Geoff Troman

The Rise of the New Professionals? The restructuring of primary teachers' work and professionalism

Abstract This article explores teachers’ reactions to changing management cultures and argues for a complex reading of their responses. Data from an ethnographic study of a primary school are used to illustrate the restructuring of the teachers’ work since the mid‐1980s. Different teacher strategies were developed in response to changes in the managerial control of their work and dominant management constructions of professionalism. Whereas teachers in an occupational culture, the ‘old professionals’, largely resisted the changes but subsequently left the school or left teaching, the ‘new professionals’ complied with some of managements changed expectations of them, but resisted others. In the new managerialist culture the teachers experienced new forms of control and their roles increasingly included managerial tasks. The article concludes by suggesting that measures for policing teachers’ work, such as inspection and school self‐management may limit the spaces in which teachers can use strategies of re...

Creativity and performativity policies in primary school cultures

Cultures of performativity in English primary schools refer to systems and relationships of: target‐setting; Ofsted inspections; school league tables constructed from pupil test scores; performance management; performance related pay; threshold assessment; and advanced skills teachers. Systems which demand that teachers ‘perform’ and in which individuals are made accountable. These policy measures, introduced to improve levels of achievement and increased international economic competitiveness, have, potentially, profound implications for the meaning and experience of primary teachers’ work; their identities; their commitment to teaching; and how they view their careers. At the same time as policies of performativity are being implemented there is now increasing advocacy for the adoption and advancement of ‘creativity’ policies within primary education. These major developments are being introduced in the context of a wide range of social/educational policies also aimed at the introduction of creativity initiatives into schools and teaching. This complex policy context has major implications for the implementation process and also primary teachers’ work and how they experience it. The ethnographic research reported in this article has been conducted over a school year in six English primary schools in order to analyse the effects of creativity and performativity policy initiatives at the implementation stage. The article concludes by arguing that in the schools of our research the drive to raise pupil test scores involves both performative and creative strategies and that this critical mediation goes beyond amelioration toward a more complex view of professional practice. Implementing creativity and performativity policies provided important contextual influencing factors on teacher commitment. These were: curriculum coverage and task completion; and providing psychic rewards of teaching.

A research team in ethnography

There are signs that teams are becoming more popular in ethnographic research. New technology and, in the UK, the Research Assessment Exercise have facilitated the establishment and continuance of teams. In this paper, the authors discuss their experiences in one particular research team in recent years. Securing adequate funding has been the essential structural prerequisite. The authors distinguish among project, federated, and whole teams, depending on function and level of analysis. They consider team structure, approach, business, and processes, and the relationship between individual and team. Teamwork has enabled a wider and deeper coverage of work, a broader comparative base, and multiple researcher triangulation. The team provides a forum for the discussion of ethical issues, an immediate supportive reference group. It has opened up horizons, and promoted individual change and development. It has aided analysis and writing, and promoted clearer and more robust arguments. The article concludes with some caveats.

No Entry Signs: educational change and some problems encountered in negotiating entry to educational settings

Abstract The difficulties involved in gaining entry to educational settings in order to carry out ethnographic fieldwork have been known for some time. Previous accounts, however, have stressed the importance of the researchers self and field relations in the micro‐context in influencing the entry process. This article argues that in a time of rapid change in education the impact of the recent changes on participants, in particular, gatekeepers, shapes their responses to access requests from ethnographers. This argument is developed using data derived from the authors unsuccessful attempts to gain entry for ethnographic research in several English primary schools. The article concludes by suggesting that getting in is getting harder, and ethnographers, in developing successful strategies to gain entry, must develop a reflexivity informed by knowledge of structure and the macro‐context in which their negotiations take place.

Qualitative data analysis in cross‐cultural projects

Large‐scale research projects, conducted in a cross‐European context, are increasingly attractive to educational researchers and policy‐makers. However, this form of comparative research across cultures brings problems concerning the standardization of data collection and analysis, particularly where ethnographic research is concerned, as it prioritizes a full range of qualitative research strategies. This paper outlines the use of a universal model and the approaches recently taken by two research teams and contrasts these with another recent nine‐partner comparative European study that used ethnographic methods. We then describe the analytical procedures used in the project, which encouraged participant observation and individual researcher interpretation in order to generate grounded accounts and outline how they were culturally sensitive and meaningful to research teams who used varied analytical approaches. However, this raised difficult issues for the ‘final’ analysis and the production of a loosely coupled research report. Our pragmatic solution was a process of ‘qualitative synthesis’ whereby individual partner reports were collated by the Project Director and treated as data and a grounded theory approach was applied to generate tentative theory in respect of creative learning. The paper concludes by arguing that data generated by a loosely coupled approach to qualitative comparative research which uses a wide range of data collection methods can be effectively analysed with a qualitative synthesis.

Primary teacher commitment and the attractions of teaching

The article examines data collected from six primary schools in the ESRC Project: Primary Teacher Identity, Commitment and Career in Performative Cultures, and compares it to classic analyses of teacher commitment made by Dan Lortie and Jennifer Nias in order to assess continuity and change. The ‘mission’ to teach is still there, as is the humanist nurturing respect for young children, expressed as ‘love’ and ‘caring’. The material suitability of primary teaching for parents of young children is still a factor, but so are choices based on improved workplace welfare and responsibility in comparison with other jobs. This paper will draw out some of the complexities of contemporary teacher commitment and identity in the context of fast policy change and the rise of portfolio careers: in this context, the teacher’s ‘self’ and ‘ontological security’ have come under challenge. We conclude by using our findings on primary teacher commitment to examine social theories around subjectivities, such as the ‘corrosion of character’, ‘individualization’ and ‘reflexive projects of the self’.

Exploring diversity: teacher education policy and bilingualism

Although issues of inclusion, diversity and achievement have become a powerful agenda for change in teacher education policy in England, bilingual pupils are still conceptualised in policy terms as a problem. This absence of linguistic integration in English teacher education is in tension with the increasing number of school pupils speaking a diversity of languages at home, and contrasts with policy towards bilingual pupils in other parts of the United Kingdom, in Europe and in the United States. The standards for qualified teacher status only require trainee competence to be demonstrated in understanding pupil language backgrounds and in providing support for those learning ‘English as an Additional Language’ (EAL). The authors’ research investigated the way teacher education policy in England ignores the positive attributes of bilingual learners and the resultant lack of debate about the preparedness of trainee teachers to work effectively with bilingual pupils. This article presents key findings from their work with secondary schools in the south of England. They interviewed trainees, teachers and Local Education Authority (LEA) officers, administered a questionnaire to trainees and analysed policy documents. The findings indicate teacher education in England pays bilingualism lip service at best, persisting with a policy discourse emphasising the problem of EAL. The research raises important questions concerning teacher education policy in relation to bilingualism, and highlights the significance of school contexts in relation to effective teacher preparation. The article concludes by arguing for policies to improve teacher confidence and competence in England’s increasingly linguistically diverse classrooms.

Turning to Teaching: Gender and Career Choice.

As the largest public sector institution in the United Kingdom, education is a key site for studying the context of ‘choice’ and changes in the identities of professional workers in contemporary society. Recruitment and retention problems in education have led to the creation of new routes into teaching to attract career changers from other professions and occupations. In this paper we focus on career changers within the Economic and Social Research Council project ‘Primary Teacher Identity, Commitment and Career in Performative School Cultures’ who have entered teaching from other private sector occupations. We analyse these career changes in terms of ‘turning points’ in the participants’ lives in order to assess the extent to which choices are ‘self‐initiated’, ‘forced’ or ‘structural’. We are interested in the basis on which these choices were made and the impact of gender on career decisions.

Headteachers, Collaborative School Cultures and School Improvement: a changing relationship?

ABSTRACT The article provides an illustrative example of a headteachers role in the management of a collaborative school culture and school improvement to achieve radical educational reform in a period prior to the Education Reform Act. It will go to show how this role has changed as a result of the Act. Recent policy and legislation whose stated intention is to facilitate school improvement has, in the case of this one headteacher, had quite contrary effects. It is argued that ignoring the complexity and role conflict inherent in the headteachers role may inhibit the headteachers management of collaborative cultures and impede school improvement.

Team and Technology in Writing up Research

Abstract This article considers the writing up of ethnographic research, focusing on the parts played by teamwork and by electronic mail (e‐mail) in the construction of one of the chapters of a book written by the team. The career of this construction, which took place over a period of 2 months, is tracked through the e‐mail messages that circulated among the team. These illustrate team interaction in analysis and writing, the use of e‐mail technology, and particular issues in writing and how they were resolved. Following the reconstruction, we discuss the benefits offered by team and technology in this kind of enterprise—enhanced validity, enrichment, support, sustained impetus, and style. We conclude with some cautionary notes.