THE FUTURE OF TEACHING:PROFESSIONALISM, PARTNERSHIPS AND

PRIVATISATION

IONAD OIDEACHAIS MHAIGH EOMAYO EDUCATION CENTRE, CO. MAYO, REPUBLIC OF IRELAND

9TH JULY 2012.

Howard StevensonUniversity of Lincoln

hstevenson@lincoln.ac.uk

#reclaimteaching

A lecture dedicated to the memory and legacy of Professor Brian Simon

(University of Leicester)

My journey started here

No secure profession has a session on whether it is a

profession.

Walter Bennis, MIT quoted in Crook (2008:10)

Teacher professionalism

The ‘good’ teacher

What is education for?

Teachers’ work

Important to recognise how discourses are shaped by global and local factors.

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

Teaching as profession? – trait theory

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

Teachers are workers, teaching is work, and the school is a workplace. (Connell, 1985:69)

A focus on . . .

The task of teaching – what do teachers do?The division of labour – who does what?Autonomy and control – who decides who does what and how is performance ensured?

Teaching as a labour process . . .

See also Ozga and Lawn (1981), Smyth (2001) , Reid (2003), Ingersoll (2003), Carter and Stevenson (2012).

Teaching is a labour process without an object. At best it has an object so intangible – the minds of the kids, of their capacity to learn – that it cannot be specified in any but vague and metaphorical ways. A great deal of work is done in schools, day in and day out, but this work does not produce any things. Nor does its, like other white collar work, produce visible and quantifiable effects – so many pensions paid, so many dollars turned over, so many patients cured. The ‘outcomes of teaching’, to use the jargon of educational research, are notoriously difficult to measure. (Connell, 1985:70)

1. Post-war welfarism and the social democratic settlement

2. New Right critique and the attack on ‘producer capture’

3. Social partnership and the New (Re-)Modelled Army

4. Privatisation and the new educational marketplace

Teacher professionalism and teacher/state relations – an historical perspective

Stevenson (2009)

Local Government

Teachers &Teacher Unions

Central State

‘a national system . . .locally administered.’

Post-war partnership and the social democratic settlement

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

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 next slide from . . . 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)

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

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)

1987 – abolition of collective bargaining1988 – Education Reform Act

National Curriculum, standardised testing, Local Management of Schools, opting-out

New Right critique, ‘producer capture’ and quasi-markets

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

The principles of Scientific Management – and the triumph of the ‘one best way’

The goal: economic success

in a global economy

Economic success requires

educational success

PISA is the global measure of

education success

Therefore . . .focus on core subjects

. . . and test relentlessly

The New Labour narrative. . . .

Social Partnership and the New (Re)-Modelled Army

• 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. 2008

Government has attempted to standardise practice, showing a lack of trust in the profession and a denial of complexity. It conceptualises CPD as a management tool to ensure good classroom practice, and is seeking to embed it within the management toolkit, including performance management, pay progression and contract. Items of training are to be imposed on teachers according only to immediate corporate needs . . .

ATL (2005: 3)

The CPD you are driven to do by your headteacher, particularly if you have a headteacher like mine, is stultifyingly boring and doesn’t give me any new skills at all. Its deadly . . .and its tedious . . .and its ‘let’s jump through a few more hoops’, and if I don’t do it right I’ll get hit with a big stick. It is horrible.

But I like learning. I enjoy learning. I need that stimulus.

Union Learning Representativequoted in Stevenson (2012a)

UnitaristIntegrativeBroadCombinedOpen/on-goingConsensual agreementTacit/implicitInformalWhole staffCentralisedExit (voluntary or forced)

PluralistDistributiveNarrowSeparateClosed/cyclicalNegotiated agreementAcknowledged/explicitFormalTeachersCentralisedDispute (industrial action)

Industrial relations paradigmBargaining typologyBargaining scopeNegotiation/consultationBargaining scheduleOutcomesIntra-organisational bargainingConstitutionEmployee coverageBargaining levelConflict resolution

Social PartnershipCollective Bargaining

Stevenson (2012b – in press)

I don’t think any of us honestly anticipated when we signed the National Agreement that what we would become is a branch of the DfES. But in many ways we are. [1].

The fact is we’re talking about incorporation and only a fool would try to deny it. I mean that, but it’s a calculated acceptance from the union point of view. From my point of view, on the part of [union] it’s a calculated acceptance of incorporation because of the benefits it brings. If the disadvantages ever got to outweigh the advantages then we would walk away. [2]

. . . it takes quite a bit of DfES resource to keep it going—but bloody hell,don’t they get a lot out of it . . . They say the TDA is the delivery arm ofthe DFES, actually we’re the bloody delivery arm. We bust a gut. [3]

It’s consenus by attrition . . . [4]

Views from inside the Social Partnership . . .

In Carter et al. (2010) – also reviewed here

New Labour . . . New professional . . .

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 . . .

The goal: economic success

in a global economy

Economic success requires

educational success

PISA is the global measure of education success

Therefore . . .focus on core subjects

. . . and test relentlessly

The Coalition narrative . . .

Michael Gove in his own words here – my views here.

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

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

It’s a revolution . . . and it is happening now, right beneath our feet

Local Authority Senior Officer interview (July 2012)

• Abandonment of Social Partnership• Erosion of national pay and conditions of service• New Professional Standards• New Appraisal/Capability Procedures• Expanded routes to QTS

• Teaching Schools• Teach First

• De-regulation of requirements for QTS• Free Schools

Privatisation and the new educational marketplace . . . implications for teacher professionalism

Working in Academyland– where is the accountability now?

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.

[teachers] too often make excuses for poor performance - it's just too hard, the children are too difficult, the families are too unsupportive, this job is far too stressful. Michael Wilshaw, 10th May 2012, Brighton College.

A ‘discourse of derision’ and the ‘enemies of promise’ . . .

There is no such thing as no alternative . . .

The culture of trust meant that education authorities and political leaders believe that teachers, together with principals, parents and their communities, know how to provide the best possible education for their children and youth. Trust can only flourish in an environment that is built on honesty, confidence, professionalism and good governance. Sahlberg (2012: 130)

. . . or watch

The future of teaching - there are alternatives . . .

MORE:• Personalisation• Trust-based

accountability• Collaboration• Pedagogy• Professionalism

LESS:• Standardisation• Test-based

accountability• Competition• Technology• Bureaucracy

Sahlberg (2012)

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

A new professionalism . . . ?

. . . or the Taylorisation of teaching?

• Narrow• Utilitarian• Divided• Compliant• Afraid• Unambitious• Joyless• . . . .

The new school system . . . ?

Pessimism of the intellect . . . optimism of the will . . .

. . . connecting ideas with activism to #reclaimteaching

This slideshow downloadable at www.slideshare.net/howardstevenson

@hstevenson10

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

• University of Leicester, Doctoral Study School, 30th June 2012

Continue the debate via hstevenson@lincoln.ac.uk

I

Variations of this presentation have been made at . . .