1
Whatever happened to the male teacher?
Recruitment to teaching in Sweden 1945-2000[1]
Britt-Marie Berge
Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Hamburg, 17-
20 September 2003
Abstract:
Have gender discourses in school policy anything to do with the shortage of teachers, especially male primary school teachers? Based on ninety Swedish Official Government Reports, this article focuses on primary schooling for the period 1945-2000. The official construction of the “good” teacher embraced various models –“female”, “male” and “gender neutral”. Further, all these models embraced different aspects of “caring” for the pupils. Nevertheless, the “male” versions were consistently regarded as superior. Paradoxically, however, the shortage of men has increased dramatically as the Swedish education has undergone marketisation. This article ends with a discussion of ways that the prevailing gender discourses exclude men from school teaching.
The Swedish National Agency of Education Skolverket[2] presented in 2002 an alarming report about teacher recruitment.More than seventy thousand teachers must be recruited to the teacher profession within the nearest future. Simultaneously similar problems were debated in, for example, British and Australian media[3]. In Western style societies worldwide there are worries about that particularly men keep away from the teacher profession. There also seems to be a problem wherever women have made advances in education.[4] The positive effects of the success of girls and women have been transformed in to an international panic over the failure of boys and men.[5] When the female-dominated primary schooling is the subject of discussion, the female teachers are often blamed for the failure of boys. One proposed solution is to find ways to encourage men to enter this area of education.[6] Feminists have, however, questioned the assumptions that more men in primary schools should make schoolwork easier.[7] It is argued that the deeper dynamics of primarily men’s construction of gender and sexuality can manifest in sexual harassment such as misogyny, homophobia and even sexual abuse.
V. Walkerdine has made a deconstruction of progressive pedagogy for primary schools.[8] Her main point was that the discursive prototype for progressive pedagogy was the bourgeois family, where the teachers’ position is that of the nurturing mother serving the omnipotent, active, inquisitive, experimental, and natural boy. In Western cultures the teacher’s position is most convenient for women and the pupil’s position for bourgeois boys, according to Walkerdine. In the light of Walkerdine´s findings the cries for more men are surprising. What are men believed to possess and women lack? F. Vogt has, however, challenged Walkerdine’s view when she, through analysis of interviews with Swiss and English primary school teachers of both sexes, found that both women and men understand primary teaching as responsibility for and relatedness to their pupils.[9]
In this article I will focus on this issue in a Swedish context, because on the one hand, national steering documents for compulsory school, since after the end of the Second World War, have prescribed various versions of progressive, pupil-centred pedagogy for primary schools. Yet, on the other hand, until the beginning of the 1970s the admission of students to intermediate level primary school teacher education was quota-based and therefore there has been a tradition of having both women and med in Swedish co-ed primary schools. Furthermore, since the 1960s one major goal for compulsory schooling has been to contribute to increased gender equality.
This article puts the question if gender discourses in progressive school policy have anything to do with the shortage of teachers, especially the shortage of men in primary schools. To be able to answer that question, the repertoire of teaching positions that have been discursively inscribed on the State arena for the period 1945-2003 are analysed. Does progressive pedagogy discussed in a Swedish state context provide other than nurturing positions for primary school teachers? If that is the case, are these position gendered? The article ends with a discussion of ways that the prevailing gender discourses exclude men from primary teaching.
The theoretical approach is based on a poststructural feminist perspective. This perspective is important for an understanding of how competing discourses are activated when normative female and male teaching positions are constructed and how the discourses also produce subject positions from which alone the gendered teachers make sense.[10] There is a variety of ways of defining and understanding discourse analysis.[11] The concept of “interpreted repertoires” is used in this study, when different teacher types embedded in documents are outlined, since the presumption is that there has been not only one discursive prototype for progressive primary school teachers.[12] In discourse analytic terms, relatively coherent ways of expressing exemplary teachers and ways of teaching in the empirical material, described below, create the building blocks of the teacher prototypes. A historical approach helps in gaining an understanding of how social, economic, and ideological changes in society affect the meanings related to these teacher types, their positions, and their fluidity over time.
The empirical material consists of ninety Swedish Official Government Reports, Statens offentliga utredningar (SOU) 1945-2000, dealing with primary schools and primary school teachers. The State arena is of interest since Sweden has had a strong, Nordic type welfare state with a strong centralistic tradition in the Swedish educational system with national rule-governed curricula, in which aims of homogeneity, consensus and equality have gone together with aims of pupil – centred pedagogy. However, Sweden has quite recently, like a lot of other western world like countries,[13] shifted school policy by giving more space to marketisation and consumers’, e.g. parents’, influence on schoolwork.
The empirical material is divided into three periods, within each of which discursive conflicts were expected to be present. The first period 1945-1962 embraces the time when compulsory school reform was on the political agenda, and ends when the first centrally managed and rule-governed national curriculum for the new school, Läroplan 1962[14], was issued. The second period 1969-1980 starts with the implementation of the second rule-governed-national curriculum, Läroplan 1969[15], and ends when the first goal-governed national curriculum, Läroplan 1980[16], was issued. During these years the way of governing schools through rules is questioned and replaced by a new way of governing schools through aims and more freedom for schools to find different ways to reach these aims. The third and final period, 1981-2000, covers the transformation of education and a profound shift in education policy towards marketisation. However, in order to set the scene I provide an outline of the historical context and describe some of the major changes in Swedish education policy.
From governing through rules to governing through goals
After World War 11 the Swedish education system was completely reconstructed, and the nine-year compulsory school was established. Equality was one of the guiding lights for the reforms, as equal opportunity to gain an education was also synonymous with standardization of schooling.[17] Timetables and detailed syllabi were issued in order to enhance the uniformity of the teaching content and important decisions were made at the very centre of the State apparatus. However, in the late 1970s, a devolution process started with increased freedom for the local authorities to make decisions on the allocation of resources. According to the national curriculum for the compulsory school, issued in 1994, Läroplan 1994[18], the timetables for various subjects can be adjusted, and the scope for local school profiles and individual choices is broad. Governing through rules has largely been replaced by governing through goals and results.[19] The meaning of a “good” teacher has also changed as, for example, responsibilities for pedagogical improvement have been transferred from the central state to the local authorities. Thus, Sweden has witnessed a dramatic system shift in education policy.[20]
As mentioned above, since the establishment of the nine-year compulsory school every curriculum has emphasised gender equality, and the school is expected to contribute to gender equality in education, the labour market, family life, leisure, and politics. However, state rhetoric about the meaning of gender is opaque and meanings of essentialism and conformity regarding the sexes operate simultaneously.[21]
One aspect of gender equality is formulated in terms of quantity, as the goal is an equal distribution of the sexes in various spheres of society. Here the arguments are drawn from the conformity discourse, where sex/gender should not matter in education. For example, girls and boys are to be equally distributed over all subjects in compulsory school and in all programmes in upper secondary school. The qualitative aspect, however, prescribes an essentialist perspective of the sexes, as it is taken for granted that girls and boys are different. Girls’ and boys’ different knowledge, experiences and values must therefore be equally taken into account in education. This essentialist view of the sexes could come into conflict with and counteracts the quantitative aims of equal distributions of the sexes over subjects and programmes. Furthermore, sex differences risk legitimating hierarchies between the sexes, especially since the asymmetry of structural and symbolic gender relations is ignored. However, in the State reports about primary schools, the complexity of the gender issue is not reflected upon.[22]
The primary school teacher as a state construction
The primary school teachers presented under the following three headlines are some abstract constructions or the interpreted repertoire of normative teacher types based on the State reports.
The story of the “well-informed, versatile and exemplary authority” and the “naturally talented supervisor” (1945-1962)
During the period 1945-1962 the establishment of the nine-year compulsory school is discussed in the SOU Reports and two “good” primary school teacher types appear on the State stage: the well-informed, versatile and exemplary authority and the naturally talented supervisor.Furthermore a third type, prevalent also in later periods, can be identified: The evaluator and controller of quality, who sometimes goes hand in hand with the other types. The State regulates admission to intermediate level primary school teacher education through gender quotas, which indicate that the State is anxious to have both sexes in school.
The well-informed, versatile and exemplary authority is a person who has good personal relations with the local people. The teacher is pictured as an authoritative patriarch, though not authoritarian; rigorous but incorruptibly impartial with a deep commitment to all school children and their families. Following quotation will illustrate important characteristics for both teachers and pupils: ‘Honesty, being dutiful and responsible, possessing patience, and self-reliance, capabilities of overcoming difficulties and making use of time in an efficient way.’ [23]
The model both for teachers and for important content in school life is ‘God, the loving father’ and ‘God’s care and protection’. [24] The teacher is to come as close as possible to a loving, caring and protective human ideal:
The disciples should regard their teacher as a friend, to whom they have possibilities to turn to get advices not only about schoolwork but also about other worries and troubles. Authority and respect will be grounded on the foundation of confidence.[25]
The teacher is a trustworthy person, whom both pupils and their parents can consult at any time, day or evening. On such occasions ‘it is of great importance that the message is conveyed that the family and the home, should include love between husband and wife and between parents and their children, because the family is the foundation of our society.’ [26]
The teacher should be a model for both pupils and their parents. When examples from school situations are mentioned, the teacher is referred to using a masculine form. ‘In his relations to the pupils, he should…’ [27]and it is presupposed that the all teachers should be like men. However, the implicit meaning is that a woman can never be as good as a man, especially since the guiding light is God, the father. As for teachers’ salaries this is made quite explicit. Not until 1 July 1948 women at intermediate level were obliged to advance to the highest salary.[28] However, the State values the intermediate level primary school teachers a lot higher than the teachers at junior level, where the vast majority were women. Teaching at intermediate level is said to be distinct from and of more value than teaching at junior level.[29] In order to construct “the well-informed, versatile and exemplary authority”, single as well as married teachers should accept the official apartment attached to their posts.[30]
Much emphasis is laid on the teacher as a competent “evaluator and controller of quality”. The teacher is to evaluate every pupil’s personal characteristics, and the teachers’ evaluations are believed to be more informative than marks based on knowledge rested on textbooks.[31] Occasionally the voices of the teachers are heard, as their points of view are reported. In some cases women and men position themselves differently. When, for example, the school commission suggests that researchers should construct diagnostic tests to evaluate the pupils, the men make every effort to maintain their exclusive rights to be the “the evaluator and controller of qualities”. The women are more inclined to accept external experts, usually men, and their tests as a complement to their own evaluations. However, they still want to reserve to themselves the right to determine if and when to use these tests.[32]
The naturally talented supervisor is a natural, born teacher. ‘The inherited characters are to a considerable extent the foundation for the teacher’s personality…his personal characters.’[33]The construction of this type is based on sciences like biology and psychology as the free growing child is at the centre of the teaching. This means a teaching based on pupils activities. ‘The authoritative school shall be replaced by an activity school, where the disciple has a feeling of joint responsibility for the daily school work.’ [34]
Tests and evaluations are left to external experts. In the Swedish State reports two aspects are prominent. On the one hand the supervisor’s competence to be a good leader is stressed. The teacher must ‘lead and inspire schoolwork.’ The teacher should act with the ‘correct kind of authority, at the same time appealing and mastering.’Stress is laid on the teacher’s ‘unique, personal characteristics, natural capacities and interests… A teacher cannot be expected to achieve good results if he must use methods he personally dislike.’ [35] This position is male coded in the texts.
In order to support the children’s free growth, on the other hand, the teacher must create ‘a good, homely classroom for everyone.’[36]These texts are gender neutral, when teachers are referred to. When the pupil is pictured he is most often a boy, unless sex differences are stressed. The teachers’ obligations are to ‘trace out his natural abilities, develop them and guide him to the right study path.’[37] In the gender discourse permeating this teacher type, and in accordance with this quote women are ‘congenial to things that appeal to emotions and imaginations’, while men are ‘congenial to things that appeal to acts of volition and abilities to take actions.’[38] Thus, if the leading position is allocated to male teachers, the position for creating good homely classrooms is left open for emotional female natures.
Until 1950 there are two competing positions for a good teacher, “the naturally talented supervisor” and “the well-informed, versatile and exemplary authority” respectively, in state reports. When the teachers’ opinions are quoted in the reports they express scepticism towards the supervising teacher. However, “the naturally talented supervisor” emerges from the struggle victoriously and is inscribed in the first national curriculum for the nine-year compulsory school 1962. A. Hargreaves[39] describes similar ideological conflicts as the two great narratives of traditionalism and progressivism.
The story of the “limitless servant”, the “pragmatist” and the “reflective teacher” (1969-1980)
After World War 11, the demand for workers increased in Sweden as trade and industry prospered. Therefore both women and immigrants were needed in the labour force while simultaneously gender equality became an important political issue. One consequence was an increased need for care institutions, and in this respect primary schools played a key role. In the 1960s and 1970s prolonged school days are discussed and the number of children’s leisure centres increased. Part-time work became more frequent even among women, who had earlier been obliged to work full time in primary schools.