Session Information
19 SES 12, The Development of the Postmodern Professional (Part 1)
Symposium
Contribution
The second and third ages of teacher professionalism – autonomy and collegiality has been superseded by the collegial post professional age or postmodern in which professional values based on collegial, intellectual and political debate and examination have been displaced by performative instrumentalism, managerial team work, in many cases to implement government directed centrally devised and controlled policies, practice and performance (Hargreaves 2000). This paper traces this development from 1990 to the present day and examines the establishment of a more differentiated postmodern professional, one that is tied closely to an increasing diversity of values and practices of institutions in which they work. The focus for the study are policy texts and their effect on English primary schools and teachers as well as the latter’s reactions and agency in managing them.
Central government policy texts have dominated schools in recent times from the National Curriculum, national assessment testing, inspection reports, QCA guidelines, national reports and the publication of school standards. These texts are written documents but they also contain values mediated through specific discourses (Foucault 1980; Ball 1990; Olssen 2006), by language and beliefs about the role of education in society and the economy (Beach and Dovemark 1988). The reforms of the 1990s addressed an economic imperative and these new reforms build on that by including creative development and moving the responsibility for improving skills (Brown 2007 - in Ball 2008) and performance on to the individual learner, teacher and school (Fielding 2008).
These discourses, for example, performativity, creativity and accountability bring objects into being, they form the object of which they speak (Ball 1993), such as policy texts and they construct particular types of social relation through the relative strength of the practices they determine, for example performative identities (Jeffrey and Troman 2009b). Policy discourses privilege certain ideas, topics and speakers and exclude others, organise their own specific rationalities, making particular sets of ideas obvious, common sense and ‘true’ – a form of governmentality (Olssen 2006)
They mobilise truth claims and constitute rather than simply reflect social reality (Ball 2008) and as Ball notes, ‘Language is deployed in the attempt to produce certain meanings and effects (Edwards, Nicoll et al. 1999, p.620). Policies are very specific and practical regimes of truth and value and the ways in which policies are spoken about, their vocabularies, are part of the creation of their acceptance and enactment. The new public service paradigm is a reform package, in different locations particular aspects of the package may be emphasised and others played down (Ball 2008).
Processes of enactment of reform have to be viewed over time and in terms of the various elements. Reform is a journey rather than a destination and extent of significance of them in any location is empirical question and they are not just a matter of restructuring but require new relationships, cultures and values (op.cit.). This paper answers the demand for a strategy to research empirically the third level of policy, that of implementation, practice, deeds and action (Ball 1998).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
[1] School restructuring (Troman 1997; Woods, Jeffrey et al. 1997) and the impact of Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) inspections (Jeffrey and Woods 1998) [2] The social aspects of stress and teachers’ identity reconstructions (Troman and Woods 2001; Woods and Jeffrey 2002). [3] Teachers developing creative learning (Jeffrey 2001; Jeffrey 2003; Jeffrey and Woods 2003; Jeffrey and Woods 2009), [4] Primary teacher careers in performative cultures (ESRC) (Troman, Jeffrey et al. 2007; Troman 2008; Troman and Raggl 2008). [5] How primary teachers and learners have managed the dual policies of creativity and performativity [ESRC] (Jeffrey and Troman 2009a).
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