (Secondary Education), Supervisory Member; Dr Margaret Mackey (School of Library and Information Studies), Supervisory Member; and Dr Jerry Kachur (Educational Policy Studies), Supervisor. I am grateful to Drs Kachur, Mackey, and Iveson in particular for their long-standing support, encouragement, and generosity. "I can no other answer make but thanks, and thanks." — William Shakespeare I also wish to acknowledge the contributions that Brent McKeown, Lillian Procter, Nicole Smith, Gail Sidonie Sobat, and Don Watt made to my thinking about this topic. Contents Chapter 1: Introduction and Overview: Context and Summary of the Research Question Chapter 2: Literature Review Chapter 3: Method Chapter 4: Alberta Past and Present: The Production of a Provincial Mythology Chapter 5: A Close Reading of the 2003 Curriculum Chapter 6: Multiliteracies and the Language Arts as Social Practices Chapter 7: Analysis and Discussion Chapter 8: Conclusions and Recommendations Works Cited Works Consulted Appendix: Outcomes for General Outcomes 2 and 4 1 Chapter 1: Introduction and Overview: Context and Summary of the Research Question In discussing the pleasures of literary and aesthetic reading, literature scholar Robert Alter reflects on "a long tradition of ideas about literature as a unique repository of values and a uniquely rich vehicle of expression" (23). It is into this tradition that the discipline of English Language Arts (ELA) has strived to bring students, transmitting thereby the norms, values, and ideologies of Western culture. But teacher educator Barrie Barrell counters, "Given the variety of new media and textual events that are appearing, ELA teachers can no longer simply limit their teaching to traditional reading and writing practices" ("Epilogue" 225–26). Why these classroom teachers cannot — or must not — do so and what consequences are generated in the teaching of traditional literacy and literature are vital questions at this moment in history, as I will explain in the coming chapters. This dissertation connects the long tradition of literary values to the dynamics of language as power by way of examining the province of Alberta. In particular, I examine the ways in which Alberta's political economy disciplines the English Language Arts curriculum: first in the constitution of that curriculum, then in the regulation of the curriculum, and finally in the legitimation of the curriculum's functioning. I argue that social class (among other indicators of difference, both marked and unmarked1) is produced, reproduced, and legitimated in the English 1 Andrew Sayer comments, "They [the struggles and competitions of everyday existence] involve not only inequalities in the distribution of material goods but the 'soft form of domination', the innumerable minor and often subtle and unintended acts of symbolic domination of everyday life, and the resistance they engender" (Class 2 Language Arts curriculum as a policy document and enacted through classroom practices that have material, political consequences. This dissertation seeks, insistently and unapologetically, to name and recognize class.2 Drawing on the sociology of education through the lens of political economy, I examine how social class and social and economic capital are stabilized and reproduced through the teaching and learning of literature and literacy practices — and who benefits from this stability and reproduction. At its core, this is a dissertation about fairness, because, as I will argue below, the presumed legitimacy assigned to the education system through the concept of meritocracy — adopted by and amplified in the language of 'choice' and 'preference' ushered in by neoliberalism — obscures the unfairness of a system 96). Here he raises some of the notions of marked and unmarked indicators of and responses to class, tying these indicators to some of Bourdieu's important ideas, which I will discuss below. His remarks may also remind us of the so-called hidden curriculum, discussed in detail below, through which class practices are enacted and reinforced. 2 Writing in 2005, Sayer observed, "For some, 'class' may seem, if not an obsolete category, one of declining relevance today, despite the widening of economic inequalities in many countries over the last twenty-five years" (Class 12–13). Instead, social focus has shifted to identity, or recognition of social differences such as race, ethnicity, and sexuality, and a demand for institutional equality of treatment for individual differences. A consequence of this turn, Sayer explains, is that "the more everyone is discursively acknowledged as being of equal worth, the less the pressure to change the distribution of material goods, because the inequality of the latter is increasingly seen as a separate matter" (Class 64–65; emphasis in source). The distinction between class and other identities is important, however: "The poor are not clamouring for poverty to be legitimised and valued. They want to escape or abolish their class position rather than affirm it" (Class 52). I will return to this distinction below. 3 deliberately structured to produce different and distinctly unequal outcomes for students.3 Thus I make a number of normative claims, evaluating what is and measuring it against what might be. In rooting my dissertation in the sociology of education, I am addressing both classroom teachers and those who teach them, for as Lauder, Brown, and Halsey explain in tracing the history of sociology of education, "the institutional context for the discipline had become that of teacher education" (572) already decades ago. My research question is simple: how do the English Language Arts curriculum and instruction in Alberta's high schools interact with Alberta's political economy? The answer is anything but simple. Some of the sub-questions that follow from this line of investigation include the following: 3 Phillip Brown refers to this phase in the development of publicly funded education as "parentocracy," observing the 'third wave' has been characterised by the rise of the educational parentocracy, where a child's education is increasingly dependent upon the wealth and wishes of parents, rather than the ability and efforts of pupils. ... The defining feature of an educational parentocracy is not the amount of education received, but the social basis upon which educational selection is organized. ("Third Wave" 66; emphasis in source) He continues, "those parents who can afford to buy a competitive advantage for their children [through parental selection of educational stream, school choice, private tutoring, or other home-based intervention] are increasingly likely to do so" (87). These themes are significant in Alberta, the only province in Canada where charter schooling has found some appeal (though limited) and a world-recognized leader in school-based budgeting; I will return to these ideas below.