Teacher Professionalism in a Privatised World: Time to Reclaim Teaching?

TEACHER PROFESSIONALISM IN A PRIVATISED WORLD:

TIME TO RECLAIM TEACHING?

UNIVERSITY OF STAFFORDSHIRE10TH JANUARY 2013.

Howard StevensonUniversity of Lincoln

hstevenson@lincoln.ac.uk

#reclaimteaching

When a professional student of social affairs writes a political book, his first duty is to plainly say so. This is a political book. I do not wish to disguise this by describing it, as I might perhaps have done, by the more elegant and ambitious name of an essay in social philosophy. But, whatever the name, the essential point remains that all I have to say is derived from certain ultimate values. I hope I have adequately discharged in the book itself a second and no less important duty: to make it clear beyond doubt what these ultimate values are on which the whole argument depends.

I have come to regard the writing of this book as a duty I must not evade.

The battle of ideas . . .

F A Hayek, (1944) Preface to The Road to Serfdom

It’s a revolution . . .

And it is happening right now, right beneath our feet.

Local Authority Officer, Interview, July 2012

Traditional Professionalis

m

New Professionalis

m

Anti-Professionalis

m

Progressive Professionalis

m

The war on welfare . . . . . . and the battle of ideas

In contrast to the economic process, it is a fundamental principle of the welfare state that the market value of an individual cannot be the measure of his [sic] right to welfare. The central function of welfare, in fact, is to supersede the market by taking goods and services out of it, or in some way to control and modify its operations so as to produce a result that it would not have produced itself.

(Marshall 1981: 107, original 1950)

Local Government

Teachers &Teacher Unions

Central State

‘a national system . . .locally administered.’

Post-war partnership and the social democratic settlement

I have heard it said that the existence in this country of 146 strong vigorous LEAs safeguards democracy and lessens the risk of dictatorship. No doubt this is true but an even greater safeguard is the existence of a quarter of a million teachers who are free to decide what should be taught and how it should be taught.

(Ron Gould, NUT General Secretary, 1954)

This quote and from The Schoolmaster in Gerald Grace, ‘Teachers and the State in Britain: A Changing Relation’, in Teachers: The Culture and Politics

of Work, ed. M. Lawn and G. Grace (Lewes, UK: Falmer Press, 1987)

Post-war Partnership - the basis of the settlement

• Professional Issues– Curriculum– Pedagogy‘the golden age of teacher (non)-control of the curriculum’ – Lawton (1980:22)

• Industrial Issues– Pay– Conditions of service

Professional Autonomy

Collective Bargaining

The freedom of teachers in their classrooms is a strongly held professional value in England and Wales. It has always been a source of pride to the profession and a very proper one, that in this country the teacher has the inalienable right to decide what toteach and how to teach it.

The Schoolmaster (1960)

Professionalism and professional autonomy

• Professional autonomy• Professional knowledge and expertise• Commitment to professional learning• Education of the profession by the profession• Self-regulating• ‘Trust’• Commitment to public service

Traditional professionalism . . .

Many useful sources – see Johnson (1972), Larson (1977).

Teachers, administrators and union officials are no different from the rest of us. They may be parents, too, sincerely desiring a fine school system. However, their interests as teachers, as administrators, and union officials are different from their interests as parents whose children they teach. Their interests may be served by greater centralization and bureaucratization even if the interests of the parents are not – indeed, one way in which those interests are served is precisely by reducing the power of parents.

Friedman and Friedman (1980: 147)

Anti-professionalism . . . ?

Education has proved easier for the producers (teacher and administrators) to capture than other industries, partly because its shortcomings can be disguised by jargon. The school with poor examination results can claim that knowledgeable educationalists nowadays hold ‘school spirit’ or ‘awareness’ more important. Although the consumers (parents and children) demand examination passes and other measureable achievements from their schools, education producers are able to argue that they, as ‘professionals’, know better . . . .Adam Smith Institute Omega Report (1980) (see also Black Papers)

New Right critique and the attack on ‘producer capture’

…a subtle set of linked measures are to be relied on to have the desired effect – that is to push the whole system towards a degree at least, of privatisation, establishing a base which could be further exploited later.

Simon (1987:13)

1988 – Education Reform ActNational Curriculum, standardised testing, Local Management of Schools, opting-out, league tables

New Right critique, ‘producer capture’ and and the creation of the educational marketplace

See also Stevenson (2011) and Guardian (2012)

1. Identification of the ‘one best way’ through scientific analysis and design of work• Work as ‘laws, rules, and even . . .mathematical formulae.’ (Taylor 1947:

90)

2. Identification features of the ideal worker – based on approach as per (1) above

3. Locate ideal worker (1) and match to scientifically designed task (2) - recruitment and division of labour

4. Link pay to productivity – reward and control

New Right critique, ‘producer capture’ and the new (scientific) managerialism

• Focus on ‘the core task of teaching and learning’

• New accountability regimes– Professional Standards– Performance Management– Performance Pay

• Focus on CPD

• Social Partnership Stevenson et al. 2007

New Labour and new professionalism . . .

. . . more markets and managerialism

One teacher’s story . . .

The story of an outstanding/very good/good/satisfactory [delete as appropriate] teacher . . . in her own words Source: research interview 2007 (reported in Carter et al. (2010)

If I talk about how my job has got easier in the various

ways. Yes, I have more non-contacts. This year I have more

non-contacts than I did last year. I had 8 non-contacts - I

have more this year. But how do you use them? If I take my

role as a subject leader, what am I supposed to do in those

non-contacts? In those non-contacts I’m supposed to be

doing the scrutiny of work, I’m supposed to be doing

lesson observation, also there’s my own work to do. So

although it looks like I have more, each one is quite full.

On workforce reform . . .

Leading and managing are two totally different things and also the nature of my job is, I mean I’m much better on statistics now and data than I ever was, that’s another thing that I had to teach myself to do. It particularly comes into Performance Management, you know, value added. So prior to it, I work it all out for them [staff] and talk about where their value added is and the positive and the negative and you have to be confident when you’re talking to them, but also make them feel at ease with what they’re doing - you just manage it in an hour.

On leading and managing . . .

Now that’s because they [staff] know that they’re being measured by it . . .

it’s that data that might be whether they go through [pay progression] or not. They’re not easy conversations or hours to have with people. . .

Their careers, their livelihood, but most importantly the money that they earn, could be down to you and I didn’t go into it with that. I’m not personnel trained as far as that is concerned.

it’s up to you whether they [staff] go on to the next [pay] threshold . . . it’s a pay thing and . . . you have these conversations with people which are about their targets and the first objective is ‘what target you’re going to set’. People are obviously upset because their statistics are affected by the students who are there.

And you’re looking at the whole child and it’s all about building that relationship which has been the ethos of [this] school. Which is very hard to do when I’m also expected to be as a core Head of English to be able to be looking at data, moving the department forward, the school is measured on the English and Maths scores. So I would actually say no, I’m a satisfactory tutor. I think I’ve gone from being a good tutor to a satisfactory one.

On the students . . .

Now there are demands put on you about teaching your subject. But my personal feeling is to be a good teacher you have to have a relationship with these children and, and they want it. They need it. I mean they don’t have to like you but you have to have the respect, you have to have the time to build the relationships with them.

. . . but maybe we don’t have the time to build those relationships because statistics say, data says, target says, the child becomes a number that you have to teach.

it’s all about the statistics, their data, their targets as opposed to building the relationship with the child.’

. . . You need to be a good teacher, then it is not just the number, it’s the whole child. But you have to juggle it.

You have relationships with people in your tutor group and then you may teach them and there’s nothing better than a tutor group and then you teach that person in your tutor group. That’s a double whammy, that’s great.

My role every week is to make contact, apart from that just calling their name, about something, knowing what’s going on because that’s how you move students on, to make every single one of them feel that someone notices them.

I had an issue - this is an example of an issue. I had some Year 10 and 11 girls, make up, clothes, all of this, so I dealt with it and I took them to one side to speak to them in tutor time on the Thursday. And they reacted very, very badly to what I said and all sorts of things. And I was quite hurt by it. So what came out? I saw the parents - their response was ‘They don’t feel you care about them any more. You’re not there for them any more’. And so relationships that I had built up, I’m not able to build them up in the same way. And I’m not saying that they dislike the person who takes them for tutor time but they actually don’t feel comfortable because the nature of it is you build a long relationship with these students and I, I know that’s gone.

I know if you had to grade me, as we do grade each other now, I think I’m a, a good subject leader and that has to be rated on the fact of the percentages. The school might say I’m very good - the Ofsted report said it’s ‘outstanding’, the leadership, but to do that how can I be a tutor? How can I give all that my tutor group requires?

On herself . . .

This White Paper signals a radical reform of our schools. We have no choice but to be this radical if our ambition is to be world-class. The most successful countries already combine a high status teaching profession; high levels of autonomy for schools; a comprehensive and effective accountability system and a strong sense of aspiration for all children, whatever their background. Tweaking things at the margins is not an option.Reforms on this scale are absolutely essential if our children are to get the education they deserve.

Foreword pp4-5Download it here

The Coalition narrative . . . the ‘enemies of promise’.

You can't have room for innovation and the pressure for excellence without having some real discipline and some fear on the part of the providers that things may go wrong if they don't live up to the aims that society as a whole is demanding of them.

Oliver Letwin

Speaking at KPMG headquarters, 2011

One school federation’s story . . .

Read the full story here

We know we are making progress when we hear the opposition from vested interests - from those in trade unions who put adults interests before children’s, from those in local government who put protecting their power before fulfilling children's potential, from those who have acquiesced in a culture of low expectations who resist any form of accountability for failure.

Michael Gove, 10th May 2012, Brighton College.

Michael Gove goes to war . . .

• DfE dismissal of ‘dialogue arrangements’

• Abolition of national pay scales (achieved through STRB) and announcement of ‘war footing’ at DfE.

• Encouraging headteachers to confront teachers engaged in ‘work to contract’ industrial action

• Continual denigration of teacher unions and active encouragement of anti-union alternatives

The war on teachers and their unions . . .

Educational futures - there are alternatives . . .

MORE:• Personalisation• Trust-based

accountability• Collaboration• Pedagogy• Professionalism

LESS:• Standardisation• Test-based

accountability• Competition• Technology• Bureaucracy

Sahlberg (2012) . . . or watch

Good teaching is . . .

Business Capital Model:

• Emotionally demanding but technically simple

• Requires only moderate intellectual ability

• Hard at first, but easily mastered

• Driven by data about ‘what works’

• Due to enthusiasm, raw talent, hard work

• Often replaceable by online instruction

Professional Capital Model:

• Technically sophisticated and difficult

• Requires high levels of education and long periods of training

• Perfected through continuous improvement

• Based on wise judgement, informed by evidence and experience

• Reflects collective effort and achievement

• Maximises, mediates and moderates online instruction

Adapted from Hargreaves and Fullan (2012:14)

• Values-led – moral purpose and social justice• Research informed and research engaged• Collaborative and collective• Democratic and public• Independent and activist• Within, and beyond, the classroom

Progressive professionalism – a professionalism worth fighting for . . .

Reclaiming teaching . . .

Presented and discussed previously at:

• University of Glasgow, Scotland, Teacher Education Teachers’ Work Conference, 8th June 2012.

• University of Leicester, England, 30th June 2012.• Mayo Education Centre, Republic of Ireland, 9th July 2012.• University of Lincoln, England, 23rd July 2012.

This presentation available at:

• http://www.slideshare.net/howardstevenson

Keep discussing at:

• @twitter #reclaimteaching• www.howardstevenson.org