Teachers, the reluctant professionals?
A call for an individual response
Alison Jackson
St.Martin’s College/ESCalate ITE
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Warwick, 6-9September 2006
ESCalate– the Education Subject Centre of the Higher Education Academy Advancing Learning and Teaching in Initial Teacher Education
The new standards for classroom teachers[1] come into effect in September 2006. These standards use the word ‘professional’ in relation to teachers over fifty times, suggesting that teachers are viewed as professionals by the state. And yet I want to argue that the notion of ‘professional’ is not a concept which sits easily with beginning teachers. My research carried out with Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs) between 2002 and 2004 discovered that teacher professionalism as set out in policy documents does not automatically transfer to the practitioner. There is a significant suggestion that teachers need to be actively engaged in the definition of their own professionalism. It is important to note that this suggestion, although drawn from time limited research, is not confined to the limitations of that timing; I would argue that it describes a basic need, fundamental to the commitment, motivation and contentment of teachers.
The questionof teachers’ professionalism formed part of a case study of ten NQTs over the first two years of their career in a large comprehensive school in England.My research was prompted by the profound changes taking place in education policy, particularly from 1997, and the effect that this was having on the teacher’s perception of self. In a paper written in 1999, Ballsuggested thatteachers were being ‘re-made‘(Ball, 1999:2) and I was curious as to the effect of this ‘re-making’ on the new generation of teachers. Ball was referring to global, managerial trends which ‘are changing what it means to be a teacher. Managerialism stresses competitiveness, accountability and audit:
stressing productive efficiency, producing an elaboration of explicit standards and measures of performance in quantitative terms that set specific targets for personnel, an emphasis on economic rewards and sanctions, and a reconstruction of accountability relationships. (Fitzsimmons, 2005:1)
And it seemed to me that global trends were surely also changing what it meant to be a professional. What form was this new professionalism taking from the perspective of the new generation of teachers?
My research question asked simply, ‘Are you a professional?’ expecting an affirmative answer and a conviction of response and it found neither. My participantshad proclaimed themselves to be autonomous, albeit an autonomy defined within the bounds of their acceptance of government frameworks and prescriptive policy, and they were very sure of their purpose and vocation. But when I asked this question about their professional identity, it unearthed a lack of clarity about the word itself which ranged from total rejection of it as a descriptor of teachers to a supposition that they must be professionals but had no idea what that meant either in government terms or as part of their own definition of self. In this paper I will first set out the historical context for teacher professionalismby considering elements of Grace’s paper on ‘Teachers and the State in Britain’ (Lawn and Grace, 1987:193-222) and then by looking at recent government documentation,pertinent to the participants at the time of my research. I will then investigate traditional and managerial images of professionalism and go on to explain my research design and give an analysis of the data I collected. I will explain how I feel that Critical Theory and Interpretivism give possibilities to teachers to critically engage with government definition of professionalism and, at the same time, build their own personal response. I will then offer some recommendations for practice suggested by my research.
The search for professionalism amongst teachers is not new and the notion of ‘trust’ is fundamental to that search.Teacher professionalism has been a contested terrain sincethe early years of the twentieth century when elementary teachers’first claim to be regarded as a profession triggered a reaction of constraint and controlfrom the state, followed by militancy from the teachers (Grace in Lawn and Grace, 1987:201).The policy of ‘trusting’ teachers’, endorsed by Percy, President of the Board of Education (1924-9) sought to separate politics from the practice of teaching and engendered a relaxation of state control, defusing potential conflict rather than creating confrontation, and brought about ‘legitimated professionalism’ in the 1930s. This form of professionalism:
implicitly involved an understanding that organised teachers would keep to their proper sphere of activity within the classroom…and the state, for its part, would grant them a measure of trust, a measure of material reward and occupational security and a measure of professional dignity. (op.cit:208)
Teachers were accorded the status of one of the accepted ‘lesser’ professions.
Teacher professionalism seems to have been given a boost after the Second World War as education policy makers realised that education could be transformational. A partnership between state and teachers to ‘regenerate the nation’ should have cemented a firmer professionalism than it did, but the state was reluctant to reward teachers with either increased salary or better conditions of service, so that trust between them continued to be elusive and by the 1960s militancy was to the fore as the path of professionalism that had distanced itself from trade unionism was seen to be weak. ‘Legitimated professionalism’ was rejected by unions as it had been accepted as a settlement with the government in the 1930s and was now seen as weak when it came to wage bargaining, and the ‘measures’ of professionalism and reward it offered were rejected as insufficient. However, professional autonomy, that is to say the lack of central directives in pedagogic matters rather than economic matters, was the one aspect of the ‘profession’ with which teachers were content.Unfortunately, radical factions who were far from apolitical were seen as ‘exploiting school and classroom autonomy to the full and for the wrong reasons’ (op.cit:214) and the result was distrust again between state and teachers, and significantly, because of negative media attention, the start of a critical distrust of teachers from the general public. There arose a blame culture where teachers were ‘the culprits for the economic failures of the 1970s’ and ‘standards were being betrayed by a significant sector of teachers’(op.cit:212.) The effects of this erosion of teacher professionalism in the eyes of the public as well as the state still has its repercussions today and precipitated increased state control. This leaves the question of trust – that is to say the amount of trust granted by the state to the teachers and the amount of trust given by the teachers to the state - at the heart of teacher professionalism.
The government White paper Excellence in Schools, issued in 1997, made it clear that teaching and professionalism were congruous in government eyes:
We are committed to ensuring that teaching is seen as a valued and worthwhile career for our best young people; a profession that is recognised and valued by the wider community. We will play our part in raising the profile and esteem of the profession. (DfEE, 1997:5.4)
And four years later, the pamphlet, ‘Professionalism and Trust’ (Morris, 2001) set out ‘a new era of trust in our professionals’, but it would seem that the government is setting the parameters of this ‘trust’. In this pamphlet, it is acknowledged that the aims and ambitions of a ‘world class’ education system in the UK are impossible without the help of teachers. There is an acknowledgement of teaching as a profession, albeit a new ‘professionalism for the modern world’ (op.cit:19), making a definitive break with any ‘old’ professionalism of legitimacy through qualifications, such as might have existed previously:
Gone are the days when doctors and teachers could say, with a straight face, ‘trust me, I’m a professional’. (op.cit.19)
The notion of trust is displaced, no longer automatic and we see the juxtaposition of the ‘old’ trust tempered by monitoring and accountability:
It is important to trust our professionals to get on with the job. That does not mean leaving professionals to go their own way, without scrutiny – we shall always need the constant focus on effective teaching and learning, and the accountability measures…But what it does mean is that we shall increasingly want to see professionals at the core, to join us in shaping the patterns for schools of the future. (op.cit:26)
Thus the definition of the professional teacher is a ‘cast-iron’ government ‘vision’ (op.cit:28) that will be shared by all and not be diverted by ‘the opponents of change’. Trust is given within the bounds of scrutiny and ‘we’ will be working together, that is to say joining the government ‘mission’.
Trust formed the basis of the traditional interpretation of professionalism, not just in education but in other spheres. Dent and Whitehead, writing in the present era of what could be called an ‘audit-based professionalism’ give this definition of what the ‘trusted’ professional used to be:
The professional was someone trusted and respected, an individual given class, status, autonomy, social elevation, in return for safeguarding our well-being and applying their professional judgement on the basis of a benign moral or cultural code.
(Dent and Whitehead, 2002:1)
But this trust and respect are now earned, not through qualifications and expertise, but through the ability to perform to performance indicators; to fulfil objective external criteria, rather than use subjective ‘gut’ feeling. This managerial professionalism is accountable, it has rules and outcomes and it is still continuing to be written. It is as if professionalism is being written by governments because the trust that was afforded to ‘gut’ feeling can no longer be trusted. Clarke and Newman (1997:78-80) make a distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ professionalism; the ‘old’ traditional professional is professional by dint of expertise, trusted simply because the word ‘professional’ implies trust without the need to question, the ’new’ managerialist professional is constantly held accountable through measurable performance. Interestingly both these definitions of professionalism suggest certitude; traditional through internal feelings and managerial through external prescription. One would expect therefore a convinced description of ‘professionalism’ from beginning teachers. But Carr and Hartnettsuggest that the situation in schools has been removing certitude from professionalism:
The tasks for which teachers and schools are being held responsible have accumulated at such a rate as to destroy any hope that they can all be achieved. In these circumstances it is unsurprising to find that there is now a growing confusion in the minds of teachers about the limits of their professional responsibilities and the nature of their educational role. (Carr and Hartnett, 1997:1)
To investigate whether Carr and Hartnett's somewhat pessimistic view of the 'confused' professional still pertained among the ten participants in my research I firstly attended their induction programme in school and then followed this up with a series of individual and group interviews over two years. I chose open-ended, semi-structured interviews to allow the interaction to be free and open and soon found that my research took on an emancipatory intention because of the enthusiasm of my participants who were eager to engage in the interviews and were anxious to discuss and evolve their own sense of teacher identity.
The school I used as the research site is a mixed, split-site comprehensive of 1500 pupils. The school is over subscribed and the economic and social background to the school is generally above the national average. The management of the schoolat the time of the research could be described as managerial. Thus the school management supported the 'new' accountable professional as there was an emphasis on performativity with wide use of Ofsted type observation of lessons to monitor teacher effectiveness. The main mission of the school was focussed on a culture of achievement and government directives with a commitment to formally measure improvements on an annual basis. There was an insistence on the need to improve external examination results at all key stages to evidence improvement and witness success in comparative league tables.Management had been keen to recruit a high percentage of NQTs in a bid to change the age profile of the staff which had become 'top heavy' with a large number of teachers whowere nearing retirement age. There had been conflicts between the ‘new’ performance-driven professionalism of management and the traditional ‘old’ professionalism of the staff in post before the new management had arrived.The latter were anxious to retain their autonomy and suspicious of prescriptive policies and audit-based practice. The participants in the research would be aware of these tensions and be confronted with arguments for both types of professionalism in their day to day work.
My research is limited in scope. I accept that case study findings are criticised as a weak vehicle for generalisation but feel strongly that they are relatable. Bassey (1981:86) expresses this sentiment in this way:
If case studies are carried out systematically and critically, if they are aimed at the improvement of education, if they are relatable, and if by publication of the findings they extend the boundaries of existing knowledge, then they are valid forms of educational research.
I was fortunate to be able to approach ten Newly Qualified Teachers,three men and seven women whose experiences, I would suggest, are typical of the broad class (Bryman, 1988:91) of NQTs. Any subsequent research could then focus on the validity of the propositions in other milieus. For the purposes of this paper, I will refer to the participants by using a pseudonym to protect their anonymity.
The school and the Local Education Authority (LEA) were keen to implement the government directive to give a full induction programme to the NQTs[2]and, interestingly, there werealready signs of ambiguity in the definition of ‘professional’ in the advice offered to the NQTs.The induction programme brought together a worthy range of established members of staff who told the NQTs about various aspects of school life. At these meetings, there were some oblique references to the government which alluded to the fact that what we were doing was different to the past and unavoidable because it was the government who was setting the agenda, but there was no overt mention of government definitions of professionalism. Mostly the NQTs were given a knowledge base of the way things were, with interesting occasional hints of some indistinct autonomous ‘professional’ possibilities; an Assistant Headteacher responsible for pastoral matters suggested:
‘What you do in registration is up to you.’
And
‘You can put them on report if it is your judgement to do this.’
The irony here was that there was no guidance at all as to what was meant by their professional judgement. They were prescribed in virtually every situation and suddenly expected to have the kind of ‘gut feeling’ professionalism of experienced teachers to deal with putting children onto report. Trust was handed out sparingly here because ‘we’, that is to say the school, were following government direction. The sudden invitation to be trusted to use professional judgement suggested that ‘old’ professional values were still lurking somewhere amongst prescriptive policy.
In the induction programme, there was no evident distinction between advice and compulsion. It was extremely rare for anyone but the speaker to speak, so there was monologue, not dialogue. It could be argued that a valuable opportunity to engage the NQTs in the formulation of their new identity as teachers was lost. In the same Autumn term of their induction year, I started my interviews with the participants on an individual basis. Now they showed themselves to be articulate and enjoyed the opportunity to discover their own thoughts on identity; this enjoyment increased over the two year research process as they became more comfortable with the research process.
The first time that I asked ‘Are you a professional?’ it was immediately apparent that ‘professionalism’ was a difficult concept for my participants. Gill stopped and stared at me:
‘How do you define professional?’
I explained that I was hoping that she would have her own definitions and declined to answer. However, throughout the interviews I had to share the onus of response with the participants to help them unravel their thoughts, not mine. Throughout the whole debate on professionalism there were constant hesitancies from all participants, suggesting that the outline provided by the government of a partnership of pressure and support was either not known or not accepted by them. Carol seemed quite surprised that she did not know whether she was a professional or not:
‘It’s very strange. It’s a strange terminology.’
There was discomfort with the word; it was not part of their vocabulary, as witnessed by Rachel:
‘It’s really hard. Plumber’s a trade. I don’t know. That’s really got me thinking now. I wonder what it says in the dictionary.’
Inadvertently she had picked on the whole point, which was to get them thinking about their professionalism.