DISCOURSES IN COMPETITION ON THE TEACHER’S ROLE IN HIGH SCHOOL

Abstract

The article describes the competitive discourses on the role of teachers, identified in a high school, in Romania, based on an analysis of 11 individual interviews with teachers. The references to the role of teachers, in the teachers` identifying stories, revealed the following competitive discourses: a teacher should transmit knowledge versus a teacher should enhance the students` understanding; a teacher should grade `objectively` versus a teacher should grade `flexible`. Moreover, the analysis shows that, in the studied high school, the dominant discourse assigns to teachers, the role to transmit knowledge and to grade `flexible`. To grade `flexible` means to accommodate the parents`, principals` and colleagues` expectations to give good grades to some students or all students, in general. This discourse is privileged in the studied field by the fact that while most universities in Romania used to admit students based on the average grade of high school years, informally, the high school gives students and parents the possibility to choose their teachers only based on formal asking and class consensus.

Keywords

• curriculum
• discourse analysis
• grading students
• theoretical high school
• university admission