Cross-Generational and Historical Interviewing: Stories of Literacy Teachers' Work.

Primary school teachers are the group who must alter their pedagogy to improve the literacy performance of Australian children. Statistics suggest that 70% of Australian primary school teachers are female and that 41% are 45 or older and therefore likely to retire within the next decade. This paper seeks to document histories of women primary school teachers with regards to literacy curriculum. And the paper examines the nature of the mentoring relationship between young teachers and mentors. It explains that the historical interview techniques which were developed invited teachers to historicize their literacy curriculum and teaching within the wider conditions of their labor as women teachers during different phases of their teaching careers; four extended interviews were conducted in South Australia. The paper adds that the cross generational interview techniques were conducted in Melbourne by inviting four early career literacy teachers to access stories of older literacy teachers' work. The paper aims to give a sense of the data and themes emerging from the study at this point, but it mostly focuses on questions of method--on the experimentation with and analysis of two different methods of interviewing to examine their effectiveness--the work they accomplished and the quality of the data elicited. Includes 30 interview texts. Contains 11 references. (NKA)