Publicly minded,privately focused: Western Australian teachers and school choice

In the growing school choice research literature little, if any, attention has been given to the choices made by the providers of educational services. Yet the workplace preferences shown by teachers and school administrators influences educational practice in important ways and helps illuminate some of the important issues raised in the school choice literature, such as the impact of marketisation on school planning, infrastructure and service delivery in public and private schools, social justice and resource distribution. Following discussion and analysis of the tendency for educational anthropologists to ignore teachers and their work, I use the stories of two teachers to help illustrate the research upon which this essay is built. Based on in-depth interviews with fifteen teachers in Perth, the capital of Western Australia, the primary aim of this paper is to ‘give voice’ to teachers by describing and analysing the social implications of the workplace choices exercised by a range of teachers. Issues of permanency, care, systemic needs, commitment to different forms of social equity, gender and age all emerge as important influences on the choices made by individuals when it comes to the type of school they choose to work in.