Situated Identities: Power and Positioning in the Work of a Literacy Coach

Abstract

At 7:45 a.m. Kate (all names are pseudonyms) is already busy gathering materials to fill her cart that will serve as a mobile office today-her physical one will be used for make-up testing. Books, sticky notes, pens, and reflection sheets for grade-level meetings are first on her list. She shakes her head as she glances at the piles of running record assessments waiting to be collated, stapled, and distributed and the stacks of books waiting to be sorted, leveled, and placed on shelves. A teacher pops in and asks for the running records packet. Kate lets her know she will get one to her this afternoon. The teacher seems annoyed, and Kate asks about her child who was sick over the weekend. Smiling, the teacher tells Kate about her daughter's return to school and walks away. Kate glances at her watch, sighs, and moves faster. A few children's books are next into the cart, anticipating they may come up in a discussion. The last thing to go in the cart, and sometimes the most important, are the snacks she purchased for the teachers.

The Emotional Landscapes of Literacy Coaching

“…Several researchers have illustrated how a literacy coach's ability to perform a role can be limited by contextual factors (Chval et al, 2010;Hibbert et al, 2008;Lynch & Ferguson, 2010;Mangin, 2009;Matsumura, Garnier, Correnti, Junker, & Bickel, 2010;McLean, Mallozzi, Hu, & Dailey, 2010;Rainville & Jones, 2009;Smith, 2007).…”

“…They argued that a focus on program implementation, dissemination of knowledge, and a forced hierarchy narrowed the role of the lead teachers and positioned other teachers as deficient. Rainville and Jones (2009) shared how one literacy coach enacted situated identities as she interacted with teachers in different ways according to a variety of expectations, relationships, and positions. Chval et al (2010) described how beginning mathematics coaches' identities were shaped by a negotiation between their own and others' expectations for their roles.…”

“…For example, although Crafton and Kaiser (2011) address discursive positioning within literature discussions with teachers, the concepts of identity and positioning are not fully theorized. To our knowledge, only Rainville and Jones (2009) explicitly explored issues of identity construction for literacy coaches. They acknowledged that there are multiple roles that coaches perform differently based on contexts, position, and power; but they continue to examine only a few roles and to imply that there are appropriate ways for coaches to enact those roles in different contexts.…”

Literacy Coaching Roles in Diverse Contexts of Teaching and Learning: New Ways of Working

“…As the newly appointed literacy coach, Miss Tracey was responsible for laying the foundation for building genuine working relationships between herself and the teachers and amongst the groups of teachers so as not to replicate the resistance encountered by Kate in Rainville and Jones' (2008) recount. Without trusting relationships, teachers would not feel safe and comfortable in actively engaging in de-privatisation of their practice and a deep reflective process (Tanner & Vains-Loy, 2009).…”

“…Another large-scale survey from across the United States documented that many school-based literacy coaches were expending 'a great deal of energy trying to create an identity' (Blamey, Meyer & Walpole, 2008, p. 122). Rainville and Jones' (2008) qualitative case-study also records the inherent tensions as literacy coaches negotiate their varied identities with different stakeholders. Another research study undertaken with 31 literacy coaches over a two year period by Walpole and Blamey (2008) found that 'what coaches should do on the job is the matter of intense debate and very little scholarship ' (p. 222).…”