Death (& Taxes) & Furniture

I ended my last blog with preliminary considerations of pre-service teacher interpretative repertoires. In my limited dealings with this perspective on discourse, interpretative repertoires have always stood out to me as a particularly interesting analytical approach. However, to a certain extent I find the idea to be vague and potentially superficial when put into practice (specifically by me). In this blog, I will outline my ideas and questions regarding interpretative repertoires and make further considerations regarding pre-service teacher interpretative repertoires.

Interpretative Repertoire Is just Glorified Coding. At first glance, this was my hesitant takeaway of interpretative repertoires. Seeing as it comes up in just about every reading, my cumulative definition of interpretative repertoires is: a shared lexicon, including idioms, expressions, and metaphors, that constructs, legitimizes, and stabilizes social action and interaction. This is in contrast to cognitive representations of the social world that are fixed, intrapersonal, and arranged by mental furniture. I epistemologically agree with this move away from cognitive representations toward intersubjective and occasioned discursive representations. Yet, I am somewhat confused as to how to deal with this analytically. As in seemingly all descriptions of interpretative repertoires, one begins with Gilbert & Mulkay’s analysis of scientists’ discourse. This work looked at the ways in which scientists’ informal and academic talk organized knowledge, practice, and belief. Essentially, two interpretative repertoires were distilled (empiricist and contingent) that located actions (i.e., “how to do science") and beliefs (i.e., “what is good science") as contextual in nature.

Here is where things get tricky. Interpretative repertoires become a glorified coding scheme when analysis simply identities the presence of particular interpretative repertoires. Potter and Wetherell push beyond this notion, “we need to know, first, the uses and functions of different repertories, and second, the problems thrown up by their existence” (p. 149). Again, all well and good, but let’s stay with scientists’ discourse a little while longer. I am under the impression that Gilbert & Mulkay (or maybe just DP proponents) would not posit that empiricist repertoires and contingent repertories are reflective of a broader institutionalized science (a "science" objectively different from scientists' talk). On the contrary, "science" is variable and located in discourse (but is perhaps made stable by institutional or field-level structures). Therefore, the presence of interpretative repertoires is not analytically sufficient in understanding how localized talk is in reference to entire fields, ideologies, etc. However, through how interpretative repertoires are variously enacted as resources for validating belief, establishing membership, or making attributions might allow us to make claims about non-local phenomena (remaining steadfast that all this is happening at the interactional level). This is all because interpretative repertoires are not linked to convenient pre-existing social groups (unlike other forms of membership categorization). Right?

Here is where P&W stop and don't really give us a run down on how to "do" it. Here's my take. First we “code” the data, looking for metaphor, imagery, and rhetorical strategy that may compose an interpretative repertoire. From there, we can analysis how the interpretative repertoire is “used” discursively. Next, we can investigate variability in when/how an interpretative repertoire is accessed and used within and across social contexts (we, of course, are under the assumption that by its very nature will be used in conflicting ways). Finally, we can make the analytical move toward understanding how interpretative repertoires stabilize the status quo or reproduce social practices in specific groups of individuals. Have I gone beyond the surface of “simply” coding? How do I know if this orients with participants realities? Does that even matter (I’d say yes)?

Pre-service Teacher Interpretative Repertoires. I imagine that work similar to G&M can be done with pre-service teachers (and in-service teachers) interpretative repertoires. Before this week’s readings, I was thinking about pre-service teacher interpretative repertoires referencing “student” and “teacher.” I was working under the assumption that pre-service teachers used interpretative repertoires to talk about students from their lived experiences and as a means to talk about their future students. Moreover, I assumed that pre-service teachers would have access to some form of “teacher” interpretative repertoires – it would be difficult to conceptualize future students without conceptualizing one's self in the role of teacher. Essentially, I had come up with three potential interpretative repertoires: lived experience as student, future students' experience, and perspectives on teaching. I’ll save further elaboration for a future blog, but briefly I see these interpretative repertoires as potentially powerful in justifying what “is” and what “could be.”

However, I think there could be more to it than this. For example, I’ve noticed anecdotally that pre-service teachers enact a variety of perspectives on their future profession. For example, I often hear an “idealist” perspective on learning and teaching, such as meeting the needs of diverse learners. Yet, just as common is a “realist” perspective on learning and teaching, marked by complaints about standardized testing or the rigid structures and expectations of school. Like in science, each may be used to best fit the needs of social interaction. As potential data, I have access to story games talk (which I have not yet analyzed through the lens of interpretative repertoires) and pre-service teachers’ written philosophy of teaching. Like G&M, I could compare formal academic discourse with informal (play-based, not interviews) talk-in-interaction.

A couple questions to end with:

1) Is first stand DP a viable approach or is it "dated?" That is, are most researchers working within strands two and three?

2) Have interpretative repertoires been used to make connections with claims about the self? In other words, can interpretative repertoires be used to understand identity (and therefore, if justified, learning)?