Professionalism,
performativity and care:
whither teacher education
for a gendered profession in
Europe?
Professor Sheelagh Drudy
University College Dublin
Paper Outline
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discourses on teacher education
highly feminised nature of teaching
changes that have happened in universities
implications for teacher education
current European policy on teaching and
teacher education
• published research evidence from EU,
North America, Australasia, research in
Ireland
A highly gendered
profession
• 70%+ teachers in primary education are
women
• lower secondary education is not as high as
in primary education
• % of women in upper secondary education
less striking but outnumber men in nearly
all countries
• policy in relation to teaching and teacher
education must take account
Discourses on teaching
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discourse of domesticity
discourse of femininity
discourse of care
discourse of performativity and ‘new
managerialism’
• discourse of professionalism
Discourse of domesticity
• ‘Domestic ideology’: women ‘naturally’ more
disposed towards nurture than men
• Women greater suitability for teaching very
young children
• perception of school students and student
teachers that women best suited to primary
teaching
• most frequent explanation for the low proportion
of men in primary teaching the perception that it
is a ‘woman’s job’
Discourse of femininity
• linked to the discourse of domestic ideology
• notions of female domesticity and service linked
to teacher professional identities
• women teacher educators read their own working
lives through images of female domesticity
• discourse of femininity found in primary teacher
education programmes
• women teachers reproduce, rather than change,
traditional gender patterns
Discourse of care
• care central and fundamental to human
development and well-being, social
solidarity, and to economic development
• ‘nurturing capital’
• feminine and feminist ethic of care
(Gilligan)
• concept of care linked to concept of
justice
• ‘caring-for’ and ‘caring-about’ (Noddings)
Three-fold taxonomy of
care (Lynch)
• Primary care relations
• Secondary care relations
• Tertiary care relations
Discourse of care
• The affective domain, or caring about
children, is fundamental to teacher
professional identity (Barber)
• Ethic of care embedded in Codes of
Professional Conduct of Teaching Council
(Ireland):
“As well as the legal duty of care which
teachers exercise, their role as carers is
central to their professional value system”
Care
• Understood in many different ways by teachers caring as commitment, caring as relatedness,
caring as physical care, caring as expressing
affection, caring as parenting and caring as
mothering (Vogt)
• a moral perspective
• an ethic of care understood as responsibility for
and relatedness to their pupils
• ethic of care should be an integral element of
quality in teaching and in teacher education
Care
• Orientation to social justice
• Altruistic values, making a difference
• Irish research - male and female student
teachers were more strongly oriented to caring or
altruistic values than were second-level pupils
• Male student primary teachers markedly
different from other males in relation to their
attitudes to caring/altruistic values
• Ethic of care should be an integral element of
quality in teaching and in teacher education
Discourse of performativity
and ‘new managerialism’
• Neo-liberalism
• Audit culture
• Removal of locus of power from practicing
professionals to auditors
• Surveillance
• New? - “payment by results” 19th C. Irl
• Research on negative aspects of
performative pressures in teaching
Discourse of
professionalism
• Managerial and democratic professionalism
(Sachs)
• Managerial discourse dominant
• Associated with neo-liberalism
• Involves re-organising the public sector
according to ‘best’ commercial practice
• Involves ‘masculinising’ school cultures
Discourse of
professionalism
Democratic professionalism:
• Emerges from the profession itself
• Relies on trust rather than
performance ranking
• Emphasis on collaborative,
cooperative action between teachers
and other educational stakeholders
Teacher Education,
Universities and
Performativity Cultures
• Teacher education mainly located within
universities in Europe
• Rise of the ‘entrepreneurial’ university
• Development of performativity, managerialism and
audit cultures
• Advantages to states of performativity cultures
in higher education
• Research on problems emerging
• Tensions between cultures of teacher education
and performativity cultures
Teacher Education in
Changing Environments
• Role of universities in the deepening of
democracy, the fostering of social justice and the
public good
• Teacher education, educational sciences,
educational research a very important element of
university’s role
• Role of teachers in daily lives of entire
populations
• Importance of higher education in initial and
continuing education (Commission of EU)
Teacher Education in
Changing Environments
• Impact of research on policy agenda
• Importance of retaining teacher education
in universities/higher education
• Space to develop reflective and critical
practitioners
• Harvest potential of research-based,
problem-centred teacher education
International Policy on
Teaching and Teacher
Education
• Lisbon, Bologna, Bergen implications
• Commission of EU – common principles, statement
to parliament:
• Teaching: high status, high reward, well-qualified
profession with opportunity to continue studies to
highest level
• Teachers: lifelong learners who understand social
cohesion and exclusion in society and ethical
dimensions of the knowledge society; reflective,
analytical and critical practitioners
• Teacher education: an object of research
International Policy on
Teaching and Teacher
Education
• OECD – Teachers Matter
• Economic competitiveness and efficiency, high
quality in teaching
• Enhance the status of teaching
• Language: performativity, performance indicators,
standards, evaluation and appraisal
• “concern” at decline of males in the profession,
based on supposed benefits of male role models
and decline in appeal of teaching
Conclusions
• Teaching highly feminised in Europe
• Disjunction between performativity discourse and
discourses integral to teaching, such as an ethic
of care
• Universities now imbued with performativity
cultures yet retaining university involvement in
teacher education is fundamental to professional
status
• Need to align professional agendas with EU policy
• Need to add an ethic of care, social justice and
solidarity to teacher education policy in Europe