The (mis)use of the Finnish teacher education model: ‘policy-based evidence-making’?

Abstract

Background: International achievement studies such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have an increasing influence on education policy worldwide. The use of such data can provide a basis for evidence-based policy-making to initiate educational reform. Finland, a high performer in PISA, is often cited as an example of both efficient and equitable education. Finland’s teachers and teacher education have not only garnered much attention for their role in the country’s PISA successes, but have also influenced education policy change in England.

Main argument: This article argues that the Finnish model of teacher education has been borrowed uncritically by UK policy-makers. Finnish and English philosophies of teacher preparation differ greatly, and the borrowing of the Finnish teacher education model does not fit within the teacher training viewpoint of England. The borrowed policies, thus, were decontextualised from the wider values and underpinnings of Finnish education. This piecemeal, ‘pick “n” mix’ approach to education policy reform ignores the fact that educational policies and ‘practices exist in ecological relationships with one another and in whole ecosystems of interrelated practices’. Thus, these borrowed teacher preparation policies will not necessarily lead to the outcomes outlined by policy-makers in the reforms.

Sources of evidence: Two teacher preparation reforms in England, the University Training Schools (outlined in the UK Government’s 2010 Schools White Paper, The Importance of Teaching) and the Master’s in Teaching and Learning (MTL), are used to illustrate the problematic nature of uncritical policy borrowing. This article juxtaposes these policies with the Finnish model of teacher education, a research-based programme where all candidates are required to complete a Master’s degree. The contradictions exposed from this analysis further highlight the divergent practices of teacher preparation in England and Finland, or the disparate ‘ecosystems’. Evidence of educational policy borrowing in other settings is also considered.

Conclusions: Both the MTL and the White Paper reforms overlook the ‘ecosystem’ surrounding Finnish teacher education. The school-based MTL contrasts with the research-based Finnish teachers’ MA. Similarly, the University Training Schools scheme, based on Finnish university-affiliated, teaching practice schools, contrasts heavily with the rest of the White Paper reforms, which contradict the philosophies and ethos behind Finnish teacher education by proposing the move of English teacher preparation away from the universities. The analysis highlights the uncritical eye through which politicians may view international survey results, looking for ‘quick fix’ options instead of utilising academic evidence for investigation on education and education reform.     

Restructuring teachers’ work‐lives and knowledge in England and Spain

This article explores the restructuring of education in England and Spain. Against a presumably homogeneous global streamlining of educational systems according to competition‐driven goals, the comparison of teachers’ work‐lives and professional knowledge evidences a variety of experiences under‐represented in discourses on global restructuring. Our argument highlights how in England political reforms have worked their way deep into the working lives of professionals, giving rise to a ‘managerial’ model of professionalism, whereas in Spain reforms are more loosely coupled with teachers’ work, favoring a ‘social service’‐oriented model. However, despite the different professional ideals, teachers uniformly stressed the challenges they face were predominantly due to broader social transformations for which policy reforms provided few if any remedies. Our study emphasizes the variety of educational reforms and teachers’ experiences in the European context and argues further educational change should be bound to the historical trajectory and the concrete needs of the professionals in question.     

Education reform in England: quality and equity in the performative school

This article argues that contradictory forces affect teachers' work in the neo-liberal school system in England, with a diversity of governance models alongside increasingly dominant orthodoxies of what constitutes ‘effective practice and leadership’. School reforms in England have focused on increasing overall attainment and on closing the achievement gap for pupils from ‘disadvantaged communities’; whilst there is evidence that reforms have delivered on the former, evidence is inconclusive on the latter, with some critics arguing that some reforms have increased social inequality. The future for teachers’ professional identity and practices in this landscape is uncertain. Whilst this article broadly concurs with many studies of teacher identity which argue that the ever-extending reach of performative mechanisms has restricted teachers’ opportunities to develop as activist professionals with ‘a moral purpose’, it also argues that the diversified landscape may provide the opportunity for new autonomous spaces. It goes on to suggest that further research is needed into the forms of locally determined values and practices emerging in ‘quasi-privatised’ academies and free schools in England, to explore whether these professional communities will be entirely managerialist/entrepreneurial in character, or whether models of practice underpinned by a concern with social equity and social justice issues may emerge.     

Inquiring in the classroom

This paper considers the part played by teaching assistants in the implementation of the National Literacy and National Numeracy Strategies, two widespread UK government reforms. Evidence from two sources of evaluation (the Ontario Institute in Canada and OfSTED, the school inspectorate for England) indicates that assistants are providing ‘remedial’ support for up to 25% of children in English primary schools. However, although the evaluators note this, they fail to truly acknowledge the important contribution of assistants to the functioning of the Strategies. The paper argues that the lack of acknowledgement arises from the evaluators’ view of teaching assistants as ‘peripheral’ and teachers as ‘core’. This does assistants a great disservice, but also masks the shortcomings of the Strategies, particularly with regard to the way in which a required pedagogy, linked to targets and tests, has created an exclusionary pressure leading to the separation of teaching by teachers and assistants, respectively.     

Trainee teachers,gender and becoming the ‘right’ person for the job: care and authority in the vocational habitus of teaching

Drawing on a qualitative study of 32 UK student teachers, this paper asks what constitutes the vocational culture of teaching by exploring contradictory discourses of care and authority as they are presented to, and interpreted by, trainee teachers along their journey to becoming newly qualified teachers. Introducing the concept of ‘vocational habitus’ in relation to teaching, ‘ideal teacher narratives’ recounted by respondents are examined and mismatches between the expectations of individuals, institutions and wider policy contexts are explored. The later part of the article focuses specifically on three trainee teachers who struggled more than other research participants with their new roles as teachers. Their experiences suggest that simultaneous and gendered notions of caring and commanding respect can present considerable obstacles for the acquisition of a ‘successful’ vocational habitus. In light of proposed changes to teacher training in England, this paper argues that for government teacher education policies to be successful, they need to demonstrate an awareness and consideration of these contradictory notions.     

The continuing politics of mistrust: performance management and the erosion of professional work

For the past two decades schools and teachers in New Zealand and elsewhere have been the subject of and subjected to intense public scrutiny of their performance and professional activities. In effect, policy solutions have cast teacher and school performance as a ‘problem’ to be solved/resolved via the intervention of the State. Consequently, the policy remedy has been the introduction of audit mechanisms such as systems of performance management to define, regulate and control teaching and teachers. That is, the State has directly intervened in the professional work and activities of teachers based on the flawed assumption that teachers cannot be trusted and therefore require the intervention of the State and its agencies to ensure their performance is aligned with organisational objectives. And while one of the hallmarks of a profession and professional practice is adherence to a set of prescribed standards, performance management has rendered teachers accountable to the State, not professional peers. And, as this article outlines, this has served to de‐professionalise teaching and teachers’ work.     

The Master’s in Teaching and Learning: expanding utilitarianism in the continuing professional development of teachers in England

The article focuses on the policy rhetoric of the Masters in Teaching and Learning (MTL). This is a new degree being launched in the summer of 2010 aimed, initially, at teachers who have just joined the profession. The degree presages the aspiration for a Master’s level teaching profession in England. Professional development as conceived in the MTL is continuous rather than continuing and permeating the vision is the language of ‘personalisation’. Teachers will be accompanied on the journey by an ‘in-school coach’. These notions suggest a highly tailored approach to continuing professional development (CPD), with careful attention to the identification of teachers’ needs and close support from a colleague. The article argues that, contrary to this impression, the MTL marks a new and significant step in expanding the utilitarianism of the English education system. The MTL represents a deepening hold on education by the state and a growing scepticism about the value of higher education in the CPD of teachers. It also aspires to a changing culture in schools as the workplace becomes the locus for the CPD of teachers. As other authors have described, the national character of education systems in Europe and in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and Asia reflect an increasing instrumentality. The MTL, then, can be seen as part of a global phenomenon; in this case the policy lever of CPD is employed to support performative and audit policy agendas via a rigid accountability system. The MTL also represents a particular form of neo-liberal governmentality where increasing centralisation is ‘masked’ by a ‘simulacra of care’.     

The ‘shape’ of teacher professionalism in England: Professional standards,performance management,professional development and the changes proposed in the 2010 White Paper

Teacher professionalism in England may be considered to have been shaped by the set of professional standards, and the accompanying statutory performance management system, introduced by the Labour government in 2007. More recently the coalition government's 2010 White Paper, The Importance of Teaching, announced reforms that will potentially re‐shape teacher professionalism. In this article I examine the ‘shape’ of teacher professionalism in England, as defined by the professional standards. I reveal it to be a lop‐sided shape, indicating a professionalism that focuses predominantly on teachers’ behaviour, rather than on their attitudes and their intellectuality. Presenting my conceptual analysis of professionalism, and examination of its link with professional development, I consider whether—and to what extent—teacher professionalism may in fact be shaped by government‐imposed reform. I conclude that ‘enacted’ professionalism may be quite different from ‘demanded’ professionalism, and shaping professionalism involves a complex and indecipherable process that is better understood by examining the process whereby individuals develop professionally.     

The politics of teaching time in disciplinary and control societies

Abstract

This article argues that education reform agendas which use policy levers, standardised testing and new regulatory authorities to steer teachers’ work at a distance are creating a new temporal politics. Evidence from interviews with teachers and principals in Australian schools suggests that these reforms are impacting on individual experiences of the rhythms of their day-to-day work. First, there is a disquieting perception of an acceleration of their working life. Second, and related, many teachers and principals spoke of feeling ‘out of time’, or out of rhythm, with the new expectations of their work. Using Deleuze’s control societies, we posit that this arrhythmia exemplifies the experience of the classroom being ‘opened up’ for the purposes of comparison. This breakdown of the enclosed classroom is affected through the datafication of teaching.     

Pick ’n’ mix,select and project; policy borrowing and the quest for ‘world class’ schooling: an analysis of the 2010 schools White Paper

Education reform is increasingly portrayed as a quest to achieve a ‘world class’ education system through a process of identifying and adopting the practices of those systems whose pupils perform best in league tables of achievement. This is the rationale for the range of new policies proposed by the coalition government in the schools White Paper published in November 2010, which promotes whole-system reform in England. This article examines the White Paper and analyses the sources and nature of the evidence for reform and the congruence between the policy intentions and their associated policy actions. The analysis suggests that the evidence for the proposed reforms and policy actions is at best tenuous. Both the White Paper and its key sources of evidence are characterised by: a selective use of data: a propensity to mix and match the sources of comparison; and an overall tendency to employ comparisons with high-performing systems elsewhere as a façade to legitimate preferred policy options.     

Schoolwork: interpreting the labour process of teaching

In 1981 we gave a paper at the International Sociology of Education Conference at Westhill, subsequently published as ‘The Educational Worker1? A Reassessment of Teachers’, which was a polemic on the subject of teacher professionalism and proletarianisation. This paper is partly a critique of ‘The Educational Worker’, following from a belated recognition of the importance of gender in analysing teachers’ work, and also makes use of more recent historical and comparative research. This paper puts the emphasis on the social construction of skill and argues for the study of ‘schoolwork’, that is for the study of the labour process of teaching.     

Expressions of agency within complex policy structures: science teachers’ experiences of education policy reforms in Sweden

We explore the experiences of school science teachers as they enact three linked national curriculum and assessment policy reforms in Sweden. Our goal is to understand teachers’ differing responses to these reforms. A sample of 13 teachers engaged in 2 interviews over a 6–9-month period. Interviews included exploration of professional background and school context, perceptions of the aims of the policy reforms and experiences of working with these reforms in the classroom. Analysis was guided by an individual-oriented sociocultural perspective on professional agency. Here teaching is conceptualised as an ongoing interplay between teachers’ knowledge, skills and personal goals, and the characteristics of the social, institutional and policy settings in which they work. Our analysis shows that navigating the ensuing continuities and contradictions results in many different expressions of teacher agency, e.g. loss of autonomy and trust, pushing back, subversion, transfer of authority, and creative tensions. Typically, an individual teacher’s enactment of these reforms involved several of these expressions of agency. We demonstrate that the sociocultural perspective provides insights into teachers’ responses to education policy reform likely to be missed by studies that focus largely on individual teacher knowledge/beliefs about reform or skills in ‘implementing’ reform practices.     

Judgement of the Teacher: the Norwood Report and internal examinations

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the intervention of the Norwood Report of 1943 in the debate over secondary school examinations. It emphasises the role of the report in supporting the active involvement of teachers in ‘internal’ examinations, as opposed to external examinations administered by examination boards. It relates this debate to its wider social and political contexts. It also suggests a longer‐term historical framework involving contestation between different interests and ideologies for control over examinations, the ‘professionalism’ of secondary school teachers in relation to their own sphere of activity, and notions such as ‘accountability’ and the ‘market’. The contribution of this historical episode to a ‘social history of education policy’ relevant to unresolved issues and tensions of the 1990s is also discussed.     

Reflections on Hegemony: towards a model of teacher competence

This article considers the gap between teaching theory and teaching practice in the context of recent calls for reform in teacher education. It argues that leaping into radical reforms without any apparent understanding of present difficulties is a mistake. It considers current models of teaching, highlighting some of their strengths and weaknesses, and asks what kind of model of teaching competency might narrow the gap between theory and practice. The second section concludes that a competency model which situates teaching in its social context, which takes account of the political nature of teaching and its professional power structures might more appropriately describe the activities of teachers. The third section considers a model of hegemony which provides insights into teaching which do not exist in present models.     

Pedagogical reasoning: the foundation of the professional knowledge of teaching

ABSTRACT

Much of the debate about that which comprises teachers’ professional knowledge has been important in the academic literature but does not necessarily reflect the reality of how they think as they construct the knowledge that underpins their practice. Typically, teachers are not encouraged to spend time talking about teaching in ways that are theoretically robust, or to unpack their teaching in order to show others what they know, how and why. Because they are busy ‘doing teaching’ they are not commonly afforded opportunities to ‘unpack’ their practice to explore and articulate the reasoning underpinning what they do. This paper argues that the essence of teachers’ professional knowledge is bound up in the teaching procedures they employ and that knowledge is accessible and demonstrable through the pedagogical reasoning that underpins their decision-making, actions and intents; all of which come to the fore when their pedagogical reasoning is examined. If teaching is to be more highly valued, it is important to more closely examine the nature of teachers’ pedagogical reasoning as it offers a window into the complex and sophisticated knowledge of practice that influences what they do, how and why.     

Assessing the suitability of individual whiteboards for left-handed writers within the Early Years Foundation Stage

In 1998, when Teachers—meeting the challenge of change was published by the English Department for Education and Skills (DfES), one of the most fundamental reforms of the teaching profession was initiated—performance management. In 2005, all schools became subject to ‘Light Touch Validation’ of their performance management policy and procedures. At this significant time, this investigation seeks to explore the views and experiences of teachers in the first-named author's own school, which is a small special school. The author critically investigates the premise of performance management as promoted by the DfES and notes that the emerging literature on the topic focuses strongly on ‘mainstream’ schools where many of the research investigations have proved to be sceptical about the initiative. In contrast, through a survey and documentary analysis the author investigates the views and experiences of teachers in her own school and discovers a largely positive view and experience of performance management.     

Being a ‘professional’ primary school teacher at the beginning of the 21st century: a comparative analysis of primary teacher professionalism in New Zealand and England

This article analyses findings from two studies conducted collaboratively across two educational settings, New Zealand and England, in 2001–2002. These studies examined the impact of national educational policy reforms on the nature of primary teachers’ work and sense of their own professionalism and compared these impacts across the two countries. Adopting a policy ethnography approach, using in‐depth interview data from samples of teachers in each country, it is argued that there have been discursive shifts in the meaning of the three key terms, autonomy, altruism and knowledge, embodied in the classical professionalism triangle. These shifts reflect policy‐makers’ moves from a ‘professional‐contextualist’ conception of teacher professionalism towards the ‘technocratic‐reductionist’ conception that accompanies neo‐liberal educational reforms in many countries. Teachers in both countries experienced increasing constraints on their autonomy as they became far more subject to ‘extrinsic’ accountability demands. Whether these demands were perceived as enhancing or diminishing teacher professionalism depended on the manner in which they were filtered through the profession’s defining quality, namely teachers’ altruistic concerns for the welfare of the children in their care.     

A quest for legitimacy: on the professionalization policies of Sweden’s Teachers’ Unions

The aim of this article is to contribute to the ongoing discussion on teacher professionalism by analyzing the professional strategies of Sweden’s two teachers’ unions from an organizational perspective. Drawing on institutional theory, the article argues that the teachers’ unions’ focus on strategies of professionalization has as much to do with questions of legitimacy in the eyes of the public, as with any specific effort at transforming the practice of teaching in a professional direction. Against the background of two recent Swedish education reforms, the article shows that the unions are ‘trapped’ within a normative order emphasizing professionalization as the primary way of organizational development and legitimacy, resulting in a need for the unions to adopt professional attributes. In the case of the Swedish unions, this is accomplished through mimetic processes whereby union policies, aimed at the improvement of teaching, are modeled upon the medical profession, regardless of the differences between the technologies and practices of the occupations. In this way, the professional rhetoric of the unions is decoupled from the practice of teaching in order to maximize the public legitimacy needed for improving the declining societal status of teaching.     

Resilience and loss in work identities: A narrative analysis of some retired teachers’ work‐life histories

The article examines the importance of ‘emotional labour’ in the constitution of the ‘teacherly‐self’. Deriving from a research project on work and social identity, the article explores the ways teachers have negotiated the radical changes in the profession in recent years, and uses the notion of ‘teacher resilience’ to explore the ways teachers have reacted to the effects of neo‐liberal reforms to education; reforms that have powerfully impacted on the more child‐centred ways of working in the classroom and school environment. Using narrative analysis of the work‐life histories of these retired teachers, recorded using oral history methodology, the authors examine structures of feeling that turn on notions of emotional labour and commitment, resilience and loss in relation to the occupational identity of teachers.