There is a plethora of literature that discusses Professional Standards, however, there is a lack of empirical evidence about the impact of Professional Standards on teachers and their learners. This paper shares research, which adds to the literature about enactment of Professional Standards as policy in Scotland and discusses how analysis of teachers voices were used to inform the new suite of Professional Standards, released in January 2021 for mandatory enactment as of August 2021, and evaluated the impact of Professional Standards on teachers professional lives.

The multi-perspective research approach used (Kincheloe, 2011) and the resultant theoretical framework is discussed, which involved critical analysis of policy and positioning theory, drawing on the work of Adams (2011, 2016), Bacchi (2000), Bamberg (2014) and Davies & Harré, (1990), interrogating literature on Professional Standards and teacher professionalism through Evetts (2013) lens of organisational and occupational professionalism and using Ball’s (1994, 1997, 2008) Theory of Enactment.

There is broad agreement across the literature that policy is intended to cause a change, however, policy is more complex than government and other policy makers would suggest and is impacted by policy borrowing and the influence of supranational organisations. The impact of ‘glocalisation’ (Lingard & Ozga, 2007) and the Scottish ‘myth’ of policy making is discussed in relation to the development of policy texts. As policies are products of discourse which involves many actors, at different levels of the system, outcomes cannot be pre-determined. Therefore, Positioning Theory is then used to understand how policy is navigated through discourse. In this, positioning and the distribution of power is demonstrated by the positions offered through multi-level discourse to teachers, which they can accept, reject or amend.

Professional Standards are being used as a tool for improvement by governments in response to the globalisation of education. Within the literature, Professional Standards are discussed within a binary framing, either as a regulatory framework or a developmental tool, however, this is more complex in Scotland as the suite of Professional Standards are used in both regulatory and developmental ways. This leads to a discussion about Professional Standards and teacher professionalism, where the notion of a mature profession (Sachs, 2016) is considered and it is suggested that professionalism is a collective term for how teachers ‘show up’ in their daily practice, as they accept, reject or amend positions within the discourse of professionalism and how this is navigated by teachers through their professional practice.

Drawing on Ball’s (1994, 1997, 2008) Theory of Enactment, interpretation and translation of policy is discussed, where interpretation can be thought of as engagement with the language of policy (Ball, Maguire & Braun, 2012). This involves the re-contextualisation of policy texts into institutional texts at the meso and micro level, with translation being a more iterative process of creating meaning and embedding these in practice, which is influenced by the positions taken by teachers.

Professional Standards promote a particular view of teachers, teaching and teacher professionalism. In Scotland, their dual nature as regulatory and developmental frameworks is not widely acknowledged and the policy discourse offers various positions within the macro, meso, micro and nano level of policy enactment. Meso level actors and school leaders have an important role to play in determining how, or whether teachers enact Professional Standards. Through this paper, a new contribution to knowledge about enactment of policy is explored, which considers policy discourse and the influence of positioning and teacher professionalism, to explain how this creates a multitude of outcomes in practice. Finally, suggestions for further research that would be insightful to support further knowledge development about the enactment of policy and Professional Standards is discussed. 

An Associated School Group was chosen for the case study as it met the criteria as being a ‘typical’ school in Scotland. However, the impact of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic meant that access to the physical research sites was not possible, so an alternative sample was sourced with the support of The General Teaching Council for Scotland. This identified sample was used, as it gave access to ‘knowledgeable people’, i.e. those who have in-depth knowledge about Professional Standards by virtue of their professional role, expertise and experience (Ball, 1990). The sample was subjected to exclusion criteria to determine the final research sample, following this, an email invitation to the research was distributed along with the participant information sheet and a consent form. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, ensuring specific data was collected about the enactment of Professional Standards, with the questions being used flexibly to ensure a conversational flow. All interviews were audio recorded using the voice memo app on an iPad and were added too from field notes, before a verbatim transcript was produced using standardised transcription protocols (McLellan, MacQueen & Neidig, 2003). The data collected was analysed through the framework offered by Braun & Clarke (2006, 2012, 2013), following this six-stage approach, the data was interpreted, coded and drawn into themes. A secondary data collection method was necessary, as from the analysis of the semi-structure interview data it appeared that teachers did not consider Professional Standards as policy. Policy analysis of the Standard for Registration using Bacchi’s (2000) “What is the Problem Represented to be” approach was used to demonstrate that they should be considered as policy.

Professional Standards were not defined as policy when released by GTC Scotland in 2012, however, as two of the five Professional Standards are mandated texts, these can be considered as policy. In Scotland there are mixed messages, due to a dual stance where Professional Standards are regulatory and/or developmental. Professional Standards initially are offered as a benchmark, then as a guide for teachers to describe their professional learning over time and as a tool to self-evaluate prior to a PRD meeting. This dual stance may contribute to how they are enacted in practice and may be exacerbated by the policy discourse of Professional Standards, as there appears to be a lack of a dominant discourse, which may be linked to the perceived positioning of GTC Scotland as ‘external’ by teachers. The lack of discourse about Professional Standards, leads teachers to comply with, rather than contest Professional Standards, leading to superficial enactment. Therefore, it is suggested that if Professional Standards are to be considered as policy, then the policy discourse needs to be more comprehensive to help teachers understand the dual nature of Professional Standards in Scotland and how their enactment can enhance teacher professionalism. A new perspective on the enactment of policy is suggested, which considers teacher professionalism and discourse as drivers of enactment of Professional Standards. Using the lens of teacher professionalism, Fournier’s (1999) suggests that teacher professionalism exists within a framework of accountability and quality assurance, Evetts (2013) uses this to underpin the notion of occupational and organisational professionalism, which are considered alongside how teachers position themselves, and others, within the discourse of Professional Standards. This demonstrated the complexity that is involved in policy enactment, as teachers can take multiple positions at the same time, thus creating different outcomes from the same policy enactment.

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