Teachers’ narratives within the performative pre-school:“We don’t sell us, because no one will buy us”

Author(s):

Annica LöfdahlHector Perez Prieto

Conference:

ECER 2008

Network:

23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

23 SES 08B, Teacher's Work - Teacher's Training

Paper Session

Time:

2008-09-12

08:30-10:00

Room:

B1 114

Chair:

Anne Larson

Contribution

One increasingly important part of teachers’ and school leaders’ work in pre-school, in accordance with the dominating logic based on marketization and competition, is to present their activities and to produce and present quality accounts of the same activities and to make it all visible to a public audience, such as parents, politicians as well as local and central school administrators. The aim is to describe how teachers and school leaders argue about their work with formulating their activities in publicly accessible documents, and the consequences of this work. This presentation is part of a larger project about ‘the performative pre-school’ where previous and ongoing studies are focusing on locally produced texts in relation to teacher professionalism and digital presentations of pre-school activities on the Internet. Taken together, results show how these texts, in different ways, govern the pre-school activities and the teacher profession. Presentations on the Internet tend to standardize and work as homogenizing on pre-schools activities, while the locally produced texts work as an arena, in which control and self discipline as well as resistance and new demands are possible to perform. Teachers in the contemporary pre-school are to be found within a field between control and resistance, where it is a necessity to be able to position one self and one’s activities in a way that enables demands on resources for this activity.

Method

This presentation is based on interviews with staff in the pre-school - pre-school teachers and their school leader - about their work with presenting their activities, on one hand in traditional planning and evaluation texts, on the other hand in quality accounts.

Expected Outcomes

The theoretical tools we use when analysing the interviews are positioning, technologies and governmentality. Results show that the staff, in their argumentations, move within a state of tension between control and resistance, by switching between flexibility and adjustment, through emphasizing their own priorities and by testing how the market might understand the pre-schools’ public accounts. “If we write that we are bad - it’s no good publicity” is an utterance from the school leader, while the teachers rather express resistance to ‘sell’ the pre-school activity. Instead, they find and discuss detours to present their activities, where possible failings are made opaque. Paradoxically, such ‘detour actions’ will at the same time be disciplinary as the teachers adjust to the logic of performativity.

References

Ball, S. J. (2006a). Education Policy and Social Class. The selected works of Stephen J Ball. London: Routledge. Ball, S. J. (2006b) Performativities and Fabrications in the Education Economy: Towards the Performative Society, pp 692-701. In Lauder, Brown, Dillabough & Halsey: Education, Globalization & Social Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dahlberg, G., & Moss, P. (2005). Ethics and Politics in Early Childhood Education. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Davies, B., & Harré, R. (1990). Positioning: The Discoursive Production of Selves. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 20(1), 43-63. Foucault, M. (1987) Övervakning och Straff. Lund: Arkiv Halldén, G. (2003). Barnperspektiv som ideologiskt eller metodologiskt begrepp. Pedagogisk Forskning i Sverige, 8(1-2), 12-23. Kampmann, J. (2004). Societalization of Childhood: New Opportunities? New Demands? In H. Brembeck, B. Johansson & J. Kampmann (Eds.), Beyond the competent child. Exploring contemporary childhoods in the Nordic welfare societies (pp. 127-152). Frederiksberg: Roskilde University Press. Lindblad, S., Lundahl, L., Lindgren, J., & Zackari, J. (2002). Educating for the New Sweden? Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 46(3), 283-303. Lindgren, A.-L. (2006). Från små människor till lärande individer: föreställningar om barn och barndom i förskoleprogram 1970-2000. Stockholm: Stiftelsen Etermedierna i Sverige. Löfdahl, A., & Pérez Prieto, H. (2006). Pedagogical work in pre-school – content and positions of the teachers’ activities. Paper presented at the Nordic Educational Research Association, Örebro, Sweden March, 9-12. Moss, P., & Petrie, P. (2002). From children's services to children's spaces. New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Pérez Prieto, H., Sahlström, F., Calander, F., Heikkilä, M. & Karlsson, M. 2003: Together? - on child care as a meeting place in an Swedish city. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, vol. 47:1, s. 43-62. Somers M. & Gibson, G. 1994. Reclaiming the Epistemological 'Other': Narrative and Social Constitution of Identity. In C. Calhoun (ed) Social Theory and the Politics of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell. Vincent, C., & Ball, S. J. (2006). Childcare, Choice and Class Practices. Middle-class parents and their children. London: Routledge. Whitty, G. (1997). Creating Quasi-Markets in Education: A Review of Recent Research in Parental Choice and School Autonomy in Three Countries. Review of Research in Education, 22, 3-47.

Author Information

Annica Löfdahl

Karlstad University

Faculty of arts and education

Karlstad

186

Hector Perez Prieto

Karlstad University

Faculty of Arts and Education

Karlstad

186

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