From double agents to double vision : marginalisation and potential transformation among three groups of open and distance teachers

This paper examines the professional lives of three groups of teachers whose work with non-traditional learners locates them in the field of open and distance learning. These are Queensland regional university teachers; Queensland adult literacy teachers; and English teachers of Travellers. All three groups are positioned - or position themselves - between their students and various incarnations of officialdom (university administration, vocational education and training syllabus documents, government agencies). This positioning constructs many of these teachers as ‘double agents’ (Harreveld, forthcoming), overtly complying with official bureaucracy while covertly ‘using the system’ to get what they can for their marginalised clients. For at least some of these teachers, their work as double agents shades into potential transfonnation [sic], whereby the multiple perspectives of students and systems are fused in a ‘double vision’ (Coombes, Simpson, Danaher & Danaher, 2001). The paper draws on ideas of Foucault (1979), de Certeau (1984) and Bourdieu (1993, 1998), and concludes by reflecting on the role of open and distance teaching in facilitating the move from double agents to double vision.