Subject to form: Research interviews, performative subjectivity, professional development

In this dissertation, I analyze teacher, literacy coach and researcher subjectivities in a five-year study of on-site professional development with middle-grade Language Arts teachers in a school designated by its district and state as severely underperforming. Interested in the role of research interviews as both research method and cultural form, I analyze the emerging teacher (and researcher) subjectivities articulated through, and in relation to, annual research interviews with the teachers at this site. I draw heavily on Judith Butler's theory of performative subjectivity to consider the following questions: (1) How do efforts to "represent" possibly reinforce differences of race, professional preparation, and institutional status that research efforts aim to potentially change? (2) In light of the role of repetition in performative subjectivity, what is the significance of "unsolicited," literal repetitions across interview contexts? and, (3) How might research interviews function as circulating public forms that carry with them possibilities for subjectivities typically foreclosed for teachers at underperforming school sites?...