Investigating teachers' work in Singapore from interviews: An analysis based on discursive psychology

Abstract

Numerous challenges associated with the work of teaching have been reported around the globe, including from Singapore. Being a multi-dimensional problem, teachers' work has been investigated by diverse research methods especially through interviewing. However, educational studies that adopt constructionist approaches have been scarce in Singapore, and none have used it to investigate teachers' work here. This study based on Discursive Psychology, thus, analyzes interview data from school teachers in Singapore talking about their work. Specifically, interviewing is taken as a "topic," which prioritizes how talk is co-constructed, rhetorically motivated, and likely with contradictions over the disclosure of information (i.e., taking interviewing as "resource"); various discursive strategies perform diverse rhetorical functions for speakers. There are two interrelated contributions from this study: (i) an increased appreciation of a constructionist approach like Discursive Psychology during interviewing, and (ii) the opening of different perspectives and generative research questions about teachers' work in Singapore.