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The teacher disempowerment debate: historical reflections on “slender autonomy”

2015; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 51; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00309230.2014.997752

1477-674X

Harry Smaller,

Global Education and Multiculturalism

AbstractA number of education researchers, both in Europe and in North America, have claimed that classroom teachers in state schooling systems have suffered from a process of "de-professionalisation" and/or "de-skilling" over recent decades. This paper argues that these claims are problematic, on at least two grounds. First, for teachers at least, "professional" is basically an ideological concept with little if any descriptive validity. To the extent that being a "professional" connotes individual or group autonomy from outside influences (whether state or societal), surveillance and controls over teacher behaviour have always been an essential component of state schooling systems, whether or not individuals or groups of teachers have attempted to mediate – or even resist – this domination from time to time. Second, while classroom teachers' work has changed and perhaps intensified over time, it is questioned whether these changes have resulted in significant de-skilling of their work – issues which are explored in the second part of this paper. Finally, as one example of the complex ways in which the state apparatus has worked throughout the history of state schooling (in Canada and the USA at least) to maintain and enhance its control over teachers, a case study is provided describing events in Ontario in the 1940s.Keywords: professionalismteachinggovernmentalityde-skillingschool reform Notes1 Teacher in discussion with the author, Toronto, May 2012.2 To be sure, it also works, to some extent, in the interests of those workers who have been accorded such state "privilege".3 Larry Cuban, How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms, 1890–1980 (New York: Longman, 1984). In relation to another traditional claim of "professionalism", the purported existence of an official knowledge base, I am very persuaded by Robert Donmoyer's arguments countering this claim in relation to teachers and teaching; Robert Donmoyer, "The Very Idea of a Knowledge Base" (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, April 1995).4 This is in no way meant to demean, or minimise, resistances (by teachers, parents, students, etc.), which have always marked state schooling, since its very beginnings.5 See, for example, Gerry Czerniawski, Emerging Teachers and Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2010).6 Norman Goble and James Porter, The Changing Role of the Teacher: International Perspectives (Paris: UNESCO, 1977), 17.7 See, for example, Jill Blackmore, "Leading as Emotional Management Work in High Risk Times: The Counterintuitive Impulses of Performativity and Passion," School Leadership and Management 24 (2004): 439–59; Raewyn Connell, "Good Teachers on Dangerous Ground: Toward a New View of Teacher Quality and Professionalism," Critical Studies in Education 50 (2009): 213–59; Stephen Ball, ed., Foucault and Education: Disciplines and Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1990).8 Cuban, How Teachers Taught, 238. To be sure, by 2009 Cuban seems to have moderated this claim of stasis, at least to some extent, suggesting that in the more recent past, the social organisation of the classroom had become increasingly informal: "classrooms filled with tables and moveable desks … walls festooned with colorful posters and student work … [j]ean-wearing teachers drinking coffee [who] smiled often at their classes…". At the same time, in spite of this seeming hybridity of pedagogical approaches, he continues to suggest an underlying continuity with the past, within the classroom if not beyond – that "teacher directed pedagogy still dominated classroom life". Larry Cuban, Hugging the Middle: How Teachers Teach in an Era of Testing and Accountability (New York: Teachers College Press, 2009), 11, 8.9 Lawrence Cremin, Transformation of the Schools (New York: Knopf, 1961); Joel Spring, Education and the Rise of the Corporate State (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1972).10 See, for example, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America (New York: Basic Books, 1976); David F. Labaree, "Progressivism, Schools, and Schools of Education: An American Romance," Paedagogica Historica 41 (1985): 275–88.11 Ibid., 284. Even John Dewey himself was quoted, in reflecting back in 1950, that the movement was "largely atmospheric; it hasn't yet really penetrated and permeated the foundations of the educational institution". Quoted in Kenneth Sirotnik, "What goes on in Classrooms? Is this the way we want it?," in The Curriculum: Problems, Politics and Possibilities, ed. Landon Beyer and Michael Apple (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 60.12 See, for example, Michael Apple, Teachers and Texts (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986); Stephen Ball, "The Teacher's Soul and the Terrors of Performativity," Journal of Educational Policy 18 (2003): 215–28; Maurice Galton and John MacBeath, Teachers under Pressure (Los Angeles: Sage, 2008).13 Michael Apple, Teachers and Texts, 42–43. To be sure, the occupational group of teachers is not alone in reports on this purported phenomenon; a number of other "professional" groups have claimed that they too are experiencing an erosion of their control over their specialised knowledge and autonomy – that they too are being "de-professionalised". Gerard Hanlon, for example, argues that even the most privileged professional groups, such as lawyers and architects, are facing increasing technical, legal and commercial constraints on their self-regulation. In addition, technological advances have allowed information that was at one time kept distant from the general public to be stored and retrieved easily by anyone with access to the internet. For example, doctors now complain that the traditional power of the "mystique" of their knowledge has been largely lost, given that their patients now have access to the internet and thus their increasing capacity – for better or worse – to self-diagnose, and/or to hold doctors to heightened scrutiny. In this article, however, I attempt to make the case that teachers, given the role of state schooling, occupy a different (and more enduring) set of relations. Gerard Hanlon, "The Changing Nature of Professionalism and the Fracturing of the Service Class," International Review of Sociology 9 (1999): 97–99.14 Mark Olssen, John Codd and Anne-Marie O'Neill, Education Policy, Globalisation, Citizenship and Democracy (London: Sage, 2004); Mike Newby, "Standards and Professionalism: Peace Talks?," in The Handbook of Teacher Education, ed. Tony Townsend and Richard Bates (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 113–26; Gill Helsby, Changing Teachers' Work: The Reform of Secondary Schooling (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999).15 Jane Perryman, "Inspection and Emotion," Cambridge Journal of Education 37 (2007): 173–90; Stephen Ball, "Better Read: Theorizing the Teacher," in Becoming a Teacher: Issues in Secondary Teaching, ed. Justin Dillon and Meg Maguire (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001), 13.16 John Smyth and Geoffrey Shacklock, Re-making Teaching: Ideology, Policy and Practice (London: Routledge, 1998), 113.17 David Hartley, Re-schooling Society (London: Falmer Press, 1997), 150.18 Joseph Zajda, Teaching and Learning (Albert Park, Australia: James Nicholas, 1997), 175.19 Aristotle, Treatises on Government. Quoted in Burton Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism (New York: Norton, 1978), 8.20 Antonio Gramsci, The Modern Prince and Other Writings (New York: International Publishers, 1980), 118.21 I am conscious of the cross-cultural complications in the use of the term "professional". As a 1990 OECD report cautions, "It should also be noted that … the terms 'profession' and 'professional' do not readily translate beyond the English language and hence the debate in some countries about their meaning is culturally specific." OECD, The Teacher Today: Tasks, Conditions, Policies (Paris: OECD, 1990), 8.22 In his classic study, Myron Lieberman for example delineates no less than eight specific criteria or attributes for determining "professional" status. Myron Lieberman, Education as a Profession (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1956).23 See, for example, Howard S. Becker, "The Teacher in the Authority System of the Public Schools," Journal of Educational Sociology 27 (1953): 128–41; Richard Ingersoll, Who Controls Teachers' Work? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).24 See, for example, Morris Cogan,"The Problems of Defining a Profession," Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science 297 (1955); Everett Hughes, Men and their Work (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1958). In fact, Daniel Duman suggests that the emergence of the ideology of professionalism in the nineteenth century had a powerful impact, not only on the public at large, but also on the "sociological and historical analysis" of the times. Daniel Duman, "The Creation and Diffusion of a Professional Ideology in Nineteenth Century England," Sociological Review 27 (1979): 127.25 Phillip Eliot, The Sociology of the Professions (London: Macmillan, 1972), 4–5.26 Magali Larsen, "Proletarianization and Educated Labour," Theory and Society 9 (1980): 142.27 Sherry Gorelick, "Class Relations and the Development of the Teaching Profession," in Class and Social Development: A New Theory of the Middle Class, ed. Dale Johnson (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1982), 219.28 Jennifer Ozga and Martin Lawn, Teachers, Professionalism and Class: A Study of Organized Teachers (London: Falmer Press, 1981), 19.29 See, for example, Ingersoll, Who Controls Teachers' Work?30 Quoted in Bruce Curtis, Building the Educational State: Canada West, 1836–1871 (London, ON: Althouse Press, 1988), 20 (emphasis in the original).31 Perhaps one concise description of the "proper subject" was contained in the words of Ryerson, in an 1850 circular to "all teachers" in the province, that teachers must exude loyalty to the Queen, the country and to "manly virtue". Quoted in Harry Smaller, "Teachers and Schools in Early Ontario," Ontario History 85 (1993): 23.32 Harry Smaller, "Teachers' Protective Associations, Professionalism and the 'State' in Nineteenth Century Ontario" (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1988), 84.33 Ibid. Understandably, Ryerson was not enamoured with all fledgling teacher organisations, as evidenced by his (non-)response to one such group which had stated firmly in its 1850 letter to him that "the members of this organization are fully competent to manage their own affairs". While Ryerson normally responded to letters from teachers and others, in this case he firmly instructed his clerk, "No answer needed". Ibid., 85.34 See, for example, Kathleen Weiler, Country Schoolwomen: Teaching in Rural California, 1850–1950 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998); John George Hodgins, Documentary History of Education in Upper Canada, Vol. 14. (Toronto: L.K. Cameron, 1899).35 Quoted in Hodgins, Documentary History, vol. 13 (Toronto: L.K. Cameron, 1898), 71. Even worse, according to Robert Murray, the first assistant superintendent of education in Ontario in 1842, were those teachers whose "minds have become dissipated" because they "chose" to live in the "lowest taverns, and consequently to associate with the lowest and most dissipated characters in the neighbourhood. By this daily intercourse with bar-room politicians and bar-room divines they insensibly become assimilated to them in their manners, views and habits, and are thus rendered utterly disqualified for conducting the education of youth." Quoted in John George Hodgins, Historical and Other Papers and Documents Illustrative of the Educational System of Ontario, 1853–1868, vol. 5 (Toronto: L. K. Cameron, 1911), 3.36 For the description of one such attempt by Ontario teachers during the 1880s, and the effective mobilisation of the educational elite and state apparatus against it, see, Harry Smaller, "Teacher Unions, (Neo)Liberalism and the State: The Perth County Conspiracy of 1885," Paedagogica Historica 40 (2004).37 See, for example, Marjorie Murphy, Blackboard Unions: The AFT and the NEA (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992); Harry Smaller, "Canadian Teachers' Unions: A Comparative Perspective," Contemporary Education 69 (1998): 223–7.38 Margaret Mead, The School in American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950), 25. As in previous eras of social unrest, this call to "professional" duty was particularly strong during the immediate post-war era; heightened immigration to the USA was certainly perceived by the elite as being highly disruptive of "traditional" social relations.39 Ibid., 11.40 See, for example, Frank Newmann, ed., Authentic Achievement: Restructuring Schools for Intellectual Quality (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1996); OECD, Teachers Matter: Attracting, Developing and Retaining Effective Teachers (Paris: OECD, 2005); David Hargreaves, "The New Professionalism: The Synthesis of Professional and Institutional Development," Teaching and Teacher Education 10 (1994): 423–38. Of course, as Dan Lortie has long since pointed out, "books and articles instructing teachers on how they should behave are legion", and certainly long pre-date the more recent spate of neo-liberal-inspired tomes. Dan Lortie, Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), vii.41 To be sure, some of this literature, from whatever sources including teachers themselves, has been painted for particular purposes; however, the overall theme of teacher as subservient seems to congrue to a great extent.42 John George Althouse, The Ontario Teacher, 1800–1910, reprinted (Toronto: Ontario Teachers' Federation, 1967), 6.43 Mead, The School, 7. The literature is replete with similar descriptions; see, for example, H. C. Dent, To be a Teacher (London: University of London Press, 1947); Myron Brenton, What Happened to Teacher? (New York: Coward-McCann, 1970); Eric Hoyle, The Role of the Teacher (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969).44 OECD, The Teacher Today: Tasks, Conditions, Policies (Paris: OECD, 1990), 9. This "malaise" was explained as resulting from three separate causes: a "charged political climate" owing to increased education/sophistication/expectations by all; second, "community involvement" and relations with employment needs; finally, "growing demand for efficiency in the use and management of resources, especially public resources". One could argue that these claims have been voiced, in one form or another, throughout the history of state schooling.45 Ibid., 11.46 I am certainly not arguing that teachers do not have power over their students. The issue here pertains to the extent to which teachers in general do, or do not, exert their "autonomy" in striving to do what they believe is best for their students, particularly where these aims contradict state schooling norms.47 Howard S. Becker, "The Teacher in the Authority System of the Public Schools," Journal of Educational Sociology 27 (1953): 129.48 Ibid., 133.49 Sara E. Freedman, "Teaching, Gender, and Curriculum," in Beyer and Apple, The Curriculum, 204.50 John Smyth and Geoffrey Shacklock, Re-making Teaching: Ideology, Policy and Practice (London: Routledge, 1998), 113.51 Sara Freedman, "Teacher, Gender, and Curriculum," 113.52 See, for example, P. J. Dwyer, "Foucault, Docile Bodies and Post-compulsory Education in Australia," British Journal of the Sociology of Education 16 (1995): 467–77; Smythe and Shacklock, Re-making Teaching, 1998; Terri Bourke, John Lidstone and Mary Ryan, "Teachers Performing Professionalism: A Foucauldian Archaeology," Sage Open, http://sgo.sagepub.com/content/3/4/2158244013511261 (accessed March 21, 2014).53 Czerniawski, Emerging Teachers, 56.54 Carolyn Steedman, "'The Mother Made Conscious': The History of a Primary School Pedagogy," History Workshop 20 (Autumn 1985), 149–63; Kate Rousmaniere, City Teachers: Teaching and School Reform in Historical Perspective (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997); Marjorie Theobald, "Women and Schools in Colonial Victoria, 1840–1910" (PhD diss., Monash University, 1985); Alison Prentice and Marjorie Theobald, eds., Women Who Taught: Perspectives on the History of Women and Teaching (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991).55 Bernadette Baker, "Normalizing Foucault? A Rhizomatic Approach to Plateaus in Anglophone Educational Research," Foucault Studies 4 (2007): 89.56 Stephen Ball, Foucault, Power, and Education (New York: Routledge, 2013), 18.57 Quoted in Apple, Teachers and Texts, 39.58 Quoted in ibid., 195.59 See, for example, Stanley Robinson, Do Not Erase (Toronto: Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, 1971), 305–06.60 Similar acts had already been passed during the previous decade in other provinces, where teacher unrest was also in abundance. See, for example, Smaller, "Canadian Teachers' Unions."61 Robinson, Do Not Erase, 305–06.62 When being questioned about these matters at the time by the author, a high official of the union explained that he did not understand why these accused teachers were "exposing themselves" to the public in this way. Normally, he explained, teachers appearing before the Relations and Discipline Committees agreed to keep their ordeal quiet, in the hopes that their careers might not be further harmed.63 Smaller, "Canadian Teachers' Unions."64 One education official, active at the time when the "Teaching Profession Act" was passed, subsequently provided another related reason why the Conservative Party government of the time was willing to act: teacher union leaders gave their formal (but unwritten) assurances that they would not allow their members to go on strike. This was a promise that was effectively maintained over at least the next three decades, until the rank-and-file defiance became too intense for the leadership to control. John Paton, The Role of Teachers' Organizations in Canadian Education (Toronto: W. J. Gage, 1962).65 Richard Ingersoll, Who Controls Teachers' Work? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 134–35.66 Cuban, Hugging the Middle, 8.