Topic:

The problematic of education policy reform is the theme of this paper.

Research Question:

The paper questions education system reform from within the Australian State of Victoria, and elsewhere, Europe and the UK and argues that contemporary reform efforts take aim at classroom teachers, their instruction and their pre-service preparation. The paper draws on critical theory and the theoretical resources of Foucault to argue that present reform efforts comprise exacting and specific declarations of operation that ignore and deny context. Furthermore, reform efforts rope in for transformation other stakeholders, in the main academic faculties of teacher education. Implicit in the reform effort is not surprisingly decentralization, and importantly an explicit outline of penalty chiefly reserved for ‘underperforming’ classroom teachers and courses of teacher preparation deemed ineffective. The central argument of the paper is that policy portrayals and declarations of fragile and unproductive education system performance originate from an economic reform agenda that slates the contemporary teaching profession including teacher preparation programs.

Theoretical Framework: 

A research method informed by critical theory is used. The paper draws on Foucault by framing the analysis on “governmentalization” (Foucault, 1997, p. 28) to critique the “normalizing power” (Mayo, 2000, p. 104) of contemporary education policy, specifically the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD) discussion paper New directions for school leadership and the teaching profession (2012), hereafter referred to as the DEECD Discussion Paper.

The representational focal point of education system modification through transformation hinges on a “regime of truth” (Foucault, 2008, p. 19) the objective of which reflects imposed “techniques of governmentality” (Foucault, 2011c, p. 8). International markers of indicative comparison are central policy constituents of quality. The “reifying abstractions” (Bourdieu & Passeron, 2000, p. 102) used to justify change and reform fails to grasp let alone can deal with the collection of constrictions — mainly economic — experienced by public school systems across Europe, the UK and Australia. Outcomes of schooling typically defined and specified emblematically as statistical symbolic pictographs conceal the “façade of calculation” (Ball, 2006, p. 153) that distracts attention from subjugating policy-making constrictions of economic and political power.

The paper is in three parts. Part one expands on the proposed reforms, and integrates aspects of Foucauldian critical analysis to stress exclusive and international reform focal points of action. Part two deals with the policy emphasis of authentic and valid evaluations of performance that specifically utilize comparative indicators.  Part three recognizes that classroom teachers have agency and so a counteracting critique is proposed to the current articulations of reform predicated on forms of resistance that refute system imposed modifications of conduct.  The paper concludes by extending the proposed counter critique outlined in part three. In thinking differently about education policy reform, the paper mentions the importance of creativity in teaching practice as a basis for a theory of teaching.

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