The teacher's body in secondary schools : the site of investigation

Abstract

In the educational system, one is frequently led to believe that teachers are perceived as non-humans, almost as if they are different from the rest of mankind. Teachers are constantly being forced to project images of how they should or should not be as if they are bodyless entities. This stereotyping of how they are to be conceived, perceived and constructed is of serious concern to all teachers. By examining such images of the body, we start realising how it has been marginalised in education. The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the image of the teacher's body. In doing so, one starts to discover how much the body and the pedagogy being used in class are intertwined. It will also throw light on how the body is disciplined and affected by the school curriculum. The literature of sociology on the body is drawn heavily from the work of Michel Foucault. The body according to Foucault is not just a site of investigation but possibly, the site of examination. The 'findings' obtained through this research show how power permeates the Maltese educational system and how teachers are affected. To be able to gather the information required for this study, qualitative methods of research were applied. I used observation to see how the teacher's behaved in the classroom, and interviews to ask the teachers questions on certain issues which I felt required more in-depth information. This research also required taking a post-structuralist view, where I had to deny the possibility of a 'truly' scientific study of 'human nature', to be able to understand Foucault's concepts better.