ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme: Thematic
Seminar Series (Jan. 2005 – June 2006)
Seminar 4: Enactments of professionalism: classrooms and
pedagogies
Tuesday July 5th. 9:30 - 5:00
This seminar focused on how conceptions of professionalism are played out in schools and
classrooms and how teachers’ and leaders’ conceptions of professionalism influence and are
influenced by classroom practices, relationships and student experiences.
Seminar Report
This fourth seminar in the Changing Teacher Roles, Identities and Professionalism
(C-TRIP) TLRP thematic seminar series was attended by 37 participants who heard
the following papers:
Enacting professionalism in integrated school environments in Northern Ireland
Alan Smith: University of Ulster
Making professional identities through relationships between teachers and children in
early childhood settings
Hiroko Fumoto: Roehampton University
Supporting innovative pedagogies: the role of school leadership
John MacBeath: Cambridge University
Towards effective management of a reformed teaching profession
Mike Wallace: University of Bath
Inventing the chartered teacher: exploring the fractures opened in schools and
authorities by enacting a ‘new professionalism’
Jenny Reeves: University of Stirling
Pedagogies and policy: issues of teacher practices and professionalism
Bob Lingard: University of Sheffield
This report pulls together notes submitted by the rapporteurs of the 3 discussion
groups and the notes of general discussions following paper presentations and the
plenary session.1 A very wide range of issues were raised during the day and it will
not be possible to do all of them full justice in these notes – as always many of them
have appeared previously and will clearly reappear in future sessions. Although
certain questions were quite specifically stimulated by, and directed towards certain
1
With thanks to Kamber Bishop, Heather Mendick, Meg Maguire, Sarah Smart and
Chris Winch.
individual presentations, in these notes we have decided to pick out major general
themes which emerged.
Policy, Change and Professionalism
As in previous sessions it was impossible to escape the many ways in which the
development of policy/ies intersect with transformations in the professional lives and
identities of teachers. All 3 of the groups focused on the implications of these
interactions. One group underlined the ‘risks’ which were entailed in the following
interesting way:
The increasing importance of education on the political agenda in the UK has
meant that there has been an increase in risk associated with failure of policy
initiatives. Much of the risk of failure at the macro level has been incurred by
politicians, even though it is borne by teachers at the micro level … Initiatives
were bound to lead to conflict, and this would be the case wherever the starting
point for change was. At the same time, the political impulse for educational
change was very often simplistic and short term in orientation and this
justifiably gave rise to resentment amongst the teaching profession. There was a
tendency to promote political initiatives by redefining professionalism to a sort
of lower level technical competence …
In different ways the drift of contemporary policy developments were tied to the
increasing power of managerialist impulses in contemporary English (see later)
education policy. The concentration on standards, target-setting and performativity
measures were seen as being particular expressions of the dominance of such
managerialism. It is, however, important to stress that these were not simplistically
expressed arguments and there was discussion about the ambivalence which
surrounded some of the current debates around specific policies. An example of this
was that 2 groups paid particular attention to the impact of the National Literacy
Strategy. Whilst it was recognised that ‘the prioritisation of literacy was potentially
beneficial to working class children and … there was a long tail of underachievement
in British education that needed to be addressed’ at the very same time it was argued
that the NLS ‘had reached right into pedagogy and practice … [and] dictated time
spent on certain aspects as well as controlling the pacing of curriculum content’. All
of the groups were concerned that such initiatives might lead to the emergence of a
‘restricted’ professionalism (Hoyle) which left little space, time and/or resources for
notions of professional self-development or growth.
The discussions on this topic also highlighted the ways in which, as one group put it
‘moderation is the new revolution’ and a radical analysis of policy was arguing for
‘temperance’. They and other groups illustrated this via analogies with the soft ‘creep’
of privatisation which is alluded to in a variety of policy documents but seldom
directly addressed. It was pointed out that what may seem to be small changes at this
point may have dramatic long-term consequences, not least for the teaching force, and
its material and cultural future.
One group summed up some of these arguments in the following way:
The logic of policy makers is that they have to keep on producing new policies.
Thus, a cycle of shifts/changes and new directions characterise policy-making.
From a school perspective, the organisation is positioned to be constantly
vigilant – which policies will last – which ones will wither on the vine … The
costs of all these policy changes need to be evaluated and remembered.
Context and Identity
All of the papers which had been presented during the day had, in one way or another,
made reference to the issues raised by considerations of context, whether this be
national contexts, sectoral contexts or institutional contexts. This proved to be a
hugely rich vein of discussion and feeds back to important questions about how we
define ‘professionalism’ and the nature of the meanings it is capable of carrying from
context to context. The discussions which groups had around the topic of the
‘professional identity’ of Early Years teachers brought out questions about the fluidity
of the notion of identity and highlighted the problems of defining who was or was not
being defined as ‘a teacher’ in this context and how that might differ across other agesectors. One group also spent a good deal of time considering the issue of ‘subjectidentities’ and the ways in which those identities articulate with the construction of
wider professional identities and professional communities. Similarly two of the
groups were concerned about the ‘tangled’ nature of the tensions which can arise
between teacher union activism and ideas of professional identity and autonomy. Such
discussions returned us to the realisation that ‘professionalism’ is by no means an
innocent concept but rather one which carries political, ideological and social
implications. One group used the following illustration to stress this point:
The notion of integrated schooling was discussed, and it was suggested that
while schools in Northern Ireland might be becoming less segregated, the
opposite might be true in England with the growth of Foundation Schools, City
Academies, the expansion of religious schooling and so on. Again, this might
mean different versions of teacher professionalism within each sector.
They, and others, also referred to the continued existence of the private (public)
school sector and the growth of ‘soft’ privatisation of schooling relationships as
having direct relevance to contextual identity.
Conflict and Resistance
Referring back to the notion of ‘restricted professionalism’ mentioned above there
was some debate about ‘whether or not [a] new kind of restricted professional was
coming to pass. It was pointed out, for example, that there were ways of ‘playing the
game’ and pretending to conform to initiatives while at the same time continuing
more traditional practices or even adapting and refining the practices prescribed by
initiatives.’ This was echoed in the discussions of other groups which pointed out that
there was evidence of the workplace adaptations which teachers made in order to do
the best for the children they were teaching. At the same time, however, all of the
groups recognised that ‘the capacity to adapt depended on what space was inhabited
…’ in terms of time and resources.
These discussions were given a particular focus by the debates over Mike Wallace’s
notion of ‘principled infidelity’. One group summarised their discussion in the
following way:
‘the greater the ambition of policy changes … the greater the scope for less than
faithful implementation… The scope for infidelity derives from the capacity for
agency which limits the manageability of change’ (Wallace 2005: 7). Principled
infidelity referred to the scope that leaders have in schools to deflect, resist,
perhaps even ignore some parts of policy while trying to hold onto what they see
as more effective practice in their schools etc.
The group discussed the policy space that leaders have to break the rules in a
principled way. It was suggested that this approach calls for a great deal of selfconfidence and commitment. The group also discussed the ways in which some
leaders/managers have the capacity to produce excitement and a creative ethos
in their schools. This was related to Pollard et al’s (1994) work on primary
schools’ capacity to work with the national curriculum rather than being
overwhelmed by it.
Another group stressed the issues entailed in a quite different way by considering:
…how principled infidelity fitted into notions of values (Gert Biesta),
authenticity and truth telling. We raised questions about what the infidelity is
directed at and at whose principles we are applying … Other possible ways to
describe principled infidelity were suggested: bad faith, organised fiddling.
There was the idea that principled infidelity distressed teachers and they would
prefer not to be “unfaithful”. This raised the issue of whether there could ever
be an education system which acknowledged and accepted ambiguity and so
was one where principled infidelity was unnecessary. Some felt that this was
possible while others argued that, given the proliferation of values in our
postmodern age, the system will always have to require our compliance to a
particular set of practices and so we are left with no choice but to negotiate our
way through the ambiguity via principled infidelity.
This is by no means the place in which to attempt to resolve the questions of integrity
and commitment which are raised in these discussions. Clearly, however, such
questions are directly at the heart of any discussions of professional identities and the
place of values and ethics in the determination of professional roles.
International Comparisons
Although this particular seminar was not intended to focus directly upon issues of
international comparisons (see Seminar 6, December 13th.) they were infused
throughout the discussions since we had two speakers from a Scottish background, 1
from Japan, 1 from Northern Ireland and 1 reporting on an Australian policy
initiative. People were both sensitive to the ways in which policies may be ‘cherrypicked’ across and between national contexts and then selectively interpreted. It was
also pointed out how necessary it was to avoid generalisations and to be sensitive to
the difficulties of making easy comparisons between contexts which carry quite
different demographic, historical, social and cultural resonances. Nonetheless one
group summed up the general feeling when it reported ‘that case studies which
highlight issues such as the specificity of place … had much to offer in terms of
asking different questions/illustrating that alternatives are possible etc.’
People also pointed out the importance of distinguishing between macro/micro
comparisons and recognising that some aspects of context go right down to individual
interactions. Within these general qualifications and sensitivities it remains true that
comparisons are often drawn between the ‘educational culture’ of Scottish policy and
practice and that pertaining in England. Once again people were struck by the
‘discourse of trust’ which was apparent in Scotland. One group pointed out that:
The ‘compliant technician’ issue came up again in relation to different CPD
policies in Scotland and in England. The chartered teacher and the Scottish
headteacher qualifications were both cited as examples of a CPD model that was
incompatible both with the ‘craft’ and the ‘compliant technician’ ideas of CPD.
It was disputed as well whether or not English CPD aimed only to produce a
restricted, compliant type of technical professional. The TTA teacher researcher
initiative was cited as an example which counter-indicated this tendency.
The debates about comparative policy development and implementation, evaluation of
effects and consequences and impact on ‘professional identities and roles’ both within
and beyond the UK administrations remain both complicated and intriguing.
September 2005