The effects of reform: Have teachers really lost theirsense of professionalism?

Christopher Day Æ Lindsey Smethem

Published online: 18 April 2009

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract In this article, we reflect upon what research and other evidence tells us

about the effects of many years of sustained, centrally initiated government reforms

upon teachers’ work, lives and effectiveness. It is important to note that whilst the

general intentions of school reform are almost always to improve standards of

teaching, learning and achievement in increasingly unstable and turbulent economic

and socially fragmented environments, their singular and cumulative effects are not

always perceived to be efficacious or beneficial by those whose responsibility it is to

enact them. In other words, reform may not always lead to renewal. As we approach

the end of the first decade of this century, then, it is important to take stock of what,

in some countries, have been 20 years of root and branch reform in schools, in pre-

service teacher training (aka education) and in teachers’ conditions of work. Whilst

the specifics of reform efforts differ in pace and in the ways they are managed in

different countries, the general direction is the same.

Keywords Education reform � Teachers’ work � Change � Professionalism

Introduction

In this paper we examine the effects of two decades of reform upon teachers. We

use England as an ‘outlier’ case study because, among all countries, teachers’ work

in that country has been, and is, the subject of more intensive and sustained central

government intervention than any other. Such intervention, it has been claimed, has

C. Day (&) � L. Smethem

School of Education, University of Nottingham, Jubilee Campus,

Wollaton Road, Nottingham NG8 1BB, UK

e-mail: christopher.day@nottingham.ac.uk

L. Smethem

e-mail: Lindsey.Smethem@nottingham.ac.uk

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J Educ Change (2009) 10:141–157

DOI 10.1007/s10833-009-9110-5

had the effect of re-defining what is meant by teacher professionalism and how

teachers practice it individually and collectively. Brennan (1996) describes this as a

model of ‘managerial professionalism’ which emphasizes:

A professional who clearly meets corporate goals, set elsewhere, manages a

range of students well and documents their achievements and problems for

public accountability purposes. The criteria of the successful professional in

this corporate model is of one who works efficiently and effectively in meeting

the standardized criteria set for the accomplishment of both students and

teachers, as well as contributing to the school’s formal accountability

processes (Brennan 1996, p. 22).

England is an example of the creation and management of sustained, radical

systemic change by government and provides a rich source of evidence of the

effects of this upon teachers from which others may learn.

Teachers in most countries across the world are experiencing a similar mix of

government interventions in the form of national curricula, national tests, criteria for

measuring the quality of schools and the publication of these on the internet in order

to raise standards and promote more parental choice. Although school contexts

continue to mediate the short term effects of the intensification of work which is a

consequence of such reforms (Apple 1986), the persisting effect is to erode teachers’

autonomy and challenge their individual and collective professional and personal

identities. Furthermore, reforms of this kind are being reinforced by changes in pre-

service teacher training through which students now must meet the measurable

requirements of prescribed curricula and sets of narrowly conceived, instrumentally

oriented competencies in order to succeed.

Lawn (1996), Robertson (1996) and Smyth et al. (2000) suggest that the effects

of economic globalization from the mid 1980s have resulted in a postmodern, post-

Fordist restructuring of workplace organization and flexible forms of production,

which are replicated in education within ‘a virulent economic rationalist model’

(Robertson 1994, cited in Smyth et al. 2000, p. 7). The language of schooling in the

‘post-industrial economy’ (Hargreaves 1997) has absorbed that of industrial

management. Teachers are obliged ‘to be demonstrably more accountable, efficient

and effective in producing quality learning’ (Smyth 1995). Ball (2003, p. 7)

illustrates the ‘new vocabulary of performance’ in England which changes teachers’

thinking as they work with measurable outcomes of ‘performance indicators,’

‘performance data,’ ‘targets,’ ‘benchmarking,’ and the new managerialism inherent

in ‘management teams,’ and ‘financial management.’ Teachers in many countries, it

is argued, are being ‘squeezed into the tunnel vision of test scores, achievement

targets and league tables of accountability’ (Hargreaves 2003) and spend precious

time producing and dealing with ‘a baffling array of figures’ (Ball 2003) within

cultures of compliancy (Ball 2000). Thus:

For many teachers, the past 20 years have been years of survival rather than

development. As social and economic change has placed new demands upon

and created new expectations from schools, hardly a year has passed without

some reform being mooted, negotiated or imposed in the name of raising

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standards (appraisal, inspection), increasing ‘user’ participation (open enrol-

ment, local financial management) and pupil entitlement (a national curric-

ulum) (Day 1997, p. 44).

Teachers’ work, internationally, is now more transparent, its quality more closely

monitored and teachers themselves are held more to public account for students’

progress and attainment against results driven agendas which are related closely to

government targets than ever before. Alongside this, in many countries, teachers are

now more explicitly being held to account for students’ ‘well being’ and

‘citizenship’ education. Whilst such high stakes testing regimes may be accompa-

nied by increased support for teachers and schools, it is disputed whether they have

contributed to improvements in student achievements; and there are increasing

concerns both about their negative effects upon teachers’ motivation, morale, well

being and effectiveness.

Although reforms in schools are different in every country in their content,

direction and pace, they have five common factors. (1) They are proposed because

governments believe that by intervening to change the conditions under which

students learn, they can accelerate improvements, raise standards of achievement

and somehow increase economic competitiveness. (2) They address implicit worries

of governments concerning a perceived fragmentation of personal and social values

in society. (3) They challenge teachers’ existing practices, resulting in periods of at

least temporary destabilization. (4) They result in an increased work load for

teachers; and (5) they do not always pay attention to teachers’ identities—arguably

central to motivation efficacy, commitment, job satisfaction and effectiveness (Day

2002).

Teachers’ work

The knowledge society […] craves higher standards of learning and teaching,

yet it has also subjected teachers to public attacks; created epidemics of

standardization and overregulation; and provided tidal waves of resignation

and early retirement, crises of recruitment, and shortage of eager and able

educational leaders. The very profession which is so often said to be of such

vital importance for the knowledge economy is the one that too many groups

have devalued, more and more people want to leave, fewer and fewer want to

join, and very few are interested in leading. This is more than a paradox. It is a

crisis of disturbing proportions (Hargreaves 2003, p. 2).

Reforms in education over the last 20 years undertaken by governments across

the developed world, with the twin aims of raising educational achievement and

making teachers more publicly accountable, are well-documented within a large

literature, most of which identifies their negative impact on teachers’ morale and

sense of professionalism (for example, Day 1997, 2000; Fullan 2001; Gideonese

1988; Grace 1997; Hargreaves 1997; Hargreaves and Evans 1997; Mahony and

Hextall 2000; Seddon 1997; Walker and Barton 1987; Whitty 1997; Pricewater-

houseCoopers 2001). Whilst educational change itself is not a new phenomenon,

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what is new in England from the 1980s onwards is its frequency and intensity (Sikes

1992) and the ‘manner of change’ which appears to have significantly increased

workload (PricewaterhouseCoopers 2001) and technicised teaching (Apple 1987;

Braverman 1974; Hall 2004). Fullan (2001) sees the pace and hierarchy of

innovation in education as worse than in the world of business.

In England, after more than two decades of constant reform, politicians and

education policy makers continue to be pre-occupied with pupil performance,

teacher performance and school performance. In the years since the 1988 Education

Reform Act target setting for teachers through annual performance management

(aka appraisal); for pupils through at least half-termly assessments of performance

against prediction in a number of key areas (English, Maths and Science); and for

schools through increased responsibilities of individual school governing bodies,

self-evaluation and external inspection have become the norm in English schools.

The government’s Green Paper, ‘Teachers meeting the Challenge of Change’

[Department for Education and Employment (DfEE 1998)] attempted to improve

the pay and conditions of teachers, their low status in society, continuing reports of

low morale and their perceived low expectations of themselves and their pupils by

putting into place measures ranging from differentiating between managerial and

leadership roles, introducing national threshold standards for teachers which were

associated with increased levels of pay, introducing ‘literacy’ and ‘numeracy’ hours

in primary schools, advice on classroom management and pedagogic attainment

tests and examinations for pupils aged 7, 11, 14, 16, 17 and 18 years. Government

also founded a lavishly resourced National College for School Leadership whose

primary function was (and is) to provide high quality development opportunities for

those with or aspiring to senior and middle leadership roles. It has also increased its

investment in the continuing professional development (CPD) of teachers and

provided significant resources for the employment of a new level of para-

professionals in classrooms, called Teaching Assistants. Alongside these and a host

of other centrally driven initiatives, teacher education programmes were reformed

and different entry routes were devised in order to attract mature candidates who

currently worked in other occupations. Many schools became ‘training schools’

with a major responsibility for training student teachers. A new ‘Standards and

Effectiveness Unit’ was established at the heart of government to drive reform.

Local authorities (aka Local Education Authorities) became a primary instrument in

monitoring standards and, with the recent introduction of ‘Every Child Matters’

[Department for Education and Skills (DfES 2003)], of ensuring the integration of

education, social, psychological and health services. As Gleeson and Husbands

observed in 2001:

At macro-educational levels, state direction prescribes the operating environ-

ments for schools with increasing precision, structured forms, curriculum,

assessment regimes, all of which are increasingly managed. At micro-

educational level, governments exhibit increasing interest – through a concern

with ‘effectiveness’ and ‘improvement’ – in direct interventions in pedagogy,

professional development and institutional management. (Gleeson and Hus-

bands 2001, p. 4).

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Whilst the English examples provided above are not intended to be pejorative,

they inevitably have had consequences for teachers’ identities and work lives.

‘Personalisation’ of the curriculum, ‘Assessment for Learning’, ‘Social and

Emotional Aspects of Learning’ curriculum (SEAL), ‘Excellence and Enjoyment’

(in primary schools), a 14-19 Diploma programme (in secondary schools), the

expansion of promotion of information and communications technology (ICT) and

other changes which continue to challenge schools and teachers are just a few of the

initiatives introduced to schools in the last five year period. The expansion of ICT

especially is now extending from the use of ‘interactive whiteboards’ in classrooms,

computer suites in schools and other technological innovations to include VLEs

(Virtual Learning Environments) in which so-called ‘Learning Platforms’ provide

the means for new forms of parental involvement in their children’s progress and,

potentially, 24/7 pupil engagement in learning which will no longer be the exclusive

domain of those employed to teach in schools.

It should not be forgotten, either, that over the same time period a decline in pupil

behaviour in primary and secondary schools in England has been observed. In a

survey of members of the National Association for Schoolmasters and Union of

Women primary school teachers in 2008, half of the respondents claimed that ‘low

level’ disruption in classrooms occurred on a daily basis, with almost two-thirds

claiming that behaviour had deteriorated in recent years, and one in five that they

had to deal with physical aggression at least once each week. Significantly, teachers

with more than 20 years’ experience were ‘most likely to report significantly more

challenging behaviour’ (The Daily Telegraph 2008, p. 10). On the same day, a

report was filed which illustrates the very different perspectives that teachers’

representatives and government spokespersons hold, this time in relation to statistics

which showed that 15,000 teachers were absent from schools each day and that, in

2007/2008, teachers in England took 2.9 million working days off school, as against

2.3 million in 1999. On the one hand, the acting general secretary of the largest

teachers’ organization in England, (National Union of Teachers) claimed that,

‘Given the enormous pressures that teachers are working under, it is remarkable that

they have so little sick leave on average;’ whilst on the other, a government

employee spoke of working hard, ‘to reduce the pressures on teachers’ (Paton

2008a, p. 2). The same report noted that teachers received more than 6,000 pages of

government paperwork in 2008. Whilst these examples are drawn from the English

context, they are, to a greater or lesser extent, replicated elsewhere also.

Ball asserts that the current ‘epidemic of reform’ or the ‘terrors of performativity’

not only change what educators do, but fundamentally ‘changes who they are’

(2003, p. 215). He observes that performativity is the ‘objective facade of public

sector reform’ (2003, p. 217); teachers ‘live an existence of calculation’ and ‘value

replaces values’; with competition between schools, within schools and between

teachers, as opposed to collaboration (Hall 2004; Mahony and Hextall 2000). He

suggests that the ‘ethics of competition and performance’ in the educational

marketplace fundamentally differ from the ‘older ethics of professional judgement

and co-operation’ (2003, p. 218). In this way, it is claimed, the dominant

educational discourse has changed from principles and values, to ‘efficiency’ and

‘productivity’ (Miliband 2003; OFSTED 2005).

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Smyth et al. (2000) suggest that the imposed school curriculum in many

developed countries, as the main means of control of teachers, is accompanied by

surveillance mechanisms to ensure its implementation, including methods of

assessment and a defined methodology or ‘shared recipes for pedagogic ‘‘best

practice’’’ (Hall 2004, p. 5). Although it should be noted that such mechanisms are

not statutory, teachers’ performance is judged against them and, therefore, the

pressure upon teachers is to comply. Teachers are rigorously supervised and

evaluated against criteria linked to the curriculum; and disciplined and rewarded

according to their performance (Smyth et al. 2000). In England the predominance of

league tables as a measure of performance, a national curriculum with a framework

of guidance and materials provided for teachers based on ‘what works’ (DfES 2001)

illustrates well this discourse of control.

In the early years of reform, Sikes argued (1992, p. 37) that the requirement to

implement changes with which they disagree on professional grounds resulted in

‘reluctant rather than enthusiastic compliance by teachers’ (Hargreaves and Evans

1997, p. 1; Helsby and McCulloch 1996). A decade later, writing in an international

context, Fullan agreed, claiming that teachers:

have become devalued by the community and the public. Teacher stress and

alienation are at an all-time high, judging from the increase in work-related

illness, and from the numbers of teachers leaving or wanting to leave the

profession (Fullan 2001, p. 115).

Such experiences over a long period of time, it is claimed, have resulted in:

a high degree of uncertainty and instability. A sense of constantly being

judged in different ways by different means, according to different criteria,

through different agents and agencies. There is a flow of changing demands,

expectations and indicators that makes one continually accountable and

constantly recorded. We become ontologically insecure: unsure whether we

are doing enough, doing the right thing, doing as much as others, or as well as

others (Ball 2003, p. 220).

Recent research into retention issues to understand the dissatisfactions in

teaching in England, Australia and the USA highlights the factors of pay, morale

and increased workload resulting in lack of time to teach and plan (Bingham 1991;

Day 2004; Dinham and Scott 2000; Gold 1996; The Guardian 2003; Ingersoll 2003;

Johnson et al. 2005; PricewaterhouseCoopers 2001; Smithers and Robinson 2003).

In their major survey of teachers in England to investigate reasons for attrition,

Smithers and Robinson (2003) reported key reasons for leaving the profession:

among secondary teachers the most frequently given reason for going was

workload (58% of leavers) followed this time by pupil behaviour (45%). But

in 2001 the new category of ‘government initiatives’ had to be added (37%)

(2003, p. 5).

These findings substantiated those reported by Market & Opinion Research

International (MORI) who surveyed all serving teachers registered with the General

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Teaching Council for England in 2002. Their analysis of over 70,000 respondents

choosing their three greatest demotivating factors in their work found that:

• 56% of respondents cited workload

• 39% cited initiative overload

• 35% cited target driven culture

• 31% cited pupil behaviour and discipline (2002, p. 5).

The influential Teacher Workload Study (PricewaterhouseCoopers 2001),

commissioned by the UK government which was concerned with issues of

recruitment and retention, concurred with Fullan (2001) that teachers experienced a

lack of professional trust. The study also reported that although many teachers

welcomed the spirit of government initiatives to improve teaching and learning they

felt a lack of support, and the pace and manner of implementation intensified their

work; teachers felt a lack of ownership of change (PricewaterhouseCoopers 2001).

The report identified a need to ‘reduce teacher workload’ and thereby achieve

‘improved teacher morale and better retention rates’ (2001, p. 2) with the following

recommendations among their six key proposals:

• improved teachers’ ownership and control of their work

• improved ways of government and agencies bringing in change.

(PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2001, pp. 1–6)

Lawn (1996) and Smyth et al. (2000) argue that, paradoxically, teachers can

be seen to support the changes, which simultaneously intensify their work and

diminish their professional responsibility and autonomy. This support ranges from

a lack of active resistance to a positive willingness as a professional to support

new initiatives. Thus, incongruously ‘teachers can be seen as both main agents of

social reproduction and low status operatives in the education system’ (Lawn

1996, p. 10), having initiatives conceived and imposed by controlling others that

they are expected to implement (Harris 1994). Together these studies suggest a

change in the nature of teacher professionalism, a recasting of teachers’ work,

which demands both flexibility and compliance and which has led to the

proletarianisation of teachers (Lawn 1996; Robertson 1996; Smyth 1995; Smyth

et al. 2000)

Arguably, one of the biggest challenges faced by all governments in this century

is to improve the recruitment, retention and commitment of good teachers and

school leaders. Yet the environment in which teachers work remains problematic.

The crisis in morale identified by the UK government in 1997 (House of Commons

1997) continued in 2000, when an ICM poll commissioned by Teachers TV (The

Guardian 2000) found that over half were planning to leave teaching within the next

three years. Successive surveys in the following years reveal a similar pattern of

response (The Guardian 2003) as the government continues to espouse a mix of high

expectations for teachers whilst its regulatory frameworks continue to demonstrate

low trust in their abilities to provide value for money.

Despite the huge investment in reform initiatives in England, in 2009, according

to judgements made by Ofsted (the government’s external inspection agency), one

in seven secondary schools did not reach the baseline target of 39% of 5 ‘A-Cs’

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(including English and Maths) in examinations for pupils aged sixteen; and the

government has abandoned its national tests at Key Stage Three for pupils aged

14 years. In addition, it has rolled back requirements to teach a national curriculum

and is considering the impact of its other initiatives. In short, it is beginning to

acknowledge the limitations of ‘top-down’ reform. On the one hand, this may be

viewed as a positive move to re-professionalise teachers by enabling them increased

levels of discretionary decision making in the classrooms. On the other hand, even if

this is so, it is likely to come too late both for many experienced teachers who have

become disillusioned and overwhelmed by successive reforms which, they perceive,

have undermined their professional authority, and also for teachers in their early

years who have ‘been actively socialized into working with change’ (Hargreaves

2005, p. 973) and have thus learned a range of technical competencies but not

necessarily the ability to teach in ways which the new world of more complex

pedagogies and increased content choices demand, not only in England, but across

the world. The achievement of ‘world class’ schools in England envisioned by

Michael Barber (2001) who is credited as the driving force for these reforms,

continues to be an elusive chimera as teachers struggle to meet performance targets

for themselves and their pupils.

Questions of interpretation: towards a more hopeful future?

There are three important qualifiers to criticisms of centrally driven reforms in

England, and elsewhere, however. First, not every education stakeholder would

subscribe to this gloomy picture of the consequences of reform. In England and

Wales, for example, The School Teachers’ Review Body’s image is of a ‘world-

class teaching profession’ which is ‘efficient, effective and accountable’ but also

‘encouraged, supported and trained, trusted, respected and valued’ (STRB 2003a, p.

vi). Policy makers and government agencies in England (e.g., Teacher Development

Agency and The National College of School Leadership) continue to claim that the

reforms are achieving their purposes and that standards of education are being

raised; and many in local authorities subscribe to this. Second, pupil attainment

statistics and the benefits of external inspection of schools in England remain

matters of dispute between academic researchers and the DCSF (Department for

Children, Schools and Families). Whilst league tables of school results seem to

show that many are improving, there are some who claim that this is simply the

result of more ‘‘teaching to the test’’ at the expense of providing broader educational

experiences (The Guardian 2006; Paton 2008b). Third, it is important to note the

likelihood of differences in response to reforms by those who have experienced

more autonomy of action in the past and those who are newly trained in the

reformed, school-focussed initial (pre-service) teacher education programmes and

have been assessed against professional standards which Mahony and Hextall

(2000) argue require a certain type of person to meet and abide by them.

Hargreaves (2005) cites OECD data to argue that across its thirty country

membership there are factors of age, career phase and generation in teachers’

attitudes to change whereby the ‘seemingly change-averse Baby-boom generation’

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moves towards retirement leaving a new generation of ‘change-inclined’ teachers,

who are ‘used to change’ (Johnson et al. 2004). However, he cautions that this

generational opportunity may not necessarily result in educational improvement as,

although young teachers may be more open to change, they can lack the experience,

competence and confidence to fully comprehend and implement change.

Tickle (2000) highlights the differences for new teachers inducted into a

‘workforce operating prescribed curriculum content and techniques of instruction’

as opposed to a profession committed to self-development and active engagement in

educational reform:

While the former might involve surrender to imposed ideas and the obedient

use of method, the latter draws upon values, personal qualities, and

professional characteristics of very different kinds (2000, p. 69).

In a world of unrelenting and even repetitive change, then, it is essential to

understand how teachers experience and respond to educational change if reform

and improvement efforts are to be more successful and sustainable (Hargreaves

2005). Teaching is a complex, caring, moral, cultural, intellectual and emotional

endeavour (Hall 2004) which requires teachers who are not only pedagogically

competent and knowledgeable about what they teach, but who are able to enthuse,

motivate and engage the learners, who are able to be at their best at all times. To be

at their best however requires them to be motivated, confident that they can make a

positive difference to learning and achievement and that they can be trusted to do so.

Ten years ago, Jeffrey and Woods (1998) examined teachers’ experiences of

external inspections and the effects upon their sense of professional identity:

My first reaction was, ‘I’m not going to play the game’, but I am and they

know I am, I don’t respect myself for it; my own self respect goes down. Why

aren’t I making a stand? Why aren’t I saying, ‘I know I can teach: say what

you want to say’, and so I lose my own self-respect. I know who I am; know

why I teach, and I don’t like it: I don’t like them doing this, and that’s sad,

isn’t it (Jeffrey and Woods 1998, p. 160)?

She was the only year 6 teacher at Tafflon and after criticism of their SATs

(standard attainment tests) results she resolved to go down the path of

‘improvement of results’. She changed her curriculum, and achieved her aim

by getting the second best results the following year in her LEA. She justified

this by saying that she was ‘now just doing a job’; and had withdrawn her total

involvement to preserve her ‘sanity’. ‘The results were better because I acted

like a function machine’ (Jeffrey and Woods 1998, p. 163).

It is tempting to continue to cast teachers’ responses to reform in the same mould

today. Yet in England, the New Labour government (1997–) with the new Prime

Minister Tony Blair’s emphasis on ‘education, education, education’ has made an

unprecedented financial commitment to schooling and school improvement. This

has included initiatives firstly to recruit and then reward teachers sufficiently to

retain them in the profession:

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• Induction programmes (1999–) to support new teachers in their first year of

teaching (Teacher Training Agency (TTA) (1999); Totterdell et al. 2002, 2004).

• Dedicated funding (2001–2004) for Early Professional Development [EPD] in

the early years of teaching which built on induction in 12 local authorities.

• Continuing professional development with the option of accreditation to post

graduate qualifications (Audit Commission and OFSTED 2002).

• Masters in Teaching and Learning (2009–) in an attempt to make teaching an all

masters profession.

• More varied career structure, with a range of opportunities (e.g., advanced skills

teacher) devised to keep effective classroom teachers teaching. A structure

which enables effective classroom teachers without further responsibility to

access the higher level of salary by crossing the threshold of their pay scale after

6 years.

• Improved working conditions, including reduction of workload and inclusion of

a right to work-life balance for teachers through the workforce remodeling

agenda (2003–present), which according to the DCSF website Teachernet is to

focus teachers’ time on teaching, rather than administrative and supervisory

tasks, which account for some 20% of teachers’ work. This fits the wider Work-Life Balance Campaign launched by the UK Government in 2000. In order to

achieve these goals schools employed a range of additional non-teaching staff to

undertake these duties. The number of para-professionals working in schools in

England almost doubled between 1997 and 2005, a figure which is expected to

rise further (DfES 2005). There is conflicting evidence of the realisation of the

proposed benefits to teachers of workforce reform.

The focus on school improvement has seen injection of record levels of resources

(financial and support materials and training):

• Free nursery places provided for every 4-year-old.

• Class sizes for 5-year-old reduced to 30 or fewer.

• National iteracy and numeracy strategies (1997–) (at an estimated cost of

£1 billion) to improve these skills in primary school age pupils.

• Key Stage 3 strategy to tackle pupil disaffection by improving engagement,

learning and behaviour.

• Education Action Zones (1998–2001) to raise achievement in challenging areas

(73 large zones receiving up to £1 million per year).

• Every Child Matters agenda.

• Extended schools (after school hours, in school holidays) to include a range of

activities such as study support, sport and music clubs, childcare in primary

schools, parenting and family support, access to specialist support services,

community access to facilities for example adult and family learning, ICT and

sports grounds.

• Significant funding to expand ICT use in schools intended to both enhance

learning and reduce teacher workload.

• Building schools for the future—the biggest-ever school buildings investment

programme, which aims to rebuild or renew nearly every secondary school in

England and ensure that secondary age pupils learn in 21st century facilities. In

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2005–2006 the government aimed to devolve £3 billion to improve school

buildings.

• Academies (publicly funded independent schools that aim to improve the

achievement of pupils in areas of educational underperformance and other

disadvantage). Academies are sponsored by business, faith or voluntary groups

working with partners from the local community and jointly funded by sponsors

(£2 million towards the capital funding for each academy) and government

which provides the balance and ongoing funding.

An investigation of the latest professional standards framework for teachers in

England and Wales (TDA 2007) also hints at a change of discourse, in an era of

freeing up of the national curriculum to make ‘learning relevant, engaging and

irresistible’ (QCA 2008), encouragement to make the curriculum locally relevant

which enables context to be addressed, and relaxation of frameworks for teaching to

become more ‘flexible’ (DCSF 2008). 2008 also saw the DCSF’s abandonment of

the standardized assessment tests for pupils aged 14 (initially boycotted by teachers,

subsequently and ironically accepted and embedded in support materials); and the

provision of funded opportunities for teachers to gain a masters degree. Audited

school self-evaluation has also become integral to the external inspection system for

most schools (OFSTED 2008).The beginnings of a change of discourse in England

are perhaps evident in one of the 33 standards for the Award of Qualified Teacher

Status, which requires qualified teachers to ‘Have a creative and constructively

critical approach towards innovation…’ This small step may signify support for a

re-emergence of teachers’ individual and collective sense of autonomy which may

have been lost or hidden in cultures of managed compliance.

There is evidence also, that, under the wise leadership of headteachers, teachers

and schools in England are not all incapacitated by the standards agendas of

government in the ways which much research by academics suggests. Not only are

such schools able to meet and exceed pupil attainment targets imposed at national

and local levels, but they are able to do so through empowering staff to make

discretionary judgements. The role of the school leader in galvanising teacher

ownership of change is clear: they are not compliant, but resilient, activist

professionals (Day 2007). There is now considerable research internationally which

identifies successful schools as being those with effective headteachers (Day et al.

2000; Leithwood et al. 2006). Moreover, there is considerable evidence that

teachers across all nations who have moral purposes (Day 1997) make a difference

to their students’ lives. Although difficult to measure, moral purposes are

acknowledged internationally to be important elements of the best professional

practice (Lortie 1975; Hansen 2001; Jackson 1999; Nias 1989; Noddings 1996;

Tickle 2000).

Such schools and such headteachers and teachers do exist; and the reasons for

their success in terms of pupil and staff well being and achievement in and beyond

the relatively narrow target setting agendas of government has been documented in

a four year mixed methods study of the work, lives and effectiveness of 300 teachers

in a range of 100 primary (elementary) and secondary schools across England (Day

et al. 2007). A key strand of this research focused upon teacher commitment and

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resilience and found that 74% of teachers in early, mid and late professional life

phases were maintaining their commitment to their broad educational ideals, and

that this was due in part to the support received from headteachers and colleagues

and in part to their sense of vocation. They did not all work in schools which were

achieving unmitigated success in terms of the government’s agendas. Yet they were

able, it seems, to exercise substantial autonomy. It was not that the government had

created, ‘the conditions, and crucially the culture, for a transformation that would be

led and created by the schools themselves’ (Barber 2001, p. 38) but more that these

teachers’ work was founded upon hope, a sense of agency, and a belief that they

could continue to make a positive contribution to the learning and achievement of

their pupils. They had refused to allow economic considerations to overwhelm their

moral and ethical purposes, or to subordinate themselves to the ‘epidemic of

educational policy’ (Levin 1998, in Ball 2001). As with the case reported by Woods

et al. (2001), they had:

…found a way…of reconciling two apparently opposing discourses…through

the cultivation of their own political awareness…[and]the refinement of their

own philosophies… (Woods et al. 2001, p. 86)

Conclusion

More than a decade ago, Hargreaves and Goodson (1996) suggested a qualitatively

different conceptualisation of teacher professionalism which rests on a ‘commitment

to working with colleagues in collaborative cultures of help and support’ (p. 20) in

order to jointly address ongoing challenges with professional practice ‘rather than

engaging in joint work as a motivational device to implement the external mandates

of others.’ This remains relevant for teachers in this century. For Hargreaves (2003,

p. 131) such ‘principled professionalism’ is underpinned by strong values, beliefs

and moral purpose. Fullan describes a ‘new professionalism’ which is ‘collaborative,

not autonomous; open rather than closed; outward-looking rather than insular; and

authoritative but not controlling’ (2001, p. 265). Teachers, as ‘intellectual vanguards’

(Harris 1994), can engage politically (Lawn 1996), campaign and take an active role

in resisting or embracing reform (Walker and Barton 1987). Hargreaves (1997)

implored teachers to ‘reinvent their sense of professionalism’ so that they ‘engage

openly and authoritatively’ (p. 13) with others who have a stake in children’s

learning and well-being; by being involved in the development of the curriculum,

materials, and using their professional experience and knowledge to make decisions

which are underpinned by sound, considered pedagogy rather than pragmatism. In

this way policy may be built from practice (Honig 2003).

What is clear, however, is that government initiated changes in education in all

countries are likely to increase rather than diminish, and that teachers will, as

always, be relied upon to be committed, skilful, resilient and open to change. Fullan

(2001) maintains that ‘educational change depends on what teachers do and think’

(p. 115); and there can be no doubt that significant and substantial reform will fail

unless teachers are motivated and committed to implement it and the reform takes

152 J Educ Change (2009) 10:141–157

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account of the context in which teachers work (Goodson 2001). Sachs promotes the

notion of activist teacher professionals who construct their own ideas of self as

teachers and collaborate with others rather than act as compliant employees and

‘perform at high levels of efficiency and effectiveness’ (2003, p. 128) as measured

against imposed standards. Fullan argues for ‘capacity-building’ to be placed before

‘compliance’ (2001, p. 233):

The best defense against the relentless pace of change is to build professional

learning communities that are good at sorting out the worthwhile from the

nonworthwhile, and are sources of support and healing when ill-conceived or

random change takes its toll (2001, p. 272).

Sachs (2001) argues that it is imperative that teachers retain the image of the

teacher they wish to be, maintaining an identity which is based on strong values and

beliefs which is likely to sustain teachers throughout a career filled with challenge

and hurried change:

Teacher identity stands at the core of the teaching profession. It provides a

framework for teachers to construct their own ideas of ‘how to be’, ‘how to

act’ and ‘how to understand’ their work and their place in society (Sachs 2003,

p. 135).

She contends that the current culture of performance within accountable, efficient

public services promotes an ‘entrepreneurial identity’ which is therefore ‘individ-

ualistic, competitive, controlling and regulative, externally defined and standards-

led’ (2001, p. 130). She argues for the transformative power of an ‘‘activist identity’’

(pp. 130–134) which suggests democratic, research-focused, collaborative cultures

where teaching is underpinned by strong ideals, values and emancipatory aims

(2003). Such an identity can result in real ownership of change, not acceptance of

mandated change.

Sergiovanni cautions against change without discrimination. Change which will

bring improvement is to be supported by effective leaders, but they should also be

just as willing to stand firm and to resist change as they are to move forward

and to embrace change. It all depends on whether the change being considered

is good. Good change, I propose, advances teaching and learning in a manner

that is consistent with the values and culture of those being served by the

school…(2001, p. 45).

Far from being unhelpful to the cause of raised standards of achievement and

school improvement, analysis of resistance to reform shows that resisters ‘may be

right’ and have valuable insight to offer the profession (Fullan 2001; Gitlin and

Margonis 1995).

There is no doubt that the academic critics—most of whom take a strong stance

associated with theorists who are critical of what they identify as the increasingly

neo-conservative agendas of governments (Foucault 1983; Bourdieu 1990, 1998)—

have a point. The worlds of schools have changed, past freedoms have been eroded.

Teachers, as those in other public services, have been called to account for the

quality of their work and its results more publicly than before and in more ways.

J Educ Change (2009) 10:141–157 153

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Surveillance has increased and those who fail to perform against standards

established by the government are punished, directly or indirectly. Schools—

particularly those in challenging socio-economic circumstances—are subject also

sometimes to unjust judgments. There have been, and will continue to be, times

when morale is low, as a number of surveys cited here suggest.

The evidence from England and elsewhere suggests, then, that teachers’

responses to government initiated reforms are by no means as clear cut as some

of those outside the classroom and school who research and publish would have us

believe. There are times when some teachers may wish they had looked elsewhere

for employment. Yet most remain in schools, sustaining their commitments to those

they teach and their passion for learning. It remains to be seen whether

governments’ continuing unprecedented, system wide interventions in education

will herald the dawn of a new professionalism in which teachers are entrusted to

make wise, evidence informed and accountable judgements about their teaching and

pupil progress. The extent to which they succeed in this is unlikely to be only a

result of government reforms, for teaching is a human endeavour. Good

colleagueship, sensitive and purposeful leadership and their own sense of purpose

may be more powerful levers to enhance quality than compliance.

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