Investigating power in the staffroom: issues in the study of power and gender relations in a professional group
Dr. Carrie Paechter
School of Education, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA email
Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the British Educational Research Association, Lancaster University,12th-15th September 1996
Abstract
This paper draws on a two-year study of the power and gender relations between teachers negotiating the new design and technology curriculum for England and Wales between 1992 and 1994. In it the author reflects on the experience of attempting to analyse power relations between individuals and groups positioned in a variety of ways with respect to one another. Issues addressed include:
¥working with the dynamic between different aspects and uses of power
¥the impact of the researcher on the power relations in the group studied
¥dealing with the interface between the internal power relations within the group and the groupÕs positioning with respect to outside bodies, structures and groupings
¥analysing multiple power relations
¥the relationship between power and gender and how that interfaces with the gender of the researcher
¥power relations between researcher and participants
¥ethical issues in the study of power relations
Investigating power in the staffroom: issues in the study of power and gender relations in a professional group
Dr. Carrie Paechter
School of Education, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA email
Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the British Educational Research Association, Lancaster University,12th-15th September 1996
Background
The activity of carrying out research, as an outsider, into the power and gender relations within a small group, of itself raises questions about the location and interaction of different levels and kinds of power. This paper is about some of the issues that arose for me in carrying out a study of the interrelationship of power and gender in the negotiation of the Design and Technology (D&T) curriculum in five London secondary schools. In it I look at the ways in which the power and gender issues being studied interacted with the research process, and consider the impacts of this interaction, both on the research and on the participants.
I see power and its manifestations as being multiple. Power is not held solely by one individual or group, but is distributed in complex ways throughout a social world. Multiple micro-powers, with corresponding mulitple micro-resistances, are set against each other in an intricately woven fabric of interaction that can be difficult to unravel analytically. These powers and resistances interrelate in ways that are often ignored in traditional analyses of power relations in schools, which tend to concentrate solely on the acquisition and uses on positional power (Foucault, 1980, Paechter and Head, 1996) . In the study described in this paper, the power and gender relations were particularly complex, both because of the circumstances of the teachers being studied, and because of the interaction between my relationships with the teachers involved, our relative power/gender positioning, and the power and gender relations between these teachers, the main focus of the study.
I became interested in power and gender relations in the early 1990s, during my Ph.D studies, which were originally focused around the potential for student empowerment arising from the new D&T curriculum that was being introduced into England and Wales at that time. I started from the belief that the relative openness of the new curriculum, coupled with its integrated nature, would make it possible for changes to take place in the prevailing power relations of the classroom, to the benfit of students. Gradually, however, it became clear that, whatever the theoretical potential contained in the D&T Order, its effect was seriously to disempower many of those expected to teach the new ÔsubjectÕ: teachers of craft, design and technology (CDT), home economics (HE), and, to a lesser extent, art and business studies (BS). This disempowerment was evident in the confusion and disillusionment expressed by teachers in interviews and conversations with me, and in the department meetings that I observed as part of my research (Paechter, 1993a, Paechter, 1995).
It was also clear at this point that there were two groups whose feelings of disempowerment were particularly strong. The first comprised male teachers who had lost positional power in the move to D&T. In the creation of an amalgamated subject area, one of the previous heads of department was generally given a higher scale post as head of D&T; this usually meant that the heads of the other contributing departments lost that title and became instead Ôteacher in charge of CDT/HEÕ. Although nationally this tended to happen to women - Martin and Coleman (1991) found that, in their (albeit rather limited) survey, only 11% of D&T departments were led by home economists - where it was men who had lost status they seemed to feel it particularly acutely and their reactions could be destabilising for the department and problematic for its new head (Paechter and Head, 1996) . At the same time, in some schools the (usually female) head of HE had never even been considered as a potential head of D&T, with the head of CDT in some cases being given the job automatically (Paechter, 1993a) ; this overt demonstration of their marginality could leave the disregarded home economists feeling bitter and angry.
In order to look more closely at the relationship between power, gender and the negotiation of the new D&T curriculum, I obtained, with John Head, a two-year ESRC award[1] (Head and Paechter, 1994). Our intention was to investigate how the new curriculum area and subject subculture of D&T was developed by teachers coming from different subject bases, while at the same time to begin to generate a description of how power and gender operate and interrelate in the processes of negotiation within a professional group. Five D&T departments, selected to give a variety of management structures and curriculum practice, in five different London Local Education Authorities (LEAs), were studied during the third and fourth years after the introduction of the new subject, through interviews with the staff involved and observation of departmental meetings. The structures of the departments were as follows:
Bursley School[2] had a loose federation of CDT and HE, led by the head of CDT as an overall head of D&T. The head of HE left the school shortly after the study commenced and was not permanently replaced during the time we worked in the school. There were four CDT teachers, two of whom were women, and three female HE staff, though for various reasons two of these posts were mainly filled only on a temporary basis during the research period; these two teachers were not formally interviewed. Hanbridge School retained separate subject departments, though the head of HE was paid at a higher rate to act as D&T co-ordinator. There were two female HE teachers, a CDT department with a female head and two male staff (both of whom only worked part-time in the department), two male BS teachers, one of whom was the head of that department, and two art teachers. During the study, the male head of art retired and was replaced by another male; the other art teacher was female. One male CDT teacher and the female art teacher also taught IT, within the overall D&T framework. Knype School was the most unusual in structure, having two joint heads of D&T, the male and female heads of CDT and HE respectively. There were three male CDT teachers, who were joined by a female in the second year of the study; at the same time the number of HE staff (all female) was reduced from four to three (one left and the post was advertised as being for a D&T teacher with any specialism). This department also worked closely with the male BS teacher, the male head of music and the male deputy head of art. Longshaw GirlsÕ School had a department led by a male CDT teacher. There were two male CDT staff and one female, two female HE teachers (the head of HE was on extended maternity leave) and one male and one female BS/IT teacher. A female deputy head also taught BS. Turnhill School had a department led by the female head of IT. There were two male CDT teachers and two females teaching HE. The former head of CDT had become second in charge of technology and the former head of HE moved out of the department to other duties in the school. In the second year of the study there was also another female IT teacher.
Issues in studying power relations
In this paper I am going to focus on the issues around carrying out a study of power relations, rather than the power relations themselves, although the two of course interrelate. Although supported by John Head, I carried out all the fieldwork and did most of the data analysis, so the issues are essentially to do with my relationship with the schools and, in particular, with the research participants. I am going to look at three main aspects of this: the impact, on what is being studied, of the researcher, research relationships and the research process; the relationship between power and gender, including the effect of my gender; and power issues in the relationship between the group being studied and the wider school community.
Power, access and teacher-researcher relationships
Access issues and the nature of informed consent
Although I had other, informal, contacts in three of the five schools studied, in all but one my initial approach to the schools came in the form of a letter to the head asking permission to approach the D&T department. This came at a time of great upheaval for the subject; the curriculum, which had been running for two years, was about to be revised, and teachers were feeling very uncertain about the future of the new subject. It was difficult to find schools willing to participate, and several heads refused access because they did not want to put staff under what they saw as further pressure. In the case of the five headteachers who did agree to their staff taking part, this was, formally at least, subject to the agreement of the teachers concerned, and in every case I was invited to explain the project to a departmental meeting. However, I got the impression that, except in the one school where I first spoke to the D&T co-ordinator, the heads of department saw the head as having made a decision to which they were acquiescing, rather than the other way around. This does not really constitute a free choice as to whether or not to allow the research (Burgess, 1984). Furthermore, once heads of department had given their consent they made every effort to ensure that other teachers would agree; this could be construed as undermining the latterÕs freedom of choice. One head of department, for example, told a department meeting that he was very keen for the research to take place in the school; others expected their staff to make collective, on-the-spot decisions about allowing me to work with them. In only one of the schools was I able to talk informally to teachers on an individual basis.
In any case, it seemed unclear to me that the teachers concerned were fully aware what exactly they were consenting to. Although I did my best to explain what I would be doing and that they might find themselves feeling threatened by it, I never felt that I had got over to people exactly what Ôbeing researchedÕ might involve, as this extract from my field notes illustrates:
IÕve explained the work in different ways in different schools, more or less coherently, and seem to say more each time, especially being explicit about gender/power issues, but it seems to make no difference to access...So what does informed consent mean in this context? I get the impression that people will basically say yes once IÕm there and being presented by the HOD [head of department]. Notable that all HODs except at Longshaw have said that I will be working in the school, and that he expressed strong support. (Field notes, 7/12/92)
At this stage in the research it is often difficult to tell whether people are giving ready consent because they feel constrained to or because their institutional position is such that they do not feel threatened by possible research findings; by the time one has a sufficient understanding of the power relations of the institution it is far too late to make allowances for this, except in writing up.
Researcher-teacher relationships
Relationships between researchers and those they study are often difficult and subject to confusion and misinterpretation. Because of the difficulties in explaining the research process, people are often unprepared for what will surface during the course of the research (Ball, 1984). In this study the situation was exacerbated because part of what I was doing was investigating and uncovering overt or covert power struggles. It was inevitable that my research would reveal the hitherto hidden strategies of some of the individuals involved, and that this exposure would have an impact on the power relations in the schools and departments concerned. One example of this was the way in which a teacher in one school quoted a paragraph from a national curriculum document, taken out of context, to persuade his colleagues to adopt a particular approach to the curriculum. In reading such documents, people tend to interpret them according to their own agendas, and so what might appear to be a Machiavellian use of selective quotation (which only I spotted) was probably unconsciously biased interpretation (Paechter, 1993b) . In reporting such selective use of important documents I had to take care not to leave individuals open to accusations of deliberately misleading others in the decision making process, or to leave the others feeling they were stupid not to have noticed what was going on. Reporting such strategies may also make it less likely that they will succeed in future, thus upsetting the current power relations in the school concerned. At the same time, uncovering and describing these things is also precisely what I was in the school to do, and was what the teachers were supposed to have consented to.
It is also important for researchers to realise that power relations within organisations operate only partially at a conscious level. Thus descriptions of such relations may bring to the surface features of which the participants were hitherto at most half-aware. Not only does this again change the power relations being studied by bringing their underlying structures to light, but it can in itself be distressing for the participants. As Becker succinctly puts it, Ôtrouble occurs primarily...because what the social scientist reports is what the people studied would prefer not to know, no matter how obvious or easy it is to discoverÕ (Becker, 1964 page 273). Having oneÕs conscious, or, worse, unconscious micropolitical strategies uncovered by a researcher can be unsettling, as can the exposure and unpicking of the interpersonal tensions and rivalries that underlie the negotiation processes of most professional groups.
Furthermore, as Adler and Adler point out, Ôportrayals that appear to researchers to be neutrally cast may seem critical or even negative to participantsÕ (Adler and Adler, 1993 page 255) . An early paper, for example, reported the views of the headteacher of Bursley School about the place of HE in the curriculum; these had been described to me by a number of teachers, including the head himself. My quotation of one of these descriptions was construed by three of the department as being critical of the school and possibly laying them open to repercussions from the headteacher (these did not occur, and he continued robustly to defend his position). It was only at this point that it became clear to me that two of the teachers in this school, despite (or maybe because of) their participation in a previous project with a team from another university, had never really understood what I was doing. One said that she had not realised that I was planning to write anything, and went on to express surprise (after I had been working with the school for a year) that I regarded my notes of departmental meetings as data which could be reported. The other, despite having read and been greatly influenced by a highly pejorative study of her subject area, described by its author as Ôan act almost of treacheryÕ (Attar, 1990 page 1) , still seemed only at this stage to have realised that research is critical and its findings can be unsettling.
In the other schools my analyses did not seem to cause alarm, but it was still the case that it was only late in the study that people began to have a clear idea about what being a research participant might really involve. This is partly because in practice a visiting researcher is a relatively unimportant aspect of a busy and demanding school life. On the other hand, most people only rarely have the opportunity to be listened to exclusively and attentively for an hour at a time; several teachers used the interviews with me as an opportunity to let off steam about their situation, to talk through things that were bothering them, or simply to tell someone how they felt. Because I was trying to uncover the underlying power and gender relations in the departments being studied, I encouraged them to talk about such things as failure to gain promotion, their positioning in the school and the department, being treated in a racist or sexist way by others in the school or the department, and their feelings about their colleagues. Partly because they did take the opportunity to talk about what were often very difficult situations, a few teachers became quite distressed during their interviews, and several told me things about their personal lives that were not generally known by their colleagues, and that, often, had little direct bearing on the research. The form of the extended interview, coupled with the subject matter I was studying, gave an illusion of friendship which ran counter to the need for me to analyse the transcripts of these conversations; the fact of analysis could come as a shock. One head of department, for example, described her feelings on reading an early paper based on the research: