EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONALISM

Therefore, this approach was not adopted because it did notattempt to link professionalism to the wider situation teaching is located in.Theses on the Bureaucratisation of the Teachers’

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONALISM: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATORS’ PERSPECTIVES IN ENGLAND AND GREECE

The various theories can be listed in four groups: the trait approach, thefunctionalist approach, the power approach and the Marxist approach toprofessionalism The first three approaches offer a variety of occupationalfeatures defining professionalism The drawback of these approaches is thatthey place teaching in a position of being either a profession or not, withoutexplaining why they use this dichotomy

That is why this chapter is concerned with two topics First of all, with thedescription of the features of a profession on which there has been consensusamong the sociologists of all approaches Johnson’s work (1972) seems to beinclusive of all features and for this reason it will be analysed here The secondissue discussed is the different orientation to society and occupations that theseapproaches hold This way the shortcomings of each approach and itssuitability for the purpose of this study will be shown

Types of Control over Workplaces

Johnson views professionalism as one of the institutionalised types of theworkers’ control over their occupation (Johnson, 1972) The main factors thisapproach is concerned with are the producer (professional), the consumer(client) and the state Johnson identified the following orders of control:

1.COLLEGIATE CONTROL, expressed through autonomous professionalassocia- tions In such a case, professionals define the consumer’s needs andthe means to cater for these needs Sub-types of collegiate control areprofessionalism and guild control

2.PATRONAGE and COMMUNAL CONTROL These types of control takeplace when the consumer defines the needs and the professional finds themeans or manner to meet the consumers’ needs Control can either be

oligarchic, when it refers to the needs of the aristocrats or corporate, when itrefers to the needs of the community or any consumerist organisation.

3.MEDIATIVE TYPE OF CONTROL, which presupposes a third party, thestate, mediating between the consumer and the producer

Collegiate Control

Like Johnson, Caplow (1954), Millerson (1964) and Larson (1977) have arguedthat there here were certain conditions under which professionalism took rootsand developed First, there should be an effective demand for particularprofessional skills from a large and heterogeneous consumer group, which has

to be unorganised, dependent and exploitable Unlike the consumer group, theprofessionals should be a homogeneous community, with common outlook andinterests To achieve homogene- ity, recruitment from similar backgrounds and

a low degree of specialisation within the occupation were necessary, as highspecialisation was considered disruptive A professional group could exploitsuch a consumer group and extent their authority to broadly control theirpractice This control over practice was evident in the norm of solo practice,that is an impersonal one-to-one relationship with clients (see also Parsons,1954).The significance of professional associations with specificresponsibilities was also stressed by sociologists Professional associations orguilds bestowed status and identity and attempted to sustain uniformity amongpractitioners The associations demanded auni-portal system of entry to theprofession in order to ensure that shared identity of the professionals (see alsoMillerson, 1964) Uniformity was also maintained by assigning duties of aregistering body to the association The uniformity of professionals referred toboth occupational and non-occupational behaviour (see also Caplow, 1954;Wilensky, 1962, 1964; Barber, 1963; Flexner and Goode, 1969; Moore, 1970).The occupational norms were acquired after lengthy periods of training, whichwere characterised by close supervision within an apprenticeship system.Vocational schools were directly or effectively controlled by the practitioners,thus achieving peer solidarity (see also Caplow, 1954; Millerson, 1964; Flexnerand Goode, 1969; Moore, 1970; Starr, 1982) Uniformnon-occupational behaviour was provided by the referral systems or the contactnetworks This system aimed at avoiding isolation among professionals(Johnson, 1972) by demanding a ‘standard of conduct’ outside the service Thecommunity of professionals generatedrole-definitions and standards, whichwere maintained with the assistance of a code of ethics, autonomousdisciplinary procedures and effective sanction mechanisms also generated bythe community of the profession- als (see also Caplow, 1954; Greenwood,1962; Wilensky, 1962, 1963; Barber, 1963; Millerson, 1964; Flexner andGoode, 1969; Freidson, 1970; Starr, 1982).To bestow status, which wasenduring, the myth of equal competence was woven This encouraged thepublic’s trust in a system where the members of a community judged thecompetence of one another In all issues related to the service, the occupationalcommunity was believed to be wiser and to have an ethical sense ofresponsibility (see also Parsons, 1954; Barber, 1963; Freidson, 1970; Moore,1970; Roth, 1974; Starr, 1982) Ritualistic elements, legends, symbols,

stereotypes were also utilised to formulate a positive public attitude to theprofession The professionals stressed the need for occupational and individualindependence as a precondition of fulfilling obligations to customers (see alsoMarshall, 1939; Hughes, 1958; Freidson, 1970; Roth, 1974; Larson, 1977;Starr, 1982; Wilding, 1982) Jargon was employed to keep outsiders out and toprovide autonomy for the occupation.

Johnson viewed the proliferation of professional grades as a possibleconsequence of the increase in specialisation However, the generalists weresufficiently powerful to maintain control of the professional-client relationship.They accomplished that by establishing the notion that the lower the technicalcontent in an occupation was the highest its status (see also Berlant, 1975;Wilding, 1982)

Patronage

Patronage arose when the dominant demand for professional services camefrom a small powerful clientele It was associated with a fragmented,hierarchical and locally oriented occupational group whose practitionersidentified themselves with their employers rather than with the professionalcommunity of their colleagues

While Johnson discussed this issue in detail, most sociologists moved on toanalyse how this type of control was utilised by the state and expanded intomediation

Mediation

When the state attempts to remove either from the producer or from theconsumer the authority to determine the content of practice in order tominimise the scope of exploitation on both parts, then the control over theoccupation is called state mediation States attempted to extend services toconsumers on the basis of their citizenship rather than their social origin ortheir ability to pay fees Instead of guaranteeing services to individuals, a statecreated agencies that directly served its needs as well as ensured a flow ofservices in the name of the public good The state itself became in effect theemployer of all practitioners who, therefore, had a statutory obligation toprovide a given service and the agency became the product of patronage Thiscaused diffusion, which meant that it was difficult to determine priorities andprofessional responsibilities (see also Lewis and Maude, 1952) Therefore, toensure that the public received quality service, the provision of that service wassupervised Efficiency became a major yardstick in determining which form oforganisation was best for the social welfare unlike the professionals, whoorganised their own practice themselves (see also Bennett and Hockenstad,1973; Blau and Meyer, 1987).One of the consequences of such interventionwas the lack of any referral system, which used to provide contact amongcolleagues in professionalism That reduced professional associations tooccupational pressure groups, which lost the power to prescribe practice Thepurpose of professional associations came to be the improvement of pay andconditions The influence of professionals fluctuated, depending on the degree

to which the state was involved in determining the manner in which theservices would be carried out

Another consequence was the undermining of the professional basis ofrecruitment, which was now open to the state The state tended to expand theacademic channels into an occupation, which undermined the exclusionmechanisms of the professional associations The state also gave more power toacademic institutions and that changed the balance of power at the expense ofthe practising members of a profession The occupational community as awhole was no longer a repository of specialised knowledge and they lost theinitiative in developing knowledge to full-time research institutions (see alsoEtzioni, 1969) Under such conditions, technical and ethical questions wereremoved from the occupation’s control (see also Bennett and Hockenstad,1973; Blau and Meyer, 1987).

State bureaucratic agencies had an impact on the income and position of theprofession- als too The latter’s income was not fees but salary or payments bylevel or amount of services per capita or unit It caused stratification ofpractitioners through hierarchy (as in corporate patronage) and varying degrees

of self-identification with the professional community

The simultaneous existence of organisational and professional affiliationsaffected the practitioners’ commitment to the administrative needs and theclient groups Divergent interests and orientations destroyed collegialrelationships and the controls that the profession imposed on its members.When being in conflict, it was the organisational contexts that gave workers anorientation, not their judgement based on codes of ethics Ethical codes in statebureaucracy were largely encompassed in the rules of the state agencies (seealso Merton, 1957) To make matters worse, these bureaucratic interests couldhave varied between those in managerial and non-managerial positions,between one agency and another and between the centre and the periphery(administration and the workers) (see also Bennett and Hockenstad, 1973; Blauand Meyer, 1987) Hierarchical organisation and the double systems of practice(bureaucratic andprofessional) caused major tensions, which gave rise to claimsthat professions were succumbing to a managerial offensive (Wright Mills,1956).Having presented the main features of a profession, I move on to discussthe shortcomings of the conceptualisation of professionalism offered by theapproaches Not only did such an analysis enable me to select specificprofessional traits for investigation, it also gave me a frame of interpretingthese traits, when discussing teaching in the following chapters

Critical Analysis of the Approaches to Professions

A) The Trait Approach to Professionalism

Major representatives of this approach are Greenwood (1962), Millerson(1964), Wilensky (1964) and Flexner and Goode (1969) They listedoccupational features that they considered professional in the hope that alloccupations could be compared against the trait list to determine whether or notthey were professions

The trait approach did not have a theoretical frame based on which thesociologists defined professional traits (Johnson, 1972) The criteria fordetermining professionalism were derived from certain occupations alreadyregarded as professions This was a consensus, not an abstract model This

approach also incorporated the terms and definitions that the professionalsthemselves used when they referred to their occupation Thus it took what theprofessionals claimed for granted making these criteria appear self-fulfilling (Hoyle and John, 1995).

Another criticism is that the bulk of the work within this approach employscategories of the Anglo-American culture of a particular period (Johnson,1972) excluding occupations in other parts of the world Referring to thefeatures of a profession in isolation from its wider context in order to describeprofessionalism is unrealistic and ahistorical The traits in this approach werepresented as unchanged and as tenets without examining them in relations tosocietal conditions, such as the economical and political status quo

B) The Functionalist Approach to Professionalism

The functionalist approach is divided into two strands The first strand includestheories, which connect professional altruism with social stratification Thesepositions referred to occupational elements which had a functional relevanceeither to the society as a whole or to the relationship between the professionaland the client (Johnson, 1972) All the writers who emphasised altruism (e.g.Marshall, 1939) or collectivity-orientation (e.g Parsons, 1954) are included inthis strand The second strand focused on the effects of bureaucracy onprofessions All authors who, based on a list of characteristics, assessedwhether occupations were professions are included in this strand functionalistapproach (Macdonald, 1995) Since not all professions would score highlywhen they were examined according to these lists of features, new terms wereused to classify them The terminology employed was ‘new professions’(Marshall, 1965), ‘the human services’ (Riessman and Pearl, 1965), ‘semi-professions’ (Etzioni, 1966, 1969), ‘aspiring professions’ (Goode, 1969),

‘personal service professions’ (Halmos, 1970), ‘people working professions’(Bennett and Hokenstad, 1973) These authors considered teaching as the

‘archetypal’ semi-profession together with nurses and social workers (Bennettand Hokenstad, 1973) Functionalists attempted to explain why someoccupations had more prestige and income than others based on their overview

of society, which follows As Hall (1994) explained for society to exist therewere tasks to be performed and each individual had to be motivated to performthese tasks Peoplewere motivated to perform tasks by differential rewards,which usually referred to employment, accomplishment or compensation.Rewards were considered necessary because all tasks were neither equallyimportant nor equally pleasant nor did they require the same ability or talent to

be carried out.Even though work and occupations in modern society were seen

as ethically neutral, professions were seen as ethically positive and as

‘embodiments of the “central values” of the society’ (Macdonald, 1995, p xi).The traditional morale of society was seen as deteriorating with new divisions

of labour caused by trade and industry, which led people to competitivenessand to loss of common life (Nixon et al, 1997) Professions were believed to beable to bring cohesion, stability (Nixon et al, 1997) and morality (Macdonald,1995) back to society because they inherited, preserved and passed on traditionand engendered modes of life, habits of thought and standards of

judgement (Carr-Saunters and Wilson, 1933) This perspective on professionswas based on the view of Durkheim (1957) that professions representedeverything functional in society.Macdonald (1995) argues that this approach iscriticised because it implies that the professionals’ knowledge is of equalimportance to all groups in society regardless of conflicting interests in society.

It ignores how individual clients may benefit in a different manner because noteverybody has the same access to professional knowledge and skill It is alsosuggested that the society will always find ways to ensure that professionals aremotivated by community interest by highly rewarding Rueschemeyer (1964)rejects the universality of such rationale because central values do not exist insociety The functionalist approach towards professionalism presupposes asociety of altruism because it excludes notions of social conflict andexploitation Moreover, this approach implies a behaviourist and mechanisticattitude to people because it perceives people as able to maintain their altruismjust by being highly rewarded It neglected the historical explanation that anyaward system is the result of aggregation by groups with the power to securetheir claims and create their own system of legitimisation (Johnson, 1972)

C) Power Approaches to Professionalism

The power approach is based on Weberian thinking, which views society asindividuals pursuing their interests (Weber, 1978) Such an attitude places allresponsibility, initiative, efforts and blame on individuals It excludes theeffects of other factors influencing the favourable or not outcome of individualpursuits This approach is divided into three major sectors The first sector isexpressed mainly by Hughes (1958) and Freidson (1970), which is referred to

as ‘interactionalism and structure’ Another sector called ‘interactionalism andprocess’ is represented by Larson (1977) The names of the sectors wereborrowed from Macdonald (1995) The last one is represented by the work ofJohnson (1972) and it is referred to by his own terminology, which is

‘institutionalised order of control’ The various lines of thinking within thepower approach to professionalism discuss how professionals gained theirpower to control their occupation in a society where members of the sameoccupation attempt to satisfy their interests

None of the above positions acknowledged the power of other factors toinfluence the state, the professionals and their clients and how that takes place.They were mainly concerned with these three elements i.e professionals, stateand clients Weber also referred to social closure, which was ‘a process bywhich social collectives seek to maximise rewards by restricting access torewards and opportunities to a limited circle of eligibles’ (Parkin, 1974, p 9).The rewards that social closure gave rise to were economic, social and ofpower.The particular model that I have presented earlier has also gotshortcomings provided by Johnson himself His forms of control were to beseen historically using an analysis of the power of specific groups to controlcertain occupational activities The characteris- tics of an occupational activityand the historically variant forms of its institutional control are products ofsocial conditions and should be distinguished (Johnson, 1972) Despite his autocritique, Johnson still limited his work to examining groups of people and not

broader factors and changes in society.Furthermore, the definition of producer

and consumer does not remain stable because we do not always find producers,

consumers and states in these fixed roles For instance, the state can be a

producer as well as a consumer of a service or product, which implies a more

complex picture than a triangle of agents This was not included in the

examination of the social characteristics of the occupational and consumerist

groups, which may influence the development of forms of occupational control

Professionalisation of Occupations

So far the basic features of professions were discussed Apart from these

features analysed by most sociologists, the advocates of the trait and the

functionalist approach also made reference to the concept of

professionalisation Professionalisation was considered to be a complex process

in which an occupation exhibited traits, which were core elements of

professionalism The natural history of professionalism by Wilensky is an

example of trait approach to professionalisation Wilensky believed that there

was a determinate historical sequence of events through which all

professionalising occupations passed in an identical series of stages (Wilensky,

1964) The 6 stages included the occupation becomingfull-time and

establishing formal training within universities Then its members would form

local and national professional associations to define their own specific tasks as

they competed with other neighbouring occupa- tions These associations were

also involved in political activity aiming at legally controlling licensing and

certification as well as at establishing a formal code of ethical practice for their

members (Wilensky, 1962) Etzioni’s theory (1969), which is functionalist,

went a little further In the continuum leading to professionalism, Etzioni

identified two types of occupations: the fully fledged professions and the

semi-professions There are many occupations that do not progress far enough on

one or some of these continua but will steadily improve their position in the

future; they will become professionalised

The main points reflecting professionalism have been contrasted to the main

points reflecting semi-professions in the Table 1

Professionalisation is mechanistic because it considers that potential

professions go through the stages in the particular order described or that

certain occupations are always expected to undergo this process because of

their essential qualities However, the relations of various factors in society

(political, economic, cultural, etc.) change all the time and so does their power

That means that occupations aspiring to be professions do not have to face the

same society and factors all the time or in all places, something which these

authors did not take into account

Table 1: The Differences between Professional and Bureaucratic Authority

BUREAUCRATIC AUTHORITY

Extensive Formal Education Technical Competence

Competence Certified By Fellow Competence Certified By SuperiorsProfessionals

Professional Codes of Ethics Bureaucratic Regulations

Authority Based on Status and Authority Based on Formal PositionPrestige of Profession in an Organisation

Advancement Based on Expertise Advancement Base on Knowledge

or Technical Knowledge of Scien- of Administrative Procedures

tific or Scholarly Discipline

Accountability to Peers and Accountability to Superiors

Colleague Groups

In conclusion these three major approaches to professionalism (trait,

functionalist and power) and their references to professionalisation lacked one

important element They appear to be too context-bound, which prevented the

use of any of them as a frame of examining teaching as a profession However,

the Marxist approach views the context where occupations develop in quite a

different manner

The Marxist Approach to Professionalism

This theory examines two main aspects regarding the professions: the

relationship of professions with the state and the proletarisation of occupations

Marxists view professions in relation to the way society works, which refers to

the capitalist relations of production, which are the means and relations of

production (Macdonald, 1995) Processes, such as state formation, polarisation

of social classes and monopolisation of means of production, are considered as

affecting professions (Macdonald, 1995)

A typical Marxist definition of profession is:

“artisan or craft-like work in which the worker produces an entire product”;

“where the worker’s pace, workplace conditions, product, its use and even to a

degree the price are largely determined by the worker; where the same source

of income is a more individually- regulated sale of a product or services under

fairly loose market conditions established by face-to-face bargaining, rather

than the sale of labour time (in advance of the creation of anything); and where

virtually the whole income goes directly to the worker with- out any

bureaucratic intermediary except perhaps an agent” (Oppen- heimer, 1973,

p 213-214)

In general, with professional work, the discretion and judgement belong to the

worker, the work is not readily standardisable and it requires high levels of

training and education (Oppenheimer, 1973)

Marxists also believe that the society is divided in two classes; it is divided

between those who own the means of production (the capitalists) and those

who do not (the labour) The owners are interested in maximising their profits

with whatever means including labour However, the economic growth and full

employment achieved over time gave power to labour and redistributed the

income The owners of the means of production attempt to control these

changes and they have the support of governments in doing so The role of

governments in such cases is to ‘support the owning class with appropriate

policies and rationalisations’ (Burchill, 1997, p 6) Concession and

compromise are seen as temporary devices that the owners use to gain absolutecontrol Labour relations are ways of ‘refining techniques of control’ overlabour and of finding methods to deal with opposition (Burchill, 1997, p 6).The major contribution of the Marxist to the analysis of professions is theconcept of proletarisation Marxists focus on how professional work becomesproletarised, which means whether work is transformed due to a major socialchange This change is ‘namely a trend towards increasing bureaucracy whichdraws a growing number of professionals into non-professional organisations’(Murphy, 1990, p 23).

Proletarisation refers to a number of elements affecting work such as thedivision, routinisation and intensification of labour, alienation at workplace,restructuring of skill, unionification and bureaucracy An occupation that isproletarised is:

“an ‘ideal-type’ form of work in which (a) extensive division of labour exists

so that the typical worker performs only one, or a smaller number, of tasks in atotal process; (b) the pace of work, the characteristics of the workplace, thenature of product, the uses to which it is put and its market conditions aredetermined not by the worker but by higher authorities (private or publicbureaucracies);(c) the worker’s primary source of income is his wage, which isde- termined by large-scale market conditions and economic processes (notexcluding collective bargaining), rather than by individual face-to-face bargaining; and (d) the worker in order to defend his situa- tion fromdeteriorating living and/or working standards, moves to- ward collectivebargaining in some form’ (Oppenheimer, 1973, p 213)

Marxists believe that the bureaucratic organisation of work leads toproletarisation because the bureaucracy brings into the professional’sworkplace conditions similar to those in factories (Oppenheimer, 1973;Braverman, 1974) These conditions are hierarchies of power, rules made bythe upper ranks, fixed roles and specialised work predetermined by superiors aswell as mobility based on performance or achievement (Blau and Meyer,1987) Under such conditions, work becomes ‘demeaning and boring’ as theworker’s training and education may have little to do with work or because theworker has been trained so as to be able to have more say in work(Oppenheimer, 1973, p 214-215) There is also an alienation between what theworker does and the end- product (Oppenheimer, 1973) Moreover, theadvantages of the educated professional deteriorate as the real income becomesstabilised or decreases due to fiscal crises The privileges also decrease, asunemployment and the employers’ pressure for accountabil- ity andmeasurement of “productivity” increase (Oppenheimer, 1973, p 215)

The above proletarisation processes increase the control of the dominant class

by reducing the amount of control exercised by the workers (Oppenheimer,1973; Braverman, 1974; Hall, 1994)

Proletarisation can lead to unionisation in occupations and professions Thepressure for rationalisation at work, the threat of unemployment, a relativeincrease in repression of a political type (e.g loss of job for politicaldissidence) and contagion from non- professional employees who are organised

in unions can result in the unions of white- collar workers starting to negotiate(Oppenheimer, 1973; Braverman, 1974) That means further bureaucratisationbut also the beginning of a working-class consciousness (Oppenheimer, 1973).

In conclusion, Marxists attempt to see occupations in relation to the status quo

in political, economical, societal, organisational and philosophical terms Theybelieve that all these factors are interrelated and influence each other Alloccupations, including traditional professions, are examined in connection withwhat happens in the rest of the society nationally and internationally at aparticular point in time Instead ofprofessionalisation, the concept ofproletarisation is employed, which leads to workers’ loss of control over theirwork, as their skills become obsolete or useless and as their working rights,privileges and benefits diminish

Such a position can be constructively applied to teaching because it does notcategorise teaching as a profession or not by definition, as the rest of theapproaches do How that is achieved will be discussed in more detail inChapters 5 and 8 Moving on to the next topic, I will refer to the literatureparticularly concerned with teaching a profession Two main approaches toteaching as a profession have been recorded; the bureaucratic and the Marxist,which are analysed next

CHAPTER 2

Professionalism in Teaching

In the previous chapter the main sociological approaches to professions andoccupations were examined and major criteria of attribution of professionalstatus were discussed With this part of the literature review, the analysis ofparticular approaches that have been put forward the last 30 years or soregarding teaching as a profession begins I have classified the literature onteachers’ professionalism into two groups They are:

positions on the affects of bureaucracy on teaching as a profession and

the Marxist approach to teaching as an occupation

In England, both of the above directions about teachers’ professionalism havedeveloped On the other hand, in Greece, although the bureaucratic structurehas always been a characteristic of the educational system, teaching has alwaysbeen viewed in terms of the Marxist discourse on teaching and labour

In this chapter the first group of positions on teachers’ professionalism, whichrefers to the effects of bureaucracy on teaching, will be analysed Inundertaking the discussion of this literature, the aim is first of all thepresentation and critical examination of the literature on the difficulties thatbureaucracy causes in the teachers’ professionalisation As teaching in the statesector has developed under bureaucratic structures, the literature focuses on theeffects of the latter on teachers’ autonomy in order to describe thecharacteristics of professionalism (Barton et al, 1994; see also Lawn, 1988).The other purpose of this analysis is to show why this approach to teaching isfound incomplete due to its lack of any reference to a theoretical frame Itsauthors usually chose features of professionalism that derived from exemplaryprofessions and then they attempted to see how these applied to teaching The

literature is difficult to appreciate as so many educational and social changeshave taken place the last 30 years or so Sometimes the era and system theseauthors referred to have changed dramatically as their research mainly tookplace in the 1970s Therefore, this approach was not adopted because it did notattempt to link professionalism to the wider situation teaching is located in.

Theses on the Bureaucratisation of the Teachers’ Work

Legatt is a major representative of such an approach to teaching because he hasincluded numerous aspects of teachers’ work in his position

As far as the professional status of teaching is concerned, Leggatt (1970)believed that since teachers were employed in bureaucratic organisations, theylacked certain professional features These were authority and independence,control over their recruitment, training and certification, determination of theirown practice or conditions of service (e.g turning away clients), a code ofethics for the protection of the public and esoteric knowledge (due towidespread literacy)

Leggatt also considered that there were 5 areas that need to be investigatedwhen examining the practitioners’ professionalism These areas referred to thecharacteristics of the practitioners group, the group’s clientele, the practitioner-client relations, the organisational context and the environmental settings i.e.the characteristic acts of professional practice

Teachers as an occupational group were viewed as having many characteristics,which do not allow unity to develop These were the large size of the teachinggroup, the high proportion of female members, the low social classcomposition, the small measure of

autonomy as a group and its segmentation Such features caused seriousdisadvantages in terms of organising teachers as a group A problem that theteachers’ unions faced was the large membership that does not allow unity todevelop easily (Leggatt, 1970) The high proportion of women and theirturnovers (i.e casual entry and exit into teaching) also contributed to the

‘unorganisability of the profession’ (Leggatt, 1970, p 165; Acker, 1987)

Another issue taken up was the teachers’ isolation and lack of collegial spirit(Lortie, 1975) This feature minimises collective action, unionisation andmilitancy among workers aspiring professionalism Leggatt also felt that theincrease in recruitment hindered the raising of the qualifications or the standard

of practice of the teachers, which was combined with the impossibility ofsubstantial salary raises

Leggatt referred to the issue of teacher and client relations, which affected thestatus of teaching As for the teachers’ clientele, it included their pupils, first ofall with whom they must have a personal, involved, reciprocal relationship,then the pupils’ parents and the community or the state The clients were of lowstatus (pupils) and their interests were not satisfactorily represented, whichdepressed the teachers’ status A properprofessional-client relationship wasdysfunctional because teachers had to use discipline and bureaucratic authority

to control their immature compulsorily attending pupils Furthermore, thedifferent types of interests teachers had to commit to were an importantproblem, which teaching as a profession faces The teachers’ legal duty was to

their employers, not to the children (Langford, 1978) Teachers were (and stillare) legally bound to abide to the state’s orders considering parents and pupils,even through these orders are not based on any professional frame.

The hierarchical organisation of education also affected teaching The need forclear qualifications for recruitment and promotion by seniority had its effects

on the headteacher’s authority that originated mainly from office Bureaucracyalso hindered the professionalisation of teachers in terms of the more specificteachers’ disputes, which were settled by their superiors and according to rulesand formal records for the equal treatment of pupils (Leggatt, 1970)

Another obstacle was the regularity and lifetime span of contact with pupils,which was considered, long enough to demystify teaching as a secret art.However, such demystification was not considered professional becauseprofessionals are supposed to own complex, esoteric knowledge It can beargued that just because there is a lot of contact with teachers that does notmean that one knows everything about teaching or is a teacher It is like sayingthat if one sees a doctor performing an operation many times one can do itthemselves or one immediately becomes a doctor Or if one sees an electricianrepairing something many times one can repair it too or one becomes anelectrician too In the same way there is knowledge behind performing anoperation or fixing something so is behind teaching others

It was also believed that the lack of clarity about the nature of success inteaching exposed teachers to criticism and low respect However, thecontradictory goals they tried to achieve and the lack of means to do that werenot considered Other elements not considered were the usefulness ofknowledge being transmitted in the pupils’ current or future lives, the pupilspersonalities and the effect of their background on their need to be educatedwhich just as well influence the successful outcome of teaching Furthermore,Leggatt did not question the role of other factors into why teachers were sorestricted in their power over their workplace He did not consider theimportance for parents and children to understand what they are told becausetheir communication with the teachers contributes to the successful learning ofthe children

Another issue that obstructed teaching from becoming a profession was the factthat education was not in itself a recognised discipline because it was seen as acomposite subject of sociology, psychology etc It was claimed that problemswere caused by the fact that education was the discipline of knowing how toachieve a desired result and why it can be achieved in that way It did not refer

to teachers choosing what that result would be (Langford, 1978) However, this

is more likely how education is expressed in schools but as a discipline it ismuch more as the previous scholars have concluded

In the 1960s the dispute about the definition of education was resolved(Xohelis, 1986) In Greece Pedagogy is the equivalent term of Education.Pedagogy or Education was recognised even though it was admitted that itaffected and was affected by other disciplines, like psychology, sociology andphilosophy People who fought for this recognition were Herbart, Dilthes, Nohland Weniger (Hatzidimou, 1991) In fact, the object of pedagogy has been

defined to be the human beings themselves, their upbringing, their educationand their self-realisation It also refers to the relationship that exists betweenthe teacher the pupil and the learning and educational outputs Pedagogyconstitutes not only a theory of social and cultural direction but a theory of self-realisationas well that contributes to a person’s change and to the improvement

of the society It has a theoretical and a practical nature and it does not confineitself within school because it offers help to children, young people and adults

It is a discipline marked out by its multilateral and multiple character(Hatzidimou, 1991)

A doubtful characteristic of teaching is that it may appear that there is nocreation of knowledge, only transmission Leggatt claimed that theaccumulation of experience and teaching arts over the generations in whichteachers are socialised is not valued By claiming that teaching experience andarts are not valued he has a point, because it is a question of who defines value(Willensky, 1964) Employing little jargon or technicality terms andtechnology from other fields (e.g audio aids, videos) were not considered to be

in the teachers’ favour

However, Leggatt did not give a broader context in which to place all thesefeatures thus causing confusion Furthermore, when he referred to thecharacteristics of teachers, their clients, their work or to bureaucracy and theproblems these factors cause, he argued in terms of the country, the educationsystem and the time point he was experiencing Nevertheless, he appears topresent these features as ever lasting, ever existing and universal The increase

in recruitment, the impossibility of salary raises, the low prestige are allcharacteristics of a particular kind of society and policy; they are not tenets butdifficult to overcome obstacles That it why they should be viewed as socialfactors, which among others hinder teachers’ professionalisation

Another example referring to the difficulties with teachers’ professionalismcomes from Ginsburg et al (1978) They referred to the fact that it appears thatteachers do not perform an ‘essential’ task or service (Ginsburg et al, 1978,p.196) It has been accepted that professionals offer services that are valuable

to the society and emphasise the societal benefit than their own interest However, teachers too claim orientation to clients and that they offerservices useful to society (e.g Broadfoot et al., 1993) It seems that thequestion of who defines social value is the issue (Willensky, 1964) becauseteachers have not been able to convince everybody of the value of their service

self-A condition of professionalism is the emphasis placed on the mental rather thanthe manual labour utilising technical expertise (Willensky, 1964; Morell andFlaherty, 1978) Teaching was found lacking in this sense It can be arguedhowever that such conditions may exist because of the type of education that isbeing offered by the state As long as there are efforts to separate conceptionfrom action (e.g Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986; Lawn and Ozga, 1988; Apple,1989), it will appear that there is high-

status mental labour and low-status manual labour As long as teachers have toimplement other people’s conceptions, their work will appear to be like manuallabour Professionals also placed emphasis on reason rather than force

Ginsburg et al (1978) claimed that the negotiating position of professionalsdepended on their monopoly over services and on the ideology that the servicethey offered was essential and based on expertise Therefore, they wereconsidered less likely to use force to achieve what they were after even thoughprofessionals may even strike or refuse services when their interests areendangered (Hang, 1973) Most of the teachers believe they should not strike(Wright, 1982; Lawn, 1985) whereas at the same time they cannot refuseservices, as professionals may do (Burke, 1971; Lawn and Ozga, 1988) Such

an attitude compromises the teachers’ situation further because they are notwilling to improve things through other means Furthermore, teachers appearunable to prove how essential their services are, as professionals do

Burke (1971) also elaborated on the differences between professionals andteachers These were the main points of his definition of professionalism

First of all, professionals were not employees working for a fixed wage orsalary according to standardised rates but people who did specific tasks forindividual clients for a fee They were highly trained and provided a veryspecialised service exclusively available from the members of that occupation.They were not subjected to external control in their performance of theoccupation, as a representative council of practitioners, enjoying autonomywithin statutory limits, determined the conditions of work Finally, their statuscame from public esteem and statutory provision as professionalism involvedpublic recognition of competence and autonomy Teachers, on the other hand,lacked all the above features and needed to fight and gain them

A difficulty with teachers’ professionalisation that Morris (1969) found is thattheir associations attempted to fulfil two separate needs, which was not easy.They tried both to promote education as a professional body would and to fightfor teachers’ interests as a union would Teachers did not have a professionalbody independent of external control and with authority to regulate issuesinvolving teachers as an occupational group and their relationships as itsmembers This shortage may not have allowed for more power, which mighthave derived if teachers were organised in both these ways (Burke, 1971).Various aspects of the bureaucratic approach to teachers’ professionalism arereinforced by more recent references One of them is the familiarity withteaching since all citizens go to school which makes people behave as experts

in education (Reid, 1994) Another is the teachers’ status being connected tochildren’s low status (Reid, 1994; Wood and Attfield, 1996) or to women’s lowstatus (Iliou, 1990) Finally, the proprietary attitudes towards children byparents and towards education by politicians hinder teachers’professionalisation That means that parents see the next generation asinadequate in terms of education and politicians think education is tooimportant to be left on the hands of teachers alone so they attempt to remedythe situation in an obligatory manner (Reid, 1994) Both politicians and parentsfail to acknowledge how complex teaching is and how other problems, out ofthe control of individual teachers, hinder them from doing their jobsuccessfully Examples of such constraints are the resources and ratios inschools

In this chapter, the views on the impact of bureaucracy on teaching as aprofession were analysed Some of these traits were the client-teachers relationship, the teachers’ unorganisability and the expectation tofollow certain rules and regulations from external sources

One of the objections that maybe levelled against the literature on thebureaucratisation of teaching is that some of these views may be refuted.Mainly that is because the educational system has changed, which only provesthat they were time and place specific rather than inaccurate This approach isalso lacking in the sense that it rarely attempts to relate teaching with widercontexts as most of the times teachers’ features, are presented in isolation fromthe rest of the society These positions do not go beyond relating features to theeducational system in which they exist

This approach was not considered adequate to be employed in this studybecause it does not take that into account that everything is society isinterlocking and education is influenced by everything that happens in thewider social context

Despite that, this approach referred to certain features, which distinguish aprofession raised by sociology as well These conditions of professionalismwere:

the theoretical background a professional teacher should have and on which tobase one’s practice,

the lack of a body to regulate the profession in terms of entrance, practice,collegial relations and teachers’ relations with the clients,

the disruptive effect of the bureaucratic organisation of the education systems.The above characteristics are selected for the investigation of professionalism

in early years teaching, discussed in detail in Chapter 8

The Marxist approach to teaching attempts to place teaching as an occupation

in a wider context and follows First the changes in society are discussed, thenthe impact of these changes on the educational systems of western societies andfinally the effect of all these reforms on the teaching profession and in Englandand Greece

CHAPTER 3

Marxist Positions on the Teachers’ ProfessionalismThe particular social and educational reforms in western societies have led totwo ways, within the Marxist approach, that interpret the concept of teachers’professionalism The first one is the thesis of reskilling or reprofessionalisationand the other is that of deskilling or deprofessionalisation or proletarisation orintensification

Reskilling and Deskilling in Teaching

In teaching, the reskilling thesis emphasises the changes and the newdimensions of the teacher’s role such as the leadership and partnership duties.These newly introduced obligations are supposed to make teaching morecomplex and teachers more skilled and thus more professional (Hargreaves,1994) For instance, teachers may think they are more professional because

they need to decide all the time according to pre-set criteria or because theyhave accepted working longer and doing a regulated work Teachers’ workinvolves a range of tasks to be performed such as systematic integration oftesting, behavioural goals, competency based upon instruction and management

by objectives (Apple, 1988) In such a case reskilling does not have anyconnotation of loss of control over work

According to the reskilling thesis, the professionalism of primary schoolteachers in England has altered It has changed from being confined to theclassroom, away from other teachers and from being defined by theheadteacher, who had allowed neverthe- less for the teacher’s responsibilityand autonomy It is now ‘a collective school wide job based on narrowlydefined, though complex tasks, within a context of shared managementfunctions and tight areas of responsibility, clearly defined and appraised’(Lawn, 1988, p 166) Professionalism now refers to the way of working withthe others, to working longer hours and to having specialist knowledge (Lawn,1988) The advocates of the reskilling thesis therefore suggest that teachers areprofessional if they assist the successful implementation of the reformsimposed on them by the state This type of professionalism is named technicistprofessionalism and is analysed further in Chapter 4 Some authors howeverpoint to a tension between genuine collegiality and teamwork andmanagerialism (e.g Hargreaves, 1994; Webb and Vulliamy, 1996), which isdiscussed in Chapters 4 and 5

For the proletarisation thesis however reskilling means that teachers becometechnicians robbed of their traditional craft skills in curriculum and assessment,being pushed to merely implement plans designed by others and experiencingintensification of work (Schon, 1983; Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986; Apple,1987; Bitsakis, 1992) These features are seen as the result of the separation ofconception (done by management) from execution (done by teachers) (Noutsos,1987; Apple, 1988; Woods, 1995)

The advocates of proletarisation in England suggest there is deterioration inteaching in their country Teaching has become more routinised, intensified andteachers have been deskilled and their scope for judgement is now limited(Lawn and Ozga, 1988) As work in school more and more acquires features ofwork in factories and offices [e.g flexibility and accountability (Lawn andOzga, 1988)] professionalism seems to be ‘seducing teachers into consortingwith their own exploitation’ (Hargreaves, 1994, p 15)

According to definitions of proletarisation (Oppenheimer, 1973; Braverman,1974; Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986; Lawn and Ozga, 1988; Hall, 1994)proletarisation includes the process of control over a service being gained bythe capital and the service

then being redefined by the management Redefining a service, which themanagement controls, means that new skills are required for the provision ofthe newly defined service and old skills become obsolete and displaced Thespecific definition of proletarisation is very crucial for deciding on theterminology to be used

‘Proletarisation does not depend upon deskilling but on a complex process ofthe subordination of skill to capital and the restructuring of skill by capital,which entails processes of increased as well as decreased skill’ (Hatcher, 1994,

p 48)

That means that the terms reskilling and intensification can be viewed as thepart of the proletarisation, which refers to the ‘processes of increased skill’.Deskilling and deprofessionalisation in the same way can be viewed as theresult of the process leading to ‘decreased skill’ Therefore, the terms deskillingand deprofessionalisation are not considered wide enough to describe the wholeprocess because they suggest only the displacement of skills or the feelingsaccompanying such a displacement The term reskilling and intensification arealso limited because they emphasise the new skills, which become necessarywhen the management assumes control over a service whereas proletarisationimplies change of control, introduction of new skills and displacement of others

as one process rather than three independent parts That is why in this researchthe term proletarisation and the proletarisation thesis will be employed

Conclusions

In this chapter the Marxist positions on teaching as an occupation werediscussed The proletarisation thesis was chosen as a theoretical, interpretativeframe for analysing teaching as an occupation The reason was that theproletarisation thesis was considered broad enough to include the otherposition, that of reskilling and other terms such as deprofessionalisation,intensification and deskilling The Marxist approach to professions considers itimportant to examine the social, economic and political conditions in a countrybefore analysing the occupational situation of a working group, which follows.CHAPTER 4

Changes in Western Societies and their Education Systems

In this chapter the changes in western societies will be investigated followed by

a thorough examination of their educational systems Such an approach to theexamina- tion of early years teachers’ professionalism was considerednecessary because Marxists link the wider context to every topic they analyse

so it will help clarify their argument The capitalist status quo is the first topic

to discuss

The Current Crisis of Capitalism

According to Marxists, nowadays, western societies are going through thephase of monopoly capitalism A major characteristic of monopoly capitalism

is the creation of a universal market To create a market, capitalism has tocontrol the production of all goods and change them into commodities It alsohas to control a variety of services and change those into commodities Finally,

a ‘product cycle’ must be initiated that will create new goods and services anddispose of others ‘as the conditions of modern life change to destroyalternatives’ (Braverman, 1974, p 281)

In order for these three steps to be realised, the tendency in monopolycapitalism is to change labour from being a subjective element of the process ofproduction into an objective one of ‘a productive process now conducted bymanagement’ (Braverman, 1974, p 172; see also Aronowitz and Giroux,1986).

The management, as we saw in the Marxist approach to professions (Chapter3), represents capital in labour relations The management can successfullyincrease productivity in a field by using all the new skills and specialities,which at first ‘are the province of labour rather than management’ (Braverman,

1974, p 172) That implies that a lot of labour is displaced in other occupationsand new crafts and skills and technical specialities are created (Braverman,1974) This process is called proletarisa- tion of labour (Oppenheimer, 1973;Hatcher, 1994)

The increase in productivity achieved by management entails massemployments going through phases in their proletarisation process Thecharacteristics of these phases are:

‘the rationalisation and division of labour,

the simplifications of duties,

the application of mechanisation,

a downward drift in relative pay,

some unemployment and some unionisation’ (Braverman, 1974, p 243; seealso

it is always necessary to adjust the worker to the work needed each time by thecapital (Braverman, 1974; Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986)

Proletarisation has been linked to the current economic crisis in westernsocieties The source of the current crisis in the accumulation of capital appears

to be the increase of the power of labour, which had led to state intervention forthe economic redistribution in the form of social wage and increased socialservices To be more precise, the power

that labour gained by the legal stabilisation and redistribution in economicterms led to ‘expectations for workplace control and self-determination, environmental protection and reduction of racial and sexualhiring practices’ (Weisskopf, 1981, p 56) That situation in turn reduced theactivities of the capitalists regarding investments and increased streamliningwhich left the state facing demands for more from both sides (Weisskopf,1981)

Weisskopf put the whole situation concisely:

‘The liberal ‘warfare-welfare-State’ agenda, which was part of the solution tothe economic crisis of the 1930s because it helped to stimulate profits via in-

creased aggregate demand is now part of the problem because it competes withcapitalists for investible resources and limits the scope of their decision-making discretion’ (Weisskopf, 1981, p 56).

Despite proletarisation, which meant an increase of the capital control over theworkplace, the accumulation of capital is still hindered Weisskopf argued that

a crisis in the accumulation of capital takes place when the contradictions in themodes of resolution of the previous crisis are enhanced

“It seems that the contradictions are embedded in the ‘institutional structure’even though the ‘economic elements’ of crisis (slowdown of growth, increasedinflation, unemployment, decline in pay and profit) are evident ” (Weisskopf,

1981, p 55)

The need to remedy such situations in the 1980s led countries with liberaldemocratic governments to question the aims of the welfare state, which meantthat the policies of distribution were increasingly considered dysfunctional.Redistribution of power was rendered necessary (Kazamias, 1991, p 106) aswell as a new ‘organic ideology’, which would justify it This new ideologysought to produce a new ‘national popular will’, which would steer people’spractical consciousness in a different direction than before and still be widelyaccepted (Walker, 1990, p 533) Thus redistribution of power and the creation

of the universal market would be facilitated

Wexler explained how Right governments used a double course of action togain hegemony That activity involved ‘reassertion of capital’ and ‘culturalrestoration’ (Wexler, 1987, p xii) Cultural restoration meant that social values,which were popular in the past, were reintroduced The withering of the oldstatus quo (i.e welfare state) and feelings manipulated were mainly the feelings

of loss of control in economic and personal life and feelings of loss ofknowledge, values and visions of life that should be passed on to thegenerations to come assisted neo-conservatives in their cultural restoration.Two of the features of their philosophy to mobilise the existing publicdiscontent (Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986) The first feature of the conservativephilosophy referred to the family and its relation with community and localism,patriarchal authority and religion The other feature was that of individualism,competition, personal effort and rewards Those two elements were combinedand the nuclear family was presented as the ‘locus of civilisation, ofcommunity and social control, a moral and political referent from which tomobilise and wage constant struggle against its “enemies”’ (Aronowitz andGiroux, 1986, p 210; see also Dale, 1989) Individualism was also employed

by the neo-conservatives in order to launch their attack against the state andbureaucracy The state was presented as blocking and eroding economicprosperity (Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986)

Reassertion of capital was achieved by applying the philosophy of market inthe public sector Market forces were presented by the neo-conservatives both

as an efficient way for managing resources and as a factor considering theneeds of individuals If the

market became the base of personal and societal change, then it could helpbuild a good society with individuals who would be self-reliant and

independent of the state (Henig, 1994) This way they legitimatised theapplication of the market philosophy in the public sector as well as peoplebeing directed away from the old status quo (employ- ment, health, safety andlegal rights, education) (Apple, 1989; Dale, 1989) and being convinced of thesuperiority of the marker (Hammond and Martin, 1982) This also enabledgovernments to distance themselves from the social effects of their economypolicies and to blame trade unions, Local Authority bureaucracies and self-interested professionals for these effects (Walker, 1990).

The contradiction between morality and market is the central dynamic of thenew institutional social structure that is being built because thecommodification relations cannot be developed unless pre-market socialconditions continue to exist (Wexler, 1987)

This ideology and the course of action to convince people of its value arenamed authoritarian populism According to Hall, authoritarian populismmeans a closer connection between capital and state, withering of the socialwelfare and efforts to gain people’s consent to them (Hall, 1980, p 6) Gamblenoted that the authoritatian populism was:

‘populist because it drew upon discontent with many aspects of the social mocratic state to win support for a radical right programme It wasauthoritarian because in the implication of its programmes it further increasedthe power of the state and weakened opposition to it’ (Gamble, 1994, p 532).Following this argument, Hammond and Martin (1982) named the changesventured ‘the corporate offensive’ The success of authoritarian populistpolicies depends on ‘the growth of corporatist structures’ (Wexler, p xi-xii), which are employed in the current social reorganisation

de-The Realisation of the Market

The reassertion of capital was achieved by employing corporatist tactics.Corporatism involves an increased interest in social life and the implementation

of neutral and technical aspects to social life such as production, training, etc.which depoliticises the economic sphere (Blackmore, 1991; see also Noutsos,1985) The term is interchange- able with managerialism and technocracy andrefers both to political organisation (corporatist democracy) as well as to theorganisational forms of businesses and institutions

As an organising principle corporatism has been a strategic solution and aneffective way of forming policy in liberal democratic societies It depends on aform of rationality premised upon consensus, which moves away from moreparticipation in decision making (Traido, 1984)

As a form of political governance it changes the meaning of democracy fromthe normative sense of ‘classical democracy’ or from positive participatoryform of democracy (Pateman, 1970) to the elite’s notions of representativedemocracy or ‘negative participation’ (Pateman, 1970) although theterminology confuses about the differences (Blackmore, 1991) Underconditions of corporate democracy, economic rights become political rights butthey do not necessarily entail responsibility In particular, corporatistdemocracy assumes that both labour and capital win from a non- adversialrelationship, which allows unequal relations of production and gender to

continue to exist Such an attitude assumes a homogenous workplacewithout class-, race- or gender-biasesand without organisations that negotiateand determine what is ‘the national interest’ on behalf of citizens (Blackmore,1991) These certain conditions however are not always there.

Because corporatism means the application of scientific planning (Eleftheriou,1995) and rationalised solutions to problems only those who are concerned andexperts should participate in decision making on a variety of issues thatnevertheless have been preselected for them to resolve (Panitch, 1977) Theparticipation of experts and directly interested groups only in the finding ofsolutions is supposed to be motivated from the need of the national interest tooverride any other Participation is denied to some groups and allows others to

be involved thus narrowing the significance of political activity on theoutcome It is the interested parties that take the decision to go against theexisting status quo rather than the politicians making such a decision (Howe,1984) On this matter Panitch argued:

‘Authority remains with the employer, it is he who still controls But those whoare controlled are taken into his confidence; their views are solicited; and so thecontrol by becoming less an imposition, is made to operate more effectively’(Panitch, 1977, pp 71)

All this current re-organisation to fight the economical crisis and create auniversal market has evident results in the characteristics of western countries

The Characteristics of Western Societies

According to Marxists some of the current features of western societies caused

by the application of corporatism are the following:

Power is concentrated on the Executive at the expense of grassrootsrepresentation and of intermediary bodies (e.g unions, regional and localauthorities), which are based on universal suffrage Parliament has been shrunk

to an area of political procedure rather than an institution of co-power It is tooprecious to abolish however because it plays the role of the screen of therepresentative system even though it has lost its basic and main function, which

is to legislate In essence it relegates significant legislating to the Executive.The distinction between the three powers (i.e Executive, Legislature andJudicature) is blurred and the boundaries of their jurisdiction and action aretrans- gressed

The political and organisational activities of massive parties are displaced tothe governmental administration and bureaucracy The fact that the operation

of the intermediary bodies of grassroots representation has beeninstitutionalised in constitutions has transformed these bodies They have beenchanged from organisations of representation of the social classes into thestate’s corporatist interpretation of organisations of the political representation.The state has assumed the total planning of the social conditions and of themanagement of social problems coming up This planning seems to be anegotiation of schemes around which politics are now defined, which rendersthe state managerial (i.e corporatist or technocratic) More and more areas ofsocial exchange and interaction are submitted to the regulative role of the state,which leads to state authoritativeness and blurs the limits between the public

and private spheres Autocracy is reinforced and political liberties shrink Awhole complex of flexible networks of social control is activated, which existseverywhere in society State intervention debars citizens, either as groups or asindividuals from participating in decision-making It results in theapolitisisation of citizens and in politics becoming a technical and legal process(Andreou, 1994).

All this restructuring in society affects education, which is reorganised to suitthe new demands A current need for education is to produce ‘workers who canwillingly perform the specialised tasks required by an economy facingincreased competition from abroad’ (Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986, p 4) Theplan of corporatism for education

is to adapt education to the demands of the labour market based on the criterion

of utmost performance or productivity (Eleftheriou, 1995) What is attempted is

to programme pupils ‘in a certain direction so that they will behave in set ways,responding to predetermined situations’ (Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986, p 9).Therefore, schools must align more closely with the interests of businesses andcorporations in both the short and long run (Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986).Wexler describes four phases in the educational reorganisation in the USA.These phases were chosen to present in detail in this chapter because theyexemplify how reorganisation in western societies affected education Theanalysis of the current educational reforms in western societies completes thebroader frame in which teachers in England and Greece exist Furthertheoretical support to Wexler’s analysis from other writers is also added

Reorganising Education in Western Societies

There are 4 phases of educational reforms in western societies in Wexler’smodel

1st Phase: ‘The Cultural Work of the Current Educational Movement’

In this phase, reorganisation in education takes place in two ways Firstly, byundermining and dismantling that which has been considered as commonculture on the importance and value of education Secondly, by changingaccepted organisational finances and forms in education i.e public means ofschool finance

i) Undermining the Importance and Value of Education

The objective of education changes from being the development of theindividual to being the assistance to the national survival, as education shouldprepare working people who are appropriately skilled and motivated(Habermas, 1976; Eleftheriou, 1995) This linkage between education and work

is based on an instrumental and utilitarian philosophy of education and is inaccordance with the need to create a market (Angus, 1991)

The meritocracy ethos encourages and reproduces competitiveness andindividualism in education and harms alternative cultures and cultural groups.The damage is subtle because it depends on common-sense assumptionsregarding differences in education, culture and background Even though itdoes not overtly force the reproduction of inequalities, it hinders the creation ofconditions that might lead to social change (Angus, 1991)

ii) Undermining Accepted Organisational Finances and Forms

Conservatives have asserted that schools should upgrade themselves bychanging curricula and by new management forms rather than by massivefinancial inputs (Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986) This way ‘school curriculumand finance are reintegrated in the rationale of commodification and market’(Apple, 1987, p xii) An example from the USA educational system is theeffort made to abolish the National Department of Education so thateducational finances go back to each State This effort intends to ceaseequalising federal support for categorical education programmes like theeducation of minorities, women, handicapped etc (Wexler, 1987) The nextphase in education regards how education is rationalised

2nd Phase: ‘The Rationalisation of Commodification of Education’

In order to proceed to the commodification of education, organisational andprofessional rationalisation is utilised Rationalisation is proclaimed in thename of quality (Wexler,

1987) It is expressed by increasing the number of methods of ‘measurableorganisation and administrative surveillance’ at every step of the educationalprocess (Euchner, 1982, p.70) It aims at transforming knowledge and so far ithas deskilled both theteaching-learning interaction and its evaluation as well asredefined broad areas of the curriculum content (Wexler, 1987) Rationalisation

in this phase takes place through an attack launched at two levels The first one

is at a theoretical level; through the discourse of the new reform of education.The other one refers to alterations in education in terms of teachers, pupils,content and processes

i) The Legitimising Discourse of the Reforms in Education

Not only are the values of education offered by the welfare state undermined,their meaning changes, too Equality is distanced from previous connotations ofoppression and lack of privileges It is now presented as fair competition andnot as equal participation It is linked to the right of choice of everybody underthe market conditions (Anderson, 1985) distancing state education from thediscourse of ‘self-empowerment, collective freedom, civic courage and humanemancipation’ (Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986, p 215) It is directed intomeasurement, testing, personal merit and qualities and that results ineducational problems being personalised (Angus, 1991) More particularly:

‘Justice is quite beside the point for the new conservative reformers Theirmajor concern is the changing world economy and the new internationaldivision of labour Schools appropriately are considered producers of humancapital’ (Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986, p 3)

Performance is defined in terms of quality, which refers to absolute standardsthat are used as objective measures of the progress of individuals and groups(Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986) Competence according to standards becomes acriterion for the future of the participants in education and work (Smith, 1985).There is also reference to accountability (Wexler et al, 1981) Schools areprojected as neutral institutions that produce quality goods thus covering ‘theproblematic nature of education in its social context’ (Preston, 1989, p 251)

and the fact that it is not an apolitical institution A neutral education undermarket conditions appears as an individual economic investment, which makes

it necessary to reckon the cost of education for the individual (Preston, 1989).These changes in the value system seem to dispose of any cultural element thatcannot be defined in narrow technical terms from the content of both thecurriculum and of teaching Euchner named this process of disposal technicalbecause it has nothing to do with generative imagination This technicalprocess is justified on the basis of the specific job requirements imposed byhigh technology and by the need for educational quality in a period ofintensified competition (Euchner, 1982)

ii) Changes in Schooling

The liberal-democratic values, like equity and quality are not the only elementsunder attack Teaching is also redefined with the testing of the teachers’competence (Wexler, 1987) and the mistrust of commitment (Dale, 1989).These attacks involve accusing teachers of a decline in their morale, lack ofcompetence and an inadequate curriculum However, Martin argued:

‘While it is only too ‘convenient for critics of the educational system to viewteachers as unprofessional artisans who should be “made” to do their best, any-one with a smattering of knowledge in the field of organisational effectivenessknows that morale and motivation are important’ (Martin, 1989, p 251)

Apparently the answer from the state does not refer to teachers’ morale, but tomanaging schools more tightly both by testing the teaching staff and thechildren and by imposing centrally determined curricula Little attention is paid

to the teacher-pupil relationship, their motivation or the methodology forachieving the outcomes The complex nature of education is diminished intoparticular problems that can be solved directly in each school (e.g Martin,1989; Andreou, 1994; Woods, 1995; Mavrogiorgos, 1998)

Rationalisation in school refers to testing, learning and effectiveness Testingnow involves the redefinition of the content of education, which becomes thelearning of specific narrow skills The learning process changes fromclassroom education as amicro-community, where social and civic learningtakes place, to ‘effective’ classroom education, which equals to the amount of

‘time (spent) on task’ ‘Knowledge’, ‘understanding’ and ‘development’ arereplaced by ‘competence’, ‘effectiveness’ and ‘performance’ (Euchner, 1982,

to progress’ (Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986, p 2) Such change in curriculumtransforms the potentially emancipatory discourses of policy into amanagerial-technicist discourse (Blackmore, 1991)

The increased application of technical solutions in education is based on thepremise that experts are more appropriate to rectify the situation than other

parts involved indirectly in education The purpose of education is defined innarrower terms than before and its success depends on the proper manipulation

of goals and problems despite human values (Pusey, 1981, p.77)

The reorganisation at the micro-level of social relations in education isachieved by deskilling teachers and pupils in order to accommodate technologyand quality (excellence) The term quality hides the commodification ofeducation for exchange (Wexler, 1987) At the same time the splintering off ofeducation into ‘smaller, more measurable, standardised units’ leads education

to marketisation at the macrolevel (Wexler, 1987, p 71) The end-product ofthis phase of reorganisation is ‘marketisation of education’, which islegitimated and partly humanised by idealised family and fundamentalistreligious ideologies that are propagated (Wexler, p xii)

3rd Phase: ‘Marketisation of Education’

For a commodity exchange to take place there need to be markets capable ofaccommodating the commodity Therefore, an attempt is made to establish anet of markets for education and of appropriate structures for the distribution ofthe commodities The ultimate goal is for the state to change education into amarket (Salganik, 1981) In Australia for example, quality and excellence havebeen connected to private school education unproblematically in contrast topublic schools, which were seen as being in crisis It was claimed that publicschools have supposedly failed to deliver the type of education that can helppeople compete for jobs and improve economy (Kenway, 1986)

Elements of the third phase are privatisation, the tax-credit incentive and

‘voucher’ plans The ideology of privatisation signifies the move towardseducational choice and towards transforming mass public schooling intocompeting businesses (Wexler, 1987)

For the elements of this phase (privatisation, the tax-credit incentive andvoucher plans) to flourish, conditions of corporatism are useful

4th Phase: ‘Corporatisation of Education’

The corporatisation of education takes place in two levels: firstly, by theintensification of the involvement of businesses in public schooling andsecondly by the conscious creation of education markets

Business cooperates with schools in various ways in order to find a solution toeducational problems and labour employability This reorganisation also takesplace in pre-primary andpost-secondary education In the pre-primary education, the schooling of younger children is prolonged through day-care In the post-secondary education, ‘innovative arrangements forcollaboration between universities and businesses’ are put forward (Noble,

1982, p 75) The results of the latter type of cooperation (Noble, 1982) arereductions in student loans, vast cutbacks in the university funding and theproliferation of bridging institutions between universities and corporations Theparticular implications of the implementation of corporatism in education areevident in terms of control and of school life

i) Control and Corporatism

Control over education does not necessarily mean control over concrete andspecific aspects of curriculum or decision-making structures e.g standardised

curricula, legal constraints, and external examinations Control can be gained

by more subtle and indirect means (Pusey, 1981) Because the increase inspecific controls is difficult for governments to manage, corporatist control isemployed Corporatism is a theoretical and practical means that yields controlaugmenting consensus (Pusey, 1981)

The discourse of corporate managerialism like devolution, consultation,accountability, etc has been introduced in education The participation ofvested interests and consultation that corporatism involves appeals tothe common-sense democratic notion of participation and thus brings aboutvoluntarism (Blackmore, 1991) It is appealing in spite of the fact thatrepresentation and the nature of participatory democracy is problematic incorporatism both at the macro-political level (e.g the economy) and micro-political level (educational bureaucracies) (Blackmore and Spaull, 1987;Watkins, 1988)

With corporatism in education the state maintains its control through thetension between centralised and decentralised forms of governance By havingstate policies referring to administrative decentralisation and school-based decision-making, the state dissimulate the central demand for moreeffective use of diminishing resources Thus it is the decentralised governmentthat has to make difficult decisions regarding resources and equity (Blackmore,1987; Watkins, 1988)

The educational boards in Australia are such an example and they are formedbased largely on representational decentralisation rather than the participatoryform of democracy (Watkins, 1988)

ii) Corporatism and School Life

Corporatism in schools leads to what Aronowitz and Giroux called ‘amanagement pedagogy’ which means that teachers’ work is changed into tasksthat obstruct the emergence of discourse and action contradicting corporatism.Pedagogy is restricted into teaching predecided pieces of knowledge called

‘taxonomies’ Management pedagogies are considered necessary because of theassumption that teachers need to be controlled in order to cater equally fordifferent pupils (Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986)

This takes place, despite the fact that technocratic rationality obstructsvariations and difference in curriculum to cater for all pupils, since it does notseriously engage in considering the less privileged pupils pedagogically(Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986, p 29) Efficiency in education is believed toderive from technicising and standardising it (Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986).Management pedagogies are a way of controlling teachers as well as a means

of good public relations for the school The good relationships are achieved byschool administrators finding technical solutions to the problems of theirschools based on the assumption that accountability can produce successfulresults (Aronowitz and Giroux, 1985)

Conclusions

In this chapter, the broader changes in western societies were presented whichderive from the need to resolve the current capital crisis Capitalism had to gaincontrol over products and services and commodify them Then capital

produced new goods and services displacing others Braverman (1974) As thatwas not sufficient, more emphasis was given to the creation of a universalmarket as a solution to the crisis To manipulate public discontent and to gainthe confidence and compliance of the people for the reconstruction in storeauthoritarian populist policies were employed The latter included therestoration of old traditional social values and the reassertion of the capitalthrough corporatist reorganisation Corporatism was and is a tactic used tocreate the free market that is hoped to resolve the current crisis These changeswere expected to have an impact on the educational systems of westernsocieties, which they did, as reorganisation has spread in this area, too.

The concepts of corporatism and market have been employed to reconstruct aneducational system in a western country Education systems in westernsocieties undergo 4 phases of restructuring, which result in the corporatisation

of education These phases aimed at the commodification and marketisation ofeducation by use of corporatist discourse and action They described howcapital attempts to gained control over the service of education

Before moving on, it is necessary to clarify that all these features of society andeducation do not necessarily exist in England and in Greece nor in such form or

to such extent as presented in an abstract model Nevertheless, they do notcease to be the broad context where teachers find themselves living andworking

As the frames of society and education, which teachers experience areestablished, the discussion moves to how new skills in teaching appeared inEngland

CHAPTER 5

Teachers’ Proletarisation in England

As it has been explained in Chapter 3, the proletarisation thesis includes thereskilling thesis on the analysis of teaching as a profession For this reason thisbroader frame was selected for the analysis of professionalism in early yearsteaching in this study Marxists have explained that the proletarisation thesis ingeneral refers to the restructuring of labour (e.g Bravermann, 1974; Lawn andOzga, 1988; Apple, 1988) resulting in control being given over to themanagement, which represents capital In other words for proletarisation totake place there needs to be a demand for new skills, which makes old andexisting skills obsolete and useless The establishment of a universal market,which maximises profits, creates this demand for new skills

In this chapter the proletarisation of teachers in England is analysed according

to Hatcher’s model because his model is very detailed, accurate and persuasive.The areas of restructuring he referred to were: the reconstruction of the workprocess, the new employment conditions and the rights of unions and finallythe new culture in schools The argument was that in all these areas discussedcontrol over teaching was more and more taken away from teachers and issupported by other authors

The Reconstruction of the Work Process of English Teachers

According to Hatcher (1994), this reconstruction takes place with theestablishment of new management techniques brought in from the privatesector, despite the fact that work in the private sector depends on the market.Indeed, the elements he focused on to discuss how control is being removedfrom teachers, such as increased work intensification and total examination ofthe work process, are actually practices of Human Resource Management onlean production reorganisation (Burchill, 1997) The parts of this phase ofproletarisation, which lead to teachers’ loss of control over work, are:

i) The Intensification of Teachers’ Work

Intensification of work was described ‘as central to the “new economy of timeand control in production’” (Coriat, 1990, quoted in Hatcher, 1994, p 42) Thepurpose of intensification is to increase the number of tasks that the directproduction workers have to perform and such an increase takes place in theschools through additional tasks assigned to teachers (Hatcher, 1994; see alsoLawn and Ozga, 1988)

Other elements demonstrating intensification are: First of all, the new positions,which were created to accommodate the increase of tasks and which divideconception from execution of work within schools These positions have asupervisory function and the post holders are named curriculumspecialists / co-ordinators / leaders or Faculty Heads (Lawn and Ozga, 1988) orsubject managers (OfSTED, 1994b) Aronowitz explained how the role of co-ordinators involves intensification:

“the working supervisor is merely a person who performs two jobs She is sponsible for actually producing the same amount of paper herself as the subor-dinate; in addition she is held responsible for the production of the subordinate

re-as well” (Aronowitz, 1973, pp 301)

The teachers’ increased workload imposed by the need to implement thenational curriculum and the SATs also intensifies teaching (Hatcher, 1994; seealso Woods, 1995) So do the increased work-time, imposed by the 1987Teachers Pay and Conditions Act (Hatcher, 1994) and the increase in classsizes (Doe, 1992) Another indicator of intensification is the fact that teachers’work does not end when they leave school but takes up time of their privatelives (Hatcher, 1994; see also Hargreaves,

1994; Woods, 1995) As Woods put it teachers were ‘doing their best to meetthe prescribed targets but compromising the quality of living and their ownhealth’ (Woods, 1995, p 4) Finally, the demands of accountability, especially

if they involve ‘singular views of correct (and by implication incorrect)practice’, increase intensification (Hargreaves, 1994, p 149) Such demandsare more intense for teachers with management duties as they experienceintensification on the period before, during and after inspections (Wilcox andGray, 1996)

It has been argued that managerialism in the form of producing policy to beimple- mented and monitored and the external determination of aims forschools and teachers have reduced ‘teachers ability to determine the ways inwhich they work’ (Webb and Vulliamy, 1996, p 456) This is the first manner

in which teachers loose control over their work They spend too much of their

time catering for legal requirements decided by others and are not devoted toteaching only The results are no time for relaxation while at work, no time forfurther updating and in-service training (Hargreaves, 1994) and increase ofresentment towards the administrative tasks because teachers do not see theirvalue (Pollard et al., 1994).

Intensification has other results, too Teachers are expected to conform tocertain established traditions and rituals, which embody particular models ofteacher, authority relations and teaching practice However, teachers’ concernabout being good teachers coupled with the overload of administrative andsupervisory duties pressures teachers to do what is pre-decided for them inways which may largely ignore the social and cultural aspects of education infavour of practicalities (Hatcher, 1994; Jeffrey and Woods, 1998)

More particularly intensification leads to loss of spontaneity and decrease intime to respond to children’s initiatives which means adoption of more formalteaching approaches (Woods 1995; see also Pollard at al., 1994) Not only that,the educational process is simplified to save time in the face of personnelshortages in schools Due to lack of sufficient personnel to cater adequately forthe new requirements, schools develop a ‘dependency on outside expertise’(Hargreaves, 1994, p 119) Intensification creates chronic and persistentoverload, which reduces teachers’ discretion as individuals and rearranges theirpriorities The decrease in discretion makes teachers depend on ‘externallyproduced materials and expertise’ and that affects their ‘involvement in andcontrol over longer-term planing’ (Hargreaves, 1994, p 118; see also Apple,1988; Jeffrey and Woods, 1998) So another result of intensification is thatteachers do not have time to provide for quality themselves but have to rely onothers’ expertise for that Thisoutside-of-school expertise can be found throughjournals like ‘Teacher’, through the Internet or through the particular website

by Department for Education and Employment on Standards(www.standards.dfee.gov.uk/schemes) Apple (1988) has commented upon thedecrease in quality, not in quantity, of the process and the output of teaching

He explained that this decrease in quality education takes place because theresponsibility over curriculum and teaching is largely taken away from teachers

as technical and managerial issues of teaching become more urgent (Apple,1988)

If intensification is to be defined as addition of administrative or other thanteaching duties then it seems that Hatcher has not taken into account one moreelement leading to decrease in control over the workplace of teachers inEngland This element is parental involvement

It was the Education Act of 1980 that referred to the new role for parents ineducation Parents could choose the school they wished for their child to attendregardless of the

authority they belonged to This Act in order to facilitate the choice of parentsrequired schools:

‘to publish annually their rules of admission for parents including the criteriafor deciding which children should be given priority when the school wasoversub- scribed’,

‘to publish information to help parents make a choice’ [choose a school] and

‘to set up independent appeal committees whose decisions would be binding’(Docking, 1996, p 128)

Even though within school, parents are the main responsibility of theheadteacher (Education Reform Act, 1988; National Standards forHeadteachers, 1998), the teachers’ control over work is nevertheless reduced.Having to cater for the legislated parental involvement in education is a dutyimposed on teachers indicating that in this aspect control was taken away fromthem Another way they loose control in through the regulation of their work

ii) The Regulation of Teachers’ Work

The regulation of teachers work takes place through the prescribed nationalcurriculum and testing as well as through the new systems that each school hasdevised for routinising and standardising and monitoring work (Hatcher, 1994)

It is closely related with intensification as both make teachers feeldeprofessionalised (Hatcher, 1994; see also Pollard et al., 1994; Jeffrey andWoods, 1998)

Inspections, too, seem to have contributed to the regulation of teachers’ work.That is because the ways of improvement that have to be planned after aninspection by Office for Standards in Education brings the school closer to themodel promoted by this office Their model is not ‘theory free’ (Wilcox andGray, 1996, p 66) because elements assessed by the inspectors such as qualityand standards derive from management theory and the governments’ views oncurriculum and school management (Wilcox and Gray, 1996; Troman, 1996;Jeffrey and Woods, 1998; Woods et al., 1999) Flexibility in school alsoreduces teachers’ control over their work process

iii) Flexibility and Skill

Functional flexibility as creation of ‘new categories of labour’ (Burchill, 1997,

p 192) or as ‘multiskilling and breakdown of traditional occupationalboundaries’ (Whitfield, 1992, p 48) has been observed at schools Since the

1988 Education Reform Act new skills in management, marketing, budgetingand monitoring are required of teachers

The teachers are being reskilled in these new tasks but at the same time theyare deskilled as control over curriculum content has been transferred to thecentral government (Hatcher, 1994)

Finally the restructuring of the teaching process had its effects on teachers’training, too

iv) Initial Teacher Training

In order to make new teachers more amendable to the new desired definition ofteachers’ professionalism the nature of their preparation changes (Barton et al,1994) Teachers are being deskilled through their initial teacher training, which

is pressurised to be narrowly vocational (Hatcher, 1994) in order to constructthe ‘official’ technicist teacher (Arnot and Barton, 1992, p 474)

It was claimed that the school-based and competency-based initial teachertraining derives from a notion of ‘competent professionalism’ which wasevident in the legal

requirements by Department of Education and Science at the time (Pollard et

al, 1994, p 14) The initiatives on the initial teacher training are based on anattempt to turn teachers into ‘competent practitioners, able effectively toimplement those policies advocated by the government of the day’ (Furlong,

1991, p 92) It makes initial teacher training narrowly defined because it isnow confined to teaching the future teachers only what will be useful for them

in order to successfully achieve external targets (Gilroy, 1991; Furlong, 1992;Jacques, 1998)

Not only these requirements force initial teacher training courses to trainteachers to be technically competent to successfully deliver externally definededucational goals, they threaten the opportunities for critical reflection too(Furlong, 1992; Wilkin, 1992; Edwards, 1992; Noutsos, 1997) Teachers areprepared to deliver the educational policy but not to question it

The changes in their roles starting from initial teacher training proves thedisappearance of a particular form of intellectual labour (Aronowitz andGiroux, 1986), which involved teachers’ initiative and being autonomousenough to use their judgement in organising and planning education rather thanproviding for legal requirements

The basis for such claims can be reinforced by the content of initial teachertraining and Education even now (Richards, 1998) Initial teacher trainingcontinues to be constrained and defined by the standards that the Departmentfor Education and Employment has specified for all teacher students to reach.Teachers need to be awarded the Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) if they want

to work in maintained schools (circular 10/97)

The standards for the award of Qualified Teacher Status are grouped in fourcategories:

Knowledge and Understanding:

standards for secondary specialist subjects, standards for primary subjects andadditional standards for early years

Planning, Teaching and Class Management:

standards for primary English and mathematics

standards for primary and secondary planning and teaching and class

management,

additional standards for early years

Monitoring, Assessment, Recording, Reporting and Accountability

Other Professional Requirements

Circular 4/98 added further standards as it elaborated on the quantity ofknowledge that teacher students should be provided with during their initialtraining

Studies of philosophy, history, psychology and sociology of education, whichare being marginalised in current courses as irrelevant or subversive, were inthe past considered significant for the preparation of teachers to act upon them(Furlong, 1992; Wilkin, 1992; Edwards, 1992; Hoyle and John, 1995; Simco,1998) These subjects are being replaced by increased time in school becausefirst hand experience is seen as best since

it provides both the means and the content of education (Buchmann andSchville, 1993) However,

‘No good reason has yet been offered to support the general assumption thatincreased school experience will, itself, improve the quality of teaching inschools’ (Carr, 1993, p 157)

Maclure suggested that the purpose behind the government plans to disconnectinitial teacher training from Higher Education should be examined carefullybecause such disconnection dismantles ‘the traditional defences of teaching as

a profession’ (Maclure, 1993, p 531)

Proletarisation of labour is not confined only in the teachers’ work process Itaffects their employment and union rights, too

New Employment Conditions and Trade Union Rights

Two further conditions have been proposed as necessary for the work process

in teaching to be controlled The first one is to connect the surveillance of andthe regulation of work to the employment conditions The second one is torestrict the authority of trade unions by law (Hatcher, 1994; see also Ozga andLawn, 1988)

The features of these two conditions include securing the collaboration ofworkforce by fear or insecurity, by legislation designed to weaken autonomousorganisations of workers, by dilution of employment rights and by pay related

to productivity and performance However, these features are also the practicesthat the human resource management prescribes for lean productionreorganisation (Burchill, 1997) indicating the attempt to bring market relatedpractice into education

‘The general approach to trade unions could best be described as amarginalisation of their role (Storey, 1992, pp 249) under their “new realist’leaderships”’ (Hatcher, 1994, p 49) Measures taken to achieve that are plenty.The legislation on industrial action is such that can divide teachers betweenstriking and not striking At the same time it is attempted to establish newindividual contracts between employers and teachers so that the employersachieve their purposes more efficiently (Hatcher 1994)

Such contracts and relationships between employers and employees are bound

to have an impact on the national collective bargaining Collective bargaining

is a process:

‘of agreeing terms and conditions of employment through representatives ofemployers -possibly their associations, probably their managers- andrepresenta- tives of the employees -probably their unions’ (Burchill, 1997, p.91)

Its importance lies on that fact that it refers to substantive matters like hourlypay, overtime rates, bonuses, hours of work, holiday pay, productivity

payments, grading issues and related matters as well as procedural matters likedisciplinary grievance and disputes (Burchill, 1997) Therefore, the power ofteachers as an occupational group represented by their trade union in collectivebargaining is likely to be reduced with individual relations That is becauseindividual teachers will have the right to bargain for themselves weakening therole of their trade unions but at the same time because the prescription ofemployment conditions becomes legislated, teachers will be legally bound toprovide for them thus loosing control.

The teachers’ employment conditions changed in a number of ways Teachersappears to be loosing control over their employment conditions because theyare largely defined by the state and the bureaucratic structure of education andschools Loss of control over employment is evident in the following ways:

i) Job Descriptions

Numerical flexibility utilised in the private sector has been introduced ineducation as the number of part-time or temporary workers increases Forexample, according to Department for Education and Employment information,the percentage of part-timeand short-time employed teachers has increasedfrom 3,3% in 1982 to 6,2% in 1992 (Hatcher 1994) The School Teachers’ Payand Conditions Act (1991) legislated the conditions of classroom teachers’work Full-time employed teachers should:

‘be available for work’ on 195 days every school year with 190 of them in thepresence of pupils

be available to perform duties as specified and when specified by theheadteacher amounting up to 1265 hours (known as directed time) throughoutthe 195 days,

work additional hours, which are nor specified in order to discharge their dutieseffectively

The School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document (Circular 9/98) clarifiesthat the job description shows how generic duties are expected to apply to theteachers’ work in the school It should indicate what the teacher is expected toachieve, the resources under their control and who is responsible for thatparticular teacher Such details and specific contracts for teachers limit theirscope for either refusing to follow them or change them at their discretion

ii) Induction

Teachers loose more control over the employment conditions as they changedwith the introduction of circular 5/1999 ‘The Induction Period for NewlyQualified Teachers (NQT)’ Teachers gaining Qualified Teacher Status afterthe May 7th 1999 are to complete an induction period of three terms full time

in order to be eligible for work in maintained schools or non-maintained specialschools in England New teachers, despite being awarded Qualified TeacherStatus at completion of initial teacher training, may not be eligible foremployment if they do not complete the statutory induction periodsatisfactorily For the latter to be realised, the teachers need to demonstrate thatthey continue to meet the Qualified Teacher Status standards in employmentcircumstances and meet the Induction Standards These standards are groupedunder three headings, which exist as such in the standards required for the

award of Qualified Teacher Status (see Initial Teacher Training) Thesecategories are:

1.planning, teaching and classroom management;

2.monitoring, assessment, recording, reporting and accountability and finally3.other professional requirements

The induction of each qualified teacher is the responsibility of the school,which employs him or her with specific implications for the headteacher andthe Appropriate Body (which was the LEA for maintained schools until thefunction of the General Teaching Council [GTC]) The induction standardsseem to ensure that the control over teachers starting in initial teacher trainingremains during the first year of appointment by fear of loss of qualification toteach

The next change in employment conditions regards teachers’ pay

iii) Performance Related Pay

The mechanism of performance-related pay was employed in order to ‘amplifymarket signals’ in education (Hatcher, 1994, p 53) with the school governingbodies offering pay based on performance criteria (like the SATs results andGCSEs results)

Until 1994, Performance Related Pay was not applied to a large extent for anumber of reasons but mainly because the money for the Performance RelatedPay had to come from the schools existing budget, which were already tight(Hatcher, 1994) Another reason was that it was difficult to ‘allocate fairly’because the allocation could have caused problems among the staff given thepersonal relationships, which develop in small size schools (Hatcher, 1994, p.53) Furthermore, in order for such pay mechanism to be effective it wouldhave to include sanctions for headteachers and the governing bodies to impose

on underachieving teachers, which was not possible thanks to the power of theunions (Hatcher, 1994)

However, the situation changed since Hatcher wrote his article, as changes inthe pay structure have taken place On the 3/12/1998 it was arranged forindividual teachers, leadership groups and whole schools to earn extra paybased on their appraised performance (DfEE, 1998) Appraisals andassessments for all the possible levels teachers may be found within the schoolhierarchy [e.g part-time classroom teachers, newly qualified teachers, teachersbefore and after the performance threshold, headteachers, teachers in leadershipgroups and advanced skills teachers (AST)] were arranged The samedocument provides the detailed criteria for the performance threshold and theAST grades, which are national

As far as individual teachers are concerned the further options provided forthem for extra pay are the following: For teachers who hold 9 spine points forqualifications and experience, a performance threshold is put in place Itsnational standards refer to the pupil performance, the teachers’ use of subject /specialist knowledge, their planning, teaching and assessment and theirprofessional effectiveness If teachers perform exceptionally on these areasthey will receive a salary increase and access to higher pay ranges Thisincrease will come from the school budget as well as funds from the state for a

transitional period An external assessor whose assessment will be based on theheadteachers’ recommendations will assess the teachers.

‘The AST [advanced skills teachers] grade was created in 1998 to provide acareer path for excellent teachers wanting to remain classroom practitioners’(DfEE, 1998, p 26) Appointment to that grade will also depend on assessmentagainst national criteria

A new leadership group comprised of headteachers, deputies, advanced skillsteachers and senior teachers is also planned to be established in schools Thegoverning bodies will select the number of members and their pay range.Further pay steps will depend on continued strong performance Finally, theSchool Performance Award Scheme aims at rewarding strong teamperformances, which means that schools with excellent performance will beawarded bonuses for their staff provided the schools met the criteria for theaward

Performance Related Pay leads to teachers’ further loss of control over workconditions first of all because, despite the teachers’ unions objections, the state

is determined to link pay with pupil results (Moore, 1999) The first year of theimplementation of Performance Related Pay starting in September 1999 wasdecided to be considered a pilot with the new system introduced in full fromSeptember 2000 Secondly, teachers loose control because the standards to bereached in order to earn extra pay are defined by the state, their employer andnot teachers themselves as a professional group (see Chapter 1) Other types ofresults or performance, which are not included in the standards, are notrewarded

The final area of teachers’ proletarisation is the culture introduced in schools

A New Organisational Culture in Schools

At work, the new business management approaches aim to change the existingbureaucratic control into ideological control They attempt to do that bychanging the traditional culture of workers into a corporate culture, as it waspresented in the changes in western societies in Chapter 4 That meansadoption of a technocratic attitude towards work, participation of the experts indecision making and devolution of responsibilities Such corporate / managerialculture is also being introduced in education (Bates, 1987) It is expressed interms of ideologies of teachers’ professional- ism and in terms of theintroduction of teamwork in schools (Hatcher, 1994)

i) Teamwork

Teamwork is now a part of the formal organisation of schools turningconsultancy to supervision (Lawn, 1988) Nowadays both goal consensus anddevolution of decision- making are imposed on schools Delegatedresponsibilities (curriculum responsibilities) are ‘to be part of the formalorganisation of school work’ (Lawn, 1988, p 164) Teamwork is presented as afeature of the new modernised teaching profession and have been discussedearlier in the intensification part of this chapter However, the purpose behindthe introduction of such responsibilities has not been criticised only in terms ofintensification The loss of control over the teaching process, the overload and

the decrease in the quality of education are not the only criticisms launchedagainst the supervisory duties.

Hargreaves (1994) commented on the new culture of collaboration that wasdeveloping He referred to the imposed teamwork as ‘contrived collegiality’distinguishing it from voluntary co-operation In addition, empirical researchprovided support to such an argument There is a long list of issues thatundermine the establishment of genuine collegiality These hindrances are:

‘the nature, amount and pace of externally imposed change;

the requirements that headteachers should have clear vision of how theirschools should develop and towards which staff should work;

the importance of overt leadership by the headteacher in all aspects of the life

of the school;

headteachers’ increased accountability to governors and parents;

the pressures created by preparations for OFSTED inspections; and

requirements for greater monitoring and evaluation in the pursuit of qualityassurance’ (Webb and Vulliamy, 1996, p 455)

As genuine collegiality could not be established in the existing context, because

it focuses on tasks that had to be done due to legal requirements, it wasconcluded that contrived collegiality was “a way of securing effectiveimplementation of externally introduced changes” (Hargreaves, 1991, pp 47;see also Lawn, 1988; Hatcher, 1994; Webb and Vulliamy, 1996)

Apart from the rhetoric of teamwork, another means of ideologicallegitimisation of the corporate reforms was the new model of professionalismput forward

ii) Professional Ideologies

As far as the ideologies of professionalism are concerned, over the years avariety of types were presented such as ‘class struggle professionalism’ and

‘dissident profession- alism’ (Hatcher, 1994, p 55)

Hatcher claimed that since 1986 a new type of incorporated professionalism,which depends on a ‘market-driven, technical-rationalist ideology’ rather thanteachers’ autonomy, is formed (Hatcher, 1994, p 55) This new managerialtype of technicist professionalism follows governmental imperatives ofdevolved budgets and centralised curricula and is in favour of modernisationand technical efficiency Yet such professionals reject ‘the market as anorganising principle of educational provision’ and are committed to liberalvalues, such as equality (Hatcher, 1994, p 59) Other authors and researchevidence supports his claim and the more exemplary follow

Mac an Ghaill (1992) referred to a new culture in teaching He distinguishedbetween the ideologies of old teachers, the ‘old collectivists’ and new ones, the

‘new entrepre- neurs’, who complied to and were in favour of changes.Furthermore, the latter embraced the new management techniques and werereplacing the existing professional senior management team (Mac an Ghaill,

1992, p 56)

Pollard et al concluded that the 1988 Education Reform Act meant a shift fromthe type of teachers’ professionalism based on personal informal judgements onissues concerning curriculum, pedagogy and assessment to a new occupational