Reflections on changing teacher roles, identities and professionalism
Pat Mahony, Ian Hextall, Sharon Gewirtz and Alan Cribb
Contact details
Professor Pat Mahony
Froebel College
Roehampton University
Roehampton Lane,
London SW15 5PJ
Tel:020 8392 3172
P.Mahony@roehampton.ac.uk
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of
Warwick, 6-9 September 2006
Abstract
This paper reports on the themes emerging from a Thematic Seminar Series entitled Changing
Teacher Roles, Identities and Professionalism (C-TRIP) conducted under the auspices of ESRC
Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP). The series is concerned with teachers
(across all sectors) both as learners and as the agents of students’ learning. It has been
designed to build on latest research in order to provide a basis for enhanced professional
practice and learning. The seminars presented new empirical and/or theoretical work and
brought together two important traditions of enquiry about teachers’ lives and practices,
namely, research which investigates the social and policy contexts of teachers’ lives and that
which focuses on the enhancement of professional practice. The series had at its core the
development of knowledge that can illuminate the role of teachers in a learning society, in order
to maximise their effectiveness. An annotated bibliography of recent literature is being produced as
well as an edited volume consolidating the theoretical contribution made by the seminar programme.
Introduction
Between January 2005 and July 2006 nine seminars were organised covering the following areas:
Identity, agency and policy in teachers’ professional lives explored the changing policy context of
teachers’ work and how teachers actively construct their identities in relation to this changing context.
Professional identities and teacher careers examined recent changes in teachers’ attitudes to teaching
as a career, key career moments that shape professional identity, the shifting nature of teachers’
professional identities and the gendered and racialised nature of identity construction over the career
course.
Conceptions of professionalism and professional knowledge considered contested concepts of
professionalism and professional knowledge, the diverse ways in which these are conceptualised by
teachers and how they are influenced by new roles in schools.
Enactments of professionalism: classrooms and pedagogies focused on how teachers’ and leaders’
conceptions of professionalism influence and are influenced by classroom practices, relationships and
student experiences and how these are played out in schools and classrooms.
What can be learnt from other professions? considered recent research on professional identities,
knowledge and constructions of professionalism in professions other than teaching and explored the
implications for understanding teachers’ work.
What can be learnt from comparative analysis? reflected on the insights that cross-national
comparison can offer about changing teacher roles and identities in UK contexts.
Models of effective professional learning explored how professional learning can best be promoted
within the various political, organisational, social and emotional contexts within which teachers work.
The impact of research on professional practice and identity considered the range of ways in which
research can be used to influence teachers’ practice and their students’ learning.
Consolidation and reflection invited speakers to respond to papers produced by the project team and to
present their ideas on the future of research and/or policy and practice, in relation to C-TRIP themes.
The series was concerned with teachers (across all sectors) both as learners and as the agents of
students’ learning. The seminars brought together two important traditions of enquiry about teachers’
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lives and practices, namely, research which investigates the social and policy contexts of teachers’ lives
and that which focuses on the enhancement of professional practice. The first approach, which draws on
the traditions of critical policy and sociological analysis, is concerned to examine the ways in which
teachers’ work, roles and identities are constructed within particular social and policy contexts. The
second approach, drawing on a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, often in conjunction with
experimental and statistical methods, examines how professional and student learning can be most
effectively enhanced. In some respects the epistemological and methodological orientations of these
broad traditions have been antagonistic to one another, with the former often placing an emphasis on
critique and the latter tending to emphasise the importance of supporting professionals and providing
policy and practical solutions. We have argued that effective policymaking depends on bringing these
two traditions together even though there are some epistemological, political and practical tensions in
doing so (Cribb et al 2005). For example, there is the danger of being bewitched by the search for
generality: diversity in relation to context and workforce led us to be wary of trying to draw general
conclusions about both the impact of social and political contexts on teachers’ lives and about how
effective teaching and learning can best be supported.
It is impossible in one paper to do justice to the range, depth and complexity of all the ideas
presented in the 43 papers presented in the series and to the group discussions and reports
which were generated. We aim, instead, to use arguments and examples from papers and
discussions to explore the following core questions which the series addressed:
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how have the policy and social contexts of teachers’ work changed over the last thirty
years?
what have been the consequences of these changes for teachers’ working lives and
identities and for teachers’ professional practice and learning?
what might be done to create the conditions for enhancing the professional practice of
teachers?
How have the policy and social contexts of teachers’ work changed over the last thirty
years?
Both presenters and discussion groups pointed out that discussions about the nature, form and
substance of contemporary professionalism cannot take place outside of an historical context
which also acts as an important corrective to ‘present-dayism’.
Since the state first became involved in the provision of state schooling in the 1830s,
the extent of teachers’ autonomy over their work has been a focus of struggle. Teacher
autonomy reached a high point in the post-war period but it has been increasingly eroded since
the 1970s by a combination of centralised managerial forms of control and the introduction and
operation of quasi-markets in education (Brehony 2005).
In all four UK jurisdictions, government has exerted increased control over the content
of teachers’ activity, in schools and in initial teacher education (ITE). Continuing professional
development for teachers and school managers is increasingly tied to government priorities and
content is also prescribed for research training programmes where institutions are in receipt (or
pursuit) of Economic and Social Research Council funding (Hodkinson and Hodkinson 2005,
Sikes 2005). When New Labour came to power in 1997, the Government also began to take
greater control over pedagogy in the primary school sector in England (Moss 2005, Winch and
Foreman-Peck 2005). Control has been allied to new regimes of audit, quality assurance and
inspection although these differ significantly across the four UK nations in respect of their
underpinning assumptions about the nature of teacher professionalism.
Head teachers and senior staff have been recast as ‘educational operatives’ whose ‘chief
function … is to act as line managers operationalising national and local priorities in their
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schools’ (Reeves 2005: 2). The increase in central control has, particularly in England, been
accompanied by the use of quasi-markets and, more specifically, the use of ‘mechanisms of
institutional loyalty and rivalry’ as means of incentivising teachers (Cribb 2005: 4). Building
on the marketising policies of their Conservative predecessors, New Labour has sought to
further diversify provision and extend choice across all public services with the ostensible aim
of creating user, rather than manager-driven services (Hendry 2005).
Although many of the policies across the four UK national systems are similar, we need
to be sensitive to historical, cultural, social and economic differences between England and the
other UK jurisdictions and the dynamics through which they express themselves. Speakers
emphasised the need for comparative studies. For example, in contrast to England, in Northern
Ireland, Scotland and Wales ‘devolution post 1997 has strengthened tendencies that are broadly
inclusive – a bias in favour of non-selective secondary schooling, a scepticism about market
forces as drivers of worthwhile educational change’ (Jones 2004: 38). In Scotland, an alliance
of powerful interests including teacher unions, the GTCS, HMI, education authorities and
teacher education institutions have managed to resist some of what they view as the worst
excesses of education policy emanating from south of the border (e.g. league tables, national
testing, specialist schools and increased private sector involvement in the provision of state
schooling (Menter 2005). Reforms designed to ‘remodel’ the teaching workforce (and indeed
the public sector workforce more generally) have been a feature of New Labour’s policy
programme in England, Wales and Scotland but not Northern Ireland (Nunn, 2005).
Discussions about the professional careers, identities and experiences of teachers need
to be undertaken internationally – and not just in the UK. Without such comparisons it is
difficult to address adequately issues of generalisability and specificity in debates about
globalisation and ‘policy-borrowing’. While policies may be ‘cherry-picked’ and selectively
interpreted across national contexts, participants urged that we be sensitive to the difficulties of
making easy comparisons between contexts which carry quite different demographic,
historical, social and cultural resonances. For example, Agnes van Zanten (2005) drew
attention to generational differences amongst French teachers, arguing that young teachers tend
to see teaching less as a unified profession and more as a form of ‘craftwork linked to specific
local situations’. This prompts questions about whether similar generational differences might
be found in the UK context.
The mix of policies to which teachers have had to respond are built on and in turn
contribute to a range of sometimes competing discourses about educational purposes and
values. In addition to contributing to the academic, physical, social, emotional and spiritual
development of individual students, the schooling system is, according to the current
Government, expected to promote national economic wellbeing, a more cohesive society,
social order, equality of opportunity, a vibrant democracy, choice and diversity of provision,
and respect for different religious and cultural identities. The policy mix may also contain
within it different versions of what is entailed in teacher professionalism. According to Jenny
Reeves (2005), the Chartered Teacher policy in Scotland, encompasses three competing
discourses of teacher professionalism: a ‘restricted’ bureau-professional form; a managerial
form and a ‘new professionalism’ based on notions of collaboration, knowledge sharing and
problem-solving. Embedded within the ‘new professionalism’ discourse was also the
expectation that teachers will articulate ‘a personal, independent and critical stance in relation
to contrasting perspectives on educational issues, policies and developments’ and contribute ‘to
the literature on, and public discussion of, teaching and learning and education’ (SEED 2002:
5). The tensions between these competing discourses, Reeves argued, create a potential ‘space
of indeterminacy’ which teachers can try to use to forge a revitalised, extended form of teacher
professionalism.
Finally, it is important to note that it is not only the content of education policy that has
changed over the last three decades but also the nature of the policy-making process. In
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particular, there has been an increasing tendency towards ‘fast policy’ where new policy
initiatives are introduced in quick succession with limited time for debate and deliberation
(Gunther 2005, Hendry 2005).
Sitting alongside, and feeding into, the changing policy context are broader social
changes that have important implications for the work of teachers. Of particular relevance to
teachers’ work are ‘multiple anti-statist and anti-professional tendencies’ in which the ‘wider
social authority enjoyed by professionals (even public service professionals) has become
fragile or contingent’ (Clarke and Newman 2005: 2). Responding to ‘consumers’ is a complex
task involving an appreciation of the unequal distribution of assertiveness, knowledge and the
capacity to articulate demands and interests, by class, age, ethnicity and biography. These
generate ‘unstable encounters’ between professionals and their publics ‘in which the
possibilities of getting it wrong have multiplied as both the public and service organisations try
to manage each other in more uncertain times’ (Clarke and Newman 2005: 3). One
manifestation of consumerism, noted by Julia Evetts (2005: 14), is the ‘increasingly litigious
culture, fuelled by knowledge of large financial gains from negligence cases in the USA’
which further undermines trust in professionals. Perhaps a more everyday concern for teachers,
however, is a perceived change in the behaviour of parents and children. For example, many of
the teachers in Chris Day’s (2005) study of 300 teachers across 7 LEAs, were reported to have
serious concerns about what they saw as a deterioration in student behaviour and a lack of
parental support.
What have been the consequences of these changes for teachers’ working lives and
identities and for teachers’ professional practice and learning?
In considering the impact of policy and social change on teachers’ work and lives it was
repeatedly emphasised that policies take on quite diverse meanings depending on experience,
age, race, gender, class, region, sector, position and role. Hence we need to be cautious about
making generalisations about the impact of policies on teachers’ lives and work, whilst not
forgetting elements of continuity as well as change in teachers’ lives. One depressing
continuity was the way in which teachers construct their identities against oppressive gendered
and racialised landscapes (Burns 2005; Daly and Maguire 2005; Roberts 2005). Whether it be
the male early years teachers in Elizabeth Burn’s study, Lorna Roberts’ research cohort of
minority ethnic trainee teachers, or the black school managers Dona Daly interviewed, findings
point to the need for more research on the racialised and gendered dimensions of policy
change, teachers’ lives and the possibilities for effective professional practice. What, if
anything, constitutes the nature of professional identity within such diversity and
differentiation? Clearly ‘professionalism’ is not an innocent concept but rather one which
carries political, ideological and social implications. Following Alan Smith’s paper (2005) 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 and
faith schools, perhaps generating different versions of teacher professionalism. The continued
existence of the fee paying school sector and the growth of ‘soft’ privatisation of schooling
relationships also carry implications for the redrawing of professional/ occupational careers,
boundaries and definitions.
Recognition of the political context within which education and schooling is inscribed
led into discussions of questions of compliance and resistance. As one discussion group
reported: ‘whilst being cautious not to slip into “Golden Ageism”, it does appear that, in the
past, teachers were more actively resistant, more likely to take up challenging positions and
nail their ideological colours to the mast’. There was discussion about whether the idea of
individual identities could be articulated through the notion of collective teacher identity and
the extent to which unions and professional associations could form the basis of such an
articulation. This was seen as particularly important in a context in which, as we have seen,
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contemporary policy changes impact differentially on individuals and specific structural
cohorts of teachers and are generating demands and tensions in the reformulations of teachers’
sense of professional identity.
Consequences for professional autonomy
The implications for ‘professional identity’ of contemporary policy trajectories has been
important, as has discussion about the heavily contested meaning of professionalism (not only
in teaching but in other cognate occupational groups). In turn these raise questions about how
professionalism is being reconstituted, who is entitled to be a professional and how credentials
are gained.
Highly prescriptive initiatives like the English National Literacy and Numeracy
Strategies have positioned teachers, as Lorraine Foreman-Peck and Chris Winch (2005: 2) put
it, ‘as recipe-following operatives whose role is to “deliver”’. John Clarke and Janet Newman
argued, however, that rather than a complete erosion of autonomous judgement, autonomy is
allowed to be exercised only within tight limits that are determined by what policy-makers
believe to be in the interests of narrowly conceived notions of educational success. In a related
argument, Evetts (2005: 9) made a useful distinction between two ideal-type conceptions of
professionalism – organisational professionalism (professionalism ‘from above’, ‘involving a
discourse of control used increasingly by managers in work organisations’) and occupational
professionalism (professionalism ‘from within’, involving ‘a discourse constructed within
professional occupational groups [that] incorporates collegial authority’).
In the UK the dominant form of teacher professionalism is far closer to ‘organisational
professionalism’ than it is to ‘occupational professionalism’. But this does not mean that
teachers are passive victims of policy, stripped of any capacity to act independently. Mike
Wallace differentiated between three types of teacher response: compliance, non-compliance
and mediation. The mediators may adopt a stance of what Wallace calls ‘principled infidelity’:
‘[I]nfidelity follows from not fully adhering to policy-makers’ expectations, and principled
follows from attempting to sustain their professional values instead of embracing the
alternative values under-girding reforms’ (Wallace 2005: 12). A number of examples were
provided of teachers responding imaginatively to try to reconcile the conflicts between the
performative demands of monitoring systems and what they felt to be in their students’
interests (Gleeson et al. 2005). However, there are limits to what mediation can achieve. As Ian
Menter (2005: 5) points out, in order to develop ‘a broad sociological understanding [of
teachers’ work and professional identities] we need to portray structure and agency, creativity
and constraint’. Whether a new ‘restricted professionalism’ is emerging was a matter of some
debate but in any case, the capacity to adapt depended partly on what time and resources were
available.
Autonomy was seen as important in teaching in part because of the nature of teachers’
professional knowledge, though for some this was a contested notion which could be used to
generate occupational closure and protectionism. Teaching entails making decisions informed
by knowledge and understanding of the unique contexts within which teachers are working, as
well as by their educational values and beliefs. Teachers have to make technical and normative
judgements which should require them to reflect on their educational ideals about what is
educationally worthwhile, what it means to be an educated person, and what counts as ‘the
good life’ and the ‘good society’ (Biesta 2005: 4). Managerial policies restrict the space for
teachers to make appropriate professional judgements and create ‘confusion over what is
allowed and what is not’ (Moss, 2005: 4)
The pressure on schools to deliver results quickly can also inhibit innovation. In his 40
school study on the role of school leadership in supporting innovative pedagogies, John
MacBeath painted a depressingly uniform picture of schools taking up similar combinations of
current learning fashions (e.g. brain-based theories of learning) in a relatively uncritical way
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and rushing through the curriculum to meet targets. But, MacBeath argued, new ideas and
practices need time to bed in, they need to be carefully nurtured and allowed to grow (2005:
12).
Consequences for professional practice
Engaging with the language in which debates about professional practice are couched,
analysing meanings and contesting un-stated assumptions were taken to be central elements of
professional education, for which it was becoming increasingly difficult to claim space. Jon
Nixon (2005: 2) pointed out that:
the language of inputs and outputs, of clients and products, of delivery and measurement,
of providers and users, is not just a different way of talking about the same thing. It
radically alters what we are talking about. It constitutes a new way of thinking about
teaching and learning. Ultimately, it affects how we teach and how we learn.
Menter (2005: 3) also reminded us of the impact of managerialism on the nature of teaching
and learning by citing an extract from Alan Bennett’s recent play, The History Boys:
Headmaster Shall I tell you what is wrong with Hector as a teacher? It isn’t that he
doesn’t produce results. He does. But they are unpredictable and unquantifiable and in
the current educational climate that is no use. He may well be doing his job, but there is
no method that I know of that enables me to assess the job that he is doing. There is
inspiration, certainly, but how do I quantify that? And he has no notion of boundaries. A
few weeks ago I caught him teaching French. French! English is his subject. (Bennett,
2004: 67)
Clive Harber (2005: 5-6) cited research which shows the harm done to children by the battery
of tests that they are now subject to in England and Wales. The harm is both emotional and
physical, with symptoms including bulimia and anorexia, anxiety attacks and loss of
confidence. In similar vein Nixon argued that the dual processes of managerialisation and
commercialisation have threatened the dispositions of truthfulness, mutual respect,
authenticity, courage and compassion that are essential for universities to continue to operate as
a civic space in which people come together to learn and engage in independent and rigorous
critique. Michael Young also offered a critique of the emphasis on generic models of
knowledge production, currently manifest in the prevalence throughout the education system of
such concepts as ‘key and core skills’, ‘thinking skills’, ‘problem solving’ and ‘teamwork’.
This emphasis reflects a wider instrumentalist turn where trainability is arguably replacing
understanding and criticism as the primary ‘pedagogic objective’ of the education system
(Bernstein, cited in Young 2005).
It is important, however, not to see the policy-practice relationship purely through a
negative lens. As already noted, there are opportunities for teachers to occupy and exploit what
Reeves calls the ‘space of indeterminacy’ generated by policy change. Such opportunities will
not resolve questions of the form, constitution and content of ‘professional
knowledge/discourse’ but highlight the necessity of their being debated within the profession
and the ‘citizenry’, and their centrality to considerations of professional practice.
Consequences for professional values and ethics
Values and ethics are at the heart of professional practice. Yet, as already noted, current
policies are squeezing out the time, space and resources for teachers to sharpen their capacities
in valuing values.
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There was general agreement that a permeable boundary exists between questions of
professional knowledge and issues of values and status. Teaching is an activity which is
grounded in values and expressive of values. Consequently the understanding of the
relationship between the ethical and intellectual bases of professional practice should be an
explicit feature of professional education (Biesta 2005). The dilemmas and contradictions
involved in such recognition were widely recognised but were specifically brought into focus
by discussions of risk aversion and caution (Sachs 2005).
As in healthcare (Cribb 2005), the introduction of markets into education has led to
concerns about the penetration of ‘accounting logic’ (Broadbent and Loughlin 1997) into
educational processes and the subjectivities of teachers. In turn, this has led to a greater focus
on narrower, extrinsic conceptions of ‘success’ as captured in institutional performance
indicators and a diminution of ‘more open-ended, ‘thicker’, modes of determining what really
counts in education. Markets and league tables encourage various forms of cheating and
manipulation and the investment of resources on impression-management activities. There are
also concerns about a ‘reduction in collaborative or collegial working across and between
institutions as a result of the structures and cultures of competition’ (Cribb 2005: 4).
However, teachers are not passive in these processes of ‘ethical drift’ just as they are
not passive victims of policy shifts more generally. They are active ethical agents who
continually have to reconcile conflicting ethical commitments, for example, commitments to
inter-institutional collegiality and the survival of the particular institution they work in. As
Alan Cribb (2005: 7-8) put it, ‘These dilemmas are chronic and serious because … there is no
simple translation between institutional obligations and ethical obligations, between “doing my
job” and “doing the right thing”’. Moreover, Cribb argued, the ethical choices professionals
make cannot be divorced from the roles that they occupy. As policy transforms the division of
labour in schools so the ethical division of labour is reconfigured and teachers will somehow
have to adjust and respond to the revised ethical demands associated with their new roles.
Newman and Clarke’s analysis indicated that the changing nature of ‘citizen/ consumer’
relationships were raising directly comparable issues more widely within the public services
(Newman and Clarke 2005).
Consequences for teachers’ emotional and physical wellbeing and identities
It was widely acknowledged that the impacts of ‘fast’ policy evoked unresolved tensions which
could generate dissatisfaction with career and professional identity. Whilst the ‘emotionality’
and ‘psychic pain’ involved were acknowledged to be general phenomena, especially at critical
points of policy, career or individual transition, it was also recognised that different groups of
teachers might well experience different impacts.
Gemma Moss (2005: 4) reported ‘a deep level of exhaustion’ as primary schools
continually struggle to make their results improve. Day’s review of the literature on changes in
primary teachers’ work pointed to ‘frustration; anger exacerbated by tiredness, stress and
students’ misbehaviour; anxiety because of the complexity of the job; guilt, sadness, blame and
shame at not being able to achieve ideals or targets imposed by others’. However, whilst not
denying these negative emotions, Day reports that many of the teachers he researched
‘demonstrate a strong sense of agency and positive sense of identity’ (Day 2005: 8-9). Day’s
work also shows the important contribution a supportive institutional context can make to
teachers’ sense of motivation, commitment and effectiveness. However, it is only the most
emotionally resilient teachers and those with the strongest sense of moral purpose who can
manage to sustain satisfaction, commitment and motivation in their work. ‘Government
policies, excessively bureaucratic results-driven systems, increased paper work, heavy
workloads and the consequent long working hours [tended to have] a negative impact on [their]
motivation and effectiveness’ (Day 2005: 23).
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Similarly, FE lecturers experience and respond to the changing policy context in a
range of ways, so that whilst the dominant picture may be one of ‘high turnover and exodus’
from the profession, there are tutors who are able to find ‘new sources of sustenance’ to bolster
their professional identities by finding imaginative ways to circumvent government and
institutional policies (Colley and James 2005; Goodrham 2006).
In HE, Pat Sikes (2005: 3) argued that changes in academic work have created
‘fragmentation … conflict, contestation, intensification, stress, pressure, work overload, and
widespread unhappiness’. She described respondents being ‘pulled in different directions’ (eg
teaching and research) which unsettles their identities and leaves them feeling ‘inadequate’.
(Sikes 2005: 7). Again, for some the experience is positive as new career opportunities become
available, or policy shifts (eg moves to widen participation) ‘enable some people to pursue
commitments to social justice …, bringing about a closer match between personal, professional
and political values and job content’ (Sikes 2005: 4). In many HE institutions, there is a
growing division between ‘teachers’ and ‘researchers’ where those deemed to be ‘RAEreturnable’ are given more time and resources to focus on research activities whilst their
teaching and administration is transferred to the ‘teachers’.
Other contributors expressed concern that the emotional dimension of teaching was not
sufficiently taken account of by policy-makers. Roberts (2005) reminded us that teaching is ‘an
emotional practice’ and Day (2005: 8) talked about teaching as an intensely emotional activity
frequently characterised by ‘love … and care, surprise and joy, anger, sadness and fear,
excitement and pleasure in students’ progress and achievements’ (see also McNally 2006,
Askew and Hodgen 2006).
Consequences for professional learning
Although ‘professional learning’ is widely used, its meaning, underpinning values, the nature
of control over its constitution and boundaries, and the form(s) of evaluation which are
appropriate for evaluating its outcomes are often unclear. Winch and Foreman-Peck (2005: 89) argued that within ITE which is a crucial stage in the process of professional learning:
students … do not develop a good understanding of the conceptual underpinnings of and
relationships between aims, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, for example, neither
do they gain sufficient acquaintance with the philosophy and practice of social science
that would give them the evaluative skills they need to make judgments about the
usefulness or otherwise of empirical research.
These limitations are perhaps not surprising given the current construction of teachers in
dominant policy discourses as ‘recipe followers’ rather than ‘recipe writers’. Clive Harber
criticised ITE programmes from a different, although related, perspective, arguing that they do
not sufficiently prepare teachers for teaching about democratic citizenship. Whilst he was
talking mainly about curriculum content he was also arguing that the pedagogic approach
adopted represents an ‘authoritarian preparation for teaching in schools’ (Harber 2005: 11). His
arguments reminded us of the importance of the constitutive relationship between means and
ends in education (Biesta 2005).
Echoing discussion over the values and meanings of ‘school effectiveness’, there was
no agreement over what would count as an adequate definition of ‘effectiveness’ in
professional learning nor what criteria might be utilised in evaluation. There was frequent
reference to the ‘managerialisation’ of professional learning which attempted to tie it to
specifically measurable targets and standards, but whilst demands for professional
accountability were regarded as entirely legitimate, how to define appropriate expectations was
highly complex.
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Teachers, according to Gert Biesta, need support to enhance their ‘“educational
professionality” - i.e. their ability to make judgements about what is educationally desirable’
(Biesta 2005: 7). Nowhere was this more apparent than in the focus on the use of student
outcomes as important criteria in evaluating professional learning. This was seen as a crucial
issue but one which was surrounded by ‘wicked problems’.
Much of the discussion also focused on the nature of the constraints which bounded
patterns and policies of professional learning. Time constraints were frequently referred to as a
major inhibiting factor for teachers (in all sectors) engaging in meaningful formalised learning
and ‘often relies on teachers giving up their own time, in the evenings, at weekends or during
the holiday’ (Hodkinson and Hodkinson 2005: 121). Another major inhibiting factor is
funding. Where resources are available, these usually have to be tied to professional
development activities that match government or institutional priorities or that can be
demonstrated to contribute directly and immediately to improvement in students’ learning
(measured by test scores) (Goodrham 2006; Hodkinson and Hodkinson 2005). A third
inhibiting factor that, according to Heather and Phil Hodkinson, limits effective professional
learning in the current climate is the emphasis in many secondary schools on individual
teaching in closed classrooms and the limited opportunities that exist for teachers to work with
others outside their subject departments or responsibility groups and schools. Biesta (2005: 14)
argued that other inhibiting factors include a lack of a tradition of educational reflection and
theorising or critical pedagogy in the UK compared with other countries and a top-down
approach to governance of the education system. This means that many teachers do not see
themselves as having ‘any opportunity to exert their judgement in any real or officially
recognised way’. A recurrent theme revolved around questions of control, expertise and
leadership of professional learning. John Elliot argued that the weaknesses of the top-down
approach to managing the profession are manifest in the contemporary phenomenon of
‘practitioner research’, which, he suggested, involves practitioners simply testing out the
applicability of the findings of school effectiveness research to their specific classroom
contexts (Elliot, 2006). It was fully recognised that issues of public and social accountability
required that all programmes be reflective of national, local and institutional criteria but that
these should not be at the cost of ruling out ‘professional and personal’ elements within these
developments.
Hodkinson and Hodkinson (2005: 111) suggested that the dominant policy approach to
professional learning is flawed because it is based on an instrumental, technical-rational model
of learning as ‘acquisition’ where a ‘commodified content’ can ‘be clearly identified and … the
extent to which it has been successfully acquired can be measured’. In this model ‘learning can
no longer be seen as “lighting fires”’. In reality much learning is informal, unplanned and
unintentional and frequently occurring in the course of collaborative activities, within
departments, across departments and across schools (2005: 119). In addition, speakers pointed
to examples of professional development practices which did enable critical reflection and
authentic learning to take place. For example despite the presence of the constraints identified
above, all of Mark Goodrham’s (2006) interviewees who had been engaged in specific research
projects in FE claimed that their research had had a positive direct effect on learners, as well as
on their own professional understanding. In a Scottish context Reeves described an M.Ed
programme which engaged teachers in action research and collaborative enquiry and which had
a positive impact on teachers’ perceptions of their scope for agency. Teachers moved from an
overwhelming feeling of being ‘cabined, cribbed, confined’ to feeling confident, energised and
keen to try out new ideas in their classroom. But Reeves’ research also exposed the challenges
of trying to enact a new extended, collaborative professionalism in institutional contexts that
nevertheless continue to be dominated by managerial practices and values (Reeves 2005: 10).
Hodkinson and Hodkinson’s research in English secondary schools also showed that, although
current government policy does constrain the possibilities for effective professional learning,
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the dispositions of individual teachers and departmental working cultures are important
influences which have the potential to interrupt or moderate policy constraints (2005: 126).
Paul Black presented an innovative example of how schools can work in partnership
with academics and local authorities to enhance the professional learning of teachers in ways
that can be linked to direct improvements in the quality of students’ learning (Black 2006). By
underpinning their approach with a constructivist model of learning the King’s team were
modelling the pedagogic relationship they were encouraging the teachers to develop with their
students.
Throughout the C-TRIP series emphasis was placed on complexity, specificity and
context, whether defined by subject, sector, national setting or specific local dynamics of social
differentiation. As we have said, recognising the complexity of the social world but accepting
the necessity of some kind of generalisation, if progressive policies are to be developed is a
major epistemological challenge.
What might be done to create the conditions for enhancing the professional practice of
teachers?
At this point we will indicate some suggestions for a revitalised teacher professionalism that
have been explicitly advocated in the seminars. Some of these relate to the climates and
cultures of policy-making whilst others involve identifying specific areas for policy change.
Teachers taking responsibility for creating a new language for a revitalised education system
A good deal of attention was focused on the different ‘discourses’ of theory, practice
and policy and how these might be better enabled to speak to each other. Participants registered
the difficulty of persuading the ‘policy community’ (in itself a complex concept) to take
serious notice of research and urged researchers to report findings in ways that are accessible to
policy-makers, teachers, academics and the wider community. Reference was also made to
issues in communications and relationships between the various agencies responsible for policy
formulation, development and implementation activities.
Nixon argued that academics need to reclaim the moral bases of academic practice – in
opposition to managerialising and commercialising forces - by forging a new ‘public language
which has the capacity to affirm and construct an educated citizenry’ (Nixon 2005: 2). He
argued that this must involve debating the aims of education and making its civic spaces (eg
universities) more inclusive. Whilst teachers’ discourses and practices are constrained by the
policy climate in which they work, Nixon reminded us that we all have a responsibility for
helping to shape climates of policy construction and enactment and that the ways in which we
talk make a difference to what is possible.
More temperate approaches to policy-making and management
In England much of the current debate about the ‘new professionalism’ and ‘workforce
remodelling’ takes place in a context where the education sector has experienced (in different
forms and expressions) the impacts of managerialism and performance management. The high
profile of education on the political agenda in the UK, according to one discussion group had
increased the risk associated with policy failure which:
… at the macro level has been incurred by politicians, even though it is borne by teachers
at the micro level … … 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.
A good deal of general concern was expressed about what has come to be called ‘fast policy’.
It was widely felt that policies were tumbled out at a rate which made them difficult to
10
comprehend, let alone implement, that they were often badly tested in terms of feasibility and
consultation and that evaluation procedures were frequently tokenistic and/or formulated by the
wrong people around the wrong questions. What it then means to be ‘in touch and up to date’ is
a concern across the public sector and raises important issues about the nature of public policy
formation and implementation.
The discussion groups were concerned that ‘fast policy’
might lead to the emergence of a ‘restricted’ professionalism which left little space, time and/or
resources for notions of professional self-development or growth. 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.
Wallace called for a more temperate approach to policy-making and to leading and managing
the profession because, as he put it, ‘the more detailed the prescription, the more insensitive it
becomes to contextual contingencies, and the more likely it is to fall prey to the irony of
unintended consequences – creating more problems then it solves’ (2005: 4). He argued that
policy makers overestimate their own capacity to control organisations and that of
organisational leaders to control what goes on in their organisations. He suggested that policy
makers and school leaders need a more developed appreciation of the range of ways in which
policy intentions can get transformed and distorted in the messy reality of ‘implementation’ as
well as controlling their urge to continually introduce new policies to try and resolve the
problems that their previous ones created. What is needed, Wallace argued, is for government
to give professionals more scope to act responsibly and creatively, and to adopt a more
incremental approach to reform which is underpinned by dialogue with class teacher and
school manager representatives, as a way of ensuring that policies are realistic and flexible
enough to be suited to the range of contexts in which they will be implemented. Wallace was
not opposed to the monitoring of teachers’ work, agreeing this is essential; but he called for
monitoring and accountability mechanisms that are ‘unobtrusive’ and ‘mild’. In a related vein,
Hendry emphasised the importance of a policy process underpinned by dialogue, trust and
proper investment. As he put it, ‘reform must … be a collaborative process, where all social
stakeholders have an opportunity to influence policy, where employers respect and implement
the spirit and letter of agreements and Government provides adequate funds and constructive
leadership’ (Hendry 2005: 10).
Rethinking assessment, pedagogy and curriculum
A number of contributors suggested that creating more effective professional practice needs to
involve challenging some of the taken-for-granted assumptions that underpin current policy on
the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment (Moss 2005; Young 2005; Hodkinson and
Hodkinson 2006; James, McCormick and Fox 2006; Edwards and Daniels 2006). Policymakers could benefit from boundary crossing – both by being alive to what happens in other
countries and by being prepared to borrow examples of good practice from the past and not
merely to assume that education has ‘progressed’. Bob Lingard’s (2005) paper, for example,
described the ‘productive pedagogies’ initiative in Queensland, Australia which was based on a
recognition of the symbiotic relationship between the three message systems of schooling –
curriculum, pedagogy and assessment – and Newmann et al’s (1995) notion of ‘authentic
pedagogy’. The Queensland reforms involved the introduction of a new transdisciplinary
curriculum and new pedagogic and assessment practices using ‘rich tasks’ which transcended
disciplinary boundaries and connected to the wider world allowing students to develop and
demonstrate higher order thinking, depth of knowledge and understanding and ‘substantive
11
conversation’. A key element of the Queensland reforms involved giving teachers time and
space to reflect on their classroom practices.
Elliot (2006) argued that education academics and teachers who have been ‘cast out of
the curriculum field’ need to be allowed to re-enter it and he called for the resurrection of
Stenhouse’s idea of ‘research-based’ teaching, developed in response to the large-scale
disaffection of students from the humanities (Stenhouse 1980). The principles underlying
‘research-based’ teaching include: a view of knowledge as open and provisional; a belief in the
importance of enabling students to direct their own learning, initiate their own questions for
inquiry and subject ideas to discussion and rational scrutiny; and a belief that that this kind of
discussion-based pedagogy, because it is alien to so many teachers, needs pedagogical
experimentation and collaboration between school and university educators if it is going to
stand any chance of success. This is obviously a radical suggestion since it would involve a
significant scaling down of the national curriculum, as well as a move to much greater
autonomy for teachers over how they teach and how they assess their students.
Harber (2005: 14) provided some indications of what a more democratic form of
inspection might look like, drawing on his work with inspectors and advisers in The Gambia.
This involved ‘a move away from more hierarchical, authoritarian and fear and blame-led
approaches’ towards an approach based on ‘openness, dialogue, trust and collegiality’ and
‘aimed at school improvement’. It is important to identify other resources to help rethink
inspection along more generative lines (eg Journal of Philosophy of Education 2001, 35 (4)
rehearses and debates some parallel arguments).
Creating more expansive environments for the professional learning of teachers
Hodkinson and Hodkinson (2005: 124) argued for increasing the expansiveness of learning
environments, characterised by:






close collaborative working;
colleagues [being] mutually supportive in enhancing teacher learning;
supported opportunities for personal development that go beyond school or government
priorities;
out of school educational opportunities including time to stand back, reflect and think
differently;
opportunities to integrate off the job learning into everyday practice;
opportunities to extend professional identity through boundary crossing into other
departments, school activities, schools and beyond.
They argued that action to increase the expansiveness of learning environments needs to be
taken at a variety of levels, pointing out that ‘even small, localised changes at one level can
result in some benefits’. At the subject department level, teacher learning needs to be regarded
as an explicit priority and be integrated into departmental practices by making collaboration
and ‘boundary crossing’ routine. And at the school level, managers, should ‘set an example and
demonstrate that they value teacher learning’, ‘recognise the significance of everyday practices
as learning’, provide ‘[o]pportunities for collaborative learning, boundary crossing and
working in different teams’ and support teacher learning that does not directly match
government policy and school development planning requirements. Finally, they urged that
government should:
modify the regulation of [teachers’] working practices [and] greatly reduce the focus on
restricted, pre-specified learning objectives, instead targeting funds and policies
12
towards helping schools enhance teacher learning through everyday working practices.
((2005: 126-7))
Reeves questioned the ‘monolithic capacity on the part of central authorities to control what
happens in the field’ (Reeves 2005: 12) and argued that HE-school collaborations can
contribute to transforming local practice, supporting greater interaction, networking and
communication between groups and thereby inventing a more dynamic, activist form of teacher
professionalism (Sachs 2005).
Given that the series has been located within the ESRC/TLRP programme it was
appropriate that research practice and policy constituted both an implicit and explicit theme
throughout the seminars. In relation to both professional practice and identities research was a
topic in its own right since it was made clear that, certainly within HE settings, questions of
identity, equity and careers were directly bounded by research activity. In this context the issue
of which staff in which institutions undertake research activity and how these ‘opportunities’
are distributed and supported, itself constitutes an important research question. Groups also
raised questions about the nature of ‘school-based research’ since we were explicitly discussing
the experiences and identities/careers of teachers who were themselves the participants in those
experiences. This clearly raises the question of ‘school-based research’ as a topic for research
(Elliot, 2006, Osborne 2006, Troman 2006).
A number of other issues were raised concerning modes of research. Reference has
already been made to the various demands for historical, longitudinal and comparative research
projects. In addition there was a stress on the importance of forms of narrative and
ethnographic data which presenters had utilised during their papers. These were seen as
particularly germane to issues of identity and experience especially when they amplified
already existing quantitative data.
The importance of a policy context that is conducive to ‘boundary-crossing’ is
reinforced by findings reported by Jonathan Osborne on the factors which facilitate teachers’
use of research evidence to inform their practice (Ratcliffe et al 2006). Many of the science
teachers:
… talked of professional contacts, with colleagues, local authority advisers, teacher
educators and researchers, as … helping them to identify research findings that might
be worth attending to, and supporting them in trying out new approaches. Professional
organisations, … were often mentioned as important in this regard – and appear to play
a key role in establishing and supporting a community of practice which values
research, and seeks to use it to improve practice.
Hodkinson and Hodkinson also encouraged support for teachers to attend extended courses to
allow them to ‘engage with new ideas, and facilitate possible shifts in disposition’ (because not
all teachers are equally disposed to engage enthusiastically with professional learning
opportunities nor to work collaboratively). They called for policy makers and managers to be
realistic about what can be achieved by any approach to supporting teachers’ professional
learning, arguing that ‘perhaps the strongest conclusion to be drawn from current research is
that efforts to improve teacher learning will always impact unevenly, across schools,
departments and individual teachers’ (2005: 128).
Conclusion
We have presented a condensed and inevitably subjective synthesis of the very broad-ranging
content and perspectives that emerged in some 60 hours of seminar activity. We have not been
able to do justice to the differences between the four national systems of education in the UK,
and we have not been able to give equal weight to all phases of education. We would like to
13
draw particular attention to the relative neglect of value-related discussion in contemporary
education research and policy discourses as highlighted by contributions from Biesta (2005),
Cribb (2005) and Nixon (2005)). It seems that despite there being a richly elaborated language
of description, explanation and critique embedded in different paradigms of educational
research, the seminars have exposed the relative absence of explicit discussion about
educational purposes and values and conceptions of success in research in this area. These
issues have been central to the concerns of the seminar programme, in particular as they relate
to:




intersections of policy development, translation and implementation;
modes of communication and dialogue between the various participants in policy
processes;
articulations between the experiences of professionals in Education and other
occupational sectors;
comparisons of such experiences across different regional, national and transnational
boundaries.
14
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