ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how teachers work with/in and between the labels in the course of their day-to-day actions and interactions within the schools and classrooms of which they are part. Drawing from ethnographic data collected as a part of a case study of primary school literacy classes in an Inner-London school, it present interview and observation results to draw attention to the ways in which one focal teacher positioned herself within the school. The chapter analyzes how teachers carve out spaces for themselves within school and classroom settings at the same time as understanding how teachers operate within the larger structures of national policy. It describes the larger research project which was conducted in an inner-London primary school and focused on how literacy was understood and enacted in relation to a small group of English is an additional language (EAL) learner.
