PEDAGOGIES: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, 1(1), 59–67

Copyright © 2006, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Pedagogy as Work: Educating the Next

Generation of Literacy Teachers
Barbara Comber
University of South Australia

What do new teachers need to know about literacy and how to teach it? Given the
changing demographics of the teaching and teacher education workforce, the chang-
ing populations of young people, and the changing nature of literacy, what counts as
essential pedagogical knowledge is increasingly open to question. In the midst of
such complexity, many governments are taking a stronger position on normative
standards for literacy and teacher training. Publishers have moved in to play key roles
in the professional development of teachers on authorised approaches. The insider
knowledge of generations of teachers is now under threat as large percentages of the
teaching population head for retirement. In this article I argue that we need to radi-
cally rethink teacher education. Taking the case of literacy, I demonstrate the kinds of
pressures and doubts experienced by many teachers about their knowledge and prac-
tice. I offer some recommendations for educating the next generation of literacy
teachers, which are informed by historical, political, demographic, and futures analy-
ses of the contemporary scene.

Human resource staff in departments of education speak in whispers about statis-

tics of the percentage of teachers over 50 years old and their predictions of retire-
ments over the next decade. At the same time, the worrying statistics of teachers
leaving the profession within the first 5 years of teaching remain under wraps, with
estimates varying from 25% to 40% (see Johnson and The Project on the next Gen-
eration of Teachers, 2004). Australian English-speaking teaching graduates can
earn attractive salaries by working in schools in the United Kingdom and interna-
tional schools worldwide and teaching English to adults in countries such as Japan
and Taiwan. Whereas teaching was once seen as a job for life, the new mobility of

Correspondence should be sent to Barbara Comber, Centre for Studies in Literacy, Policy and
Learning Cultures, School of Education, University of South Australia, St Bernards Road,
Magill 5072, South Australia. E-mail: [email protected]
60 COMBER

workers across nations and careers destabilises any firm notions of teacher identity
and career duration.
On the policy front, teacher education and educational research are being sub-
jected to new scrutiny. In Australia, the House of Representatives has recently an-
nounced an Inquiry into Teacher Education “to conduct an inquiry into the quality
of teaching-training.” The deadline for submissions to the Federal Educational
Minister’s Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy has just closed amid spirited me-
dia campaigns, with the minister accusing some education faculties of being de
facto departments of sociology. Similar criticisms of “ed-babble” and “touchy-
feely self-awareness” in teacher education are reported in the U.S. media (see
Cochran-Smith, 2004). Education faculties have been warned to focus on teaching
skills rather than sociology. Such moves produce paranoia and panic among a
worn-out teacher education workforce at a time when we need to be increasingly
innovative and imaginative.
Scripted pedagogies for teaching literacy are already mandated in places such
as California (see MacGillvray, Ardell, Curwen, & Palma, 2004). With new book
titles such as Rookie Teaching for Dummies (Kelley, 2003) and A-Z of teaching
(Cowley, 2004) and with Web sites such as Teaching Secrets, subtitled “How to be-
come an ace at teaching, using my easy step-by-step system, without years of end-
less frustration” (Morrison, 2005), publishers look set to have a field day when and
if the roles of universities in teacher education are further diminished by govern-
ments. These publishers have strategically promoted experienced teachers who
can write well and with humour and at the same time make the problems of every-
day teaching seem uncomplicated.
In the context of enormous demographic shifts in the teacher workforce and a
conservative political backlash affecting public education in many nations, how
should we educate the next generation of teachers? How can the profession attract
and retain a better balance in terms of gender, culture, and ethnicity? How can poor
and remote areas attract and retain highly qualified teachers? What should teacher
education look like? What should be core? What can we distil from decades of re-
search to help form pedagogical dispositions and repertoires of practices for these
times and places? What do tomorrow’s teachers need to know in order to teach to-
morrow’s children? These questions are taxing teacher educators and educational
researchers internationally (Cochran-Smith, 2000; Day, 2004; Green & Reid,
2004; Luke, Luke, & Mayer, 2000), particularly as they grapple with changing stu-
dent populations, global economies, and changing work and communication prac-
tices and attempt to retain and reinvent social justice in and through education
(Cochran-Smith, 2004; Kumashiro, Baber, Richardson, Ricker-Wilson, & Wong,
2004). Key challenges include recruitment and sustainability, particularly in hard-
er-to-staff locations.
My starting point for considering the kinds of knowledges, dispositions, and
practices that the next generation of teachers needs is based on several longitudinal
 PEDAGOGY AS WORK 61

studies of literacy development of children growing up and schooling in poor com-

munities in Australia (Comber, Badger, Barnett, Nixon, & Pitt, 2002; Comber &
Barnett, 2003; Hill, Comber, Louden, Reid, & Rivalland, 2002).

THE WORK OF TEACHING

In a number of studies in high-poverty and culturally diverse environments, I have

closely observed teaching practices that made a positive difference to children.
From a synthesis of these studies I argue that such teaching requires teachers to si-
multaneously engage in and orchestrate different kinds of work:

1. Interpretive work;
2. Pedagogical work;
3. Discursive work;
4. Relational work; and
5. Institutional work.

These categories overlap, but I have found it useful to tease them out in order to
consider what early-career teachers need to learn and where and how they might
learn it. I see some advantages in thinking about these kinds of work, not because I
support a “training approach” to education—indeed I oppose narrow models of
any kind—but because I want to continue to understand teaching as being situated,
embodied, intellectual and political and, importantly, as being more complicated
than simply being “effective” or “ineffective.” I prefer to think about how some
forms of teaching make a positive difference to children’s learning, identity forma-
tions, and positionings and how specific forms of teachers’ labour contribute to
such consequences. Here I first summarise these different kinds of work before
considering possible implications for teacher education in literacy.

Interpretive Work
Teachers who make a significant positive difference to children’s literacy learning
take an interpretive approach: they observe the children closely and carefully take
note of their products and performances as children participate in activities and
tasks in different contexts. They are responsive to what children are doing or at-
tempting to do, and they make decisions about when and how to offer feedback,
suggestions, and questions and when to wait. Their students’ ways of operating in-
form their teaching. In the case of literacy, these teachers are highly analytical and
diagnostic about their students’ developing repertoires and difficulties. Their inter-
pretive work is informed by complex understandings of what constitutes literacy
across its operational, cultural, and critical dimensions (Green, 1988) and its
62 COMBER

changing and dynamic nature in contemporary times (Lankshear, Gee, Knobel, &
Searle, 1997). Such interpretive work requires rich and current pedagogical knowl-
edge and openness to reinterpretation when the explanatory power of one’s frames
of reference does not pertain to the child at hand.

Pedagogical Work
Teachers who make a significant positive difference to children’s literacy learning
have strongly developed knowledge of their subject and focus—in this case liter-
acy—in terms of both the theoretical dimensions and the practical approaches.
They also have sound knowledge of their communities (languages and cultures,
employment, leisure, religions, and so on) that they deploy to specifically alter
their own discursive and curriculum practices in a dynamic and responsive fashion.
Over time they assemble repertoires of theoretically informed practices, which
they continually rework and modify. Rather than adopting prescripted and routine
lesson plans, these teachers invent and plan activities with care and allow for multi-
ple responses and eventualities. Their pedagogical work is evident in the ways that
they design curriculum over time and in the ways that they structure lesson activi-
ties to support children’s understandings. Their pedagogical knowledge allows
them to make decisions about when to intervene, how to help, when to model,
when to reteach a concept, and so on. Their professional knowledge allows them to
analyse the effects of their practices on different children.

Discursive Work
Teachers who make a significant positive difference to children’s literacy learning
think carefully about what they say and write and how they say and write it. Much
of the work of teaching is done discursively. These teachers know that their words
matter, and they may offer repeated explanations, modifying their language to
better connect with students. They time their introductions, explanations, feed-
back, and revisions carefully, allowing spaces for children to think, rehearse, and
contribute. They make it clear that they are aware of the effects of words, and they
make this explicit, thus making their own metacognitive and metalinguistic strate-
gies available to children. They ask genuine questions and seek information, clari-
fication, and elaboration in the context of specific tasks and activities. As well as
being conscious of their own language use in moment-to-moment classroom inter-
actions, such teachers choose their words carefully in setting assignments, explain-
ing procedures, and providing feedback to students.

Relational Work
Teachers who make a significant positive difference to children’s literacy learning
have respect for the children in their classrooms. They believe in their students’ po-
 PEDAGOGY AS WORK 63

tential, have high expectations, and make sophisticated academic demands. Re-
spect is evident in how they respond to children, the teachers’ body language as
well as their explicit verbal messages. Respect is afforded too to children’s families
and communities. The communication between them is reciprocal and dynamic.
They have a genuine interest in children’s lives and knowledges. In the classroom
these teachers overtly recognise children’s specific accomplishments.

Institutional Work
Teachers who make a significant positive difference to children’s literacy learning
ensure that the routines, resources, physical facilities, and organisational practices
of their institutions work for students, parents, and coworkers. Important learning
resources that are not available in children’s homes and communities are (as far as
possible) budgeted for, including traditional materials (books and stationery), digi-
tal materials (Internet access, computers, cameras), and budgets for excursions and
camps. They ensure that the budget for human resources is utilised to increase the
ratio of adults to children and to focus on particularly demanding educative activi-
ties in well-resourced periods—that is, when it is possible for extra adult helpers or
teachers to assist. They anticipate interruptions as much as they can and try to
minimise them. Wherever possible they enlist tangible support from school leaders
and colleagues. In other words such teachers actively read the politics and prac-
tices of everyday life in schools and work in ethical ways to make the most of what
their institution offers. They invest time and energy to create a good workplace for
themselves and their students.
In summarising how these teachers go about their work, I do not want to suggest
that a teacher should be a generic, effective technician or a heroic individual. Quite
the reverse. In each and every case these teachers are highly analytical, informed
by sound local knowledge and broad, deep professional knowledge. How teachers
orchestrate such repertoires of professional labour is not always “obvious.” These
forms of work are concerned not only with what teachers visibly do in school and
classroom contexts but also with how teachers think about their subject and under-
stand different young people as learners. That is, the ethics informing their labour
is contingent upon their dispositions and habitus. The ethical or moral deci-
sion-making aspect of teaching is frequently ignored in school reform models and
teacher education (Day, 2004; Deng, 2004).
What I took from long periods of observation and in-depth conversation with
these teachers is not necessarily self-evident. Student teachers and early-career
teachers who observed their teaching for short periods may notice the extent to
which these teachers “have the children with them”—intellectually, psychologi-
cally, and emotionally. How to replicate such pedagogical interactions, however, is
frequently difficult to deduce. Apprentice teachers in such classrooms would need
more than a chance to look and listen, although that would also be valuable. They
would need extended discussion with experienced teachers and peers; theoretical
64 COMBER

resources about pedagogy, learning, and culture; and opportunities to develop a

professional identity and associated repertoires of practice and to constantly revise
these. If teachers’ work is “fundamentally interpretive, political and theoretical as
well as strategic, practical and local” (Cochran-Smith, 2000, p. 18), then teacher
education needs to provide the space and resources for all teachers to explore
across these dimensions.

TEACHER EDUCATION AND TURN-AROUND

PEDAGOGIES

Following the longitudinal studies of children’s literacy development and a synthe-

sis of the kinds of teaching that made a difference to children in high-poverty
schools, I have worked collaboratively with Barbara Kamler of Deakin University
and two groups of teacher–researchers in two states of Australia to investigate sys-
tematically how unequal outcomes manifest in their workplaces and how they ad-
dressed this problem (Comber & Kamler, 2004; Kamler & Comber, 2005). Impor-
tantly, these communities included teachers in their first years of professional
practice and late-career teachers who had been teaching for 25 to 35 years. We re-
cruited the early-career teachers first and asked them to invite an experienced
teacher to be their mentor and coresearcher for the project. Teachers Investigate
Unequal Literacy Outcomes: Cross-Generational Perspectives, a 3-year longitudi-
nal study, was funded by the Australian Research Council from 2002 to 2004.
What was crucial in helping the children who were having the most trouble with
school literacies was the teachers’ changing their thinking of children, families,
and literacies. They needed to short-circuit the deficit discourses about what “these
kids cannot do”; some of the teachers needed to overturn a fear of different lan-
guages, cultures, and races. Part of this shift occurred through reading and discuss-
ing productive and positive metaphors about children’s educational potential—for
example, Thomson’s notion of “virtual school bags” (2002) and Luis Moll’s
“funds of knowledge” (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992). The next key
move involved teachers’ seriously talking with and listening to children and their
families: sometimes it meant visiting a child at home; sometimes it meant a tele-
phone chat or parents’ coming to the school. In all cases it meant starting from the
parents’ or child’s perspective. Sometimes it meant observing the child in a differ-
ent activity context (playing in the yard, chatting with siblings at home, working
with a peer). All of the teachers needed to think ambitiously beyond minimalist
and normative renditions of literacy and towards contemporary communicative
practices. Teachers in the project were remarkably successful at reconnecting with
alienated and at-risk students in their classes. To conclude I draw out the key fea-
tures of the project as a site for “teacher education”—induction and renewal.
 PEDAGOGY AS WORK 65

As a site for teacher education, the project was designed to be an opportunity for
reciprocal mentoring for one of the most difficult problems teachers face—un-
equal student outcomes. We anticipated that the early-career teachers would bring
with them energy, recent theoretical engagement with literacy (such as literacy as a
sociocultural practice, critical literacy, multiliteracies), optimism, everyday famil-
iarity with new information and communication technologies, and perhaps a close-
ness to youth culture. We had hoped that the late-career teachers would bring with
them their years of experience as problem solvers, evidence of their commitment,
knowledges assembled over time, and a healthy scepticism towards promises of
quick fixes. As researchers, we brought our respect for teachers working in diffi-
cult situations, a passion for empirical classroom inquiry, long careers as literacy
educators, and optimism that poor and culturally diverse young people can assem-
ble complex and worthwhile literacies at school. The cross-generational aspects
were key. The project engaged people at widely diverse points of their educational
careers, and this difference was treated as a beneficial resource. Unlike some mod-
els of mentoring and induction that treat the novice as “a dummy” needing to be
helped, with this model we anticipated that these inexperienced teachers, while
having urgent questions that they wanted to address (in areas such as behaviour
management, communicating with parents, and assessment), would also have dif-
ferent perspectives, assumptions, and ambitions.
As university-based researchers interested in making a difference to the literacy
learning of disadvantaged children, we made ourselves available for dialogue with
classroom teachers as cotheorists, coresearchers, and coanalysts who were work-
ing collaboratively on a shared problem. We assisted the teachers in talking
in-depth with each other, children, and parents. We assisted the teachers with the
designing and implementation of curriculum and pedagogic change and with the
recording and assessment of its effects. The teachers talked to each other and with
us regularly in their schools and outside schools. The subject matter of those con-
versations were specific children’s literacy practices, ways of operating, and con-
crete situated pedagogies. My point here with respect to teacher education is that
the project was reciprocal, dialogic, and inquiry based. All participants were posi-
tioned as being knowledgeable but not having “final solutions” or even “best prac-
tice.” Rather than a passing on of assumed knowledge, there was a collective re-
membering and reassessment of what we knew and what we did not know and a
collective imagining and planning of what might make a sustainable difference to
different young people.
These early-career teachers had undertaken a range of teacher preservice de-
grees in different universities and across different states. They were all “well quali-
fied” to teach. However, the kinds of learning that they did in the context of their
work as new teachers and with support from school and university-based mentors
indicated to us the need for ongoing and continual teacher education and “critical
support.” As Duncan-Andrade (2004) pointed out, “good pre-service training will
66 COMBER

simply delay the problem of attrition rather than create a cadre of lifelong profes-
sional teachers” (p. 347). Working on problems that were specific to their commu-
nities and that affected their workplaces in particular ways was crucial (Kumashiro
et al., 2004). Cochran-Smith (2004) asked how teacher educators can both prepare
teachers to “fit” into standards-driven systems and at the same time question
schools’ propensity to fail certain groups of children. A strength of the cross-gen-
erational study was that early-career and late-career teachers discussed these prior-
ities, contradictions, and pressures and developed strategic responses within
schools and ethical action in the classrooms (e.g., Boyer, Maney, Kamler, &
Comber, 2004). These competing agendas and debates need to be the object of
study for teachers at all stages. The complexity of teaching as intellectual, moral,
and political work needs to be foregrounded, and teachers need time to learn, to re-
search, and to become “professional” (Kumashiro et al., 2004). As Cochran-Smith
(2004) argued, this means making

teaching harder and more complicated for teaching candidates (rather than easier and
more straightforward) by recognising its inevitable complexity and uncertainty and
by acknowledging the fact that there are often concurrent and competing claims to
justice operating in the decisions teacher candidates must make from moment to mo-
ment, day to day. (pp. 204–205)

Working for extended periods with teachers committed to making a difference

has confirmed for me the need for teacher education to take place in multiple
sites—schools (affluent, middle, poor), communities, leisure situations, and
workplaces. It should also involve extended interactions with different groups of
people—children of different ages, cultures, and class and from different places;
their parents and other caregivers; and teachers, teacher educators, and research-
ers. It is in moving across different institutional locations and kinds of activities
that teachers get to see children differently and to think differently about what
kinds of learning matter and how. Several of the early-career teachers reported
alienation and despair among the experienced teachers in their schools. Sometimes
they actively discouraged the pedagogical risk taking of the newcomers and
scoffed at their high expectations. Some young teachers were sent to incredibly
conservative rural communities where they were ridiculed for the ways that they
dressed and were sexually harassed in the neighbourhood. Part of learning to be a
teacher is always about learning how to live in the wider community as well as in
the workplace. If in teacher education we are forced to pretend that teaching is sim-
ply a transmission of skills and facts to docile subjects, then the profession as a
whole and individual teachers in particular are in diabolical trouble. It is not clear
that the next generation of teachers will show up and, much less likely, stay for the
long haul.
 PEDAGOGY AS WORK 67

REFERENCES

Boyer, I., Maney, B., Kamler, B., & Comber, B. (2004). Reciprocal mentoring across generations: Sus-
taining professional development for English teachers. English Teaching: Practice and Critique,
3(2), 139–150.
Cochran-Smith, M. (2000). The future of teacher education: Framing the questions that matter.
Teaching Education, 11(1), 13–24.
Cochran-Smith, M. (2004). Defining the outcomes of teacher education: What’s social justice got to do
with it? Asia-Pacific Journal for Teacher Education, 32(3), 193–212.
Comber, B., Badger, L., Barnett, J., Nixon, H., & Pitt, J. (2002). Literacy after the early years: A longi-
tudinal study. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 25(2), 9–23.
Comber, B., & Barnett, J. (Eds.). (2003). Look again: Longitudinal studies of children’s literacy learn-
ing. Newtown, New South Wales, Australia: Primary English Teachers Association.
Comber, B., & Kamler, B. (2004). Getting out of deficit: Pedagogies of reconnection. Teaching Educa-
tion, 15(3), 293–310.
Cowley, S. (2004). A-Z of teaching. London: Continuum.
Day, C. (2004). Change agendas: The roles of teacher educators. Teaching Education, 15(2), 145–158.
Deng, Z. (2004). Beyond teacher training: Singaporean teacher preparation in the era of new educa-
tional initiatives. Teaching Education, 15(2), 159–173.
Duncan-Andrade, J. M. R. (2004). Towards teacher development for the urban in urban teaching.
Teaching Education, 15(4), 339–350.
Green, B. (1988). Subject-specific literacy and school learning: A focus on writing. Australian Journal
of Education, 32(2), 156–179.
Green, B., & Reid, J. (2004). Teacher education for rural-regional sustainability: Changing agendas,
challenging futures, chasing chimeras. Asia-Pacific Journal for Teacher Education, 32(3), 255–273.
Hill, S., Comber, B., Louden, W., Rivalland, J., & Reid, J. (2002). 100 children turn 10: A longitudinal
study of literacy development from the year prior to school to the first four years of school. Canberra,
Australia: Department of Education, Science, and Training. Retrieved June 7, 2005, from
http://www.detya.gov.au/schools/publications/2002/100childturn10/100childturn10.htm
Johnson, S. M., & the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers. (2004). Finders and keepers:
Helping new teachers survive and thrive in our schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Kamler, B., & Comber, B. (2005). Designing turn-around pedagogies and contesting deficit assump-
tions. In B. Comber & B. Kamler (Eds.), Turn-around pedagogies: Literacy interventions for at-risk
students (pp. 1–14). Newtown, New South Wales, Australia: Primary English Teachers Association.
Kelley, M. W. (2003). Rookie teaching for dummies. New York: Wiley.
Kumashiro, K. K., Baber, S. A., Richardson, E., Ricker-Wilson, C., & Wong, P. L. (2004). Preparing teach-
ers for anti-oppressive education: International movements. Teaching Education, 15(3), 257–275.
Lankshear, C., Gee, J. P., Knobel, M., & Searle, C. (1997). Changing literacies. Philadelphia: Open
University Press.
Luke, A., Luke. C., & Mayer, D. (2000). Redesigning teacher education. Teaching Education, 11(1),
5–11.
MacGillvray, L., Ardell, A. L., Curwen, M. S., & Palma, J. (2004). Colonized teachers: Examining the
implementation of a scripted reading program. Teaching Education, 15(2), 131–144.
Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a
qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory and Practice, 31, 132–141.
Morrison, C. (2005). Teaching secrets study guide: How to become an ace at teaching, using my
easy step-by-step system, without years of endless frustration! Retrieved April 30, 2005, from
http://www.teaching-secrets.com
Thomson, P. (2002). Schooling the rustbelt kids: Making the difference in changing times. Sydney, Aus-
tralia: Allen and Unwin.