The flagship policy
of the Scottish Attainment Challenge with its laudable aspiration to raise the
level of achievement and attainment for all pupils across Scotland cannot be
argued with. However how this policy is being pursued within Scottish education
could lead to tensions between the ideas of teachers as professionals versus
teachers as policy enactors.
The Government has ploughed
funding into the Scottish Attainment Challenge and will use the lesson learned
from London Challenge to raise attainment for all, here.
The tension arises when one of the first projects announced by the Scottish
Government is standardised testing for primary pupils,
here. The First Minister in launching this proposal is quoted to have said
"The basic purpose
of the improvement framework will be to provide clarity on what we are seeking
to achieve and allow us to measure clearly where we're succeeding and where we
still need to do more” and "by
doing that, it will enable us to raise standards more quickly.”
This is countered in
the public press by Stephen Curran, Glasgow City Council's executive member for
education, here, as he warns of the creation of league tables by those out with Government
as a means to control the attainment agenda and the First Minister accepted this
could happen. How this plays out raises tensions for teachers as in
imposing standardised testing treats teachers as policy enactor and does not
take into account that teachers are professionals.
The notion of
professionalism is a contested one, Torabain (2014:46) drawing on the work of
Hargreaves, Whitty and Sachs, outlines some of the traits of teacher
professionalism as “autonomous discretion,
extended specialised training, social prestige, reasonable income, ethical codes
of conduct and active unions”. Geopel concedes that there are ‘competing versions of teacher professionalism’ (Whitty 2000:282) and the views are not static. Instead they are
influences by government, policy and the profession as well both the public and
the media.
‘Autonomous discretion’
is important to teachers as they feel that teaching is more than enacting
policy. Policy enactment gives a mechanistic approach to teaching and most
teachers are rightly also concerned with the social and emotional aspects of
teaching. Policy enactment limits autonomy by prescribing ‘best practice’
without taking into consideration context. It focuses on young people’s
economic capital as we guide them through exams to support them be ‘market
ready’ post 16. Thus as
discussed by Torabian (2104:54)
“teacher professionalism then
is a form of professional control of teachers to ensure services to those in
power rather than a way to stress the inherent qualities of teaching (Ozga,
1995).”
Alongside autonomy is accountability. Teachers recognise that they have
public accountability as they are public servants. Teachers are accountable to
the Government as they through local authorities pay the salaries of teachers
and in times of austerity when there are lower public budgets, teachers along
with all other service providers, come under more scrutiny as ‘best value’ is
sought.
Part of being a professional means that each teachers has both an
internal and external accountability system. This accountability systems
requires balancing the moral and ethical stance of the individual within the
collective of the profession against external performance accountability by
Government, in the form of data, including young people’s attainment and
achievement. In other words, professional conduct balanced against enacting
policy with limited criticality. Mausethagen (2013:425) draws on the work of
Charlton (2002) when he states that “accountability is closely related to responsibility, trustworthiness
and being answerable to one’s actions” and Biesta (2004, 2010) when he goes on
to say that “teacher responsibility can be conceptualized as teachers’
‘internal accountability’ in terms…of being accountable to students, parents
and the wider public”. External accountability tends to be more mechanistic,
technically defined and measured by limited data sources. However, there is a
balance to be made in the internal and external accountability system for
teachers as they balance their needs as an autonomous professional with
expertise, skills and abilities that have been developed and honed, with the
needs of the government to provide public accountability for the expenses of
education and also the social and economic capital being built by the young people
of Scotland.
The politicising of the education agenda is a fundamental aspect
of how the government and teaching profession engage with each other and the
level of trust within this relationship. The relationship between successive
governments and the teaching profession stem from the different objectives each
holds and is viewed from differing perspectives.
This raises the tension between the purpose of education and the
purpose of schooling and how ‘professional’ teachers are ‘allowed’ to be.
Teachers use their professionalism to guard against policy enactment that does
not align with their values and leads to as Torabian (2104:55)
states “strategic compliance
(Shain & Gleeson, 1999),
but not total obedience”
References
Biesta, G. (2004). Education, accountability, and the ethical
demand: Can the democratic potential of accountability be regained? Educational
Theory, 54(3), 18.
Biesta, G. (2010). Good
education in an age of measurement. Ethics,
politics, democracy.
Colorado: Paradigm Publishers.
Charlton, B. G. (2002). Audit, accountability, quality and all that:
The growth of managerial technologies in UK Universities. In S. Prickett &
P. Erskine-Hill (Eds.), Education! Education! Education!
Managerial Ethics and the Law of Unintended Consequences. England: Imprint Academic.
Geopel, J. (2012) Upholding public trust: an examination of teacher professionalism
and the use of Teachers’ Standards in England: Teacher Development;
Nov2012, Vol. 16 Issue 4, p489-505
Mausethagen, S. (2013) Accountable
for what and to whom? Changing representations and new
legitimation discourses among teachers under increased external control; Journal of
Educational Change; Nov2013, Vol. 14 Issue 4, p423-444
Ozga, J. (1995). Deskilling a profession: professionalism,
de-professionalisation and the new managerialism. In H. Busher and R. Saran
(eds). Managing Teachers as Professionals in Schools. London:
Kogan Page.
Torabain, E. (2014) WTO/GATS
and the global governance of education: A holistic analysis of its
impacts on teachers' professionalism, Educate,
Vol 14, Issue 3, p44-59
Whitty, G. 2000. Teacher professionalism in new times. Journal
of In-Service Education
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no. 2: 281–5.
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