The Dialogic Production of Informant Specific Maps

Abstract

The influence of extralocally produced texts, such as professional standards and systems of accreditation, on the ruling relations that govern teachers’ work and their learning about that work is a matter of concern in Australia, as it is in Canada, UK, and USA. This chapter explains how a dialogic analysis and the construction of individual maps of social relations were employed to reveal the influences that governed teachers’ learning about their work at the frontline. A dialogic analysis of research conversations about learning, based on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, revealed the existence of both centralizing, hegemonic discourses associated with a managerial agenda and contextualized, heterogeneous discourses supportive of transformative learning. It also revealed the uneven influence of extralocally produced governing texts on both the locally produced texts and the “doings” of individuals. The production and use of “individual” maps represents a variation on the way “mapping” has generally been used by institutional ethnographers. From these informant specific maps, we can begin to observe some broad patterns in relation to the coordination of people’s “doings” both within a given context and from one context to another.

Citation

Talbot, D. (2017), "The Dialogic Production of Informant Specific Maps", Reid, J. and Russell, L. (Ed.) Perspectives on and from Institutional Ethnography (Studies in Qualitative Methodology, Vol. 15), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1042-319220170000015005