Main Content
Session Information
28 SES 10, Sociologies of Mobile Students and Teachers
Paper Session
Contribution
Teacher education, teacher professional development and teachers’ working conditions have traditionally been the domain of states and sub-state public policy bodies. However, during the latest decade the attention directed towards teachers as key actors in ‘knowledge economies’ has been unprecedented. Especially the OECD and the World Bank have emerged as major transnational players and connected teachers to global policy agendas (Robertson 2012).
This paper forms part of a current PhD project which examines the construction of TALIS 2013, the second round of the OECD programme Teaching and Learning International Survey. TALIS focuses on working conditions, attitudes and practices among lower secondary school teachers.
The paper situates Finnish and English education policy in the European and global political economy and discusses whether teacher policy in these two countries is being increasingly de-nationalized. As an entry point for this discussion, the paper focuses on the agendas of the main political actors involved in TALIS 2013 on an international level and in England and Finland, including the OECD, the European Commission, state education authorities, international and national teacher unions, and private companies whose relationships to the state are often mediated through private-public partnerships. The paper thus adopts a multi-scalar perspective, paying attention to the relationships between organisations, institutions and companies with various horizons of action.
The paper answers the following research questions:
- How do the emergent geographies of governance in the global educational policy field signify the de-nationalization of policies related to the teaching profession in England and Finland?
- What are the associated normative implications with regard to the character of the teaching profession in England and Finland?
Theoretically, the paper draws on concepts from a range of social sciences, including education, sociology, geography, political science and political economy. In particular, two strands of political economy are applied in the discussion of the de-nationalization of teacher policy.
First, the literature on varieties of capitalism highlights the resilience of national institutional arrangements and the importance of the education sector in the welfare production regimes of contemporary competition states (Hall and Soskice 2001). In this respect, England and Finland constitute contrasting cases, as examples of liberal and coordinated market economies, respectively, although Finland has moved in a liberal direction during the 2000s (Menz 2005, Schneider & Paunescu 2011). Accordingly, England and Finland have also responded differently to OECD recommendations in relation to education policy (Rinne and Ozga 2012).
Second, the paper recognises the limitations of the varieties of capitalism approach in terms of its implied methodological nationalism and a-historicity. Thus, the emergence of the global educational policy field calls for concepts such as internationally variegated capitalism which emphasizes the international economic and political interdependence of national institutional configurations and their embedding in global markets (Streeck 2010). In this perspective, globalizing processes are also initiated deep within national institutional arrangements, according to context-specific capabilities, organizing logics and tipping points (Sassen 2006).
In the discussion of the normative implications for the teaching profession, the paper adopts the notion of pedagogic identities (Bernstein 2000) and Connell’s (1995) distinction between the various political foci associated with teachers’ work.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
BERNSTEIN, B., 2000. Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Theory, Research, Critique. Rev. edition. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield publishers. CONNELL, R.W., 1995. Transformative Labour: Theorizing the Politics of Teachers’ Work. In: M.K. Ginsburg, ed. The Politics of Educators’ Work and Lives. London: Garland, 91-114. FAIRCLOUGH, N., 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge. FALLETI, T.G., 2006. Theory-Guided Process-Tracing: Something Old, Something New. APSA-CP, Newsletter of the Organized Section in Comparative Politics of the APSA, 17(1), 9-14. FINNISH MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, 2003. Attracting, developing and retaining effective teachers: Country background report for Finland [online]. Available from: http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/5328720.pdf [Accessed 31 January 2013]. HALL, P.A. & D. SOSKICE, eds. 2001. Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. New York: Oxford University. HAY, C., 2002. Political analysis: A critical introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave. JESSOP, B., 2007. State Power: A Strategic-Relational Approach. Cambridge: Polity. MENZ, G., 2005. Varieties of Capitalism and Europeanization: National Response Strategies to the Single European Market. Oxford: Oxford University. PAWSON, R., 1996. Theorizing the interview. The British Journal of Sociology, 47(2), 295-314. RINNE, R. & J. OZGA, 2012. The OECD and the Global Re-Regulation of Teachers’ Work: Knowledge-Based Regulation Tools and Teachers in Finland and England. In: T. SEDDON & J. LEVIN, eds. World Yearbook of Education 2013. Educators, Professionalism and Politics: Global Transitions, National Spaces and Professional Projects. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 97-116. ROBERTSON, S.L., 2012. Placing Teachers in Global Governance Agendas. Comparative Education Review, 56(4), 584-607. SASSEN, S., 2006. Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University. SAYER, A., 2010. Method in Social Science. A realist approach. 2nd edition. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. SCHNEIDER, M.R. & M. PAUNESCU, 2011. Changing varieties of capitalism and revealed comparative advantages from 1990 to 2005: A test of the Hall and Soskice claims. Socio-Economic Review, 10(4), 731-753. SIMOLA, H., 2005. The Finnish miracle of PISA: historical and sociological remarks on teaching and teacher education. Comparative Education, 41(4), 455-470. STREECK, W., 2010. E pluribus unum? Varieties and commonalities of capitalism. MPIfG Discussion Paper, No. 10/12. Cologne: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. TANSEY, O., 2007. Process Tracing and Elite Interviewing: A Case for Non-probability Sampling. PS: Political Science & Politics, 40(4), 765-772. WEBB, R., G. VULLIAMY, S. HAMAILAINEN, A. SARJA, E. KIMONEN & R. NEVALAINEN, 2004. A comparative analysis of primary teacher professionalism in England and Finland. Comparative Education, 40(1), 83-107.
Programme by Network 2019
00. Central Events (Keynotes, EERA-Panel, EERJ Round Table, Invited Sessions)
Network 1. Continuing Professional Development: Learning for Individuals, Leaders, and Organisations
Network 2. Vocational Education and Training (VETNET)
Network 3. Curriculum Innovation
Network 4. Inclusive Education
Network 5. Children and Youth at Risk and Urban Education
Network 6. Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures
Network 7. Social Justice and Intercultural Education
Network 8. Research on Health Education
Network 9. Assessment, Evaluation, Testing and Measurement
Network 10. Teacher Education Research
Network 11. Educational Effectiveness and Quality Assurance
Network 12. LISnet - Library and Information Science Network
Network 13. Philosophy of Education
Network 14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research
Network 15. Research Partnerships in Education
Network 16. ICT in Education and Training
Network 17. Histories of Education
Network 18. Research in Sport Pedagogy
Network 19. Ethnography
Network 20. Research in Innovative Intercultural Learning Environments
Network 22. Research in Higher Education
Network 23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Network 24. Mathematics Education Research
Network 25. Research on Children's Rights in Education
Network 26. Educational Leadership
Network 27. Didactics – Learning and Teaching
Network 28. Sociologies of Education
Network 29. Reserach on Arts Education
Network 30. Research on Environmental und Sustainability Education
Network 31. Research on Language and Education (LEd)
Network 32. Organizational Education
The programme is updated regularly (each day in the morning)
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