| This study is a personal odyssey of my struggle to come to terms with some of the recurring events and conflicts I have experienced as a teacher. Using the Pennsylvania Lead Teacher Initiative as my context, I examine its roots in teacher development reform discourse and shape an official story of how it was conceived in Pennsylvania.;After interviewing lead teachers and non-lead teachers, I created a series of encounters which I call, "inner views storied." Using literary theory (narrative) as a rationale, I create texts that portray the stories of my encounters with my participants in a way that enables the reader to hear our conversations. Since all of the characters in the inner views storied are female, feminine perspective is present. Interestingly, a disproportionate number of Pennsylvania lead teachers are women.;Using principles of literary and educational criticism, I interpret the texts of the inner views storied, focusing on the surface and embedded meaning in them. I interpret the themes that emerge from a critical theory perspective and convey the appearance/reality dualism within the texts by showing that the Lead Teacher Initiative represents a symbolic effort to "professionalize" teaching, while the lived experience of the teachers involved in lead teacher programs (mostly women) reveals the effects of proletarianization.;Through this interpretative study, I developed an understanding not only of the ways in which the dominant ideology functions to oppress my class and gender, but also of the ways in which I have acted in complicity with the very forces I have been struggling to combat. The journey has been painful and the wisdom I have come to is a bitter wisdom, yet paradoxically, it has liberated me from the rational, technical mind set that imbues our culture and has made me available for new beginnings. |
