Sue Middleton1

Disciplining the subject of ‘Education:’

Research Assessment, teacher educators, and professional identity.

Sue Middleton

School of Education

University of Waikato

Private Bag 3105

Hamilton

New Zealand.

E-mail: .

Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University College Dublin, 7-10 September 2005

Disciplining the subject of ‘Education:’ Research Assessment, teacher educators, and professional identity.

SUE MIDDLETON

School of Education, University of Waikato

ABSTRACT:

The twenty-first century has seen the momentum of three decades of educational restructuring in New Zealand shift to the tertiary sector. In order to improve research quality, a contestable performance-based research fund (PBRF) was introduced. The data used to assess each institution’s “research quality” are the Evidence Portfolios (EPs) of its staff. In 2004, each staff member received a grade – a “mark” of A, B or C (for those deemed “research active”) or ‘R’ (“Research Inactive’). This paper raises questions about the impact of PBRF (in New Zealand) and similar systems elsewhere on staff, their work, and research in the subject Education. “Who” we think we are as Education academics (our subjectivity or identity) is strongly influenced by who or what we are presumed, supposed, or required to be in terms of the “official identities” (subject positions) constructed for us in policy documents and bureaucratic processes. “Who” does the PBRF require researchers to be? How has the process of the first round of PBRF influenced Education academics’ individual and collective senses of professional identity? What implications might this have for the subject as a whole? What does this tell us more generally about the impact on intellectual life and work of bureucratic processes and systems of surveillance, monitoring, and regulation?

In New Zealand, the early years of the twenty-first century have seen the momentum of three decades of educational restructuring shift to the tertiary sector. Like their counterparts in Britain and Australia (Becher and Trowler, 2001), New Zealand’s educational policymakers introduced a system of contestable research funding to the nation’s Tertiary Education Organisations, or TEOS, (universities, polytechnics, wananga[1] and, in the case of the subject “Education,”[2] colleges of education). The previous Equivalent Full-time Student (EFTS) funding system had distributed research funds to TEOs according to degree enrolment figures on the assumption that degree teaching is informed by research. This system would be replaced by a contestable performance-based research fund (PBRF) with the aim of improving “the quality of research through peer assessment and performance indicators” (Ministry of Education, 2002, p.55).

Under PBRF, research funding is allocated to a TEO on the basis of three, differentially weighted, “elements” of its measured research performance over a six year period: 15% according to external research income earned, and 25% to its numbers of postgraduate research degree completions. The most highly weighted element (60%) is “the research quality of its staff, based on peer review” by panels of experts in a subject, or group of subjects (Tertiary Education Commission, 2003, p. 11). The data used to assess the “research quality” of staff are the Evidence Portfolios (EPs) each individual is required to submit. Aggregate scores of institutions, of subjects and groups of subjects (such as Education) across institutions, were ranked and compared and the results made public in league tables. In addition, each staff member received a personal score - a “mark” of A, B or C (for those deemed “research active”) or ‘R’ (for those classified as “Research Inactive’). I interviewed 36 staff who submitted Evidence Portfolios (EPS) to the Education subject panel.[3] My project explores the PBRF’s “power of naming” (Butler, 1993) at the level of institutions, subjects, and individuals. The PBRF’s impact on individuals is the subject of another paper (Middleton, 2005). This one is primarily concerned with its implications for the collective identity and status of Education as a university subject.

My argument falls into four parts. The first shows how, in press reports and public debates, Education appeared “deficient” as a university subject when rankings were announced. Part two discusses multiple, and conflicting roles and identities required of Education staff in universities and colleges of education. Part three conceptualises legal imperatives to intellectual freedom as in tension with regulatory processes (such as PBRF) to which institutions and individuals are increasingly subjected. Brief case studies raise further questions about PBRF’s impact on individual professional identities, and the character and status of Education as a field of inquiry.

1. 2. Education as “a problem subject”:

I begin with a brief overview of Education as a subject in higher education in New Zealand, since “to understand knowledge, it is necessary to understand the institutions in which it is produced” (Gibbons et al., 1994, p.82). As a subject, Education was historically split into “pure” (theoretical or discipline-based) and “applied” (professional/practical) specialisms (Middleton & May, 1997). This epistemological split mirrored the organisational segmentation of courses taught for degrees in university Education departments and courses taught for professional diplomas in teachers’ colleges. From the 1960s, some teachers’ colleges had contributed in various ways to the teaching of university-based B Ed degrees (Middleton & May, 1997).While “research” was a requirement for university Education staff, it was not for those in colleges of Education, although some staff voluntarily engaged in such activities (Middleton, 2001). This changed when, from the 1990s, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority approved degree qualifications in colleges of education and polytechnics and staff teaching in these were, for the first time, expected to “do research.” Amalgamations between university Education departments and Colleges of Education imposed further demands on former college staff to become “research active.” At the time of the PBRF’s first quality evaluation round, many staff in Education were upgrading their own qualifications (gaining a doctorate) and getting started on research for the first time. Many were labelled “Research Inactive” by the PBRF and, as a result, Education was ranked low in comparison with traditional academic subjects on the PBRF’s league tables.

After the announcement of institutional and subject ratings, Education was given something of a bad press (Performance Based Research Fund, 2004). Emphasising their institutions’ perceived subject strengths, university managers seemed quick to distance themselves from Education, implying that their institutions would have rated more highly had they not merged with a teachers’ college. The Waikato Times reported its local university’s Vice Chancellor as saying that: “We are right on the shoulder of Otago University and when you take into account that Otago has a medical school which produces a lot of research, and Waikato has a teachers' training college which doesn't require a high research output, we have done incredibly well” (Graham, 2004, p. 1). This apologetic stance towards Education was exacerbated when, in preparation for the second round of the PBRF in 2006, the Tertiary Education Commission gave permission to universities in the process of amalgamating with colleges of education or polytechnics to report separately the ‘outputs’ of their former university staff and those previously employed by the amalgamating partner. When Auckland University’s new Faculty of Education was given permission to ‘count’ only the outputs of its former university staff in the second round of PBBF, and to report separately the scores of its former Auckland College of Education staff, others in the sector saw this as designed to protect Auckland’s reputation as the “top” university by ensuring that “the average score for the university will not be dragged down” (Gerritsen, 2004a, p. 3). This apparent distancing had a demoralising effect on staff in Faculties of Education, which increasingly appeared publicly as intellectual abject zones. The fact that, in comparison with other subjects, Education had one of the numerically largest critical masses of A researchers was masked by the emphasis on the proportion of Education staff rated R - a huge inactive tail. Education’s research culture was perceives as deficient (Gerritsen, 2004b).

While such responses emphasised a need for Education faculties and staff to change, behind the scenes many in Education described the problem as one of lack of ‘fit’ between the PBRF and the subject. At meetings and seminars on PBRF, some accused the PBRF’s definition of research of being too narrow. As a result of amalgamations, some college staff had reconciled their commitments to their professional communities and the new demands that, as degree teachers, they must be “research active” by winning Ministry of Education contracts for curriculum and teacher development, which in the entrepreneurial environment of the 1990s, earned funding and prestige for the institution. However, the PBRF regime labelled ‘R,’(Research Inactive), some who under these former criteria, were regarded as professionally active and successful - writers of school textbooks, national curricula, and facilitators of teacher development. PBRF’s criteria could recognise these as quality assured ‘outputs' only if they included a research dimension with results published in refereed publications.

Although falling outside PBRF’s definition of ‘research,’ these activities are intrinsic to the core intellectual activities of a university. Foucault reminds us that academic “knowledges” and professional practices are heirs to the Enlightenment’s dual legacies - the liberties (intellectual freedoms) as well as the disciplines (bureaucratic survellance) (Foucault, 1977, p.222). In the case of Education, PBRF’s demand that all academics “be researchers” may at times be in tension with imperatives to intellectual freedom. Here I turn to Said’s conceptualisation of intellectual work, and New Zealand’s statutory definition of the characteristics and roles of universities.

2. Educationists as intellectuals

To be labelled or ranked “is to be positioned within the Symbolic, the idealized domain of kinship, a set of relationships structured through sanction” (Butler, 1993, p.72). As Education academics, who we think we are (our subjectivity or identity) is strongly influenced by who or what we are presumed, supposed, or required to be in terms of the “official identities” (subject positions) constructed for us. Subject positions “exist” in the form of abstractions, or textual spaces, in documents such as employment contracts or job descriptions. These presume who an academic “is,” what he or she is required to do, and aspire to become. They “address” academic staff as particular sorts of people (Ellsworth, 1998). A subject position is “a linguistic category, a place-holder, a structure in formation” (Butler, 1997, p.10). Subject positions relate who we think we are (our sense of subjectivity or professional identity), to who we are “officially” presumed to be, and there can be a dissonance between the two. It is the place “where work and singularity intersect each other” (Derrida & Ewald, 2003, p.72). [4]

The PBRF’s grading system addresses, or interpellates, its recipients as particular kinds of individuals, kin to those similarly graded (other A, B, or C performing persons). “Who” does the PBRF require researchers to be? Does this differ from other conceptualisations of academic or intellectual work in Education?How has the PBRF influenced Education academics’ individual and collective senses of professional identity? What implications might this have for the subject as a whole? What does this tell us more generally about the impact on intellectual life and work of bureaucratic processes and systems of surveillance, monitoring, and regulation?

A legally mandated subject position for university teachers is written in New Zealand’s 1989 Education Act, which defines universities as: “primarily concerned with more advanced learning, the principal aim being to develop intellectual independence” (Part xiv, section 162, para 4ai). Universities are “characterised by a wide diversity of teaching and research, especially at a higher level that maintains, advances, disseminates, and assists the application of, knowledge, develops intellectual independence, and promotes community learning” (Ibid., para 4biii). They “accept a role as critic and conscience of society” (Ibid, para 4av). Their research and teaching are closely interdependent and most of their teaching is done by people who are active in advancing knowledge”(Part xiv, section 162, para. 4aii). Current government and university policies presume that the Act’s mandate that “most of their teaching is done by people who are active in advancing knowledge” means that all individual staff responsible for teaching degree courses must themselves be “active researchers.” This slippage is particularly significant for teacher education. The identity “active researcher” (producer of quality assured publications) fits many Educationists from university teaching backgrounds. But the legal mandate to be “active in advancing knowledge” is broader and might apply to teacher-educators whose “outputs” include designing professional development for teachers, writing textbooks or curriculum exemplars.

Clinical, professional and practical work with teachers and schools can be seen as falling within the Act’s definition of a university’s mission as being to advance knowledge, develop intellectual independence, promote community learning, and act as critic and conscience of society. In Edward Said’s sense, such activities - if informed by critical thinking and careful scholarship - would exemplify intellectual work. In his Reith Lectures on ‘representations of the intellectual’, Said described intellectual life and work:

…the intellectual does not represent a statuesque icon, but an individual vocation, an energy, a stubborn force engaging as a committed and recognisable voice in language and society with a whole slew of issues, all of them having to do in the end with a combination of enlightenment and emancipation or freedom (Said, 1993, p. 55).

Said’s intellectual who engages with a “wide slew of social issues” from the point of view of a commitment to “enlightenment and freedom” sounds remarkably like the university staff member of the 1989 Education Act who develops and fosters “intellectual independence and promotes community learning”.

Said also observed that the critical edge, or oblique angle of vision, required for intellectual work rests on a sense of personal and professional identity:

… a sense of being someone whose place it is to publicly raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than to produce them), to be someone who cannot be easily co-opted by governments or corporations, and whose raison d’etre is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug (Said, 1993, p. 9).

This is consistent with the 1989 New Zealand Education Act’s view of the mandate for university staff to engage with social issues and systems as “critic and conscience of society.” Intellectual work, wrote Said, is not confined to universities or other bureaucratic institutions: “intellectuals are individuals with a vocation for the art of representing, whether that is talking, writing, teaching, or appearing on television” (Said, 1993, p. 10). The economic, political and other conditions in bureaucratic institutions such as universities might actually conflict with intellectual life and work. This takes place in multiple sites, as is characterized by a passionate identification with a cause, project or ideal:

Whether you are an academic, or a bohemian essayist, or a consultant to the Defence Department, you do what you do according to an idea or representation you have of yourself as doing that thing: do you think of yourself as providing ‘objective’ advice for pay, or do you believe that what you teach your students has truth value, or do you think of yourself as a personality advocating an eccentric but consistent perspective? (Said, 1993, p. xiii).

This comprehensive definition would encompass the intellectual contributions of many of New Zealand’s most influential and remembered intellectuals, who did not work in universities or write for refereed journals. In interviews with 150 teachers and former teachers for an oral history of educational ideas from 1915-1995, names of Education intellectuals who had been a lasting influence recurred (Middleton and May, 1997). While some, such as James Shelley and Jack Shallcrass did teach in universities, they published little in refereed journals. Shelley was renowned as a provocative teacher and public speaker and Shallcrass is best remembered for his radio commentaries and weekly columns in the New Zealand Listener. Sylvia Ashton-Warner expressed her educational ideas through poetry and fiction. Sir Apirana Ngata’s famous proverbs were disseminated through hui [Maori ceremonial gatherings) and wider political forums. How would these and many other Education intellectuals fare under PBRF? While PBRF has some space for such activities, an academic with particular talent in those media would be discouraged from focussing heavily on them.

Such activities are, however, consistent with the mandate for colleges of education and our most influential educationists often worked in such institutions. The Education Act (1989) defines a college of education as “characterised by teaching and research required for the pre-school, compulsory and post-compulsory sectors of education, and for associated social and service roles” (s. 162, para 4aii). University faculties of education are legally (as well as professionally) required to do these “associated social and service roles” as well as the research work traditional to a university. They must not be discouraged from according equivalent status to staff who are in demand for professional consultancy (“service roles’) and those whose “outputs” fit the conventions of more academic educational research.

3. Education: individual and collective identities:

University staff are subjected to scrutiny by multiple authorities through what Foucault describes as ‘examination’: “The examination that places individuals in a relation of surveillance also situates them in a network of writing; it engages them in a whole mass of documents that capture and fix them” (Foucault, 1977, p. 189). At the time of writing this paper, my desktops (electronic and solid Formica) are littered with the detritus of at least ten separate and simultaneous quality assurance and compliance processes. The PBRF is the latest, and most powerful, of these. Although intended as a ‘corporate’ measurement, PBRF’s individual scores rate academics as commodities of differential economic value and personal scores are already being used as currency in promotion and job applications. Yet, despite the broad interpretation accorded it by the PBRF, the subject position “researcher” does not encompass the range of intellectual work and professional identities essential to Education as a subject.

When asked how they identified themselves professionally at various states of their careers, my interviewees named a wider range of subject positions and activities, including: