Teaching Philosophy in secondary education in México: Teachers’ intertextual links of the discipline

Abstract

Philosophy, as a school subject, has been present in secondary education in Mexico and other countries around the world. The teaching of this discipline is usually mediated by the use of school and disciplinary texts, as well as by the intertextual relationships that teachers build in the classroom. In this sense, teachers are an essential part of this process since they can enrich or limit the knowledge of the discipline depending on their academic background and teaching experience.

In this work we analyze the literacy practices promoted by two philosophy teachers in the classroom in two public secondary schools in Mexico. We use the concepts of intertextuality and cultural capital to analyze the network of meanings that the teacher constructs within the classroom. By intertextuality we consider the transposition of one system of meanings into another, whereby people construct a textual mosaic that becomes evident through their use of texts. By cultural capital we refer exclusively to the academic resources that are acquired through formal education.

The research method included ethnographic techniques such as non-participant class observations and in depth interviews, as well as document collection of texts used by the teachers for classroom instruction. We based our analysis on the New Literacy Studies and consider both the visible and hidden elements of the literacy practices observed. The results show that each teacher constructed a network of meanings that is qualitatively distinct, some with ideas rooted at the core of his discipline and others with interdisciplinary connections according to their academic background. In the results we show and discuss examples of each, as well as possible consequences for the teaching of disciplinary literacy in this school subject.