There Is a Constant Bombardment : the Work Lives of Primary Teachers in Two Countries

‘There is a constant bombardment…’: The work lives of primary teachers in two countries - Australia and the UK.

John Williamson, Marion Myhill & Christine Gardner

Faculty of Education

University of Tasmania

Australia

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Institute of Education, University of London, 5-8 September 2007

Contact address:

Marion Myhill, Faculty of Education, University of Tasmania, Locked Bag 1307, Launceston Tasmania 7250 Australia.

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Abstract

Teachers’ work has become more complex and demanding in recent years and there has been a growing national and international concern about teachers’ workloads. (Galton & MacBeath, 2003; Gardner & Williamson, 2004; MacBeath & Galton, 2004) and, more broadly, teachers’ work lives (Goodson, 1997; Helsby, 1999; Poppleton & Williamson, 2004).

All modern societies have raised expectations and demands of teachers and as these have increased it has become important to examine teachers;’ time and work, as teachers are central to the changes that employers, system level authorities and the wider community wish to see implemented. It is important therefore to ensure that this central teacher role is, in fact, able to be met through the number of hours available and the location of the tasks that are required to be conducted.

The broad aim of the current research was to describe and map the workload of primary school teachers; paying attention not just to the number of hours worked, but also to exploring the nature of the tasks involved and, inter alia, the split between those tasks that were completed in situ in school and those that were completed away from the school, at home; and those tasks that involved independent action or the need to work collaboratively.

The aim of this paper is to report some of the similarities and differences in the data from comparative studies inEngland and Tasmania, focussingon how teachers in the two different countries are facing the increased workloads and work intensification.

In addition, some of the specific aspects of the Tasmanian study and the data from this context are presented here, while the specific contextof the English data will be reported separately elsewhere. The differences in teacher work lives in the two contexts are used toshow how educational policy, culture and context play out in schools and classrooms and, increasingly, in the homes of teachers.

Introduction

Teachers’ work has become more complex and demanding in recent years. This has been recognised in the growing national and international concern about teachers’ workloads (Galton & MacBeath, 2003; Gardner & Williamson, 2004; MacBeath & Galton, 2004), teachers’ work lives more broadly (Goodson, 1997; Helsby, 1999; Poppleton & Williamson, 2004) and the effects of these changes.

All modern societies have raised expectations and demands of teachers. As these have increased, it has become important to examine teachers’ time and work, as teachers are central to the changes that employers, system level authorities and the wider community wish to see implemented. It is important therefore to ensure that this central teacher role is, in fact, able to be met by teachers through the number of hours available and the location of the tasks that are required to be conducted.

The broad aim of thisresearch in the two countries was to describe and map the workload of primary school teachers. Thespecific aim was to pay attention not just to the number of hours teachers worked, but also to explore the nature of the tasks involved and, inter alia, the split between those tasks that were completed in situ in school and those that were completed away from the school, at home. An additional aim was aim to investigate the extent to which the tasks involved either independent action or the need to work collaboratively.

This paperreports some of the findings from theseAustralianand UKstudies, focussing on the Australian (Tasmanian) data. It will show how teachers in two different countries are facing increased workloads and work intensification. In addition, this paper will highlight some of the important differences in teacher work lives to show how educational policy and culture and context play out in schools and classrooms and increasingly, the homes of teachers.

The two country comparison study

Research methods

Independently of each other, two research teams, one at the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge (UK)(Galton and colleagues) and the other at the Faculty of Education at the University of Tasmania (Australia) (Williamson and colleagues), were approached in 2001 and 2003 by their respective teachers’ unions to conduct a study of teachers’ workloads.

In recognition of this cross-national opportunity and to allow analysis and comparisons, the same data gathering instruments – questionnaire, focus group interviews and teacher diaries – were used, with the appropriate contextual modifications in language and terms.

This was part of a larger study for the Tasmanian researchers. They also used face-to-face semi-structured interviews and their teacher sample included not only primary teachers, but also secondary and technical college teachers.Further, the Tasmanian study also investigated workload issues with ‘allied educators’, that is, guidance counsellors, laboratory technicians and teacher’s aides. Only the primary teacher data are reported here.

The Cambridgeand Tasmanian teams both had similar size samples. The Cambridgeteam drew a purposive sample of 267 primary teachers and the Tasmanian team drew a sample of approximately 180 teachers through a stratified random sampling procedure that selectedten percent of the total primary teacher union membership. Teacher union membershipcomprises over 94% of the total teaching force in Tasmania.

The questionnaire data were analysed using SPSS and the focus group interviews were analysed manually. The teacher diaries were analysed using a modified ‘grounded’ theory approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1998).

Findings

Cross-national similarities

There was a high degree of similarity between the primary (and secondary) teachers’ workloads in England and Tasmania. The main issues on which there was similarity were: the totalnumber of hours worked, the amount of out-of school time worked,the types of tasks undertaken, the relationship of workload to position,the teacher perceptions of changes in workload,and gender differences.

These similarities also reflected a general view among teachers that the current situation gave rise to a very general, and commonly expressed, concern: that they had less time now for doing what they believed was their main role – teaching students. Teachersin both the UK and Australia expressed this view (and also highlighted the frustration it causes teachers):

Time, time, time is the major issue for me. Being given trivial and other paper pushing exercises, gets you down and reduces the time you have to spend on children and preparation for them. (Galton, in preparation)

I have always loved teaching but at the moment I am not happy in my job because much of what we have to do is not teaching. It is: record keeping and filing; being policeman, counsellor and mediator; re-inventing the wheel; justifying what we do; prioritising and compromising professionalism in order to get mundane tasks done... It is also: frustrating; stressful; demoralising; and fraught with unrealistic expectations of parents, community, politicians and policy writers.(Gardner & Williamson, 2004, p. 59)

The data from the English teachers also revealed more localised concerns such as: ‘the squeeze on the curriculum’ resulting from an increased emphasis on the core subjects (e.g., English, mathematics); meeting the targets set for each age range which restricted the time available for giving feedback on homework; and the paperwork connected with testing and preparing for inspections reduced the time available for informal contact with both pupils and colleagues.

In general,meeting external expectations was a major cause of stress for the UK teachers, particularly as it also meant a loss of opportunity to beinvolved in decision-making, resulting in the feeling that they were not in control of what they were doing. An additional concern for primary teachers was the increased employment of untrained staff (i.e., classroom assistants), which was viewed as an additional burden, because of the time required to train them to work effectively with students

For the UKprimary teachers, the main obstacles to effective teaching were thelack of time for reflection, large classes, too many national initiatives and the pressure to meet assessment targets.(Galton, in preparation).

Total hours worked

In terms of the total number of hours worked, it seemed that almost half of all teachers reported working 50 or more hours per week, with up to 20 hours per week of work being completed at home.

This teacher’s statement from the Australian questionnaire datawas illustrative of this general situation:

Yesterday I worked from 7.30am until 7.10pm with a recess break of 15 minutes, lunch break of 25 minutes, 10 minute coffee break and 30 minutes for tea. (Gardner & Williamson, 2004, p.55)

Types of tasks

The nature of the tasks that teachers were asked to undertake – or what they actually did – was very broad. It ranged from their ‘expected’ professional core roles of planning and preparation, teaching and assessing to the much less expected tasks of cleaning and administrative tasks.

Galton (in preparation) has summarised the national data in terms of the range of teachers’ tasks and the relative proportions of time spent in teaching, non-contact/teaching time, after school work and voluntary time spent by the primary teachers fromthe Australian and UK data (and also included further data from studies in Canada and Hong Kong). The table below shows a very similar pattern of work for teachers in both in both the UK and Australia.

Source: Galton (in preparation)

Teachers spent a total of between 50 and 55 hours per week at the work of ‘being a teacher’. The greatest amount of time was spent in the classroom (20 – 22 hours), but this was closely followed by after school work, then non-contact time and voluntary work.

As can be seen from Figure 1, the overall pattern for the UK and Australian teachers was remarkably similar. The non-contact school time was taken up with administration, including meetings and parent-related matters. After school time for teachers was taken up largely with preparation and marking, with preparation taking about eight hours per week.

The country-specific data also showed that while there was an overall similarity, there were also some interesting differences in the detail. Administration time, for example, was higher in the UK data (5.7 hours) than in the Australian data (4 hours), while teachers in Australia spent more time interviewing parents (2.4 hours per week) than UK teachers (<1 hour per week). (Galton, in preparation)

Work and position

The hours worked and tasks undertaken did not appear to be related to teaching position, however. As with the earlier Campbell, Evans, Neill and Packwood (1991) study, the primary teacher data in both the English and Tasmanian studies showed, importantly, that the amount of time spent on ‘teaching tasks’ was not related to position, but rather to the teacher’s own idea of what was reasonable for them to work in their out-of-school time.

Effects of changes

Similarly,teacher perceptions were in agreement that they had a broader range of tasks now than previously and that this had important flow-on effects. When asked to comment on the work task changes in the recent past,for example, all teachers indicated that the range of tasks had broadened and this had contributed to their work intensification.

In all of this busy-ness, there was seen to be too little time for professional reflection or even informal conversations with colleagues:

We used to talk, as a staff. I can remember, you know, as the children go home you came out of your classroom and had a bit of a chat about the things that had happened. And in some ways, it was good to share. If you had a difficult afternoon it was nice to come and talk to other staff members. Now you don't tend to talk to your colleagues, everybody's just too busy. It's heads down as soon as they children have gone because you know you’ve jobs to do. (Primary teacher, 20 years experience) (Galton, in preparation)

Gender differences

There were interesting gender differences with males and females reporting varying levels of dissatisfaction with their ‘work expectations’. Many more female teachers than male teachers complained that changed (increased) work expectations had led to issues of work-life balance. They reported having to try to fit family and child rearing into the decreased non-work time available, as many professional activities were now expected in out-of-school time. These data fit well with the earlier observation of Helsby (1999)that ‘the new emphasis on teamwork’ will mean ‘… more time spent in meetings and in joint planning and review processes’ (p.99) and that if it (the teamwork) is not programmed for in the school day, then it will intrude into family life.

Cross-national differences

As identified earlier, there were remarkable similarities between the Australian and UK data, but there were also several interesting differences between the twogroups of teachers.

These differences related largely to specific contextual issues and occurred in such areas as: the nature of the particular major school or system changes (e.g., curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and reporting);where the driver for the changes was located; the way that teachers saw the changes impacting on their classrooms; and the demands that followed the new initiative in terms of professional development.

The next section of this paper will focus on the particular context of the Tasmanian data, focussing again on primary teachers.

Australia: The Tasmanian study

Context

Tasmaniais one of the smaller of the eight states and territories inAustralia; and these are all independent jurisdictions in relation to schools. However, many of thebroader educational policy and curriculum issues are common to, and evident in,all the states and territories.Issuestend to be pursued similarly and in mutually influencing, but independent, ways across all the states. So the main issues in the larger statesare also evident in a smaller state likeTasmania.In addition, while schools are a state responsibility, the federal government plays a strong and often interventionist role through funding, which also contributes to common elements.

Thespecific work context for Tasmanian teachers has changed very considerably over the last five years. Like teachers in many of the other Australian state systems, they have been involved in widespread change, resulting in a considerablyincreased workload and noticeable work intensification. The Tasmanian Department of Education embarked on amajorprocess of change in the school system commencing in the early years of the new century, particularly in relationto curriculum, but also impacting directly and comprehensively on the way that teachers work. Itwas a bold and comprehensive initiative that required system-wide change. The changes were rolled out over several years, starting with Lighthouse Schools and eventually including all state government schools across the state. (The independent non-government sector was less enthusiastic and was able to be selective about the aspects adopted).

A new curriculum, the‘Essential Learnings’ (Department of Education Tasmania, 2003a), was introduced and implemented across the state. This new curriculum represented a very significant change not only to curriculum content and organisation, but also to the teaching and planning approaches. The curriculum was based on a range of influences includingHarvardUniversity’s Project Zeroand Blythe and associate’s (1998)Teaching for Understandingcurriculum framework. It mandated a system-wide and specific approach to curriculum development that required a major re-conceptualisation and re-writing in all areas of the curriculum (content, approach and assessment). It also required an integrative multidisciplinary approach to curriculum areas that had previously been separate, inquiry (i.e., inductive or problem-based learning) models of teaching, and collaborative planning by teachers (Department of Education Tasmania, 2003b).

A very large commitment of teacher time was required for this change process and this had to be sustained over a number of years, as the changes were rolled out. Teachers not only had to make major alterations to their own teaching, but they also had to work with a wider that usual range of colleagues to plan and implement the changes, and to attend a greater than usual number of meetings and professional development sessions.