Accounting for educational equality: the cultural politics of Samoan paraprofessionals' representations of pedagogy in state-designated disadvantagedschools and communities in Australia

This paper reports a study of the accounts of pedagogic work provided by Sa moan paraprofessionals responsible for forging lines of communication betwe en government secondary schools in an Australian city and state-designated disadvantaged local communities. The paraprofessionals are viewed as repres entatives of the imagined communities constructed around schools in officia l state discourses on educational disadvantage and equality. It is shown th at the discourses on Samoan pedagogy spoken by the paraprofessionals are ap propriated from a highly conflictual field of anthropological and historica l knowledge-production. Qualitative analysis of interview data provided by the paraprofessionals indicates that all interviewees emphasized difference s in the form and content of pedagogy between the Australian school and the Samoan home and church, attributing these differences to various relations of power and control. In conclusion, it is proposed that the paraprofessio nals' accounts should not be read as simply true or untrue, but in terms of their specificity as input to institutional pedagogic work-input with the potential to bring cultural difference into being as it is acted on by teac hers and other educational agents.