Professional Knowledge and Educational Restructuring in Europe

Professional Knowledge and Educational Restructuring in Europe

STUDIES IN PROFESSIONAL LIFE AND WORK Volume 4 Editor Ivor Goodson Education Research Centre, University of Brighton, UK Editorial Board J. M. Pancheco, University of Minho, Portugal David Labaree, Stanford University Sverker Lindblad, University of Gothenburg Leslie Siskin, NYU/Steinhardt Institute for Education & Social Policy Scope The series will commission books in the broad area of professional life and work. This is a burgeoning area of study now in educational research with more and more books coming out on teachers’ lives and work, on nurses’ life and work, and on the whole interface between professional knowledge and professional lives. The focus on life and work has been growing rapidly in the last two decades. There are a number of rationales for this. Firstly, there is a methodological impulse: many new studies are adopting a life history approach. The life history tradition aims to understand the interface between people’s life and work and to explore the historical context and the socio-political circumstances in which people’s professional life and work is located. The growth in life history studies demands a series of books which allow people to explore this methodological focus within the context of professional settings. The second rationale for growth in this area is a huge range of restructuring initiatives taking place throughout the world. There is in fact a world movement to restructure education and health. In most forms this takes the introduction of more targets, tests and tables and increasing accountability and performativity regimes. These initiatives have been introduced at governmental level – in most cases without detailed consultation with the teaching and nursing workforces. As a result there is growing evidence of a clash between people’s professional life and work missions and the restructuring initiatives which aim to transform these missions. One way of exploring this increasingly acute clash of values is through studies of professional life and work. Hence the European Commission, for instance, have begun to commission quite large studies of professional life and work focussing on teachers and nurses. One of these projects – the Professional Knowledge Network project has studied teachers’ and nurses’ life and work in seven countries. There will be a range of books coming out from this project and it is intended to commission the main books on nurses and on teachers for this series. The series will begin with a number of works which aim to define and delineate the field of professional life and work. One of the first books ‘Investigating the Teacher’s Life and Work’ by Ivor Goodson will attempt to bring together the methodological and substantive approaches in one book. This is something of a ‘how to do’ book in that it looks at how such studies can be undertaken as well as what kind of generic findings might be anticipated. Future books in the series might expect to look at either the methodological approach of studying professional life and work or provide substantive findings from research projects which aim to investigate professional life and work particularly in education and health settings.

Professional Knowledge and Educational Restructuring in Europe Edited by

Ivor F. Goodson University of Brighton, UK

Sverker Lindblad University of Gothenburg, Sweden

SENSE PUBLISHERS ROTTERDAM/BOSTON/TAIPEI

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ................................................................................................ vii 1. Researching the Teaching Profession under Restructuring ................................. 1 Sverker Lindblad and Ivor Goodson 2. “We’ve Come Full Circle”: Restructuring Primary Teachers’ Work-lives and Knowledge in England................................................................................ 11 Caroline Norrie and Ivor Goodson 3. Some General Developments in the Restructuring of Education and Health Care Professions in Europe .................................................................... 25 Dennis Beach 4. Teacher’s Working Life under Restructuring .................................................... 41 Peter Sohlberg, Magdalena Czaplicka and Sverker Lindblad 5. European School Teachers’ Work and Life under Restructuring: Professional Experiences, Knowledge and Expertise in Changing Contexts ........................................................................................ 65 Jörg Müller, Caroline Norrie, Fernando Hernández, Juana M. Sancho, Amalia Creus and Verónica Larraín 6. Teachers’ Experiences of Restructuring: Problems and Possibilities of a Generational Approach ................................................................................... 81 Jorge Ávila de Lima, Jarmo Houtsonen and Ari Antikainen 7. Conclusions: Developing a Conceptual Framework for Understanding Professional Knowledge .................................................................................... 99 Ivor Goodson and Sverker Lindblad

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is based on a research project financed by European Union through its sixth framework programme Priority Citizens, Contract No. 506493. In the project the following participated: University of Gothenburg in cooperation with the University College of Borås, Sweden: Sverker Lindblad (Coordinator), Dennis Beach, Rita Foss-Lindblad, Ewa Pilhammar Andersson, Gun-Britt Wärvik. University of Brighton, United Kingdom: Ivor Goodson, Caroline Norrie. National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in cooperation with Athens University Medical School, Greece: Evie Zambeta, Giannis Skalkidis, Dimitra Thoma, Nasia Dakopoulou, Areti Stavropoulou, Constantina Safiliou-Rothschild. University of Joensuu, Finland, Ari Antikainen, Jarmo Houtsonen, Toni Kosonen, Erja Moore. University of Barcelona, Spain: Fernando Hernández, Juana M. Sancho, Jörg Müller, Verónica Larrain, Amalia Creus, Max Muntadas, Xavier Giró. University of the Azores, Portugal, Jorge Ávila de Lima, Helder Pereira. St. Pat’s, DCU: St. Patrick’s College, Dublin City University, Ireland: Ciaran Sugrue, Maeve Dupont. Stockholm University, Sweden: Peter Sohlberg, Magdalena Czaplicka. Dr Ian Perry was our contact at the European Commission in Brussels. Many thanks for their contributions to the Profknow project. Special thanks to Elizabeth F. Briggs for her editing of this report.

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1. RESEARCHING THE TEACHING PROFESSION UNDER RESTRUCTURING Over the last few decades ‘educational restructuring’ has become a world-wide movement. This can be seen in the transformation in patterns of governance, deregulation, marketization, consumerism and the introduction of management principles derived from the world of business. Restructuring issues are controversial and are questioned substantially in educational policy discourses and research. In this book we present studies that deal with the intersection of restructuring as a change in the organisation and governing of educational systems with the work life of the teaching profession. Vital questions are posed: how are teachers experiencing and implementing restructuring? What implications does restructuring have for the teachers’ work, for education and schooling? The chapters in this book are based on studies from the international research project “Profknow” which was funded by the European Commission, see appendix 1. It is a seven-country study of northern, western, and southern European welfare state education systems. The research is a combination of different research approaches involving: policy discourse, analyses of national cases, surveys and life history research and ethnographies in multi-cultural primary schools. The current chapter is informed by the final report from Profknow by Goodson & Lindblad (2008). For a list of reports, see appendix 2. In this chapter we will frame the research problematic – describe how it was dealt with it by international research and also comment on the contributions from the studies presented in this book. RESEARCH POSITIONS ON RESTRUCTURING AND PROFESSIONS

Research reviews of educational restructuring and the teaching profession presents a plethora of research positions, controversies, as well as policy development recommendations. Overviews are presented by Norrie & Goodson (2005) in the Profknow studies, by Gewirtz, Mahony, Hextall & Cribb & (2008), and in handbooks on teacher education, for example, Cochran-Smith & Zeichner (2005). These reviews illustrate educational restructuring and the work of teachers in somewhat different and even sometimes oppositional ways. Here, we will organise these positions within the context of the educational systems and their environmental interaction. Educational Restructuring In the Profknow studies, two positions on educational restructuring were of interest and gave rise to quite different views of what educational restructuring was all I.F. Goodson and S. Lindblad, (eds.), Professional Knowledge and Educational Restructuring in Europe, 1–10. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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about, and what was ahead of us if the restructuring processes proceeded according to its own rationalities. The first position maintains that educational restructuring is a perceived (worldwide) model for organisational and rational planning in times of rapid change and instability. According to this, educational restructuring gives name to some of the changes that shows themselves in such practises as; the operations of educational policies, of schools, as well as in the operation of learning and regulation more generally. Transformation here is a normative force – the idea of “restructuring” is as much about leaving something behind as it is about setting the scene for something new and necessary to happen. Basically, this position is about innovation and also adaption. For example, it is suggested that through deregulation, increased autonomy and marketization, schools will gain greater freedom, be more incentivized to interact and communicate with their environments and therefore be more able to improve creatively and innovatively. According to the second position educational restructuring is seen as not so much a model for transformation, but as a consequence of societal and political transformations within the present day welfare state systems and societies. Not only is educational restructuring specifically a result of a variety of changes in policies, societies, worldeconomies, governments etc., it has had a profound and general impact on society, education and the teaching profession. The second position holds the view that educational restructuring leads to dissolution. Restructuring builds an iron cage around institutions in health care and education – decreasing their ability to manoeuvre and act. A number of indicators, such as league tables, quality indicators and audits are used to regulate and discipline work processes and in doing so decrease autonomy and freedom of movement. But these two different ways of understanding educational restructuring turn out to have more in common than they do at first glance but it is not just their belief in consequences that they have in common. The first position, underlines the possibility of learning from, for example, comparisons of performance or markets mechanisms. The critical, or even dystopian second position maintains that the collapse of institutional norms and virtues is a result of marketization and commercialisation within the realms of education. However, the arguments of both positions are based on theoretical positions that do not capture the more uneven, fractured and multi-dimensional modes of operations found within the different spheres of institutional life, organisation and actions. Given this possibility, we have to put forward a third position, stating that the causal processes of ongoing educational restructuring holds forth an endless number of possible modes of operation within and between education and schooling organisation. Education is, however and as we see it, best considered as an educational system, whose legacy in terms of a societal and public concern is distinct and irreducible to the open-ended numbers of its everyday activities, and the meanings or significances that students, teachers, parents, citizens etc. experience or hold to be its virtues, possibilities or meanings. Thus, the third position, holds possibilities of de-coupling (see Weick, 1976, March & Olsen, 1976), where the label ‘educational restructuring’ at once refers to 2

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the formal structures of the educational system (policies, governance etc...) and to some specific kinds of operations and tools of operation (evaluation, marketing etc...). Interrelations, as well as communication within both spheres could be seem as strong, and at the same time de-coupled from each other in terms of consequences and causalities. The same could be said in relation to norms and experiences of teachers, pupils etc., in single schools, where the nature of de-coupling also permit continuity in the daily work of schools. The Teaching Profession Considering teachers in educational restructuring, it is possible to identify a set of positions capturing their professional status and expertise and a corresponding set of positions is possible to identify. Firstly, we find a professionalization position pointing towards an increasing professional autonomy of the teaching profession in deregulated and independent schools. The professional authority and legitimacy will be improved relative to different stakeholders when getting rid of centralised and bureaucratic governing. In this futuristic position teacher unions are sometimes replaced by professional organisations. The second position is about de-professionalization. From this position it is argued that teachers are increasingly controlled and supervised by managers and stakeholders. Comparisons of school results and testing reduce the recognition of teachers’ professional expertise and authority relative to stakeholders. Stated with a focus on marketization this position implies that the teaching profession is commercialized – money matters more than the education of young people. However, a third position labelled professional reconfiguration makes it possible to identify “new” ways of identifying the teaching profession in relation to changing ways of governing education. The differences between the professional positions are developed as follows. In the first two positions the professionals are conceptualised within notions of social positions and professional closure and expertise in mind. In order to investigate into the dimensions of professionalization and de-professionalization the focus is on the organising of work on one side and on the interaction with clients on the other side. What are then the processes at work here? From a professionalization position it has substantial implications from the professional point of view and on the other hand having an impact on organisational decisions as well as in accept and trust from the side of students, parents or policy-makers. Given the statement that “expertise excludes” (Nowotny et al, 2001) increasing asymmetries in communication are basic in a professionalization position and decreasing asymmetries is basic in a de-professionalization position, of autonomy and authority are indications on outcomes of such processes. The third position twists notions of professionalization/ de-professionalization a bit. The point is that restructuring implies differences in institutional working and institutional relations (see e.g. Sachs, 2001, Fournier, 1999) as well as boundary work (Gieryn, 1983). Given this, it should be expected that the structure of professional characteristics are changing as well. Thus, the classical notions of closure, expertise and asymmetries in professions might be turned 3

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around in other ways. Indications of this are the 1960s notion on “a profession for everyone” (Wilensky, 1964) and current analyses of the expansion of the profession concept during the last decades related to power/knowledge issues. The first two positions are contrary in their workings. The third position points towards new constellations of professional work and life. Here, it is needed to identify such constellations in different ways. Combining Research Positions We have here put forwards two sets of research positions – one concerns education restructuring and the other the teaching profession. These two sets seem to correspond in the following way: Educational Restructuring Innovation Dissolution De-coupling

The Teaching Profession Professionalization De-professionalization Re-configuration

In this chapter we will use this as a map to introduce the different chapters in this book – assuming that the reader can check our comments in relation to what is argued in the text. ORGANISING RESEARCH

Going back to the research reviews (Norrie & Goodson, op cit) little of research was devoted to the fact that restructuring is part and parcel of professional work life, carried out by teachers with their specific orientations and experiences based on previous action and interaction under given preconditions and boundaries. Thus, it is reasonable to focus on the professionals and their ways of organising work in interaction with their clients. With this focus – and its limits – we will learn about professions and restructuring from a specific point of view, that is the professionals and their experiences and strategies when dealing with work life in change. Thus, what we get are versions of restructuring based on positions and perspectives among professional actors. Our studies deal with organisational change in terms of institutional restructuring and focussing on professional perspectives and experiences in different national and local contexts. Given this we have the tasks of capturing discourses on restructuring on one side and professional experiences and ways of work under restructuring on the other. Below we present, in short, the three theoretical and methodological issues of central importance. System Narratives and Professional Work Life Narratives Firstly, organisational restructuring is not conceived of as an example of policy implementation affecting professional work life. Instead it is regarded as part of a cultural change in institutions and society at large which sometimes are translated 4

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into institutional life and professional work (c.f. Foss Lindblad, de Lima and Zambeta, 2007). This means that we are mainly interested in professional life and work, and not trying to capture policy implementation effects as such. However, we need to be deeply informed about policy discourses as contexts for professional work life, for example, in terms of directives, technologies and resource allocation procedures. We are naming such discourses system narratives – texts on restructuring welfare state institutions. By using the concept of system we imply that we are interested with ideas and practices – how to govern and frame professional work life as part of welfare state institutions. The notion of narrative does not imply that such ideas are arbitrary or illusory. It means that we are interested in them as stories on educational restructuring – why it should be done, with what measures, and with what kind of implications? (e.g. Lindblad & Popkewitz, 2004). In other words, to conceive of policy discourses as facts or as having direct implications on institutional work life is to provide them with transforming characteristics they do not have. We are examining professional work life under restructuring from the professionals’ points of view – their experiences and how they organise these experiences. We call these professional work life narratives. The notion of narrative has the same implications as when dealing with systems. They are not assumed to correspond to what institutional work life actually is but as it is conceived of and handled by professionals – their stories, perspectives and strategies to deal with their work. The aim is to capture such professional work life narratives in a strict and rigorous way. Here, we are taking the stance of professional work life as the working of a professional habitus (c.f. Bourdieu, 1986) – incarnated positions and positionings. This means firstly that professional histories are part of the making of the present – that achieved dispositions to act are at work in a current contexts of restructuring work life. Secondly our studies of professional work life narratives are regarded as the meaning making and acting of professional habitus. Given these two considerations, we designed the research as studies of system narratives and work life narratives. Of special interest is then the intersection between such narratives – of system narratives both as stories on professional work life and work life narratives as ways of dealing with welfare state institutions in transition. One idea is that such transitions will make it possible to carry out more elaborated studies of professional habitus since it put demands on positioning in a more explicit way. The same can be said about system narratives that need to question established ideas on systems in order to make organisational change a reasonable enterprise. INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS ON THE STUDIES

We will here present the chapters in the order they are presented in the book and then go back to the basic problematic of education and professional work under restructuring. Research Approaches and Findings in Relation to Discursive Positions The first study ‘We have come Full Circle’ by Caroline Norrie and Ivor Goodson are analysing educational restructuring in England. Periods in education policy 5

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narratives are presented and related to changing ways of constructing the teachers as professionals. Professional work life histories are put forwards and coupled to changes in relations with students and parents and the increased importance to gain trust in these relations. They also portray how generations of teachers are taking stances relative to restructuring issues. The study presents a generative elaboration of the basic problematic – how to relate system narratives and work life narratives to each other using a combination of policy discourses and work life narratives. In relation to the discursive position presented above our conclusion is that the English case is a study supporting notions of restructuring as a dissolution and a deprofessionalization of the teaching profession. System narratives in European welfare state education is captured by Dennis Beach in the chapter on ‘Restructuring in Education and Health Care Professions’. Beach is doing a critical analysis based on national case policy discourse studies. His argument is based on comparisons of discourses on education and health care and focuses on labour socialisation and commercialisation of public services. Noting differences in these cases Beach emphasizes the similarities between them in terms of Neo-liberalism and marketisation and the spread of market practices and principles for governance. Our conclusion is that these analyses result in a support for positions concerning dissolution and de-professionalization in education under restructuring. A different approach to the problematic is presented by Peter Sohlberg, Magdalena Czaplicka and Sverker Lindblad in ‘Teachers Working Life under Restructuring’. They present results from a large survey study of teachers in three countries with a focus on professional expertise and autonomy as well as organisational governing and control. They put forward a set of significant differences between teachers from different national contexts in professional tasks and experiences of restructuring in their professional work life. Sohlberg, Czaplicka and Lindblad note a high degree of professional autonomy on one side and a low degree of participation in organised decision-making on the other side, as well as expressions of organisational inertia. In sum this study supports the discursive positions of organisational de-coupling and professional re-configuration. In ‘European Schoolteachers’ Work and Life under Restructuring’ by Jörg Müller, Caroline Norrie, Fernando Hernández, Juana M. Sancho, Amalia Creus, and Verónica Larraín the approach is an international study using life histories and ethnographies in seven European school contexts. Though the study uses very thorough and intensive methodologies the authors avoid generalisations over national contexts. Common work life narratives in the different contexts present interaction with students and parents as vital for the teaching profession. A loss of social status and prestige was experienced in all European contexts as well. But there were large differences in the current cases when considering the working of restructuring measures in terms of accountability and curriculum reform; where the English experiences to a large extent differ to those in the other contexts; where work-life narratives are regarded as de-coupled from the system narratives. Thus, this study in most cases is supporting a de-coupled position on educational restructuring. Considering the teaching profession demographical and social changes is considered of greatest importance for the teacher’s position. 6

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The studies were designed to examine the impact of generations of teachers’ work and life under restructuring. This is analysed in ‘Cross Generational Comparisons: Problems and Possibilities of a Generational Approach’ by Jorge Ávila de Lima, Jarmo Houtsonen and Ari Antikainen. Different meanings of the generational concept is discussed and related to societal experiences and professional knowledge. They put forward the importance of understanding the specific location of experiences rather than general notions of individuals belonging to the same cohort. Based on life histories of teachers and survey data little impact of generation as a structuring concept was found in work life narratives. In ‘Conclusions’ Ivor Goodson and Sverker Lindblad present the findings and theoretical developments from the Profknow research. An important part is the presentation of periodization over time in national contexts and differences in welfare state development. The concept of ‘refraction’ is developed in an attempt to understand national and local variations. Here we also find a range of different responses to educational restructuring serving as a basis for further studies on professional work under restructuring. These short resumes of the chapters do not present a full picture of the different studies. But in sum they present the variety of approaches used in our research and also the complexity in research outcomes in relation to the discursive positions in terms of division of labour and interaction. REFLECTIONS ON AN INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH ODYSSEY

The studies presented in this book are results of a research consortium from different parts of Europe. The research teams worked in accordance with a detailed research plans, theoretical and methodological outlines, work packages, and deliverables. This was carried out in a prompt way following the consortium agreements. However, our work resulted in somewhat unexpected notions and challenges for international research cooperation. The first finding is that the intellectual organisation of research on educational restructuring is constructed by asymmetries in the import and export of references (as developed by e.g. Leydesdorf, 2007). There are publications by intellectual “icons” such as Michel Foucault (1977), Jürgen Habermas (1989) or Pierre Bourdieu (1988), or presentations of theoretical positions in publications by for example, Talcott Parsons (1939), John W. Meyer (1992) or Anthony Giddens (1988). Arguments taken from such publications are often imported in the literatures on educational restructuring and the teaching professions. However, there is not a flow in the other direction where arguments from research on educational restructuring and the teaching profession are imported by e.g. Habermas or Bourdieu. Perhaps, this asymmetry could be expected, but it seems to imply that progress in research and development of communities of expertise is hindered by this lack of reciprocal communication. A second notion concerns international research cooperation. When analysing the import and export of arguments and references in research reviews as well as national case studies, we found asymmetries in communication of the research problematic and in referencing. Where Anglo-Saxon research had a privileged position in the 7

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politics of referencing and in the framing of the research problematics, for example in terms of Neo-liberalism, Thatcherism or Blairism and the “third way” as captured in England. This relationship in European education research corresponds to more general statements concerning “Southern Theory” in the social sciences (Connell, 2007) where research outside the Northern hemisphere shows itself to be marginalised and not attended to in research cooperation. The point is not to emphasize geopolitical or linguistic equity in referencing or problem formulation – instead, to improve opportunities to integrate other insights and experiences from outsider discourses. An implication of this finding in Profknow research was somewhat of a re-thinking of the research problematic on education restructuring and the teaching profession and an increased sensitivity for contextual variations concerning the research object as presented in the different chapters in this book. A challenge is of a conceptual nature where notions of educational restructuring are reconsidered. We started with an understanding of restructuring as a kind of policy implementation, where teaching and schooling were considered as objects for policy measures from the outside. After lengthy discussions this understanding was at least partly revised into a way of considering restructuring in education as a translation of policy measures into schooling and teaching (see here e.g. Latour & Wolgar, 1986; Czarniawska & Sevon, 2005; and the work by Foss Lindblad, Zambeta, & de Lima, 2007). This was a theoretically important move in two ways – it conceptualised teachers as agents rather than victims in the restructuring processes and it pointed in the direction of de-coupling, of restructuring measures in schools – which to a large extent fit better with our results. Such a way of understanding decoupling in educational restructuring refers to the conceptual work on generations that de Lima, Houtsonen & Antikainen carried out and presented in their chapter. Though restructuring appears as a powerful measure in policy discourses and system narratives their translation into teachers’ work and life is diversified if not marginalised. Thus, given these experiences of restructuring it is reasonably not the most significant fact in teachers’ work and life compared to for example, demographic changes shown in interactions with students and parents, as pointed out by Mueller et al in their chapter. Another vital challenge was to deal with the professional concept in a fruitful way. We started with a simple notion of professions as occupations, for example, without any specific characteristics in terms expertise and organisation. However, when going through research in the field it was obvious that the concept of profession was in change, due to movements in educational practices as well as in theoretical terms and trying to capture why professionalization in teaching was put on the agenda by policymakers and education intellectuals. This made it necessary to reconceptualise teaching as a profession – putting it closer to demands on professional legitimacy and authority as well as disciplinism (Foss Lindblad & Lindblad, 2009). Such a twist was quite reasonable when considering the specific experiences of teachers in schools as organisations, as pointed out by Sohlberg et al in their chapter – presenting individual autonomy and non-participation in decision-making. In broad terms such a professional reconfiguration can be conceptually translated into changes in contemporary societies and organisational resources related to autonomous though dominated 8

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positions (Wright, 1997). So far, these notions on reconfiguration seems to be of vital concern when researching the teaching profession from a societal point of view. To conclude: this odyssey of research cooperation on educational restructuring resulted in a number of research outcomes, as presented in a number of publications from the Profknow consortium and the chapters in this book. However, an important side effect concerns interactions in research – in the framing and re-framing of the research problematic and the recognition of differences of the European contexts – that could be labelled a reflexive Europeanization of the European Educational Research Area. This process improved the quality of research in terms of a more differentiated understanding of education restructuring and the teaching profession in Europe. REFERENCES Bourdieu, P. (1988). The globalisation myth and the European welfare state. In P. Bourdieu & R. Nice (Eds.), Acts of resistance: Against the new myths of our time. New York: Then New Press. Cochran-Smith, M., & Zeichner, K. (Eds.). (2005). Studying teacher education: A panel report of the AERA panel on research and teacher education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Connell, R. (2007). Southern theory: The global dynamics of knowledge in the social sciences. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Czarniawska, B., & Sevón, G. (1996). Translating organizational change. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. Foss Lindblad, R., & Lindblad, S. (2009). The politics of professionalizing talk on teaching. In M. Simons, M. Olssen, & M. Peters (Eds.), Re-reading education policies: Studying the policy agenda of the 21st century. Rotterdam: Sense Publisher. Foss Lindblad, R., Zambeta, E., & de Lima, J. (2007, September). Professional knowledge on tour in the knowledge society. A contribution to the symposium Professional Work and Life under Restructuring. Comparative Studies of Teachers and Nurses in Different European Political Contexts at the EERA annual meeting in Ghent. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the penitentiary. London: Tavistock. Fournier, V. (1999). The appeal to ‘professionalism’ as a disciplinary mechanism. Social Review, 47(2), 280–307. Gewirtz, S., Mahony, P., Hextall, I., & Cribb, A. (Eds.). (2008). Changing teacher professionalism: International trends, challenges and ways forward. London: Routledge. Giddens, A. (1988). The third way: The renewal of social democracy. Oxford: Polity Press. Gieryn, T. F. (1983). Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science: Strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists. American Sociological Review, 48(6), 781–795. Goodson, I., & Lindblad, S. (Eds.). (2008). Cross-professional studies on nursing and teaching in Europe. Report No 6 from the Profknow project. http://www.ips.gu.se/profknow. Habermas, J. (1989). The theory of communicative action, volume 2. Lifeworld and system: A critique of functionalist reason. Cambridge, Oxford: Polity Press. Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1986). Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Leydesdorff, L. (2007). Scientific communication and cognitive codification: Social systems theory and the sociology of scientific knowledge. European Journal of Social Theory, 10(3), 375–388. Lindblad, S., & Popkewitz, T. S. (Eds.). (2004). Educational restructuring: International perspectives on travelling policies. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publications. March, J., & Olsen, J. P. (1976). Ambiguity and choice in organizations. Bergen: Universitetsforlaget. Meyer, J. W., Ramirez, F. O., & Soysal, Y. N. (1992). World expansion of mass education, 1870–1980. Sociology of Education, 65(2), 128–149. 9

LINDBLAD AND GOODSON Nowotny, H., Scott, P., & Gibbons, M. (2001). Re-thinking science: Knowledge and the public in an age of uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press. Norrie, C., & Goodson, I. (2005). A literature review of welfare state restructuring in education and health care in European contexts. Report 1 from the Profknow project. http://www.ips.gu.se/profknow. Parsons, T. (1939, May). The professions and social structure. Social Forces. Sachs, J. (2001). Teacher professional identity: Competing discourses, competing outcomes. Journal of Education Policy, 16(2), 149–161. Warren Little, J. (1993). Teachers’ professional development in a climate of educational reform. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 15(1), 29–51. Weick, K. (1976). Educational organisations as loosely coupled systems. Administrative Science Quarterly, 21(11), 1–19. Wilensky, H. (1964, September). The professionalization of everyone. American Journal of Sociology, 70(2), 137–158. Wright, E. O. (1997). Class counts: comparative studies in class analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ivor Goodson University of Brighton Sverker Lindblad University of Gothenburg APPENDIX 1: PROFKNOW REPORTS: These reports are published at the Profknow website: http://www.ips.gu.se/profknow. Antonio, A., Astin, H., & Cress, C. (2000). Norrie, C., & Goodson, I. F. (2005). A literature review of welfare state restructuring in education and health care in European contexts. Report No 1. Beach, D. (Ed.). (2005). Welfare state restructuring in education and health care: Implications for the teaching and nursing professions and their professional knowledge. Report No 2. Sohlberg, P., Czaplicka, M., Lindblad, S., Houtsonen, J., Müller, J., Morgan, M., et al. (2007). Professional expertise under restructuring: Comparative studies of education and health care. Report No 3. Müller, J., Hernández, F., Sancho, J., Creus, A., Muntadas, M., Larrain, V., et al. (2007). European schoolteachers work and life under restructuring: Professional experiences, knowledge and expertise in changing context. Report No 4. Kosonen, T., & Jarmo Houtsonen, J. (2007). University of Joensuu: European nurses’ life and work under restructuring: Professional experiences, knowledge and expertise in changing contexts. Report No 5. Goodson, I. F., & Lindblad, S. (Eds.). (2008). Cross-professional studies on nursing and teaching in Europe. Report No 6 from the Profknow project.

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2. “WE’VE COME FULL CIRCLE” Restructuring Primary Teachers’ Work-lives and Knowledge in England

INTRODUCTION

This chapter uses a narrative approach to explore educational restructuring and the work-lives and professional knowledge of primary teachers in England. It juxtaposes policy narratives of reform against teachers’ work-life narratives of change as a way of exploring the interaction between restructuring and the professional lives and knowledge of primary teachers. The data for this chapter is taken from an EU Commission-funded, 6th Framework project entitled Professional Knowledge in Education and Health: Restructuring work and life between the state and citizens in Europe (Profknow). This project ran from 2004 to 2007 and involved European partner universities in England, Ireland, Finland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Greece. The aim of the Profknow project was to compare and analyse restructuring of welfare provision and relations with public sector workers situated between the state and the citizens across Europe. BACKGROUND

The Profknow literature review (Norrie and Goodson, 2005) identified key narratives around relations between educational restructuring, teachers and their professional knowledge. A central narrative highlights the relationships between global, travelling, Neo-liberal education policies such as those propagated by the World Bank and the IMF and workplace de-skilling, performativity and the de-legitimisation of professional knowledge (Harvey, 2005). Narratives around the concept of the ‘knowledge society’ (Drucker, 1993) represent an alternative global discourse as well as being a key EU goal (CEC, 2000a). From this perspective, countries are seen as engaged in a knowledge arms race with professionals including teachers maintaining and extending their power and expertise. Beck (1999) puts forward another worldview where, in an era of environmental uncertainty, life is controlled by statistics. There is no knowledge certainty and counter-culture epistemologies are challenging professional groups. Gibbons (1994) meanwhile describes how knowledge production and its validation is increasingly moving from academia into society with implications for the power of professionals. These varied perspectives on change are of interest when exploring the restructuring of primary teachers and their professional knowledge in the English context. I.F. Goodson and S. Lindblad, (eds.), Professional Knowledge and Educational Restructuring in Europe, 11–24. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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grounds of their status and expert knowledge. Under Thatcherism the battle between Old Left socialist discourses and New Right ideologies led to the emergence of contested professionals with teachers’ practice, expertise, authority and commitment becoming publicly disputed in the media. Under New Labour the teaching profession has become increasingly re-framed. Teachers’ identities are now characterised by team-working, lifelong learning and collaboration with pupils and parents. Alongside this many teachers work with increasing flexibility due to changes in contracts and less guaranteed tenure. RESEARCH APPROACH

The Profknow project used a multi-method research approach consisting of national and cross-national literature reviews, reports on restructuring of professional education, statistical analysis or surveys and inter-generational, life-history interviews and ethnographies carried out in case-study schools. Inter-generational analysis was used as a strategy for exploring how reforms interact with professionals over time. Mannheim (1952) has written about the formation of generations as cohorts with a shared consciousness located within a historical time period. Exploration of the personas, experiences and relationships between teachers belonging to different generations highlights the interaction between reforms and professionals over time. The use of a life-history approach is a distinctive lens for exploring restructuring and welfare reform. The life-history approach locates teachers within their temporal context, so underlining how their lives and knowledge have changed over the generations (Goodson, 1992:6). Narrative analysis was used to problematise how competing discourses resonate or are refracted at a multiplicity of different levels in each EU country according to historical, cultural, social-economic or political factors. Gender was also viewed as an analytical concept given the dominance of women in primary education and the important changes in women’s working lives over three generations. The analysis of policy discourses was based on a wide selection of academic literature, governmental and non-governmental websites, statistics, documents and news media. The analysis of work-life narratives was based on life-history interviews and mini-ethnographic observations carried out in one case-study school in each of the Profknow consortium countries. Two life-history interviews and observations (of two to three days) were carried out with three teachers belonging to different generations in each school. First interviews were unstructured and second interviews explored emerging themes. Additional interviews and a focus group were also conducted in other schools. This chapter focuses on the views of fifteen English primary teachers working in three schools (Norrie and Goodson, 2007). The schools and teachers involved in this research were not viewed as ‘representative’ of the national picture. Rather, given the small sample size, data was viewed as highly specific, localised and personal. This chapter will compare policy narratives and work-life narratives involved in addressing the following four questions in the English context. 13

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1) 2) 3) 4)

What is restructuring? How is restructuring working? What professional strategies are open to teachers? How is reconfiguration of the primary teaching profession occurring? Generational differences between the different cohorts of teachers will be explored throughout this chapter as well as briefly at the end. WHAT IS RESTRUCTURING?

This section starts with a brief periodisation of policy narratives of reform in primary education in England. This re-capping of change outlines how teachers’ individual and professional capacity for action is affected by their location within a historical period. 1960–75 – Progressivism and Expansion of Education The era of the 1960s and 1970s is remembered as a time of progressive narratives within primary education as was laid out in the Plowden Report (Central Advisory Council for Education, 1967). Primary teachers were part of a profession-led, hierarchical, bureaucratic, planned welfare system. Primary teachers were traditional professionals, their work self-directed and their knowledge accepted as expert in a more classdefined society. Despite reservations about the degree of golden ageism in this conception (Whitty, 2005) professionals can be seen as commanding greater respect at this time. Teachers were encouraged to innovate in schools and there was a decline in the surveillance role of Her Majesties Inspectorate (HMI). Professional training for primary teachers was changing during this period as B Eds started being provided in universities and the practical training colleges were gradually amalgamated into the more academic and subject-based university system. 1979–97 – Welfare Reform – Thatcherism and the Conservative Years The era of Thatcherism was a period of conflicting ideological discourses between Old Labour and the New Right where the positionality of professionals became contested. Under Thatcherism professions were viewed sceptically as wasteful, self-serving monopolistic bodies which acted against the citizens. Teachers were particularly targeted in this ideological battle and vilified in the media for their allegedly ‘trendy lefty’ beliefs and supposedly progressive pedagogies which were seen as failing children. Despite protracted industrial action from teachers over two years, the 1988 Education Act was passed leading to the National Curriculum, testing, league tables and intensified inspection by the newly formed Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted). During this period initial teacher training was reformed to become more competency and delivery focused. 1997–2005 – New Labour – the Third Way? New Labour came to power in 1997 under the slogan “education, education, education”. Teachers welcomed the new rhetoric of ‘partnership and performance’. 14

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Labour however quickly introduced a plethora of legislation specifically aimed at remodelling primary teaching. The National Numeracy (1998) and Literacy (1999) Strategies were introduced prescriptively dictating classroom pedagogy. Labour however were disappointed with the Strategies’ ability to raise standards and moved to a new approach of personalised provision of public services (Leadbeater, 2004). This new narrative focuses on ‘clients’ exercising choice and being co-producers, designers and deliverers of their own personalised services with a greater role for the private sector. From 2003, a new Primary National Strategy, Excellence and Enjoyment introduced a more flexible creative curriculum and individualised learning in primary education (DfES, 2003). New Labour has aimed to make public sector workers more accountable and for teachers this has meant increased managerialism with the setting up of performance management (DfEE, 1988) and performance related pay (PRP) (DfEE, 2000). Workforce Remodelling introduced extra time for planning, preparation and assessment (PPA), as well as hugely expanding numbers of teaching assistants (TAs) and other support staff. Another New Labour narrative has focused on the importance of ITC in the classroom with the introduction of interactive white boards and laptops for teachers. This periodisation has highlighted policy narratives of restructuring. The following section compares these with teachers’ work-life narratives. This illustrates how policy narratives cannot be entirely successful in bringing about workforce reconfiguration unless they are accepted and adopted rather than being contested or resisted by teachers. Analysis of teachers’ work-life narratives of restructuring highlighted a key discourse was how primary education had come ‘full circle’ over the generations. The teachers described how under Thatcher the introduction of the National Curriculum, testing, Ofsted and league tables affected the autonomy of primary teachers. Teachers struggled with an enforced new curriculum which now included science. Under New Labour, the introduction of the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies with their highly prescriptive pedagogy again changed teachers’ practice. This time, however the teachers were less critical of the Strategies in retrospect and they noted they were well-conceived and had raised standards. As T1 noted, T1: Once we’d shaken off the kind of straight-jacket syndrome and got down to actually teaching it, it was very helpful, provided that you still remembered that you were a professional and you needed to remember the children’s needs. (T1, experienced teacher) The teachers highlighted how the most recent changes (DfES, 2003) brought teaching ‘full circle’ with the focus on creativity pedagogies. It was noted however the pressures of SATs [Standard Assessment tasks] tests and Ofsted meant teachers’ practice is still vastly more prescribed than it used to be in previous generations. Troman et al. (2007) describe this new situation in schools as a culture of performativity combined with creativity. One experienced teacher discussed how the different generations of teachers coped with the changes. T8: ... initially, it was the older teachers who were finding it really difficult, and really resistant to a lot of it […] now it’s swung back a bit and it’s 15

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some of the ones who are coming out of colleges which are still teaching rigid planning and rigid Strategy-based and [I am] saying, ‘Free up’. (T8, experienced teacher) The existence of this very strong collective ‘full circle’ narrative suggests there is consensus over changes and cohesiveness of the profession. (In the words of experienced T12, “If you stand still long enough you’re actually an innovator!”) This can be seen as a symbolic narrative motif or mantra of passive resistance as it represents a short cut for teachers to bolster their individual and collective selfesteem and note to each other and outsiders that despite reforms teachers knew best all along and were correct in their own professional knowledge. HOW IS RESTRUCTURING WORKING?

This section will compare policy narratives of restructuring with work-life narratives. The following policy narratives – choice, marketisation and governance-by-results will be explored. These are key narrative themes related to teachers’ move from traditional to contested to re-framed professionals. The policy narrative of ‘choice’ is central to how restructuring is working. Under the Conservatives, the raising of standards through competition and choice was justified ideologically. Under New Labour ideological shibboleths have been abandoned and choice is justified as a way of defending public services by maintaining their popularity in a consumerist society (Cabinet Office, 2007). Parents now have the right to express three preferences in which primary school their child will attend, leading to frenetic competition in some areas (Taylor et al., 2002). When accused of creating greater social inequalities, Labour argue they are offering the less privileged sections of society greater opportunity to access better schools (Cabinet Office, 2007). New Labour defend their policies by stating public sector capture by the middle classes means that inequalities were rife in the past. An over-arching discourse during the Conservatives years was the marketisation and privatisation of services on ideological grounds. Under New Labour, the normalisation of marketisation discourses has continued. Private providers have been encouraged into many areas of education, especially controversial is school building funded by Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes (Edwards and Shaoul, 2002). As Tony Blair recently stated when announcing that primary schools would soon be incorporated into the business-sponsored Academy schools scheme, “business and education will move even closer together and rightly so.” (Cabinet Office, 2007) Policy Narratives around governance changes in education are easily identifiable over the three generations of teachers. Increasingly power has been devolved from Local Education Authorities (LEAs) to individual primary schools – empowering parentocracy at the expense of local democracy. At the same time, paradoxically, centralised regulation and control has also increased through Ofsted, SATs tests, PRP, national targets and league tables. New Labour support the devolution process with the justification discourse that ‘increased user-involvement is democratising’ (Cabinet Office, 2007). New Labour argue in the past local councils were never democratic as they privileged the voices of middle-class, male counsellors who had the time to serve on them. 16

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Analysis of policy narratives established restructuring as working through various key mechanisms and discourses, positioning teachers as moving from traditional to contested to re-framed professionals. Analysis of teachers’ work-life narratives however identified alternative discourses about how restructuring is working. Interestingly many of the issues teachers discussed were related to societal changes rather than government policies. Key discourses were identified around ‘changed relationships’ with children and parents, commercialisation and testing regimes in schools. A major work-life narrative motif of restructuring the primary teachers continually came back to was the alterations in relations with children over the years. As T8 noted, T8: Children are not as nice. [...] Children are more difficult, […] because they don’t have any kind of self-discipline, on the whole. There’s a lack of boundaries, a lack of parenting [...] Nowadays children are kept in, they’re not given freedom, they are like pressure-cooked, […] and yet, they don’t know rules and boundaries, so they don’t learn self-discipline. (T8, experienced teacher) The breakdown of class barriers in society, the rise of consumerism and individualism (Beck, 1999, Giddens, 1991) and the decrease of deference in society (Sennett, 2003) are experienced by the teachers in the frontline. In addition to this, teachers mentioned family breakdown and the UK long working hours culture as issues. Over the generations changes in women’s working patterns without commensurate modifications in men’s behaviour have also led to a household work-deficit (National Statistics, 2006) with implications for children. Two recent studies address these issues. In the first, primary school pupil stress is blamed on testing regimes combined with a highly unequal society with low social capital (Alexander and Hargreaves, 2007). In the second, a Unicef publication placed England 20th in a list of childhood well-being in OECD countries (Unicef, 2007). The changed relationship between teachers and parents over the three generations was also identified as a work-life narrative of restructuring. T8 sums up below changes in parents. T8: Most parents are really wanting help which is different. They’re also stroppy with you, which they never used to be […] In the past parents weren’t involved with school, they just handed their children over and that was it. And they didn’t really know very much about what went on […] People question more…people are less submissive, […] the class structure is not as strong as it was […] It’s society generally, it’s not just with teachers. It’s the classic thing, people know all their rights without their responsibilities, it’s that kind of phrase, isn’t it? (T8, experienced teacher) In the past the policy narrative around citizens’ ‘rights and responsibilities’ was a right wing mantra, but it also now been taken over by New Labour. It encompasses teachers’ liminal positionality between the state and the citizen. Teachers are trapped in the gap between government rhetoric and political narratives about choices and 17

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entitlements and the reality of the classroom. Giddens (2007) describes the public’s change in attitude to professionals as a move from passive trust in the past to a situation today of active trust. Professionals now have to work with ‘clients’ and within teams of colleagues and gain trust in a collaborative exchange rather than it being simply being assumed. Work-life narratives also highlighted teachers’ frustration and ideological unease over testing regimes. T3 and T2 noted how they disagreed with testing for seven-year old children but, for example, tried to make the experience fun and non-pressurised while still falling in with regulations such as covering material on the classroom walls that could help pupils. Other teachers noted the additional work and emotional labour involved in SATs. T4: The SATs pressure gets to you, […] It’s internal, it’s self-made pressure. It’s not pressure put on by school or management or anything like that, it’s, you know, it’s me. T8 summed up, T8: There’s been a huge hammer to crack a nut, and that hammer has mostly been through the channels of, you could put it under the umbrella of Ofsted, basically, and it’s been vastly expensive. […] And has it achieved what it wanted to? Well, in a way, but at what cost? [...] I think a lot of it has been, basically, a political football that’s been kicked around and we’re the ones that have felt the kicks [chuckles] if you know what I mean. We’ve got the bruises to show for it. And some people more bruised than others. (T8, experienced teacher) WHAT PROFESSIONAL STRATEGIES ARE OPEN TO TEACHERS?

Policy narratives over the generations can be viewed as janus-faced in relation to the teaching professions’ strategies under restructuring. Under Thatcherism teachers were publicly berated. New Labour has pursued an alternative strategy of courting teachers while at the same time imposing directive change. The work-life narratives highlighted teachers’ strategies of resistance or compliance as individuals and as a profession in the face of reform. Teachers offered few concrete examples of resistance to reforms; instead they appeared resigned to change being part of their professional lot. This included older generation members who might have been expected to be more resistant, given their more questioning professional education and memories of former critical, silenced, socialist discourses. Instead it appears that across the generations the ‘resigned compliance’ tag was fitting. In the sample of teachers interviewed, the majority belonged to a union, but no militant views or passionate commitments were expressed. This moderate ‘new unionism’ is part of the teaching professional identity today (Redman and Snape, 2006). The older generation of teachers mentioned the failure of the teachers’ strikes in the 1980s. T4 noted of the period, ‘We lost a lot of public sympathy and I don’t think that we’ve ever regained that in the public’s eyes.’ This attitude reflects the increasingly individualised, affluent society where capturing an overarching metanarrative with which to inspire would-be union activists would be challenging. 18

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A main strategy of the teaching profession is to maintain public and media support. It would appear this strategy is successful as a recent survey found 83 percent of the public trusted teachers. Politicians in comparison only scored seven percent (Lifestyle Extra, 2007). This rosy picture was not supported by all the teachers interviewed (or by teacher shortages in the last decade). Older generation teachers expressed the view that the profession was losing status. Experienced T4 for example noted, T4: I don’t think teachers are held socially, if you like, and I use the term fairly loosely, I don’t think they’re held in the esteem that they once were. Sennett (1998) has argued that in today’s ‘interview society’ (Atkinson and Silverman, 1997) (where no corner of society is left un-intruded into) respect based on occupational mystique is increasingly impossible to maintain. HOW IS RECONFIFURATION OF THE PRIMARY TEACHING PROFESSION OCCURRING?

This section will explore primary teachers’ professional reconfiguration and the gradual shift from traditional to re-framed professionals over the three generations. Sociological conceptualisations of professions have a long history of investigation (Freidson, 1983, Friedson, 2001, Larson, 1977, Lortie, 1975, Parsons, 1968). Traditional professionals are frequently characterised by a long training, an exclusive body of knowledge, self-regulation via a professional body and an ethical code. Associated with traditional professionals are paternalistic attitudes, autonomy, power and public deference. In contrast re-framed professionals are characterised by lifelong learning and continuous professional development (CPD), knowledge-sharing, research-based practice, team-working, tighter regulation and reflective practice. The following section will compare policy discourses of restructuring with worklife narratives focusing on categories identified by the Profknow consortium of teacher expertise, accountability and positionality. Expertise – Policy narratives highlight how teachers’ professional knowledge has been restructured in terms of education, practice and lifelong learning. Traditional teachers relied on an exclusive body of knowledge. Policy discourses highlight reframed teachers as working in an environment where there is greater public access to their professional knowledge via the internet. The reliability of professional knowledge is also now more debatable leading to a greater emphasis on evidencebased practice and teacher-as-researcher discourses (Stenhouse, 1975). Re-framed teachers’ expertise is therefore characterised by continuous up-grading of professional knowledge and lifelong learning. Work-life narratives demonstrate changes in teachers’ professional knowledge from the point of view of practitioners belonging to different generations. The reform of initial teacher training was discussed, for example, experienced T8 reflected, T8: … we studied Piaget […] we did a lot on psychological and social influences on children..[…] ..nowadays I think the students don’t get that side, they get a lot of how to plan, a lot of curriculum-based planning sheets, they’re 19

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very good at the paperwork, and yet actually they don’t know a lot about child development, which I think is really sad. (T8, experienced teacher) Beck and Young (2005) criticise this focus on competencies as undermining the training of critically-thinking professionals. The work-life narratives explored how teachers’ professional knowledge is viewed as a collaborative process today. Rather than being the ‘sage on the stage’, teachers have become the ‘guide on the side’. As T4 noted, T4: The biggest lesson for me when dealing with children is knowing that I’m only human and that sometimes I get it wrong. (I: Oh, OK)… you know, I think there was a point when a lot of teachers sort of almost put themselves on a pedestal of being God in the classroom… (T4, experienced teacher) The work-life narratives did also however present strong discourses of cynicism and fatigue about the need to constantly update or change professional knowledge and practice as was discussed earlier in this chapter. The teachers in this sample presented differing views on lifelong learning. T5 expressed genuine enthusiasm about a recent course on learning theories. N1 however, questioned the training provided by private and public outside consultancies as simply peddling unproven theories for profit. It has been argued that lifelong learning is a gender issue with femaledominated professions being compelled to undertake more CPD (often in their own time) than male equivalent jobs, without receiving monetary compensation (Leathwood and Francis, 2006). Accountability – Policy narrative analysis highlights how discourses around teachers’ accountability have changed over three generations with re-framed teachers having been ‘remodelled’ to be more professional, accountable, regulated, workers. The introduction of performance management (DfEE, 2000) and PRP through Threshold Assessment and Advanced Skills teachers (ASTs) means career progression is now linked to teachers’ performance which is measured against targets and test results. This is a change from the situation in the past, where teachers moved up the pay scale incrementally depending on years of service (Forrester, 2005, Farrell and Morris, 2004, Troman et al., 2007). This policy is promoted in government publications as recognition of teachers as knowledge workers who view career progression as personally important (Cabinet Office, 2007). Teacher unions however argue PRP threatens teachers’ professional solidarity. The creation of the General Teaching Council (legislated for in 1997) and the introduction of teacher registration was accompanied by policy narratives around the necessity of maintaining of public confidence in the teaching profession. At the same time, teachers are included in the stipulation that all adults working with children have to undergo police checks, reflecting parents’ suspicion of professionals. The emphasis placed on reflectivity (Schon, 1983) can be linked to the need for teachers to be personally accountable and self-monitoring in a less hierarchical society where religion is no longer the controlling and self-regulating mechanism it was a generation ago. The work-life narratives explored these changing conceptualisations of teacher accountability. While some cynicism was expressed, there was also a feeling that 20

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standards of teaching had been raised. T5’s perception concurred with policy narratives of professional reconfiguration. T5: We feel very accountable, I think, both to parents and to inspectors and to governors and the head, […] but also really… trying to understand what good learning is, and how to deliver knowledge and skills to children, so I think in that respect we’re very much more professional. Professional in terms of recordkeeping as well, reporting back to parents. […] I think the expectations on teachers are, are of greater expertise, greater professionalism. (T5, mid-career teacher) The work-life narratives also underlined how teachers’ day to day work is controlled through increased regulation via ICT and paperwork. The frustration this created was underlined by T8, T8: I used to say, if it moved in school you had to write a policy for it. Well, now we’ve done that, we’ve been there, we’ve written policies for everything… Now, people are writing action plans for everything…now you’ve got an action plan about how you’re going to improve it! (T8, experienced teacher) The need to document work was discussed by the sample teachers as good-practice, aiding accountability at the same time as working to increase surveillance and adding unnecessarily to an already heavy workload. Positionality – Analysis of policy narratives underlined how increased team working is a key part of the re-framed professional discourse in England. Team working and inter-professional collaboration with outside agencies is an integral discourse associated with the reframed teaching profession. The incorporation of Special Educational Needs (SEN) children into mainstream education, the new roles created in self-managing schools and the increase in Extended Schools mean there is greater specialisation of jobs in the Children’s workforce. In an effort to co-ordinate this burgeoning Children’s Workforce, Labour has promoted the Every Child Matters (ECM) agenda (Department of Education and Skills, 2004) as a way of stimulating inter-professional working (Cabinet Office, 2007). Under this agenda new core competencies for the Children’s Workforce have been introduced with the expectation that teachers, children’s nurses and social workers might in the future have transferable qualifications. Career structures for teachers themselves have also become more differentiated. A major part of teachers’ changed positionality is the increased working with teaching assistants (TAs). Between 1997 and 2005 the number of teaching assistants almost trebled – from 35,500 to just under 100,000. During this time special needs support staff doubled to 48,000. By comparison, the number of full time equivalent (FTE) ‘regular’ teachers in nursery and primary actually went down by 200, to 196,000 (Whitty, 2005). Teaching assistants can now train to be advanced teaching assistants (ATAs) who can teach whole-class groups. This is celebrated in New Labour discourses as evidence of government support for teachers (Cabinet Office, 2007). The teachers’ work-life narratives featured many references to the introduction of TAs and Learning Support Assistants (LSAs). Within the schools visited, all the 21

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Heads, made a point of emphasising how well these groups worked together. Privately teachers however expressed reservations as well as positive aspects of the increase in TAs and LSAs. The National Union of Teachers (NUT) - has warned that TAs/LSAs only result in larger classes and unqualified people substituting for properly trained teachers especially of SEN pupils. The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) review of literature on the impact of teaching assistants in schools found TAs do not necessarily lead to any reduction in teacher workload or allow extra time for them to concentrate on planning or preparation. Instead, they give teachers additional responsibilities, as they now need to manage and plan the TA’s work (Lee, 2002). GENERATIONAL COMPARISONS

The Profknow project aimed to compare the lives and professional knowledge of teachers belonging to different generations as a way of exploring reform. The data generated found little evidence of tensions or strong inter-generational professional differences in comparison to previous research (Horne, 2001, Troman, 1996) although inter-generational nuances have been highlighted throughout this chapter. ICT knowledge was however one area where a large generational divide was identified. Younger generation T9, for example voiced satisfaction at having ICT skills that were valued by older colleagues, while generally feeling positioned as a novice. The different generations actually voiced many of the same narratives. This could be seen as evidence of the cohesion of the profession and how far the mature professionals have moved and are now re-framed professionals. Research finds the life motif of ‘working to live, not living to work’ is a key generation X characteristic (Huber and Skidmore, 2003). Work-life narrative analysis in this study however found this narrative was repeated fervently across the generations as a symbolic mantra pointing to the difficulty teachers have in maintaining a good work-life balance. The pervasiveness of this discourse can be viewed as a psychological attempt by teachers to distance themselves from the all encompassing intrusivity of their work in an era of individualisation where intense job commitment is viewed as naïve, yet the demands of the job are increasingly onerous. CONCLUSION

This article has juxtaposed policy narratives of restructuring with work-life narratives, demonstrating how the primary education system and teachers within it in England have changed over three generations. The exploration of policy narratives demonstrated how teachers have moved towards being re-framed professionals in comparison to earlier generations of traditional professionals. Examination of the work-life narratives demonstrates how primary teachers have negotiated reform in their own ways – opposing, subverting, contesting, negotiating or supporting reforms as they have been introduced. This chapter has also however highlighted how many of the issues primary teachers face are not only related to government policies but linked to wider societal shifts associated with an altered socio-economic landscape and changing gender relations as well as greater individualisation and commercialisation. 22

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REFERENCES Alexander, R., & Hargreaves, L. (2007). Community soundings. The primary review regional witness sessions. In Report, the primary review, children, their world, their education. Cambridge: University of Cambridge. Retrieved October 12, 2007, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/12_10_ 2007primary.pdf Atkinson, R., & Silverman, D. (1997). Kundera’s immortality: The interview society and the invention of the self. Qualitative Inquiry, 3, 304–325. Babb, P., Butcher, H., Church, J., & Zealey, L. (2006). Social Trends. No 36, Office for National Statistic. Retrieved May 22, 2007, from http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_social/ Social_Trends36/ Social_Trends_36.pdf Beck, J., & Young, M. F. D. (2005). The assault on the professions and the restructuring of academic and professional identities: A Bernsteinian analysis. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 26, 183–197. Beck, U. (1999). Risk society: Towards a new modernity (Theory, Culture & Society). London: Sage. Cabinet Office. (2007). Building on progress: Public services. HM government policy review. Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, Cabinet Office, Admiralty Arch, The Mall, London, SW1A 2WH. Retrieved April 16, 2007, from http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/policy_review/documents/building_on_progress.pdf CEC. (2000a). Presidency conclusions: Lisbon European Council, 23 and 24 March 2000. In COMMUNITIES, C. O. T. E. (Ed.). Retrieved August 6, 2007, from http://ue.eu.int/ueDocs/cms_Data/ docs/pressData/en/ec/00100-r1.en0.htm Central Advisory Council for Education. (1967). Children in their primary schools. London: HMSO. DfEE. (1998). Teachers: Meeting the challenge of change. London: The Stationary Office. DfEE. (2000). Performance management in schools. Performance management framework. London: DfEE Publications. DFES. (2003). Excellence and enjoyment: A strategy for primary schools. Nottingham: DfES Publications. Drucker, P. F. (1993). Post-capitalist society. London: Butterworth-Heinemann. Edwards, P., & Shaoul, J. (2002). Controlling the PFI process in schools: A case study of the Pimlico project. Policy & Politics, 31, 371–385(15). Farrel, C. & Morris, J. (2004). Resigned compliance: Teacher attitudes towards performance-related pay in schools. Educational Management Administration Leadership, 32, 81–104. Forrester, G. (2005). All in a day’s work: Primary teachers ‘performing’ and ‘caring’. Gender and Education, 17, 271–287. Freidson, E. (1983). The theory of professions: State of the art. In R. Dingwall & P. E. Lewis (Eds.), The sociology of the professions. London: The Macmillan Press. Friedson, E. (2001). Professionalism, the third logic: On the practice of knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P., Trow, M., et al. (1994). The new production of knowledge. London: Sage. Giddens, A. (1988). The third way: The renewal of social democracy. Oxford: Polity Press. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in late modern age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Giddens, A. (2007). Over to you, Mr Brown. Cambridge: Polity Press. Goodson, I. F. (1992). Studying teachers’ lives. New York: Teachers College. Harvey, D. (2005). The new imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Horne, M. (2001). Classroom assistance. London: DEMOS. Retrieved February 6, 2005, from http:// www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/classrmassistance/ Huber, J., & Skidmore, P. (2003). The new old. Why baby boomers won't be pensioned off. London: Demos. Larson, M. S. (1977). The rise of professionalism: A sociological analysis. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Leadbeater, C. (2004). Personalisation through participation: A new script for public services. London: Demos. www.demos.co.uk. Retrieved April 11, 2007, from http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Personalisation ThroughParticipation.pdf 23

NORRIE AND GOODSON Leathwood, C., & Francis, B. E. (2006). Gender and lifelong learning. London: Routledge. Lifestyle Extra. (2007). Car Salesmen ‘More Trustworthy Than Politicians’. Retrieved May 18, 2007, from http://www.lse.co.uk/ShowStory.asp?story=EC837089W&news_headline=car_salesmen_more_trust worthy_than_politicians Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lyotard, J. F. (1979). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge. Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Meyer, J. W., Boli, J., Thomas, G. M., & Ramirez, F. O. (1997). World society and the nation state. American Journal of Sociology, 103(1), 144–181. Mannheim, K. (1952). The problem of generations. Essays on the sociology of knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. National Statistics. (2006). Lifestyles Women do more chores than men. Retrieved May 22, 2007, from http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=440 Norrie, C., & Goodson, I. (2005). A literature review of welfare state restructuring in education and healthcare in European Contexts. Retrieved June 25, 2006, from http://www.ips.gu.se/profknow EU Commission, 6th Framework Programme. Norrie, C., & Goodson, I. (2007). English primary teachers’ work and life under restructuring: Professional experiences, knowledge and expertise. In J. Müller, F. Hernández, J. Sancho, A. Creus, M. Muntadas, V. Larrain, et al. (Eds.), European schoolteachers work and life under restructuring: Professional experiences, knowledge and expertise in changing context. http://www.ips.gu.se/profknow Parsons, T. (1968). Professions. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 12. Redman, T. & Snape, E. (2006). Militancy and moderation in teacher’s unions: Is there a fit between union image and member attitudes? Retrieved May 18, 2007, from http://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/ dbs/faculty//working-papers/WP-101-Feb06.pdf Schon, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner. New York: Basic Books. Sennett, R. (1998). The corrosion of character. London: Sage. Sennett, R. (2003) Respect: The formation of character in an age of inequality. London: Penguin. Stenhouse, L. (1975) An introduction to curriculum research and development. London: Heinemann Educational. Taylor, C., Gorard, S., & Fitz, J. (2002). Market frustration? Admission appeals in the UK education market. Educational Management Administration Leadership, 30, 243–260. Troman, G. (1996). The rise of the new professionals: The restructuring of primary teachers’ work and professionalism. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 17. Troman, G., Jeffrey, B., & Raggl, A. (2007) Creativity and performativity policies in primary school cultures. Journal of Education Policy, 22, 549–572(24). UNICEF. (2007) Child poverty in perspective: An overview of child well-being in rich countries. Innocenti Report Card 7. The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre Florence. Whitty, G. (2005, November,). Moving beyond recent education reform and towards a democratic professionalism. Paper presented at the international symposium on education reform and teachers. Tokyo: Hitotsubashi University. Retrieved May 14, 2007, from http://k1.ioe.ac.uk/directorate/ HitotsubashiPaperJapan11-2005.pdf

CN Norrie and Professor Ivor Goodson Education Research Centre University of Brighton

24

DENNIS BEACH

3. SOME GENERAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THE RESTRUCTURING OF EDUCATION AND HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONS IN EUROPE

INTRODUCTION

This chapter has been produced on the basis of an analysis of the second work package document (specifically work package 2: Welfare State Restructuring in Education and Health Care: Implications for the Teaching and Nursing Professions and their Professional Knowledge), edited by the author of the present chapter. It attaches to the seven main aims of the project. These are: – To produce an improved knowledge base concerning professional knowledge and the organisation of work in education and health in Europe – To present comparisons of professional work and life in different European contexts within and between the professions of teaching and nursing – To achieve a developed view of professional knowledge in the fields of teaching and nursing as a basis for the development of organisational, professional and educational strategies by the professions and by administrators and policy makers – To describe, analyse and evaluate current restructuring in education and health in different parts of Europe from the point of view of teachers and nurses and their experiences from their interaction with clients – To inform the public and professional discourse on integration and segregation tendencies in education and health in Europe – To inform teacher and nurse education programmes about practical professional knowledge at work among professional actors in the fields of education and health – To contribute to the integration of the European research arena (http://www.ips. gu.se/profknow) The objectives of work package 2 contribute to the above aims. They are described in the work package as follows (http://www.ips.gu.se/profknow) – To provide descriptions of structural changes in the organisation of teaching and nursing since the 1960’s in each partner country, including restructuring measures (particularly from the 1980ies onwards), with special attention paid to the recruitment, competence, authority and positions of the professional groups of teachers and nurses respectively

I.F. Goodson and S. Lindblad, (eds.), Professional Knowledge and Educational Restructuring in Europe, 25–39. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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other services has been extensively analysed globally and is now hardly contestable as a phenomenon (Edwards & Usher, 2002; Robertson et al, 2002). References are regularly made in the analysis of global convergence to the economist Schumpeter and the formation of a Schumpeterian (i.e. entrepreneurial) State, based on a notion of the strength of entrepreneurialism for economic (national) development. Schumpeter’s suggestions were that arrangements that enable entrepreneurs to purchase the resources needed to realize their visions were in line with the best organisational characteristics for a well-developed capitalist system, which should therefore be organised in ways that encourage and support entrepreneurialism. Markets were expressed as the best means. The EU innovation program, and its main development plan, the Lisbon Strategy, are based on ideas traceable to Schumpeter’s works. SOCIALISATION OF LABOUR

In addition to a recent neo-liberal convergence, there were also several other important common indicators from the collection of case studies concerning the development of nursing and teaching and the effects of restructuring on these professions in the partner countries (Greece, England, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Spain, Portugal). One of these concerned a common denominator noted in all case studies regarding the socialisation of labour, in its cultural and sociological form1, as the creation of public labour power (from different forms of domestic labour, that in all national instances has taken place as a precursor to neo-liberal restructuring. Through the socialisation of labour relationships of production were moved from private domains into the broader social spheres of public activity. Examples in the two professions researched in the present investigation (teaching and nursing) in each country in question are primarily always two fold. They include a movement of caring and/or educational labour from the domestic spheres of family relations in the home (regarding the education and care of the lower social classes) on the one hand, and from small scale independent private relations of production for the wealthier and elite categories on the other, in both cases toward some form of public organisation. A couple of things are significant here. One of these is of course the obvious fact that the upper-classes in each country have historically always had private access to education and care from sources outside of the domestic sphere of the immediate family and that the socialisation of labour in this instance represents a de-commodification of service production. The other is that in the instance of the lower classes education and care has always depended on kinship or neighbourly relations and that the socialisation of labour there usually therefore represents an externalisation of domestic labour (usually the labour of women) and the incorporation this female labour power in a public service organisation. With regard to the activities of teaching and nursing for the lower social classes and the mass of the populations of the countries in the research the socialisation of labour has passed through two quite distinct periods in some countries according to the case studies: first the development of church and/or charitable 27

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(i.e. voluntary) organisations and then the ‘absorption’ of these activities into the public domain, as State enterprises (services), through the expansion of the service sector and the creation of sometimes rudimentary (Spain, Greece, Portugal, Ireland) and sometimes more developed (UK, Sweden, Finland) welfare States. This development applies mainly to the majority of the populations in these countries. It does not apply as much for the wealthier sectors of society, where the socialisation of education and care has instead involved what can be termed as a ‘de-commercialisation’ of services through the public sector purchase of the private organisations by means of which the upper-classes had previously secured the health and education services they needed through private consumption. Both processes are described as occurring in the last 30 to 80 years in each of the countries in the research, earlier for some (e.g. Sweden, Greece, UK) and later for others. Also significant is that the development of concepts of the welfare State has been very important in the conversion of the nurturing labour originally carried out by women within a system of kinship relationships and small family groups to a productive aspect of the general economy. Considering the welfare state brings us to a third point of common occurrence (and therefore also interest). This is that the processes of socialisation and decommercialisation; i.e. the conversion of domestic and private health and education production forms to social forms as outlined above; has been incompletely carried out in each of the case study countries, and has therefore always finally given rise to a continuation of the previously existing parallel systems of education and care. That is, a public system of health and education for the mass of the population (mainly the poorer social groups) and a private system for the wealthier elite. This is an important point. For despite national health and education policy rhetoric in each of the partner countries, and regardless of recent changes in these discoursing practices concerning egalitarian and comprehensive caring systems, the professions we are looking at have never anywhere or at any time been of ‘one kind’ in ‘one system’ and equally for all members of ‘one classless State’. They have always been divided as resources that are unequally distributed according to class, gender and more recently also ethnicity. This applies even in the most egalitarian periods of history for the most developed social democratic welfare States in the project such as Sweden and Finland. Non-the-less, at the same time it must also be admitted that in these countries, perhaps through the stronger political organisation of the working classes, parities of education and care across class divisions have been approached to a degree hardly dreamt of elsewhere (EspingAndersson, 1996). All of the above issues are consistent and important in relation to changes in the supply of education and care in Europe. However, the clearly most consistent point has to be that teaching and nursing are principally, historically and contemporaneously also female occupations, and that the socialisation processes in question are principally therefore referring to women’s labour and its movement first from the home to church/voluntary organisations and then from these to the public service domain through the establishment of a Welfare state and the growth of the service sector. This is a significant point, because what is suggested then is that through the welfare 28

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State, forms of (free) labour that were formerly confined to the domestic sphere and its kinship and neighbourly relationships, were shifted into the broader social arena in such a way that the socialisation of labour was equally also a feminisation of the economy and an ethical transformation of specific labour relationships. The feminisation of the economy has had some well-researched consequences. One of these is the often spoken on job opportunities and paid employment for women outside the home, of a kind that are said to lead to freedom and independence from an exploitative patriarchal structure (e.g. Weiss, 2004). However, it seems that this ‘freedom’ is only won at a cost, as the feminisation of the economy has also coincided with a less openly discussed general ‘dampening’ effect on real income levels, which have effectively dropped in the past forty years in each country by between 17 and 31%, for the lower economic portions within which the professional workers in question are generally also to be found, with the result that teachers and nurses have become relatively low paid workers in relation to years of education and training, from the lower salariate who are also incapable of supporting their families on a single income (see also OECD, 2001, 2003; Eurostat, 2001; NUT, http:// teachers.org.uk; Horne, 2001). This is obviously highly problematic for the aims of female liberation and class equality. Rather than liberation, the often spoken on freedom for women implied by liberal feminists through the explosion of women’s paid labour has actually primarily resulted in a more effective extraction of surplus value from production by capitalists and capitalist States. COMMERCIALISATION

Teaching and nursing are both very much caught up in the dynamics of State mediation in the interests of capital discussed above. However, what is also clear form the case studies collectively as well as individually is that the transformation of teaching and nursing labour has not stopped at a simple socialisation of work by ‘de-commoditised’ production and an ‘absorbed domestic and voluntary work’ in the expansion of the welfare-State. Rather these public developments have then been extensively privately capitalised on. Re-privatisation, at times referred to also as (re-)commercialisation or (re-)commodification, has occurred. For education and care in the wealthier sections of the national populations this means in one sense very little, as to greater or lesser extents these sections of the populace have constantly exploited private facilities through private consumption anyway. But with respect to education and care as mass projects within a service economy it means a great deal, as a very significant step in a processes of conversion of socially useful labour to an objectified form of labour for the production of surplus value for private organisations on large scale. This process has taken place in a relatively short period of time in some countries (e.g. Spain, Portugal, Ireland) than others (e.g. Sweden, Finland), where teaching and nursing, from being useful labour in the home, has been rapidly transformed into an economically productive labour and a direct factor of economic production; often through the use of government and EU subsidies; that is increasingly being carried out in private economic interests and arrangements.2 29

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The terms productive and useful labour, as discussed for instance in Marxist literature, become important concepts in this light. In Marxist use these concepts differ from the understanding generally employed in bourgeois economic theory, as in Marxism productive labour is a concept very distinct from the concept of useful labour. Useful labour is a purposive activity which meets a human need. Productive labour is labour that is productive principally in the economic sense of labour; i.e. labour that directly creates new economic value, usually in terms of private profit, as the unpaid part of labour as measured in proportion to the total capital invested in production that is expropriated from workers and distributed by various means among the capitalist class. A SIGNIFICANCE OF REFORM

The developments of firstly socialisation (of domestic, voluntary and also to a degree previously private labour) and then the (re-)privatision and (re)commodification of social/public labour represent probably the key anthropological junctures within the education and care sectors regarding the changing relationships between the State, professions and individuals in the countries in question according to WorkPackage 2 and the present chapter in the last fifty to eighty years. And grasping the importance and characteristics of these moments is extremely important therefore to understanding and describing the past, present and possible future scenarios of teaching and nursing reforms in Europe, and in whose interests they may operate (Ball, 2007). In the countries in question at the present time the case studies are extremely conclusive about which reforms are the ones that are most predominant today. They are those of commercialisation and they are said to involve twin processes, both of which are also said to have negative consequences for teacher and nurse job satisfaction (see also e.g. Harris, 1994; Roussakis, 1995; Lawn, 1996; Woods et al, 1997; Woods & Jeffrey, 2002; Lundahl, 2002a,b; Mahony & Hextall, 2000; Petronikolos, 2003; Moutsios, 2003; Grollios, 1999; Zambeta, 2002 and Kazamias, 2003; Edwards & Usher, 2002; Robertson et al, 2002; Beach, 2004). Harris, as cited in the English case study by Norrie and Goodson (http://www.ips.gu.se/profknow), has described the outcomes of these processes in terms of a loss of autonomy, worsening of conditions, loss of purpose and direction, destruction of health, increased anxiety and depression, lowering of morale and, despite a continued proliferation of policy rhetoric to the contrary, subjugation to increasing government and other external controls of schooling and curricula (Harris, 1994, p. 5). The processes are: – The out-sourcing of functions that were formerly carried out within first domestic and voluntary and then State arrangements to capitalist enterprises mediated by the State – The full-scale privatisation of public services for capitalisation The national case studies from profknow make some quite clearly pronounced statements – individually and collectively - about the above factors of recent reforms and their consequences in respect of the professions of teaching and nursing for professional identities, practices and education needs. These are echoed in the present 30

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volume, in relation to predominant temporal and national differences across the period from the 1960ies to the present day and then, secondly and very importantly, regarding a recent convergence through what is identified as a common influx of neo-liberalism and thirdly in the way neo-liberalism is tending to (and is already sensed as having begun to) oppose humanism and democracy in (welfare) services and professions in everyday interaction, personal experience and the concrete outcomes of care- and education quality for individuals of different class backgrounds. Not taken up however is why the States should so abruptly begin to de-emphasise the Welfare-State and sell-out its infrastructure. Notwithstanding this each chapter in the present volume does nevertheless testify clearly to the restructuring of services with the help of government reforms and other interventions in one or another sense. Sometimes this has occurred from national contexts with low levels of de-commoditised general service provision (e.g. Greece, Spain, Portugal), in others in the context of a mature welfare State with fairly high preceding levels of de-commoditisation in services (e.g. Finland, Sweden and earlier also the UK). However, in both cases outcomes have tended to be somewhat similar, in that rather than contributing to the development of a comprehensive system of service supply and professional development in relation to this supply, neo-liberal restructuring by means of government intervention has clearly led to the creation of apparatuses of conversion through which public wealth is first objectified and then converted into private economic forms that are accumulated by corporations and corporate stock holders at the expense of others (Ball, 2007). These issues are expressed perhaps most clearly in the UK, but they are also suggested by research from Greece, Ireland and Spain as well, and have also been described recently in an article in a Swedish journal 3 as being equally apparent there. They are that neo-liberal restructuring in services has resulted in the creation of economically exploitable and objectified service practices, professions and professional knowledge and an alienated service society (Mentor, et al, 2004; Mahony & Hextall, 2000; Lawn, 1996) that may have contributed significantly to crises in recruitment and retention in the professions researched (Woods et al., 1997; Woods & Jeffrey, 1997). This is a very different set of outcomes to the often formally spoken on aims of extended professionalism, increased autonomy and responsibility and greater professional freedom for nurses and teachers through restructuring, in national reform texts and commentaries. In this sense extended professionalism and related concepts seem to have worked as bait in the form of plastic boundary objects that are used in public discourses in ways that are intended to help accrue general support from (key) specific groups in and for restructuring processes. They are, in other words, issues of hegemony and in-authenticity in the strongest possible sense of these terms (Beach, 2004). The ‘realignment’ of service professions by/through neo-liberal economic restructuring (and its major discourses) has according to the accounts in the present volume clearly progressed furthest (seen in terms of material consequences/outcomes) in the UK. For instance, as cited through the UK research, Mahony and Hextall suggest in England that the dominant machinery of regulation in neo-liberalism has been 31

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redefined as the very foundation of professionalism and has begun to dominate (welfare) services and professions from the political level in the restructuring of work and life and the relationship between the State and its citizens. But such developments are not just restricted to two professions in one country. They are aspects of a broader transformation of the public sector(s) in Europe. The Bologna process is probably the most recent general example in education but such things have for instance, albeit on a smaller scale, been described in the case study contents in relation to adult education in Sweden (Wass, 2004; Beach, 2004) as well as in relation to teaching and nursing and their respective education programmes in England, Ireland, Spain, Greece and Portugal (Beach, 2005: Ed). Hargreaves has described the problems of restructuring in the teaching profession in England as one of monumental proportions and has stated that teaching, although expressed globally as a profession vital to the knowledge economy, is now a profession which ‘more and more people want to leave, fewer and fewer want to join, and very few are interested in leading’4. SUMMING UP: A NEW RATIONALITY?

A particular kind of economic rationality seems to have become fundamental to public service restructuring in the context of the States involved in the project discussed in the present volume. This, in that although restructuring is always a potential variable (in line with Dale, 1997 and Whitty et al, 1998) with several different potential meanings and outcomes, it has generally come to mean the same thing, with this being a transformation of public service supply through the promotion of an entrepreneurial culture and the introduction of a market model of delivery with roots in the world of business and the expressed intention of making service supply more economically effective through competition, based on the extremely ideological claim that markets have been shown to create this competition in a way that efficiently distributes goods to individuals who need and desire them and that services should therefore be deliberately altered so that the market can also become the ultimate arbiter of what is included in them as well (Beach, 2004). As mentioned earlier, we can speak here of a concept of the Schumpeterian State, a specific localturned-global form of neo-liberalism and the introduction of regulated markets in an attempt to reconstruct the world in line with certain preconceived interests, by legitimising and actively supporting the privatisation of public services in ways that allow direct corporate involvement in service production and delivery in the name, ultimately, of profit. Current global neo-liberalism in services in Europe is characterised by five main denominators according to the present volume. These are first an idea of a market economy where economic decisions and actions by individuals regarding the transfer of money, goods, and services are (through an idealisation of the concept of free transactions) considered to be voluntary (free of coercion). They are second, the use of a monetarist economic policy that involves stimulating the economy by manipulating money supply, third the privatisation of State-owned industries to ‘shrink’ and weaken State involvement in markets and fourth low taxation to stimulate individual freedom of choice in economic transactions and the private purchasing of 32

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goods and services. These four denominators collectively represent an individuation and privatisation of services. They are combined with a fifth denominator, strong opposition to anything in any way antithetical to individuation and privatisation such as radical (and strong) trade unions, nationalism, centralism and the expansion in collective interests of State expenditure in the welfare State and local government.5 All current forms for restructuring in the public sector noted in the present volume relate to these five denominators in clearly stated ways. Sometimes all of them are expressed, sometimes some of them in combination, sometimes more in relation to ‘discoursing service supply’ (as is stressed as a recent strategy in Sweden in the Swedish case study), sometimes in terms (also) of practical organisation, as in the most recent education (specifically) and welfare (generally) reforms reported in the case studies from both Spain, Greece, Portugal and the UK and expressed also in the Lisbon Declaration. So in this sense it seems clear therefore that in its present form (empirically as well as theoretically), although it is expressed as something that has been developed in general economic (and even in some instance democratic) interests, restructuring is currently clearly ‘driven’ primarily in the interests of finance capital and its aims to create new sites for processes of economic accumulation. When we try to grasp this situation of ‘new capitalism’ in the service sector (Gee, et al, 1996; Linblad et al, 2001) we need to bear in mind some important transitions in the economic base of capitalism in the countries in question in recent years that help make them not only realistic but also obviously logical. These transitions are in some senses different for each country, admittedly. But at the same time there is, collectively, some pretty consistent occurrences as well, as in fact the entire scenario can relate to the ‘evolution’ of post-modern, post-industrial society, where what is important, but not always pointed out, is the need capitalism has of finding new sources of investment once conventional sources of production have been transformed or shifted. In post-modernism this society, as is described also by Jameson in his book the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, is characterized by scepticism and a disbelief in any concept of value beyond what pays. The development of economic interests in and through the restructuring of services is sometimes masked by other activities and discourses. In the present case studies both political democratisation (including transformations of/in democracy practices and democracy talk/discourses: as reported from both Greece, Spain, Portugal and the UK), modernisation (including also the discourses, concepts and descriptions of modernisation: as reported from Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Spain), the changing characteristics of the ‘modern’ labour market and the changing labour processes in Western societies (as suggested in the Swedish case study) are involved. However, with the exception of parts of the Swedish case study, where the concept of new ways of discoursing welfare is focussed and Portugal, where the textual practices of modernisation are heavily focussed, the transformation of labour and changing labour processes of professions and professional education are the things discussed the most. This is specifically and particularly the case with respect to the UK. Restructuring has gone further there than in the other countries concerned and this may have helped material outcomes to be more easily identified and described. 33

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As reflected in the English case study, modern labour processes (and ways of writing and talking – discoursing - about these processes) have become radically reconditioned by automation and computerisation in the Western European States, where they have then also become both more abstract, immaterial and even intellectual, and economic production has begun to swarm out of factories and nestle within the interstices of civil society in such a way that it no longer makes easy sense to locate profit (either practically or discursively) primarily in relation to mass labour and the confines of the factory (see also MacDonald, 2003; Wärvik, 2004). And it is here that the current restructuring processes may also perhaps most appropriately obtain a scientific explanation, as an example of the creation of new sites for financial accumulation when sites of ‘national’ investment change as rates of profit fall (nationally) in conventional production. This recognition is also very important, because to be any where near fully understood, the present restructuring of the public service economy has to be set into this, for the project countries, context of change in economic production through the transmutations of profit cycles and labour power exploitation and in the transformational discourses relating to and ideologically describing these practices and their significances. The case studies make it possible to contextualise understandings (and explanations) of service transition in relation to these broader cycles of the global political economy of signs and accumulation. However, they also, through their detail, do much more than this, as they also suggest that although the current restructuring processes are presented from the right and centre of the global (and European) political and economic playing field in each participating country in the project as a natural solution to the recently developed capital crisis in the public sector (see for instance the Greek and Spanish cases), there are some good reasons to question this very ideological position. One of these reasons is that the purported capital crisis in the service sector is far from natural. It is cultural, economic and political not natural. And a second is that an examination of developments in public services in countries where privatisation and corporate involvement have become commonplace through restructuring; such as the USA, New Zealand and the UK; indicates that the more the private sector becomes involved in delivering public services, the worse the level of general service becomes in terms of broad availability and class differences in the use of services by citizens (Beach, 2004). This is very evident in basic (social, physical, mental and dental) health, education, water supply, energy supply and transport in particular (Gustafsson, 2001; Harvey, 2003). However secondly, as also Thorpe and Brady (2003) and McMurtry (1998) have suggested, rather than being a solution to the culturally generated capital crisis in the public sector, privatisation (generally) and corporatism (in particular) are the main culprits in this crisis. Public services are maintained through taxation and corporations cost society billions each year in tax avoidance through their exploitation of loopholes in tax laws that in the last ten years have led the tax burden for services to become dramatically displaced from businesses onto workers and individual consumers. Although these tendencies are becoming increasingly prevalent elsewhere as well, perhaps the best example from our partnership is still the UK. They can be summarised as follows. 34

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Table 1. The noted outcomes of public service restructuring in the case studies – taken from the profknow work package 2, welfare state restructuring in education and health care: implications for the teaching and nursing professions and their professional knowledge

– – – – – – – – – – – – – –

– – – – – – – –

Decentralisation Development of an emphatic discourse of privatisation and marketisation Company formation Conversion of public services to private Business takeover of education and care supply and teacher and nursing supply The creation of quasi markets for consolidating the processes of privatisation Authorities forming agencies for contracting out services to private suppliers Costs of administration shifted from costs of public ownership and control to costs of managing and monitoring outsourced delivery Increased costs from franchise effects (un/under-employment) on public employees The increased objectification of labour and increases in the value form of labour A dissemination of a view of learners and care recipients as economically rational, self-interested individuals and the reconstruction of supply in line with this vision A redefinition of democracy in terms of consumer choice An increased objectification of teachers and nurses, learners and patients, care and curricula and (increasingly) professional education and educators as factors of production The creation of a labour buffer (surplus army of labour) in the education and care sectors at the same time as (at least in some education sectors) posts are increasingly difficult to fill and notoriously difficult to maintain continuity in Increased class differences in terms of education and care supply and consumption Increased inequalities in conditions of/for service work Hiring and firing of faculty based on market needs and performances An increased incidence of student recruitment for economic (profit oriented) reasons Increases in quick training programmes to maximise economic gains Increased judgement of teaching performances according to consumer values Standardisation of professional (higher) education curricula, instruction and assessment Sacrifice of the critical mission of professional education/training for practical, technical training (and above all economic interests)

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These collective features suggest several important things about the commoditisation of services. But they also present material effects as well, such as an increase in public financing of private interests, an increase in professional surveillance, a transformation of governance through the furtherance of corporate management regimes, the introduction of new accountability agendas, and significant changes in the labour process for public service professionals. These things are all present in the collective contents of the chapters in the present volume. But what is also interesting in this, is that thus the welfare States in countries like Finland and Sweden (which have had an emphatic infrastructure of de-commoditised services) have undergone restructuring with effects not dissimilar from those apparent in countries like Britain, which have had long periods of conservative office, and Ireland, Portugal, Spain or Greece, where neither stable ideologies of welfare nor materially established welfare State practices have become fully secured. This suggests that regardless of these aspects of history, the neo-liberal economic restructuring of services shares some fundamental elements in common and may possess a global characteristic, in which services are increasingly provided subject to cost and profitability potentials rather than professional judgements and are in this sense therefore also becoming increasingly objectified in the terms of developing through social relations that transform people into objects rather than subjects, and alienated in the sense that work becomes increasingly accommodated toward a value form of labour that is characteristic for competitive, privatised production. CONCLUDING REMARKS

Based on prior readings of other chapters in the present volume and the research upon which these chapters have been based, two processes have been suggested in this chapter to have shaped restructuring in teaching and nursing in Europe. These are firstly the socialisation of labour and then a massive (re)commercialisation of this labour and its various institutions and their accumulated human and other resources. This commercialisation, which is also termed re-commodification, has been described as the predominant contemporary process and has also been said to be increasing in pace and scope in recent years and to be having negative effects on teacher and nurse professional experiences, commitments, careers and identities. Teachers and nurses are becoming over-managed in and/or uprooted from the service sector and have either lost the possibility to exercise professional control over their work or the possibility of working with the jobs they desire in public service employment as opposed to private (Harris, op cit; Beach, 2004). Service professionals have in this sense suffered a deflation of their professional freedom and capacity and have been forced to accept and adapt to the requirements of a new-market identity or be excluded from the service sector and the work they have been educated for. This forced adaptation to market requirements can be described as a reculturalisation of services (Carlson, 2004; Beach & Carlson, 2004). It suggests that whilst in each partner country the current right and right centre idealism of restructuring expresses that there is no gaping hole between market logic and good services and that the two can be ‘run together’ for the benefit of all, inside ‘market 36

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programmes’ the value-practices of public service become stifled through processes of liquidation in a conversion of public wealth to private capital that although it began in some cases more than a hundred years ago is now taking on distinctly clearer forms. In it services like education and care and jobs like teaching and nursing are no longer even formally democratic and comprehensive, but concern instead the application of a market discourse to a local situation no matter what the consequences might be, even when these consequences openly cut against democratic principles such as the public availability of knowledge and care as an altruistic act of (domestic) solidarity rather than their increased privatisation and economic exploitation. It is very questionable therefore if the current forms of neo-liberal restructuring (whether primarily only discursive or increasingly material) are resulting in the creation of the best possible conditions of labour for professional groups to do professional jobs. What has developed is a shift in agency disfavouring previous hybrid forms of professional and bureaucratic control and favouring bureaucratic-market ones instead and this is furthering the interests of market capitalist by encouraging the spread of market practices and principles of governance ever deeper into the public domain (Beach, 2005: Ed; Ball, 2007). ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Acknowledgements to the profknow consortium are in order, including Sverker Lindblad, Rita Foss, Ewa Pilhammar Andersson and Gun-Britt Wärvik from Göteborg University, Ivor Goodson and Caroline Norrie from the University of Brighton, Evie Zambeta, Giannis Skalkidis, Dimitra Thoma, Nasia Dakopoulou and Areti Stavropoulou from the National and Kopodistorian University of Athens and Athens University Medical School, Ari Antikainen and Erja Moore from the University of Joensuu and Joensuu Polytechnic University, Fernando Hernández, Juana M. Sancho, Jörg Müller, Verónica Larrain, Amalia Creus, Max Muntadas and Xavier Giró from the University of Barcelona, Jorge Ávila de Lima and Helder Pereira from the University of the Azores, Ciaran Sugrue and Maeve Dupont from St. Patrick’s College, Dublin City University and Peter Sohlberg and Magdalena Czaplicka from Stockholm University, who have all either contributed to the production of national case studies or have provided comments on these case studies and the first versions of the present paper. Thanks also Geoff Troman from Roehampton University who has also provided insightful comments on an earlier version of the article. NOTES 1

2

This concept of socialisation is importantly different from common social psychological interpretations and representations of the term, where socialisation is a descriptive term for processes of the formation of individual identity (the self and the psyche) through the internalisation of social values and beliefs, primarily through interaction in the family and school, and also later, and ‘professionally’, at the workplace. There is an interesting suggestion here about the welfare State and common European economic policy, which instead of being seen as ‘the opposite’ of private production and as an example of the redistribution of surplus value through the taxation of income and profits, now becomes an intermediary in the capitalist processes of the creation of labour power and instrumental in the 37

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3 4

5

capitalist processes of conversion of ‘other’ value forms into an objectively economic form to be accumulated by capitalists: i.e. part of the transitions of capitalism and an integral and important intermediary in the expansion of capital rather than something opposing and resistant to this process as is expressed in some liberal accounts of welfare States and welfare State professions. ‘Korståg mot välfärden’ (the Crusade against Welfare) in Ordfront, 10/2005, pp. 12–21. Nursing doesn’t seem to have been effected in quite the same way. Although high levels of stress are noted in research about nurses’ experiences of their work conditions, there are far fewer job vacancies and no tendencies to employ unqualified staff. Some of this may be to do with forms economic capitalism and the trafficking of qualified professionals from poorer countries to the richer ones. England for instance imports vast numbers of qualified nurses from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean countries, as it previously did from Ireland, to do nursing duties in its hospital wards. It is able to do this because of economic incentives and relative wage structures and is, in this way, able to save on its public budget. It is cheaper for the UK to import nurses than educate them. This practice is now quite widespread in Europe. The notion of neo-liberalism developed as an economic practice during the era of Reagonomics in the USA and then Thatcherism in the UK around the expressed (but not strongly empirically tested) idea that businesses have to be innovative and create wealth to survive. ‘Businesses are the goose that lays the golden eggs and government regulation and taxes are activities that are strangling the goose’ was a common paraphrase. In its current form (a form of neo-classical economic philosophy) neo-liberalism is easily visible however as an imposition of market practices from the top-down promoted also by international financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank and by centralised governments such as those of the EU and the USA. In this ‘global’ form neo-liberalism coincides with current corporate dominations of economic production world-wide (neo-corporatism) and seems easily aligned with the economic interests of these organisations. It has taken different forms in different countries in the project reproted from here, from the November revolution in the National Bank of Sweden in 1984 through the deregulation of the credit markets to the coercive politics of Thatcher’s regime in the UK in the same era, with its own harsh technologies of power.

REFERENCES Ball, S. J. (2007). Education plc: Understanding private sector participation in the public sector. Oxford: Routledge. Beach, D. (2003). From teachers for education change. European Educational Research Journal, 2(2), 203–227. Beach, D. (2004). The public costs of the re-structuring of adult education: A case in point from sweden. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 2(1), www.jceps.com Beach, D. (2005). The problem of how learning should be socially organised. Reflective Practice, 6(4), 473–489. Beach, D., & Carlsson, M. (2004). Adult education by tender: A case study of effects of restructuring on education identities. European Educational Researcher Journal, 3(3), 674–690. Dale, R. (1997). The state and the governance of education: An analysis of the restructuring of the State education relationship. In A. H. Halsey, H. Lauder, P. Brown, & A. Stuart Wells (Eds.), Education, Culture, Economy, Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edwards, R., & Usher, P. (2002). Globalisation and pedagogy: Space, place and identity. London: Routledge. Esping-Andersen, G. (1996). After the golden age? Welfare state dilemmas in a global economy. In G. Esping-Andersen (Ed.), Welfare states in transition. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications. Gee, J., Hull, G., & Lankshear, C. (1996). The new work order: Behind the language of the new capitalism. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin. Grollios, G. (1999). Ideology, pedagogy and education policy. Discourse and practice of the European programmes on education. Athens: Gutenberg. Harris, K. (1994). Teachers: Constructing the future. London: Falmer Press. 38

SOME GENERAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THE RESTRUCTURING Harvey, D. (2003). The new imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jessop, B. (2000). From the KWNS to the SWPR. In G. Lweis, S. Gewirtz, & C. Clarke (Eds.), Rethinking social policy. London: SAGE. Jones, K. (2005). Remaking education in Western Europe. European Educational Researcher Journal, 4(3), 228–242. Kazamias, A., Zambeta, E., & Karadjia, E. (2002). Greece: Educational reform 2000 - Toward a paideia of open orisons - The modern Greek Sisyphus. In S. Linblad & T. S. Popkewitz (Eds.), Education governance and social integration and exclusion: Studies in the powers of reason and the reasons of power, Uppsala Reports on Education 39. Uppsala University. Lawn, M. (1996). Modern times? Professionalism and citizenship in teaching. London: Falmer. Lindblad, S., Lundahl, G., & Zackari, G. (2001). Sweden: Increased inequalities – Increased stress on human agency. In S. Lindblad & T. Popkewitz (Eds.), Education governance and social integration and exclusion: Studies in the powers of reason and the reasons of power. (Uppsala Reports on Education, 39). Uppsala: Department of Education Uppsala University. Lundahl, L. (2002a). Sweden: decentralization, deregulation, quasi-markets – and then what? Journal of Education Policy, 17(6), 687–697. Lundahl, L. (2002b). From centralisation to decentralisation: Governance of education in Sweden. European Educational Research Journal, 1(4), 625–636. Macdonald, B. J. (2003). Thinking through Marx: An introduction to the political theory of Antonio Negri. Strategies, 16(2), 86–95. Mahony, P., & Hextall, I. (2000). Reconstructing teaching: Standards, performance and accountability. London: Routledge, Falmer. McMurtry, J. (1998). Unequal freedoms: The global market as an ethical system. Toronto: Kumarian Press. Moutsios, S. (2003). The identity of the European Union and the European pedagogic identities. Comparative and International Education Review, 47(2), 62–94. Petronikolos, L. (2003). European identity and citizenship education. The case of Greece. Comparative and International Education Review, 47(2), 95–126. Robertson S., Bonal, X., & Dale, R. (2002). GATS and the education service industry: The politics of scale and global territorisation. Comparative Education Review, 46, 472–496. Roussakis, Y. (1995). European citizenship: A symbol and a process in the New Europe, a challenge for Greece. In A. Kazamias & M. Kassotakis (Eds.), Greek education: Perspectives of restructuring and modernisation. Athens: Seirios. Thorpe, G., & Brady, P. (2003, May 1). Toward a political economy of education in the transitional period. Paper presented at the Marxism and Education, Revisiting Dialogues conference, London Institute of Education. Wass, Lumsden, K. (2004). Vuxenutbildning i omvandling. Kunskapslyftet som ett sätt att organisera förnyesle. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. Weiss, L. (2004). Class reunion. London: Routledge. Welsh, P., & Brassart, J. (2002). Poverty, deprivation and politics of educational inclusion in Thanet and Lille. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 6(2), 127–141. Whitty, G., Power, S., & Halpin, D. (1998). Devolution and choice in education: The school, the state and the market. Buckingham: Open University Press. Wärvik, G.-B. (2004). Ambitioner att förändra och artefakters verkan. Gränsskapande och stabilserande praktiker på produktionsgolvet. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. Zambeta, E. (2002). Europeanisation and the emergence of entrepreneurial culture in Greek education: Reflections from education policy. Education and Social Justice, 4(2), 15–23.

Dennis Beach University of Borås, Sweden

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PETER SOHLBERG, MAGDALENA CZAPLICKA AND SVERKER LINDBLAD

4. TEACHERS’ WORKING LIFE UNDER RESTRUCTURING

INTRODUCTION

This chapter deals with teachers’ work with a focus on teachers’ working life conditions, professional and expertise, autonomy and organisational control in education. We start with developing notions on professional work life based on Jürgen Habermas’s (1989) differentiation between life-world and system-world and Pierre Bourdieu’s (1984) concepts of practice and social field. These theoretical notions were developed in an analysis of data from a survey of 3,300 teachers in Finland, Ireland and Sweden. An additional rationale for this quantitative study was to give a comprehensive view of teachers’ and nurses’ situations as a supplementary approach to life histories and ethnographies in the Profknow project (Müller et al eds. 2007, Kosonen & Houtsonen eds. 2007). ON THE PROKNOW SURVEY

The survey targeted nurses and teachers in the Autumn 2005 and Spring of 2006. Initial samples were taken from 1,100 nurses and 1,100 teachers in Finland, Ireland and Sweden, respectively. In relation to what is now standard for postal-surveys the response rate was very high - 70 percent or more. The survey covered 40 year age span - the youngest nurses and teachers having been born in 1981 and the oldest 1941. Women were in the majority, not only among nurses (more than 90 percent) but also among teachers (app. 70 percent). A comparison of generations (divided into three cohorts: born before 1955, 1956–1969 and 1970 or later) showed an increasing feminization of the teaching occupation in Finland and Ireland. Seen in the context of high unemployment in Europe during the last 15 years it is obvious that the position on the labour-market of Finnish, Irish and Swedish nurses and teachers is rather strong.1 Nearly 80 percent of them have never been unemployed. The teachers’ life-world is in an essential way structured by their working life but working life disciplines teachers, not only as time regime, during working hours. Almost all teachers are economically dependent on their professional income. The majority of the teachers (app. 75%) contribute at least 50% to their households. This dependency can also be seen from another angle – an average teacher’s I.F. Goodson and S. Lindblad, (eds.), Professional Knowledge and Educational Restructuring in Europe, 41–63. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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career lasts 17 years. In general it is a long-lasting job with considerable experience accumulated. RESEARCH PROBLEMATICS

Teachers’ experiences and attitudes should not be studied as just aggregates of individual attitudes and experiences, but need to be understood in the structural and organisational setting. The Profknow project sought to capture the restructuring processes via the everyday experiences of nurses and teachers, i.e. from a bottomup perspective. This perspective implied, of course, a hierarchical structure with different structural layers and positions. In order to capture the whole range of levels of relevance for restructuring processes we tried to cover the following aspects: – The general localisation of education as a social activity in a societal perspective and its position in relation to educational governance, steering mechanisms and social fields of knowledge production. – The specific characteristic of the social field of education e.g. internal hierarchies, and its relationship to adjacent fields, i.e. primarily academia. Furthermore a focus on what aspects of teachers’ competence is valued in the social field. – The organisational structure – national, regional and local – of education in the specific national case. – Characterisations of particular working environments for teachers in their everyday working-life. – A description of resources, strategies, experiences and attitudes of individual teachers. It is beyond the scope and ambition of this chapter to cover all these aspects in a more conclusive way, but it is evident that we need a conceptual apparatus with a wide scope. The catalogue of relevant characteristics could be greatly extended but the essential point is that every reasonable analysis and presentation has to take into account multi-dimensionality2. It is theoretically important that restructuring is distinguished from mere change. Without assuming an essentialist understanding it is reasonable to regard restructuring as implying some sort of ‘qualitative’ change beyond increases or decreases in numerical variables. The theoretical framework to be used in this study is composed of several structural models describing the relational ‘balance’ or conflicts between elements or social groups. This concerns, for example, the relationship between markets and public institutions or the hierarchical structuration of occupational groups. Education has gone through extensive changes on a system-level in the last two decades ((Lindblad & Popkewitz, 2004). System changes can be described with structural concepts, such as ‘decentralisation, privatisation, marketization, labour supply, secularisation, new public management and the use of information technology (ICT)’ (Norrie & Goodson, 2005). These are important characterisations in the vocabulary of the system-world. The question to be discussed in this chapter is the relationship between structural tendencies in the system-world and the experiences articulated with the vocabulary of the life world. What are then the implications of this multi-level perspective? 42

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The Multi-level Structure of Teachers Working Life The bottom-up metaphor expresses the eternal division between actor/agent perspectives and structural perspectives (see e.g. Archer 2003; Bourdieu et al 1991; Bourdieu 1984, 1992; Giddens 1984; Layder 2006; Mouzelis 1995). As a consequence we want to exploit specific perspectives and vocabularies within social science designed particularly to give a more substantial localisation of those positions. In the Profknow-project we used the metaphor ‘refraction’ in order to express the idea that specific structural changes do not necessarily have the same consequences in different contexts3. This is a trivial assumption concerning the pure formality of causal analysis - where causal effects are always dependent on specific contexts (See e.g. Rubin 1993). However, of sociological interest is that different consequences of similar policy measures in diverse national and regional contexts to a high degree is related to the actual strategies and actions of the occupations studied.4 These strategies could be characterised somewhere on the continuous dimension between adaptation and resistance. Should we regard the strategies in terms of mere adaptation we would adhere to a simplistic structural determinism. Sociologically interesting aspects in this context are thus paradoxes and fuzzy- rather than clear-cut outcomes. Thus, to understand the conditions, experiences and attitudes extracted from our material we need concepts to capture the relationship between actor and structure and various general forms of governance. In order to picture this ‘macro-situation’5 we have chosen Jürgen Habermas’ conceptualisation in terms of life-world and systemworld. This theoretical perspective captures the relative importance of different mechanisms of integration, or rephrased in more managerial terms, ‘mechanisms of steering’. This context is of particular interest, since the field of teaching represents areas which were regarded by Habermas as integration mechanisms, seems to be contested and controversial, i.e. there exists a tension or conflict between the state and market in steering mechanism terms as well as a conflict between those two aspects of the system-world and the life-world (Habermas 1989). Also important is how Habermas’ normative differentiation between the life-world and the system-world is related to new modes of control in the ‘audit society’ (Power, 1999) where the reciprocal dialogue in communicative action is sharply contrasted with an audit, which is presenting hierarchical aspects of communication in the system-world (Jary 2002, p. 42). It’s necessary, though not sufficient, to picture the general relationship between teachers and the system-world represented by governing mechanisms of the market or politics. We also need to complement this with a conceptual apparatus more specifically focused on the intermediate level of teachers’ working lives and on their resources and how those are valued and used in the concrete setting. Thus, in order to make some of the implications of the bottom-up perspective more stringent we would prefer at the intermediate level to use the concepts of practice and social field as formulated by Bourdieu. In a quasi-formal but rather substantial manner Bourdieu (1984, p. 101) summarises a conceptualisation of practice in the formula: Practice = (Symbolic capital + Habitus) x Social Field. There are several implications of this conceptualization. 43

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In a negative sense practice, according to this definition, is never directly observable but requires theoretical interpretation. It is impossible to get a full understanding of teachers’ professional practice by solely concentrating on their individual and collective behaviour. Furthermore, an understanding of resources and structural aspects can never give a full account of practice. In a positive sense it follows that an understanding of individual and collective behaviour always should be integrated with an analysis of resources. These resources or symbolic capital do not have absolute qualities but are socially determined within social fields. Social fields are hierarchically constructed. Within each social field there are conflicts concerning how different characteristics should be evaluated as symbolic capital. In sum, practice is composed both of structural contextual elements and elements of actions. A combination of theoretical apparatuses presented in the works of Bourdieu and Habermas is not unproblematic, since there are fundamental differences in the respective conceptualisations of social life. Here we put forward that: – Bourdieu is much more interested in hierarchies and struggles within the ‘life world’. – Bourdieu uses the social field as a structural concept on an intermediate/low level. – Bourdieu is more oriented towards differences in distribution of resources. – Habermas has a much more general system-theory on an evolutionary level and it has stronger normative implications (Habermas 1989). – Bourdieu does not have a systematic theory of the relationship between various social fields. The rationale behind our pragmatic use of different frameworks is to make a conceptualization possible concerning the grand picture of the general system level related to everyday practice (Habermas), without losing precision in the description of the intermediate level where the everyday life is structured by positions and actions within more delimited structures or social fields (Bourdieu). In this context we are not interested in some kind of conceptual or programmatic fusion of theories, but rather in using them as a complementary structuring of the working life of teachers. Without going into exegetic details, the idea of using both theories is that Habermas gives an overall view of important processes where the state and the market seem to colonise the life-world - a macro-perspective lacking in Bourdieu6. This is complemented by Bourdieu’s conflict-perspective where he is interested in struggles within symbolic capital and the uneven distribution of resources and power, as well as the systematic differentiation between individuals and classes with regard to actions and habitus. We have chosen Bourdieu’s conception of a social field in favour of the more theoretically neutral concept of organisation. This does however not mean that organisational aspects of the educational system on different levels are without informative value. A fundamental aspect for understanding possible discrepancies between policy measures on a systemic level and the actual situation in the life-world concerns organizational inertia. This concept is applied below in the analysis of our results. 44

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Taking into account that the policy-making measures have to be transformed in diverse organizational settings we have an additional systematic factor that could explain the relative autonomy in the respondents’ life-world. This could be phrased theoretically in terms of organizational inertia based on the assumption that every organization (including educational ones) have to handle a balance between stability and change (see e.g. Ahrne & Papakostas 2002). In view of the relative stability of environmental pressure of change this could then be seen in terms of the organizations’ unwillingness and inability to change (Ibid). A further organizational feature of relevance to us which has implication for aspects of control and professional autonomy is a specific division of labour within modern organizations. There are few modern organisations with a functionally uniform structure, being either purely professional or purely formal or ‘bureaucratic’. More common is a double structure where administrative functions and professional knowledge are more or less separated. Schools have this separation between professional and administrative functions. Teachers belong primarily to the professional staff, but they can, occasionally, be administrative leaders. It is the rapid development of administrative structures parallel to the (formerly) professional structure that makes new forms of control-mechanisms possible. Schools can also be characterised as open systems in the sense that they generally are tax financed and therefore under political control and furthermore parents are expected to be involved in school activities (see for example Scott, 1998). Before further developing these structuring principles from the works of Habermas and Bourdieu, education can be localised within an even more comprehensive perspective, i.e. in terms of general functional localisation. Seen in the most traditional system-perspective education deals with the ‘maintenance’ of the social system, rather than being an active productive-force. This functional contextualization of education stems from a time where education primarily was regarded as a matter of socialization and normative reproduction. When knowledge during the twentieth century was considered a main productive force of a dynamic kind, for instance, in terms of a knowledge society, policy-makers further stressed the competitive aspect of knowledge (such as international comparisons of test performances). There are however tendencies, also documented in the Profknow material (Müller et al 2007) that the normative and socializing aspects of education, in contrast to such cognitive aspects of education, have had something of a renaissance. This is expressed in several ways by teachers, for example the lessening status and authority of teachers combined with new challenges. And dealing with pupils’ problems makes it necessary to focus on getting a reasonable working atmosphere. It is also expressed in relation to an expressed need for complimentary knowledge (Ibid). Most teachers seem rather satisfied with the level of their cognitive skills in the subjects they are teaching, but express a lack of practical know-how in how to manage a heterogeneous group of pupils in the class-room (Sohlberg et al 2007). The old-fashioned, but not irrelevant functional view of education tries thus to position activity in terms of its general consequence and utility in a societal perspective. This aspect has lately been all the more relevant as we detected a dramatic increase in the social engineering aspects of the educational system. We have 45

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here a profound change from latent functions depicted by social scientists, to manifest ones intended by policy makers. A simple indicator of this change of relative proportions between manifest and latent functions is the intensification of educational reforms.7 Education and the System-World When Habermas (1989) discusses the system-world he does this in terms of general integrative mechanisms and more specifically in terms of power (the state) and money (the market). The relevance of such a duality in this context is that it also captures one of the most important ideological schisms when it comes to how institutions should be administered and run. Restructuring in those terms would probably imply a change in the ratio between publicly and privately administered/run educational institutions. Interestingly enough this is not the case as we can see in our own survey, as well as in our secondary data. For the countries studied in the survey there is, at the most general level, no dramatic restructuring in terms of privatization in the educational sector. A great majority of the teachers (94 to 99 percent in our material) are employed in public institutions. However, this rather clear-cut result does not totally falsify the hypothesis about a restructuring on a systemic level. It could be, as generally is the case with New Public Management that publicly run institutions follow market principles and can also be subject to competition with privately run institutions. Another possibility of restructuring in the Habermasian terms could be a change in balance between system and life-world, i.e. what generally is known as the colonization of the lifeworld (Habermas, 1989) – one example being decentralised economic responsibility and accountability without substantial influence over strategic decisions. By adapting the normative ideal of communicative reciprocity it is possible to compare the actual situation of employment authority with what teachers regard as the desired situation. We have on this subject replicated questions asked in the so called ‘Wright studies’8, where the respondents were asked by what kind of organisation should various institutions should be run - the choices being: by government; by government and private companies or solely by private companies. It was only a very small minority of teachers that were of the opinion that secondary schools should be exclusively organised by private companies. However, the relative number of supporters of government monopoly of municipality varies between countries – from 49 percent in Sweden to 71 percent in Finland9. Instruments of governance: goals and steering mechanisms. From an empirical point of view the relevance of the systemic angle is obvious when it concerns the educational system as the general goal-setting for the system is done at high political level and not by teachers or other professionals within the educational field. The mediation from the structural level to that of the level of everyday-work is in many ways problematic from a system-theoretical point of view (Lenzen & Luhmann, 1997; Vanderstraetern, 2001). Even from an extreme principal-agent perspective there are several factors obstructing totally predictable implementations. 46

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In the case that there is only a one-way steering from state or market as described here. Habermas would subsume this under the general tendency of the systemworld’s colonisation of the life-world (Habermas 1989). Habermas discusses these aspects not explicitly in terms of steering or governance but in terms of integrative mechanisms, i.e. the state is closely related to the integration mechanism of political power whereas in the alternative aspect of the system-world – the market – money functions as a medium (ibid). The normative alternative – dialogue by reason – is the integrative principle of the life-world and is also closely related to the ideal-typical representation of a profession. A relative high autonomy has been a traditional criterion of a profession, and this implies a high degree of control of goals in the work-situation. This cannot be regarded as a constant situation and there are strong indicators that the situation even for the traditional professions, e.g. in the academia, have undergone a radical change in terms of decreased autonomy and self-control (Jary 2002). The main explicit goals of schools are formulated by politicians, whereas the control of goal fulfilment is generally exercised by special authorities within the educational system. As publicly financed organisations, schools have limited influence over the choice of clients. To the same extent that education is a universal right; all pupils have to be accepted by the system in its totality10. The principle of universality correlates highly with the general legitimacy of the school system, which in its turn is important for its financial resources. The openness of the educational system interacting with various external agents and mechanisms implies a high requirement of adaptability. Such a requirement is further accentuated by the fact that an educational system is often a battlefield for political conflicts and new political majorities often initiates educational reforms. For individual providers of education there is always a risk of losing resources if they do not adapt to external demands. The multifaceted situation and pressure from several agents is one aspect of the educational system. Another aspect that further stresses the complexity of the situation and the strain is the intermediate position between this pressure from ‘above’ and the needs of pupils. This is a position analogous with the ‘grass-root bureaucrat’ (Lipsky, 1980), i.e. a position between state and client that creates conflicts of interests. In our research we have been discussing the working of new forms of goal-setting and steering-mechanisms inspired by ‘New Public Management’, often characterised by indirect steering of financial resources and more specified control-instances. Ultimately it implies a merger of Habemas’ two integration-mechanisms. In the terminology of David Jary, when he speaks of professional control, the colonisation of the life-world could be expressed as a transition from a traditionally self-regulated profession with ‘trust in paternalistic, self-regulating professional provider organizations’ to a mode of ‘expert external audit.’ (Jary, 2002 p. 48). Regardless of whether teachers should be regarded as professionals or semi-professionals - this development is relevant. This general development, portrayed in the project with strong tendencies towards an amalgamation between the political decisions (state) and profit steering 47

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(the market), complicates the simple categorization of the system-world but does not make the distinction between life-world and system-world less relevant. We have so far been discussing the actual forms or mechanisms of goal-setting within the educational system at the most general level - what about the actual outcome of those processes in the concrete work-setting? From an empirical point of view it is highly questionable to assume that all goals implemented are executed in a mechanical and uncomplicated way without being ‘moulded’ by those responsible for the actual contact with pupils. These are practices developed in the social field of education; creating ambiguities and fuzziness. The Social Field of Education The social field according to Bourdieu is a delimited social arena with a hierarchical structure and a struggle for position - the setting where characteristics are evaluated and constructed as symbolic capital (See e.g. Bourdieu 1984). Important characteristics of the social field of education are few hierarchical levels with few opportunities of promotion and a low degree of autonomy. Decisions about what constitutes symbolic capital are primarily made outside the field and not decided primarily through struggles within the field. We thus have a situation where forces in the system-world set many of the standards and rules of the social field of education. Furthermore, educational institutions have to take into consideration not only the interest of the clients (pupils) but also those of the pupils’ relatives, associations of parents etc... Additionally, debates on education are often initiated by the mass media and have great impact as a carrier of political conflicts and diverging interests. The implication of this being that the limited autonomy means that one could question if primary and secondary education satisfies the definitional criteria of social field in Bourdieu’s sense. The fuzziness of the borders of the educational system should however be regarded as an important empirical result rather than a definitional problem. The degree of autonomy should be treated as an empirical variable rather than an a priori defining characteristic. One reason for this is that no theoretically identifiable social field in Bourdieu’s conception can be regarded as a closed system. The restructuring processes might be related to changes in the hierarchical structure, for example: the number of positions and career trajectories and the substance of symbolic capital, the relative value of pedagogic skills versus formal education in specific subjects. The educational system is hierarchically structured, the main structuring principle being the level of education. It follows a homology between the hierarchy among teachers and the hierarchy among school-forms/levels with the consequence that, for example, teachers in tertiary education usually have a longer education, higher status and earn more than teachers in secondary education etc. When discussing the educational system in terms of general functions we mentioned a ratio between socializing-normative and cognitive functions. This ratio is affected by the hierarchical level so that the transmission of cognitive skills becomes more important at higher levels - the implication being that its relation to competing social fields of academia becomes more important11. 48

TEACHERS’ WORKING LIFE UNDER RESTRUCTURING

WHERE THE LIFE-WORLD MEETS THE SYSTEM-WORLD

Supervision and Promotion Supervision and control could be viewed from two directions in the work-life setting, that is to say, one could be subject to supervision and control and one could exercise supervision and control over others. In the survey we asked the question: ‘My work is more controlled and supervised nowadays’ in order to capture the general and subjective experience of control. We found here a large difference between Irish and Finnish teachers, where 72 % of the Irish teachers and only 39% of the Finnish teachers agreed with this statement. The statement of more ‘control’ and ‘supervision’ is easily interpreted as a normative statement with negative content, but this interpretation is not self-evident as will be argued below. Only one third of the teachers agreed with the statement that ‘The non-management employees in my place of work could run things effectively without bosses’ which seem to imply a widespread acceptance of supervisory control. About half of all the teachers in our study stated that their work was more controlled nowadays. Paradoxically they did not, however, think that they were controlled a great deal – as many as nine out of ten stated that they were not even controlled as often as once a week. The fact that teachers’ expressed that they were seldom controlled in an explicit and apparent way means that we have to shift focus to more indirect forms of control. A possible explanation of the fact that a majority of the teachers did not experience control from supervisors as an influential factor in their daily work could be that they understand ‘control’ in a narrow sense, as a direct regulation of their actions from supervisors. This form of control when directed towards professionally educated employees is probably unusual. Control of these groups is often indirect - when a supervisor exercises ‘ideological’ influence and puts resources at the disposal of someone or evaluates his or hers job. In this broader sense, control is merged with leadership and can even in the best of worlds include tutoring and advice. We then have the other aspect of supervision – being in a supervisory position. This is also related to the active aspect of professional habitus. Only one teacher out of four has a supervisory position and there are no differences between countries in this respect. The system of supervision is one side of the organisational structure – it describes control between individuals in the organisation. The promotional system describes another aspect of the organisational structure, namely individuals’ chances of reaching higher positions in organisations step by step12. When we discussed the characteristics of the social field of teachers we found that it had few hierarchical levels. The survey shows that a majority (approximately 75 percent) of the Finnish and Swedish teachers not had been promoted at all, while two out of three Irish teachers had been promoted, at least once. A characteristic of a formal and bureaucratic system13 is that promotion generally is highly correlated to how long individuals have worked in the organization. Our results show that teachers do not work in a bureaucratic organization in the strict ‘Weberian’ sense. The correlation between work-length and rate of promotion exists for the Irish and Swedish teachers but not for the Finnish teachers. 49

SOHLBERG ET AL

Control of Professional Work Life A majority of the items in our study concerned power and control as a matter of subjective estimates and general attitudes. We consider these holistic and subjective experiences as crucial for understanding the life-world of teachers. This is in accordance with the ‘Thomas-theorem’ that emphasises the individual’s interpretations and subjective understandings as crucial for his or her identity and actions (Thomas 1928). However, an acceptance of this theorem does not exclude the importance of the factual conditions. To those factual conditions we regard the influence over major decisions affecting the resources and organisation of the work-place. We will later return to this interface between the life and the system world. Restructuring is a dynamic concept referring to changes over time. The survey technique principally covers only static pictures, but in order to capture possible aspects of restructuring we asked retrospective questions about developments in the social field and the work-situation in general. The respondents were asked to respond to various statements concerning their work and work-situation. This is presented in table 1. Particularly relevant to the description of changes in the social field are questions concerning team-work; documentation; competition; control; demand to explain the work to others and hierarchies14. The general picture is an increase of team-work, demands for documentation as well as a perception of more competition between schools. With regard to hierarchies barely fifty percent of the teachers saw a decrease in hierarchical structures. The social field of teaching seems to have become more conflict-loaded, with harder demands both from external forces (more competition and documentation), and from the inside (more team-work and increased demands for explaining work to other groups). The harder working climate coincides with teachers experiencing that they have lost authority. For the Swedish teachers the difference between the occupational generations is of importance, with the exception of increased competition between schools and the questioning of the professional expertise. For the Finnish and the Irish teachers the importance of occupational generation is minor in terms of the experiences of changing work conditions. Table 1. When you look back to the day when you started to work in your occupation as a teacher – what were your general impressions today, compared with earlier? What do you think of the following statement? (Q_30 percentage agreeing strongly or somewhat) Aspects

The work climate has become more demanding The demand of written documents has increased More team-work nowadays More competition between schools Spending more time explaining work to others 50

Finnish teachers Agree 84 74

Irish teachers Agree 94 95

Swedish teachers Agree 87 88

77

86

79

77 62

82 88

76 68

TEACHERS’ WORKING LIFE UNDER RESTRUCTURING

Table 1. (Continued) My work is more controlled

39

72

54

Work is more routinised nowadays Less of a hierarchy nowadays My education was more appreciated earlier

40 40 35

54 36 51

37 46 43

My professional expertise is more questioned Teachers have achieved more authority

24 8

56 33

23 6

All opinions described above capture general tendencies as perceived by the teachers. It is not necessarily so that they constitute ‘real’ changes. They can also express the ideological climate, and mirror general discourses about changes. Even though the social field of education has a low degree of autonomy and is in the middle of counteracting forces this is nonetheless the relevant context for the construction of symbolic capital. Symbolic capital in the field of education. In the Profknow-project we discussed nurses and teachers professional status in relation to their professional knowledge. For a further elaboration on changes in the profession concept and the politics of professionalization in teaching, see Foss Lindblad & Lindblad (2009). When discussing the status of a given profession the principal view could be regarded as a matter of market position, organizational strength and power of ‘consecration’ (Bourdieu 1984, Weber 1978). Only focussing on organizational strength and the ability to market closure would be too limited, therefore the symbolic value of the professional knowledge also had to be taken into consideration. It should be stressed that the categorization in terms of ‘profession’, ‘professional knowledge’ etc... should not be a normative decision from the social scientists’ point of view. By characterizing knowledge as professional or an occupation as a profession the idea is rather to depict the actual valuations done in the social fields by agents with power to evaluate symbolic capital. Professional knowledge can be analysed from various perspectives of the professional field hierarchy. It could concern the professional habitus from various aspects, for example, the opportunities of update knowledge and career trajectories. An absolute dividing criterion in this aspect is not forms of upgrading and passive collection of information relevant for the field in question, but the opportunity to actually participate in the production of knowledge. In old-fashioned academic theories of stratification (e.g. Davis & Moore 1945) as well as in many a modern discourse of stratification and professional status (Grusky 2008, Scott 1996), a fundamental explanatory variable of income-inequalities and status-hierarchies has to do with the ability of a professional group to have some degree of monopoly over valuable characteristics. This could thus be expressed in terms of necessary properties (though scarce) for the maintenance of the social system (Davis & Moore 1945), social closure (Weber 1978), control of the establishment of symbolic capital in the social field (Bourdieu 1984, 1992). 51

SOHLBERG ET AL

Somewhat superficially this could be summarised as some kind of market-power of the professional group in question. This market-power in its turn concerns the ability of the professional group to control the ‘supply-side’ of the profession in question. Another aspect of the profession’s market power, beside the aspect of scarcity that was highlighted in the above referred article by Davis and Moore, is the functional importance of the properties in question assumed to be part of the profession. An interesting aspect of those crucial characteristics, i.e. symbolic capital in Bourdieu’s terms is their general legitimacy in a wider context rather than in the specific field. When introducing the conception of symbolic capital Bourdieu emphasises social and power-aspects of values, i.e. the valuation of characteristics is seen as the outcome of a social process involving social conflicts in the context of a hierarchy. Symbolic capital as a concept is characterised by its plasticity and its systematic social character, as well involving conflicts in the social field where it is exists. The plasticity has to do with an empirical openness for what characteristics are actually evaluated and rewarded in the specific social field in question. If we now apply the aspect of consecration, or power to form symbolic capital, we find that teachers have an interesting and changing relationship with academia. In the hierarchy of knowledge-production and knowledge-use, primary and secondary schools teachers relate to the knowledge-production in university settings, but their specific competence is more oriented to the pedagogic communication of knowledge to their pupils. Furthermore the research speciality related to teaching has generally nothing specific to do with the various subjects taught in schools but is instead instrumental in the transmission of the information to the pupils and the general conditions surrounding this process. What is then the teachers’ own conception of how their education is appreciated? We asked this question in the retrospective fashion mentioned above. The diachronic aspect of how education is appreciated must be seen partly in the context of the increasing number of people with tertiary education and partly in the context of their own parents’ education. Of the oldest generation of teachers (born 1956 or earlier) only one out of five had at least one of the parents with college or Table 2. My education was more appreciated in the beginning of my working career, divided by working time (Q 30_7) - see the profknow study: http://www.ips.gu.se/profknow

Working 1–10 years Working 11–25 years Working more than 25 years Kendall’s tau b (correlation coefficient)

Finnish teachers (%) Irish teachers (%) Swedish teachers (%) 27 39 24 43 62 50 60 70 75 0.197

0.233

0.403

Only responses agreeing with the statement are presented here (Alternatives: agree somewhat and strongly). Correlations are estimates of all values except ‘cannot decide’. (See Sohlberg et al 2007) 52

TEACHERS’ WORKING LIFE UNDER RESTRUCTURING

university education. Of those born 1970 or later the same was valid for more than 50%. What we witnessed here was teachers’ experiences of devaluation of professional competence over time coinciding with an increase in formal requirements. The Formal Education of Teachers The professional education of teachers is rather homogeneous, but there are variations in the educational systems between countries. A majority of the teachers are nowadays educated at universities and the education of teachers is longer in Finland than in Ireland and Sweden. Twice as many Finnish teachers as Irish teachers and more than four as many Finnish as Swedish teachers have a Masters degree. It is however not only the length of the university education that matters. Having a Master degree implies longer independent exam-work, and each Master student is therefore given an opportunity to work with theoretical issues and have contact with the academic culture. In this context it is interesting to mention that it is also the Finnish teachers who are least convinced that their ‘authority is mostly based on professional education’ (Sohlberg et al 2007). An interesting aspect of the educational system is the dynamic aspect of education, i.e. not focussing only on the educational level at the entrance of the profession. This gives us a picture of the professional status and of the ‘professional capacity’ of the labour market, i.e. the capacity and interest of the labour market in using and assimilating professional developments within an occupational group. This is presented in diagram 1.

Figure 1. Educational dynamics. When teachers received additional higher education15 in relation to the start of their professional career. (See Sohlberg et al 2007 & the profknow study: http://www.ips.gu.se/profknow).

53

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If we study the ‘extreme’ group (those with no higher education either before or after their education as teachers), we find that this group is rather big, except for the Swedish teachers. The interpretation of this is however rather complex. We have seen for example that the educational standard of Finnish teachers is high before they begin their career. Seen in context of current discourses on professionalism and knowledge-society the need of updating knowledge anyhow has to be considered. The implication is that there has been little opportunity for most teachers to upgrade professional knowledge within the traditional academic system. A consequence of this is an increasing distance between the educational system and academia. Criteria for Wage Setting The main material reward in the social field of education is wages. The wage system reveals a lot of information about the social field of an occupation, for example, to what extent meritocratic qualities are emphasised - if we have to deal with formal bureaucratic principles or if there is room for informal or even nepotistic relationships. The system of wage-setting also gives a picture of power relations and how powerful the employees are in negotiations with the employers. The respondents were asked to what extent possible factors could influence people’s rates of pay in their work-place. The alternatives possibly influencing pay rises were the following: If people in a job like mine do good work; depends on how long they have been on the job; get more education or training; have close personal connections to people; depends only on formal position16. The results presented in table 3 in an aggregated form could be described as a kind of fusion between different national wage systems and specific circumstances relevant to the work-place in question. The question was phrased so that respondents gave a general estimation of the principles relevant to their work-place in general. Table 3. Perceived factors influencing pay rise (Q_ 40)

Good work Definitely + probably true Probably + definitely false Don’t know Length of career Definitely + probably true Probably + definitely false Don’t know More education or training Definitely + probably true Probably + definitely false Don’t know 54

Finnish teachers (%)

Irish teachers (%)

Swedish teachers (%)

9 80 11

8 89 3

66 20 14

50 42 8

83 16 3

31 50 19

21 70 8

71 26 3

60 25 15

TEACHERS’ WORKING LIFE UNDER RESTRUCTURING

Table 3. (Continued) Close connections with important people Definitely + probably true Probably + definitely false Don’t know Formal position Definitely + probably true Probably + definitely false Don’t know

10 84 5

11 84 5

39 45 16

75 19 6

77 16 8

19 61 20

Here we find large differences between countries: the Finnish and Irish respondents state that good work does not influence pay rises to a great extent, whereas the majority of the Swedish teachers are of the opposite opinion, emphasising the impact of work performances. The majority of the Finnish and Irish respondents suggested that formal position influences pay rises whereas the Swedish teachers did not share this view. The Finnish teachers stated that more education or training did not result in income rises whereas the Swedish and Irish teachers were convinced that higher qualification by education or training was profitable. Only the Irish teachers thought that career length influenced pay rises considerably. Furthermore, a majority of the Finnish and Irish teachers considered close connections with “important people” in the work-place as an unimportant factor in pay-rises. The implications of our empirical findings could be summarised as follows: if a formal position is the most important factor in pay rise we probably have a formal bureaucratic organisation in a Weberian sense where there are predefined steps in a hierarchical trajectory and where time spent in the organisation probably, but not necessarily, is the crucial factor. Stress on educational efforts is a characteristic of a meritocracy and also in line with the received view of professionalism. The implication of systems rewarding ‘good work’ depends on how transparent the basis for rewards is and by which criteria this is judged. Rewards could be more or less based on nepotism in extreme cases. A decentralised, non-formalised system and accordingly non-transparent system in general makes personal relations more important. A main theme of the project was work-life under systematic change. As a holistic indicator of the experiences of restructuring processes we asked the respondents about their experiences of organisational changes as presented in table 4. There were rather varied experiences of organisational changes between countries: where the Finnish teachers experienced less organisational changes – and between different occupational generations – where younger teachers, not surprisingly, had noted fewer organisational changes in the school.17 It is hardly surprising that the experience of organisational changes escalated with increased career length. The statement that was responded to was in itself normatively neutral. Organizational changes could theoretically imply improvements as well as a deterioration. Our other findings concerned changes in more concrete work-tasks and did however 55

SOHLBERG ET AL

Table 4. I have experienced a lot of organisational changes (percentage) Men

Finland Ireland Sweden

45 82 75

Sex Women

45 78 77

Generation Working as a teacher 11–25 years 48 87 91

Working as a teacher -10 years 23 60 50

Working as a teachers for more than 25 years 69 93 96

Percentage of all who answered ‘‘very true’ or ‘quite true’ (Q 36-3).

indicate that those changes were not experienced as improvements. For the static picture of teachers’ work-life practice we have a detailed picture of actual tasks as well as influencing factors and obstacles (Sohlberg et al 2007). Teachers’ Work in Practice What are then teachers actually doing when working? In diagram 2 below we find a distribution of the main activities. It was obvious that what could be called the basic activities, i.e. teaching, dominated the working day. Furthermore administration and contact with relatives was rather important (with the exception of the Finnish teachers). What was interesting from the perspective of traditional professional habitus is that only a small proportion of the work-time was spent in research activities18. The same applied to trade-union activities19. The idea of a common Nordic model is contested by this distribution of activities. Finnish teachers were, for example, highly professional in a traditional way - that is

Main duties for teachers in Finland, Ireland and Sweden. Percent of all teachers Teacher training Staff management Development Contact with relatives Administration

Swedish teachers Irish teachers

Teaching

Finnish teachers

0

20

40

60

80

100

Percent

Figure 2. Teachers’ presentation of main duties. (See Sohlberg et al 2007 & the profknow study: http://www.ips.gu.se/profknow). 56

TEACHERS’ WORKING LIFE UNDER RESTRUCTURING

to say they concentrated on the main activity of teaching, and spent little time on administration. It is not a part of the standard teacher-habitus presented here to spend a lot of time on upgrading specific academic knowledge, even if some time was spent on development. Also problematic from a professional perspective was that a lot more time was spent on administration than development by Irish and Swedish teachers. In order to capture not just the concrete activities but also the context of teachers’ everyday-life, we asked about factors influencing their work. The results are presented in table 5. Teachers’ general estimate of changes, described above in table 1, and the static perspective of factors influencing daily work were not fully convergent. Even though a great majority stated that the work climate had become more demanding, we can here see that an even larger majority saw their own conception of work as highly influential for their daily work. Furthermore, in contrast to that many teachers stated in general that competition between schools had increased; they did not see competition with other schools as very influential in their daily work. Below we will nuance this picture further when we in detail study teachers’ influence on basic aspects of their work organisation. If we, notwithstanding the double character of structure as restricting as well as enabling (Giddens, 1984), focus on the restricting aspect, we are tracing aspects of the system world in the practice of work life. In order to do this we asked in the survey: Would you say that you meet serious obstacles (i.e. factors hindering you) in the realisation of your own ideas in your work?20 The main finding was that only a tiny proportion of all teachers reported meeting such obstacles at least once a week. On the other extreme there was a much bigger group of teachers who stated that they seldom or never experienced serious obstacles obstructing their own ideas about how their work should be done.21 Another interesting result, with consequences for the interpretation of the social field was that, for Irish teachers, those who had a supervisory position experienced obstacles more often than those with no supervisory position. The implication being a decentralised accountability with limited flexibility related to a control function. Table 5. How much do the following factors influence your daily work? (Q32) Factors Own conception of work Planning with colleagues Opinion of pupils/patients Demand of documentation Evaluation of work The risk of being sued Control of supervisors Mass media coverage Competition with other schools

Finnish teachers 98 56 52 27 35 22 11 11 10

Irish teachers 96 55 42 58 56 24 15 15 14

Swedish teachers 96 71 84 61 46 6 17 9 15

Percentages of those who answered ‘very much’ + ‘rather much’ 57

SOHLBERG ET AL

Control, Participation and Decision-making It has become rather popular to use the works of Michel Foucault (e.g. 1977) in various fields to illustrate diverse oppressive forms of control mechanisms as an important part of the social life and to identify a general trajectory from external control to self-discipline in a transition from government to governance in professional work life22. A problem with a mechanical application of the Foucauldian notion of self-regulation concerns the manifest aspects of control in complex organizational settings. Instead, there is a need to analyse the different practices and frameworks that are part of and used in professional work life by different agents (Fournier, 1999). In this section we will relate our results of teachers’ experiences of control over their work life to actual decision-making concerning a number of structural aspects of schooling and teachers’ work. It is not our ambition to ‘test’ mechanical notions of self-regulation but to show some complexities in constructions of professionalism in organised school work. Seen in contrast with our earlier discussion of how a great proportion of teachers did not think there were any serious obstacles in realizing their ideas, and the absence of external control etc… those figures are really dramatic in the contrasting picture they show. We can also here discern the importance of studying aspects of power and control at different levels. From our earlier description of the educational systems and the high level of political governance it is perhaps not surprising that a small minority of teachers participated directly in the distribution of funds and services delivered by the organization. What is more surprising is that there were relatively few teachers stating that they participated directly in Decisions about changes in method of work. Table 6. Participation in policy decision. Percentage agreeing Q39: 1,2,3,4 See the profknow study: http://www.ips.gu.se/profknow).

Decisions about distribution of funds Participate directly Give advice Decisions about increasing or decreasing of personal Participate directly Give advice Decisions about changes in method of work Participate directly Give advice Decisions about services delivered by organisation Participate directly Give advice

Finnish teachers

Irish teachers

Swedish teachers

21 29

19 21

13 21

5 15

7 6

4 11

26 41

31 39

26 46

12 25

19 32

8 29

The percentage of those who responded ‘no’ i.e. neither participate directly nor give advice is not accounted for here (See Sohlberg et al 2007). 58

TEACHERS’ WORKING LIFE UNDER RESTRUCTURING

If we instead study the complimentary situation we would have an operationalisation of frequent organizational powerlessness concerning vital aspects of the work situation as is shown in table 7. There are differences between countries. With Finnish and Irish teachers there are relatively less in power (35–37%) compared with their colleagues in Sweden (52%). When discussing power one should distinguish between power mainly emanating from individuals (e.g. supervision) and directed mostly at the concrete individual and more structural aspects that is in effect continually during the working day. When we are talking about the kind of decisions mentioned above – we change focus, because these decisions influence simultaneously many individuals working in the same work place and those decisions are in general made infrequently each year but with really long-lasting consequences. In this case power seems to be depersonalised in a Foucauldian sense where power primarily is a ‘force’ - not exercised by a specific intentional agent or subject. If we step up one level in the organizational hierarchy we find that further decisions are made, setting the limitations of the decisions at the concrete work-place. As can be seen in table 7 there are relatively few teachers who have substantial influence over decisions concerning their own work-place. This can be sharply contrasted with ideas about the democratization of work-life and the discourses about the delegation of decisions to the professionals in education restructuring. We have shown two quite different pictures of the working life of teachers in this study. On the one hand teachers present themselves as autonomous professionals in a changing organization. This could be expected given the stress on interaction at work in education as a system (e.g. Vanderstraetern, 2001). What matters for them as individuals were their own ideas and sometimes their cooperation with colleagues and negotiation with students. On the other hand the individual teachers mostly presented themselves as non-participants in organisational decision-making process as having little influence (as could be expected) over the important structuring aspects in their work. Table 7. Powerless: Respondents who neither participate directly in decision nor give advice. Men and women and educational level Generation: Working as teacher for

Sex

Country

Education

Men

Women

Up to 10 years

11–25 years

more than 25 years

College or similar

University

Finland

28

42

43

35

38

43

37

Ireland

25

39

48

36

22

22

38

Sweden

42

57

57

47

54

51

53

Percentage of all who have answered ‘no’ on questions q 39-1, 39-2 and 39-4.

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SOHLBERG ET AL

These results present an interesting paradox in relation to differences in the respective functioning of the life-world and system-world and the relationship between those worlds. Teachers experience a relative professional autonomy in their everyday work life and are problematic to govern from a system point of view. In spite of this relative autonomy we have identified a distance between the teachers and the organized decision-making at the workplace. Thus, the conclusion is that “the professional self ” at work in restructured educational systems needs to be reconceptualized. CONCLUSIONS

The main conclusions from our studies of teachers’ work and life in Finnish, Irish and Swedish contexts are summarised in the following overarching statements: – Firstly, there is a great discrepancy between teachers’ holistic, subjective experience of control of the everyday work-situation and their statements about actual influence on strategic and economic decisions setting the institutional framework of their work. This could be interpreted as merely an inconsistency or methodological artefact. However, the fact that this pattern is highly consistent in our material opens up for a much more interesting and plausible interpretation, i.e. the relative autonomy of teachers’ life-world. – Secondly, we have above introduced the idea of organizational inertia, i.e. what could be described as a tendency of organizations to status quo and non-adaptation to external demands and pressure. From the data we have presented one can interpolate organizational inertia from the fact that teachers perceived changes at the level of system-world does not correspond with perceived changes and obstacles in the life-world. – Thirdly, considering the social field of teaching we found an organizational structure with few promotions and career-trajectories; where teachers production of knowledge applicable in the own field often is missing. From a bottom-up perspective where the systemic level is critically regarded in terms of its capacity to deliver the ‘goods’ in the life-world, the ‘professional capacity’ of the labourmarket to assimilate teachers’ qualifications could be questioned. The demand for formal qualifications has increased, but the actual impact and influence of professional knowledge seem to have decreased. – Fourthly, we found that in the social field of education the power to consecrate symbolic capital is severely restricted; one aspect being that the field is so governed by outside forces that it does not fully satisfy the strict definition of a social field. This is in itself an important empirical finding following from the use of the field-concept as an analytical frame of reference. The fact that we, notwithstanding great complexities, can identify larger differences between the studied countries than between occupational generations within each country shows the importance of international comparisons when analysing educational changes. It also shows the importance of combining an interest in political and organisational issues with research on professional work life experiences – not assuming that education policy, often convergent from the point of view of policy-makers, has direct impact on teaching. From another point of view; the 60

TEACHERS’ WORKING LIFE UNDER RESTRUCTURING

system world is not easily transformed or implemented into the professional world. It seems clear that the overall work situation of teachers ought to be interpreted as the outcome of external forces of educational policy meeting inertia rather than being the consequence of teachers’ active and substantial influence over strategic decisions forming their life-world. NOTES 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8 9

10

11

12

13 14

15

16 17

18

At least 85 percent (Finland) of the teachers have a permanent post and only one to five percent have short temporary contracts. Both main theoretical perspectives used in the following presentation are characterised by relating different structural layers into one integrated model, though with different emphasis. One could argue that the metaphor ‘refraction’ in itself implies something of a top-down perspective where the structural changes, coming from ‘above’ are refracted in the ‘medium of everyday practice’. The other principal factor has simply to do with that the different countries participating in the study represent different historical trajectories. By ‘macro-situation’ we refer here to the all-inclusive perspective embracing the actor’s situation as well as the systemic situation. The idea of colonisation applied in this context would, for example, mean from the aspect of political power and steering mechanisms a one-way steering and control of the actual practices in the everyday working life, with detailed codification of techniques and goals. This is not to say that all intended reforms (manifest functions) make the study of latent functions redundant. As the frequency of articulated goals and ‘bench-marks’ increases these have, however, to be taken into account in the research. See Wright 1997 and 1994. The opinion of Finnish teachers on this matter was neither dependent on generation, sex nor on working in a specific school form (primary respectively secondary. The opinion of Irish teachers in this matter was not dependent on how old they were (generationally) or on which type of school they were teaching. Swedish teachers who were 50 years old or more were more positive about the state monopoly of secondary education than younger ones (58 and41 percent respectively. The difference was statistically significant on 0.00 level). Neither sex nor school form in which Swedish teachers were working influenced their opinion about how secondary schools should be driven. This is in contrast to some more traditional professions, e.g. lawyers. Privately financed schools and health-care could also be exceptions to this principle of universality. It is reasonable to regard primary, secondary and tertiary education as subfields in the general field of education. The interesting paradox would be if in the light of the discourse or rhetoric of life long-learning – there would be no trajectories for promotion in the organisation. There would then be no obvious correspondence between the demands on the individual and the opportunities provided by the organisation. We are not using ‘bureaucratic’ in a normative negative sense but in the Weberian descriptive sense. These items measure more clearly relational aspects and imply social relations in the work-setting and not merely experienced qualities in general. The prerequisite being education at least six months full time at university level to be considered of value in their work as teachers. These questions are replicated from the Wright-studies (See Wright 1997). Differences between generations for Finnish teachers are expressed in Kendall tau b coefficient = 0.350, for Irish teachers = 0.361 and for Swedish teachers = 0.528. The same could be said of traditional professions as e.g. doctors, architects and lawyers. The difference is however that for these professions there is no ‘competing’ occupation in the university systems producing knowledge that should be applied in their practice. For teachers those competing 61

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19 20

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adjacent occupations are those integrated in the university system i.e. academics within the specialist subjects, for example mathematics and language (the cognitive dimension) and pedagogues (practical skills). Those activities are so marginal that they not are included in the diagram. We used a quantitative criterion of at least once per week in order to characterise the obstacles as severe. Those who answered that they seldom or never experience serious obstacles: Finnish teachers - 40%, Irish teachers - 35% and Swedish teachers - 42%. Related to Foucault’s reluctance of universal theories and the post-modern tradition’s emphasis on local knowledge it’s somewhat surprising that these general schemes have become so widespread.

REFERENCES Ahrne, G., & Papakostas, A. (2002). Organisationer, samhälle och globalisering. Tröghetens mekanismer och förnyelsens förutsättningar. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Archer, M. (2003). Structure, agency and the internal conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P., et al. (1991). The craft of sociology: Epistemological preliminaries. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. Bourdieu, P. (1992). The logic of practice. Cambridge & Oxford: Polity Press. Davis, K., & Moore, W. E. (1945). Some principles of stratification. American Sociological Review, 10(2), 242–249. Dent, M., & Whitehead, S. (2002). Introduction: configuring the ‘new’ professional. In M. Dent & S. Whitehead (Eds.), Knowledge, performativity and the ‘new’ professional. London: Routledge. Foss Lindblad, R., & Lindblad, S. (2009). The politics of professionalising talk on teaching. In S. Maarten, M. Olssen, & M. Peters (Eds.), Re-reading education policies: Studying the policy agenda of the 21st century. Rotterdam: Sense Publisher. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the penitentiary. London: Tavistock. Fournier, V. (1999). The appeal to ‘Professionalism’ as a disciplinary mechanism. Social Review, 47(2), 280–307. Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Cambridge & Oxford: Polity Press. Grusky, D. B. (Ed.). (2008). Social stratification. Class, race and gender in sociological perspective (3rd ed.). Colorado, CO: Westview Press. Habermas, J. (1989). The theory of communicative action, Volume 2. Lifeworld and system: A critique of functionalist reason. Cambridge & Oxford: Polity Press. Jary, D. (2002). Aspects of the ‘audit society’. In M. Dent & S. Whitehead (Eds.), Knowledge, performativity and the ‘new’ professional. London: Routledge Studies in Business Organizations and Networks. Kosonen, T., & Houtsonen J. (Eds.). (2007). European nurses’ life and work under restructuring: professional experiences, knowledge and expertise in changing contexts. Deliverable 5, Profknowproject, http://www.ips.gu.se/profknow Layder, D. (2006). Understanding social theory (2nd ed.). London: Sage. Lenzen, D., & Luhmann, N. (1997). Bildung und weiterbildung im erziehungssystem: lebenslauf und humanontogenese als medium und form. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Lindblad, S., & Popkewitz, T. (2004). Educational restructuring: International perspectives on travelling policies. Greenwich: Information Age Publishing. Lipsky, M. (1980). Street-level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public services. New York: Russel Sage Foundation. Mouzelis, N. (1995). Sociological theory: What went wrong. diagnosis and remedies. London: Routledge.

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TEACHERS’ WORKING LIFE UNDER RESTRUCTURING Müller, J., Hernández, F., Sancho, J. Creus, A., Muntadas, M., Larrain, V., et al. (Eds.). (2007). European schoolteachers work and life under restructuring: Professional experiences, knowledge and expertise in changing context. Deliverable 4 Profknow-project. http://www.ips.gu.se/profknow Norrie, C., & Goodson I. (2005). A literature review of welfare state restructuring in education and health care in european contexts: Implications for the teaching and nursing professions and their professional knowledge. Report No. 1 from the PROFKNOW- project. http://www.ips.gu.se/profknow OECD. (2007). Fact book 2007. Paris: OECD Power, M. (1999): The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rubin, D. H. (Ed.). (1993). Explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schein, E. (1985). Organisational culture and leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Scott, J. (1996). Stratification & power. Structures of class, status and command. Cambridge: Polity Press. Scott, R. (1998). Organisations, rational, natural and open systems. UK: Prentice-Hall International. Sohlberg, P., Czaplicka, M., Lindblad, S., Houtsonen J., Müller, J., Morgan, M., et al. (2007). Professional expertise under restructuring: comparative studies of education and health care: The survey study. http://www.ips.gu.se/profknowThomas, W. I. (1928). The child in America. Behaviour problems and programs. New York: Alfred, A. Knop. Vanderstraeten, R. (2001). The school class as an interaction order. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 22(2), 267–277. Weber, M. (1978). Economy and society. An outline of interpretative sociology (Vol. 1, No. 2). Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.

Peter Sohlberg Department of Social Work University of Stockholm Faculty of Social Sciences and Technology Management Norwegian University of Science and Technology Magdalena Czaplicka Department of Social Work University of Stockholm Sverker Lindblad Department of Education University of Gothenburg

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JÖRG MÜLLER, CAROLINE NORRIE, FERNANDO HERNÁNDEZ, JUANA M. SANCHO, AMALIA CREUS AND VERÓNICA LARRAÍN

5. EUROPEAN SCHOOLTEACHERS’ WORK AND LIFE UNDER RESTRUCTURING Professional Experiences, Knowledge and Expertise in Changing Contexts

INTRODUCTION

This chapter was written using data produced as part of an EU-funded project, Professional Knowledge – Restructuring Work and Life between the State and Citizens in Europe (Profknow). This project aimed to compare educational restructuring in seven countries (England, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Finland and Sweden). The Profknow project juxtaposed policy narratives of restructuring with primary teachers’ own work-life narratives of reform. This comparison highlighted the extent to which policy narratives were accepted, contested or resisted by teachers in each national context. This was a way of exploring how restructuring policy narratives have influenced teachers at the chalkface or have simply been refracted at various levels in the different national contexts. Examination of policy narratives highlighted how deregulation, marketisation, privatization and commercialization have been a reality to different degrees for northern European welfare institutions since the 1980s. This could be seen in Sweden, Ireland and Finland and above all England. In contrast, narratives of welfare roll-out, Europeanization and democratization have marked the trajectories of the southern welfare states of Spain, Greece and Portugal. The result of this is that in Northern Europe, restructuring policy narratives are associated with a decline in public provision while in the Southern countries, they are linked with a growth in services. Whereas the northern countries started to build their welfare states after WWII, in the southern countries this process started later. Welfare roll-out in the south gained momentum precisely when the northern and continental European reference models entered into crisis from the 1970s onwards. The southern countries are still well below EU average public expenditure in education and have thus never reached the standards of the northern and “older” welfare states now affected by “restructuring” (Adelantado & Calderón, 2006). Whereas in England or Sweden teachers’ day to day experiences were influenced by policy inspired by market forces narratives, in Spain or Portugal – recent government Neoliberal reform narratives were viewed as more rhetorical rather than influencing classroom practice. Greece is an exception and an interesting case. Here parents have acquired an influential position in schools—in terms of financial I.F. Goodson and S. Lindblad, (eds.), Professional Knowledge and Educational Restructuring in Europe, 65–79. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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support—which allows them to see their relation to schools primarily as clients. Meanwhile Finland and Ireland demonstrated their own idiosyncratic trajectories of reform. Whatever the governmental policy narratives, close examination of the teachers’ own work-life narratives highlights how wider societal and economic transformations (such as the move to a knowledge society, changes in women’s work and increased commercialization of society) are interacting with teachers’ everyday lives (Norrie & Goodson, 2005; Beach, 2005). The investigation of primary teachers, ‘situated between the state and the citizen’, offers a window on the larger picture of welfare restructuring and relations with professionals and their knowledge. This chapter will outline the Profknow project’s methodological approach. This will be followed by cross-national analysis of primary teachers’ work-life narratives. METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH

A life history approach connects the personal narratives or biographies of teachers with the wider socio-cultural and historical context (Goodson, 1998; Cary, 1999; Goodson & Sikes, 2001). Inter-generational analysis was used as a strategy for exploring how reforms interact with professional identities over time (Mannheim, 1952). Professionals belonging to different generations were chosen as research participants: early career teachers (around 1 to 5 years of experience), mid-career teachers (around 10–15 years of experience), and experienced teachers (with around 30 years of experience). This approach highlighted the varying identities, opinions and outlooks of cohorts of teachers with different experiences of reform. In each country three primary teachers belonging to different generations were selected working within one case-study school. Teachers’ life stories were captured by way of two interviews with each participant. The first interview was held in a semi-structured and open manner, the second interview investigated emerging issues as well as questioning discrepancies or omissions. Interviews were recorded and transcribed and in most cases lasted between 40 minutes to 1½ hours. Each teacher was also work shadowed for three days. The field-notes produced during observations were converted to “ethnographic descriptions” (Atkinson & Hammersley, 1994) and used to contextualize and compare the teachers’ life story narratives. The interview data and the observational notes were analysed according to a thematic grid that was derived from the general theoretical position of the project and work carried out during the previous stages of Profknow (Beach, 2005; Norrie & Goodson, 2005). The analytic-thematic grid provided the structure for interim written reports delivered by each member country partner. In addition, focus groups (Morgan, 1988; Kreuger, 1988) were held in each country with teachers from another school, (except Finland, where a fourth teacher was interviewed and shadowed). The focus groups aimed to examine to what extent emerging working hypothesises were supported by teachers in different working contexts. Drawing conclusions or making generalisations from such a small sample group would evidently be impossible. Rather, the data was viewed as personal, situated examples which might point to wider issues in the national contexts. When we 66

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refer in the following chapter to the different case studies by their country name this is not intended to represent the overall situation in each country but rather to identify the research carried out in each context. A PROFILE OF SCHOOLS & PARTICIPATING TEACHERS

This section aims to provide greater detail of the case-study schools and teachers in the seven Profknow project countries. All the schools were public primary institutions, located in urban settings. The socio-economic contexts were middle to lower working class environments. The schools’ size spanned a wide range: from approximately 160 students in Spain and Greece up to 900 students in the case of Ireland. The multi-cultural nature of the schools also differed, with ethnic minorities making up different proportions of the student body, for example Ireland (30%), Spain (80%), or Sweden (90%). School infrastructures varied widely between the institutions with Finland, England and Sweden being described as relatively “luxurious” in terms of buildings and equipment in comparison to the situation in Portugal, Spain or Greece where school facilities were lacking for example in sports equipment or ICT infrastructure. Overall 22 primary teachers (three per country and four in Finland) participated in our study, as well as an additional 25 teachers and 3 teaching assistants who were involved in the focus groups. The distribution of sexes—18 women and 4 men— mirrors the increasing feminization of the profession in primary and secondary teaching across Europe (Eurydice, 2005:235). The age of teachers spanned the “whole” range, the youngest being 22 years old (Ireland), up to 65 years (Sweden). Working experiences did not always correspond to age groups. In Sweden and England, for example teachers were in-and-out of their work, for example one Swedish teacher was 38 years old and in her first year of working in a school. This inevitably brief and reductionist account of the participating schools and teachers offers a snapshot of the research. Detailed case-study descriptions are available across the different national reports (Müller et al., 2007). A CROSS-NATIONAL ANALYSIS OF PRIMARY WORK-LIFE NARRATIVES

The remainder of this chapter will present the work-life narratives of primary teachers’ 1) changing experiences (commonalities and differences) 2) changing knowledge and 3) professional re-configuration in the seven case studies of Sweden, England, Ireland, Finland, Spain, Greece, and Portugal. 1) Teachers’ Common Narratives of Changing Working Conditions Common narratives were identified from the teachers’ work-life stories around the following areas: a) students have become more demanding b) increasing diversity of pupils; c) relations with parents have changed and d) teachers’ prestige and status has declined over the generations. 67

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a) More demanding students. A common work-life narrative expressed by teachers across the age, gender and experience boundaries, outlined how over the years, it has become increasingly difficult to maintain discipline and order in class due to more demanding students. This situation was viewed as occurring with different speeds and intensities in the different national contexts. In England for example, this state of affairs was discussed as occurring from the 1980s, whereas in Spain it was viewed as a more recent process. Teachers offered various explanations for the changes in children’s behaviour. In the English case, teachers’ attributed the rise of more demanding students to wider changes in society - commercialization, marketisation and disintegrating family structures. The Greek teachers primarily refer to the lowering of class barriers as the main cause of a changing student profile. Especially in Greece, where parents have come to play a decisive role in the educational configuration, the lack of discipline is seen as forming part of the larger picture of loss of respect towards teachers, as the following quote demonstrates: “I believe that in general teachers’ social prestige has been lost…in the past, if my parents were in disagreement with a teacher’s practices …they would not allow us to oppose the teacher, to disagree and come into open conflict with him, (our parents) would never allow the child to criticise the teacher.” (GR-T1) The Swedish teachers discussed the increasing lack of discipline and how the effort required to establish a sort of “ordered” and “calm” atmosphere in class was increasingly harder to achieve. In Portugal, these differences in student behaviour are mapped in terms of an urban-rural dichotomy. Even in the Finnish case (where teachers reported satisfaction with their working conditions reflecting the outsiders’ picture of a “successful” education system) teachers mentioned that students have become more talkative. The identification of this narrative leads to the questioning of the traditional model of teaching and learning. Teachers did not discuss that student discipline may be connected not only to issues of changing societal and family relations and working patterns, but also to the failure of schools to change enough themselves in the face of a radically altered, IT-knowledgeable, media-savvy generation of pupils. b) Increased student diversity. A related key theme arising from the primary teachers’ work-life narratives was the increase in student diversity. There exist huge national differences in provision, assessment and funding of special needs children in Europe (Eurydice, 2005:129). Teachers’ narratives however across the Profknow countries were full of references to issues around the increased SEN numbers of children in school. In addition, increasingly there are more children whose first language is not that of the member state. Inclusive education was viewed by the teachers as problematic with teachers complaining about the lack of training in integrating pupils with special needs. The following quote from Portugal is illustrative. “I don’t mean to say that we were against them [SEN students], we were against the way they were integrated ... because the children showed up in the school and there were no teachers to support them and no one knew how that was 68

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going to be done. [...] in the beginning, it was awful (...) it was insane, because they [the pupils] were supposed to be integrated full-time, as if they were exactly the same as the other pupils, it was... it almost drove us crazy.” (PT-T1) The narrative of increased student diversity was articulated differently according to the local and national contexts. The Irish, Finnish and English teachers talked of the increased identification of SEN children and the additional preparation time required to differentiate lessons in order to cater for a diversity of needs. In the English case one teacher highlighted the government rhetoric of inclusion of SEN children compared to the reality at the chalkface of disturbed children disrupting a whole class for four years. In the Swedish and Greek contexts learning difficulties were seen in terms of the relationship between the school and parents. In Portugal, as mentioned, teachers especially bemoaned the lack of official support structures for integrating SEN pupils and the personal stress this caused. Meanwhile in Spain and Greece immigration is a relatively new social situation and services for children whose first language is not that of the home country are not well developed which was an issue for teachers. Consequently changes in the pupils were viewed through this lens especially in the Spanish context. In summary, a narrative of having to teach an increasingly diverse population of students was identified, although this was articulated in a variety of ways in the different school contexts. c) Relations with parents. Relations with parents constitute another significant, common point of change in teachers’ work-life narratives. Parents in general have become more assertive, demanding a greater role in the education of their children. The rise of the parent-as-consumer policy narrative could be identified across the Profknow countries—although working in different ways and with different intensities according to the national context. The Greek case is paradigmatic for this neo-liberal, consumerist, “parentocracy” (Brown, 1990) narrative. While in the past Greek teachers were cautious about the scrutiny of the inspectorate and the administrative hierarchy, today their main concern is the scrutiny of the parents. A quote from the mid-career teacher in Greece demonstrates this changing relationship with parents. “You should keep the parents at a certain distance, in order for them to respect you. Otherwise, they do not respect you. They consider that you are similar, like them, or even inferior to them. [] If you don’t try, you will loose the game. [...] everything we do, we “write” in front of the parents: through our appearance, in the way that we speak, by the work that we do, the photocopies that we distribute, from the appearance that the children’s exercise books have.” (GR-T2) In England, the introduction of the right for parents to express a preference in school choice combined with compulsory testing, targets and internet-available league tables means parents have gained more power in relation to teachers. Swedish legislation has also introduced increased parental power, in this case via a voucher system which created a consumerist element to the system and obliged teachers to explore new methods of parent-school involvement as a way of keeping pupil numbers up. 69

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In Ireland the cooperation with parents had a clear professional dimension in being tied to a remuneration scheme. Maintaining good relations was seen from a pragmatic point of view and valued as benefiting the child: “I just think it is so important to develop and maintain a good relationship with parents. You don’t have to be a friend to them, but courteous and respectful. I often say to parents at our open meetings at the beginning of the year, ‘Look, we are both here for the same reason. YOUR CHILD. We both want the best for him/her so let’s work together to make it happen.” (IR-2) In contrast, in the Spanish and Portuguese cases, parents form part of school life but play a much less decisive role in teachers’ everyday practice. Again, it was Finland where the most positive narratives were found. Here two of the Finnish teachers reported quite passionately the positive relations they had established with their students’ parents. Although in Finland cooperation was required by the national curriculum, in general parents did not occupy a very “threatening” role. d) Loss of status, prestige, respect. Examination of teachers’ work-life narratives found a common concern over a perceived falling of professional prestige over time. Teachers from across the cases mentioned this loss of respect and the increased media public criticism of the profession. Literature suggests this negative self-perception might in reality be at odds with more positive accounts available through general surveys on teachers’ status and respect (Eurydice, 2004:7). However, across Europe rising educational standards, and falling of class barriers mean the relative decrease of the historically privileged situation of teachers. As an Irish teacher noted, “Very few of the parents would have been to secondary school or passed their Junior Cert themselves so they would have been in awe of anybody who did go to college but now there’s so many people going to college there isn’t the same distinction.” (IR-3) Although Irish teachers were quite sceptical concerning their status in the eyes of the public, a recent OECD (2006) report indicates, Irish teachers are held in relatively high esteem. However, it is possible that recent industrial conflict (involving prolonged and difficult negotiations over salaries) and a changing economy have damaged the public perception of teachers, especially in the secondary sector. A similar situation was described in Finland. Finnish teachers complained about their loss of status but according to Simola (2005:458ff) they are well appreciated by the public, enjoying high levels of social trust together with members of the political and economic elite—quite to the contrary of their own self-perceptions. The Greek case presented the most extreme situation of public attacks on teachers. The Greek teachers analysed the situation in terms of a rising, questioning, middle class, modernization of society and the waning of traditional (family) values combined with the expansion of consumerist ideologies, fuelled by a public discourse on the malfunctioning of public services. The Portuguese case, adds again the specific urbanrural dimension, where teachers’ status was perceived as higher in past times in rural areas and was perceived to be under attack currently in urban environments. 70

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In the English case the primary teachers described how their falling status started under Thatcherism when they were publicly attacked in the media for poor teaching standards and protracted strikes for improved conditions ended in humiliating defeat. In addition, teachers mentioned how increasingly media panic over paedophilia discouraged men from entering primary teaching. Overall, the teachers’ narrative of loss of status and prestige was one of the strongest motifs arising from this research. No matter which school or country, teachers expressed a feeling they were increasingly working in an atmosphere where their professional status was in decline and influenced by media blaming campaigns targeting them. 2) Teachers’ Diverging Narratives of Changing Working Conditions So far we have described the common narratives of changing working conditions. The following section explores diverging concerns over working conditions. When it comes to changes in a) accountability and b) curriculum reform, teachers in the Profknow case-study schools reported quite differently. a) Accountability. Governments across the Profknow countries use policy narratives around the increasing accountability of teachers via increased governance-byresults. Teachers’ work-life narratives however demonstrate the wide diversity in the systems of accountability in place. In England, teachers worked within a highly prescriptive system where their performance was highly directed, monitored and evaluated. In this context, the teachers’ narratives were full of references to being held accountable at many levels – via the inspection agency (OFSTED) and their students’ internet-accessible test results as well as through new performance related pay schemes and increased demands for documentation. In contrast, in Spain, the head-teacher noted an increase in “paper work” but rather viewed it as an empty gesture. This view was confirmed in the focus group as the following quote shows: “There is a lot of absurd paper work, useless which takes up a lot of time [...] you just photocopy and that’s it. Who is going to look at all this? This is just impossible. Where does this go to? What is it good for?” (ES-T6) The Greek case is different again. Official inspection or accountability to external educational authorities is missing as in the Spanish and also the Portuguese cases. However, the existence of a very prescriptive curriculum combined with the role of parents as source of control nevertheless, established a very tight regime of accountability. In Sweden the teachers noted the introduction of the “Balanced Scoreboards” within their city district to allow public comparison of schools. However this system of accountability was not yet fully developed in the Swedish case-study school and teachers were resistant to aiding its implementation by collecting data. The Swedish teachers only took documentation seriously when it came to reporting on the SEN 71

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or when claiming additional resources for pupils—but not in terms of controlling their performance. Likewise, the Irish teachers also noted the new situation requirement of filling in extensive documentation especially to gain resources for SEN pupils. b) Curriculum reform. Curriculum reform is another area where teachers’ experiences diverge to a large degree. The teachers’ narratives are characterized by a diverse European map of curriculum reform revealing a range of changes in objectives and practices over time. Curriculum reform has played out in distinctive and diverse ways in the different national contexts and teachers’ experiences of this demonstrate even wider variation. Whereas one might expect a correlation between positive versus negative evaluations of reform depending on the resulting changes in professional autonomy, the evidence pointed in other directions. The English teachers, for example, appreciated retrospectively what was viewed as an increase in professionalism due to the National Numeracy and Literacy strategies. The highly prescriptive curriculum (although originally criticised) was in retrospect seen as helping establish a common vocabulary between colleagues while at the same time bringing “real skills” improvements for teachers. “The Literacy hour and Numeracy hour was for a couple of years and although they had their place, actually it frustrated us all, […] Looking back now though I can see that actually from a skills point of view for the teachers, we taught the Numeracy and Literacy hours so specifically that we now have a huge amount of knowledge and from the children’s benefit it is actually a good idea [...]” (EN-T5) As the experienced English teacher (T1) states, “[...] once we’d shaken off the kind of straight-jacket syndrome the Strategies proved quite helpful”. Loss of teaching autonomy was not necessarily described as negative. The Finnish teachers described curricular change towards a more open and flexible framework in quite neutral terms. The resulting increase in autonomy also meant an increase in additional tasks such as extending the curriculum and additional documentation. So the increase in professional autonomy was not enthusiastically embraced by the Finnish teachers. Increased liberty was viewed as an additional burden as described by a related study (Webb et al., 2004:90). However, the decisive point significantly seems to be that the Finnish teachers enjoyed sufficient personal autonomy to either engage in the additional tasks or not. Ireland provides a different picture in the sense that the recent curricular reform is embraced by the teachers (from the youngest to the most experienced). There were however varying interpretations on whether the current Revised Curriculum gives rise to more flexible and open practice. The case of the Greek teachers provides yet another configuration. The curriculum is highly prescriptive but this is neither experienced as especially empowering or having a negative impact on the working conditions and autonomy. Rather, it is quite naturally accepted as it is, despite the fact that most teachers emphasized the stress they suffer during their work day. 72

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If there is some convergence between the different cases including especially Portugal, Spain and England, then it is with regard to “tiredness” of reform. Portuguese teachers in theory have a flexible and open curriculum, adaptable to their local school needs. However, the reforms are qualified as “just words” in the same way that Spanish teachers reject recent reform as misconceiving the real needs of schools. In England, the more recent trends such as New Labour’s National Primary Strategy (2003) are seen as a return to earlier teaching methods or “coming full circle”. In Spain, teachers reported on the one hand on the high impact of the LOGSE (Organic Act on the General Arrangement of the Educational System, approved in 1990) which established the structure of primary and secondary education. Recent changes introduced in educational policies however were just seen as cosmetic modifications reflecting the ideological preferences of the political party in power rather than reaching the deeper social issues involved. In sum, how curriculum reforms are experienced by teachers depends to a strong degree on the history of the profession and the relevant cultural context of each case. There is no uniform relation between the type of reform and teachers’ experience. However, a certain “policy-fatigue” was shared amongst a wide range of the participating teachers. 3) Changes in Teachers’ Knowledge Policy narratives across Europe highlight the move to a knowledge society with importance being placed on lifelong learning (Norrie & Goodson, 2005). It should not be too surprising however that teachers’ own work-life narratives around their professional knowledge are more focused on to issues already mentioned as well as offering oppositional discourses around standards in initial and in-service training. In addition, changes in opportunities to learn from colleagues were discussed. Teachers in Ireland, Portugal, Greece, and Sweden described the lack of tools and teaching techniques that would enable them to provide very diverse students with the same possibilities of advancing and learning. Especially in the case of Ireland, but also in Sweden and Portugal the lack of special needs training was sharply criticized. The teachers in the Spanish case were more specific—they saw that more knowledge of child psychology probably would help them. They also were quite explicit that more knowledge in group dynamics and social cohesion would be helpful. The Greek teachers mentioned a need for practical tips of “what” and “how to do in class” in order to achieve and maintain a predictable work routine explicitly rejecting theoretical knowledge. The need for new strategies in relation to other “new” members in the school context was also brought up by some participants. In Sweden, for example, strategies to deal with the municipality were sought as well as help with parent involvement. The Irish teachers as well as the Greeks described relations with parents as a new variable of their work, which made them feel insecure. The English teachers discussed how increased self-management in schools and inter-agency working meant dealing with new roles such as the school bursar or teaching assistants. In addition, at the risk of oversimplification, the teachers’ narratives demonstrated a struggle to know what teaching and education entails in today’s society. This was 73

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highlighted in the Finnish case where participants questioned the line between “teaching” and “educating” children. Whereas “teaching” refers more to the simple transmission model of knowledge, the “educational” model is more encompassing as it concerns moral education, fairness, equity and justice. As the teachers claimed, increasingly they needed to know “a little bit of everything”. The Finnish, Spanish, English and Swedish teachers all posed the question of where to draw the line in the division of labour—and thus required knowledge. Depending on which responsibilities teachers were willing to take on (and which were abdicated by families) notions of professional knowledge and skills varied highly. Initial education. Governmental policy narratives often focus on the upgrading of teachers’ education and knowledge as part of a knowledge arms-race within the global economy (Norrie & Goodson, 2005). In contrast, the teachers’ work-life narratives often offered critical opinions on their initial education. In all participating countries, access to the profession is now tied to a higher education degree. The quality of higher education and the relationship between theoretical academic knowledge and practical competencies however were raised as problematic especially in Portugal, Spain and Greece. The following quote from the Spanish early career teacher asked to evaluate her initial training is illustrative “The other day they called me from the university. []’We’re doing a survey’. [] And the guy asked me, ‘Well, from one to ten, [how] would you mark the education you’ve received?’ []… And I realized I was marking with 3, 4… [] The guy was like this: ‘Bloody hell! You didn’t like it much, did you?’ And I said, ‘You can be sure that if I decide to start studying again I won’t go back to your university.’ [] Super-boring… Only the classes with musicians were fun. [] But when we were doing didactics of everything, and they were like super-boring didactics. So bad. We didn’t do practical classes until the last year. I mean, very badly organised.” (ES-T1) Many of the teachers stressed the fact that the actual learning happened on the job, in the practice of working with pupils. This not only refers to actual class work but also to organizational procedures and administrative issues. The judgements vary of course between the individual teachers but always rather within the negative spectrum. On the job and in-service training. Congruent with the rather low opinion on initial education was the description of learning primarily on the job. What differs across the countries is not the importance that teachers attribute to learning on the job but rather the degree to which this was facilitated or backed up by formal procedures. The English teachers maybe provide an extreme case of plentiful in-service opportunities, where one teacher even noted that excessive skills training actually interfered with her teaching. In contrast, the Spanish teachers described the difficulty of receiving in-service training that does not fit the standardized courses, at the same time they underlined the necessity and importance of external experts coming into the school instead of sending staff off to individual courses. In Portugal a massive national upgrading program has been put in place recently in order to update the training of those mature teachers in the system that lacked a licenciatura (university 74

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degree). However teachers were now criticizing not the availability of courses but their low quality and irrelevance for their teaching practice. Likewise the Greek teachers criticised in-service training as not very useful including their similar “academic equation” programme. In Finland, three days of training annually are required by a collective labour agreement. Teachers here complained that this type of training is not necessarily or practically useful. What the Finnish class teachers call for is, as they put it, “applicable” and “useful” knowledge. This analysis highlights the diverse opinions offered on in-service training, throughout the national reports. Learning from colleagues. Policy narratives discuss flexible team working as a feature of the knowledge society. The work-life narratives also brought to a fore the issue of changing collegial collaboration. In some countries new staff roles such as SEN specialists, teaching assistants, Learning Support Assistants, or Leisure Time Pedagogues (Sweden, England, Ireland) among others have come into the schools, changing the positionality of teachers. Different mentoring schemes were also in evidence. For example in Ireland, government legislation means senior staff are obliged to tutor younger teachers and collaboration was clearly inscribed in the curricular reform (Revised Curriculum, 1999 together with the Primary Curriculum Support Programme). Class level meetings and other formal measures such as reserved time (within school hours) for meeting between colleagues are guaranteed. In England team-teaching and increased staff co-operation are a feature of the changing school landscape. The Finnish teachers showed a high degree of collaboration between colleagues. It forms part of their professional culture, albeit it is not required. Finnish teachers enjoy the freedom to engage in close planning, preparation and teaching but this is not compulsory. The Spanish situation made it clear that staff collaboration depends highly on the people involved and does not involve formal procedures (a similar situation was described in the case of Sweden). In Portugal and Greece especially a picture was created of collaboration with teachers remaining on the level of ad hoc exchanges that do not really manage to make any dent in what is still a very individualistic profession. Teachers reported learning a lot from their colleagues but this knowledge remained highly personal and did not travel within the wider institutional context of the school or the system. Thus although individual teachers learn, their knowledge largely remains locked-in; it does not get inserted into the formal mechanisms of teacher education or in-service training where experienced teachers would feed back into the education of the new generations of teachers. Besides these different types of collegial interaction, one can also describe the varying atmospheres among staff. The most competitive situation was described in the Greek report. Whereas at the other end of the scale the Finnish teachers report a very flat hierarchy based on discussion and shared responsibilities. In the Greek school, a hierarchical situation was described where the head delegated decisions without discussion, in a climate of competition. Here a Greek teacher explains: “There are frequently intense situations created between colleagues. Unfortunately we have the situation that if one tries to do something more than 75

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the other, it is as if we would take a medal, or we would gain some reward…. A lot of times, certain colleagues do not collaborate with each other, when they have the same class…Each one tries to make whatever he can from his own side, to show himself as a good teacher, and he doesn’t collaborate with the other colleague, in order to make a name just for himself. To be distinguished by the parents. And in front of the director...” (GR-T1) A sort of superficial cooperation was also observed in the English case. The standardized Strategies have implemented a common language between teachers facilitating exchange of teaching units—but as one teacher remarked, this should not be confused with school solidarity within the teaching staff. Several teachers commented they had too much paperwork to spend time interacting with other colleagues. The English teachers also allude to the tensions that can build up between teachers and different assistant positions where age can clash with qualification (younger but higher qualified teachers versus older but less qualified assistants). 3) Professional Re-configuration At this point, the teachers’ work-life narratives of professional re-configuration will be explored. How restructuring and teachers’ professional knowledge is related the re-configuration of the teaching profession in the different national contexts? Responding to this question will weave a further layer into our understanding of primary teachers’ knowledge at work. As the teachers’ accounts demonstrate, there exist a variety of professional ideals. Professional re-configurations are more varied than being reducible to deprofessionalization or professionalization trends. In societies where parents and pupils are changing, increasingly there are tensions between those teachers who orient their goals around a more traditional vocational, social service model versus those who adopt more openly a performative view of their occupation with an emphasis on efficiency and managerial skills. This is well documented in the literature between “democratic” vs. “managerial” (Sachs, 2001) or “social service” vs. “commercialised professionalism” (Hanlon, 1998). Clearly, the English teachers confirmed that their knowledge has shifted towards compliance with government directives and documentation. Although the English teachers may have had some reservations about the development towards a more standards driven practice, it has become reality. Retrospectively the teachers grudgingly support many of the changes and see them as creating a more accountable, modern, professional teaching force. This is the extreme example however, the other Profknow countries describe re-configuration as a less violent process. In the Swedish or Spanish experience, this turn to a managerial understanding of the profession is quite remote. The midcareer teacher in Sweden noted, “Teacher: I am very concerned about the children, that they should feel well, and feel happy in school. I have seen this as number one, and I still do, Interviewer: Nothing has changed? Teacher: No” (SW-T2) 76

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Taking into account the challenging situations of the Spanish (as well as Swedish) school, professional ideals of these teachers were oriented towards making a difference in the harsh conditions that define the reality of the school and the neighbourhoods. The tensions and conflicts between the children foreground the social relations in the work of teachers; academic content and possible performance measures come in second. Knowledge was seen as being rooted in the challenging situation of the school and primarily concerned with how to guide or re-conduct social dynamics and social cohesion. Rather than being concerned with attainment results, Spanish and Swedish teachers were struggling with questions of social cohesion and how to guarantee a sufficiently supportive environment where learning could happen. Learning and being a professional was primarily seen in the Swedish and Spanish context as being tied to an open process of individual and collective self-reflection (Schön, 1983). Teachers did however have the possibility to take their own decisions and become an active agent for educational reform and societal change. The Finnish and the Irish cases could be cited as further examples where teachers enjoy a “certified” high level of autonomy for organizing their work. What stood out as the defining feature of the Finnish case was precisely the individual freedom of teachers to decide on their practice together with the headmaster of the school. In contrast again however, stands the case of Greece. Here, it is the increase in parentpower that has been influential in the re-configuration of teachers’ work-lives. In closing this section it is important however to underline that these dualities between “managerial” versus “social service” oriented models of the profession do not say anything about how the involved teachers value the implied levels of autonomy and control. Teachers’ voices make clear that simple dichotomies between the “good” and desirable “social service,” democratic model versus the coercive, managerial and repressive professionalization “from above” are hard to maintain. Teachers are themselves a heterogeneous group that come to appreciate the different sides of the coin. Teachers do not always desire more autonomy. “Yet, just as autonomy can be harnessed as a form of control or steering, so control can enable the exercise of autonomy. [...] there is a real sense in which rules and procedures, for example, can be facilitative” (Cribb & Gewirtz, 2007:210). As already mentioned, the Finnish case indicated that the higher responsibility of an increase in autonomy can be experienced as additional burden (Webb et al., 2004:92). And the other way around: as observation in the school in Catalonia made apparent, teachers’ autonomy can also be misused in terms of passive resistance to agendas of change. CONCLUDING REMARKS

This chapter aimed to report on primary teachers’ work-life narratives of change over time. The 22 biographical case studies opened up a wide variety of different experiences, exposing the highly individual and personal stories of each of the participants. At the same time, despite the very diverse biographies involved it was also possible to single out common patterns across Europe. Teachers seem to share a certain range of core concerns which indicate modifications in their professional expertise. How to secure learning when faced with an increasingly demanding, 77

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heterogeneous student population, how to negotiate changing relations with children and parents and how to deal with the “imagined” or “real” loss of a previously takenfor-granted status traverses all cases. These primary concerns draw our attention to schools that have altered profoundly due to the changes in students. Students come to school now with social problems which teachers did not have to take care of before. They have to be prepared to take care of these new necessities and policy reform finds it problematic treating these issues as they cannot be resolved purely in schools—if they can at all be resolved even at the level of national policies. In the past teachers felt more secure of their professional mission (to teach reading and writing and to facilitate selection and social mobility). These demands have changed and teachers have had to re-configure themselves. Part of teachers’ work is now to educate and equip children for an insecure future with respect to work and knowledge. Analysis of the teachers in the different European contexts highlighted how the individuals, the profession and governments are responding to these similar wider societal changes through similar and diverging educational reform measures. The Profknow project juxtaposed policy and work-life narratives of restructuring. This highlighted the strong variation in how reforms have interacted with teachers over time across the national cases. England is exemplary of a context where there is tight knitting between authoritative intervention and concrete working conditions. Policy narratives are closely coupled with work-life narratives. On the other hand, we have cases such as Portugal or Spain where policy exists but does not travel to teachers practice as neatly. There exist considerable margins to interpret, accommodate and engage with state policy. In these cases the variety and differences with which teachers recounted their experiences of “restructuring” make it questionable to speak of “a” single process. In these cases policy narratives are viewed as de-coupled from work-life narratives. In the case of Finland policy narratives have had little impact on government policy and teachers have not encountered strong reform. Between these extremes, Sweden, Ireland, and Greece followed their own trajectories with some reforms being more closely related to teachers’ professional reconfiguration than others. REFERENCES Adelantado, J., & Calderón, E. (2006). Globalization and the welfare state: The same strategies for similar problems? Journal of European Social Policy, 16(4), 374–386. Atkinson, P., & Hammersley, M. (1994). Ethnography and participant observation. In N. Denzing, & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research. (pp. 248-261).London: Sage. Beach, D. (2005). (Ed.), Welfare state restructuring in education and health care: Implications for the teaching and nursing professions and their professional knowledge. Report No 2 from the Profknow project, http://www.ips.gu.se/profknow Brown, P. (1990). The ‘third wave’: Education and the ideology of parentocracy. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 11(1), 65–85. Cary, L. (1999). Unexpected stories: Life history and the limits of representation. Qualitative Inquiry, 5(3), 411–427. Cribb, A., & Gewirtz, S. (2007). Unpacking autonomy and control in education: Some conceptual and normative groundwork for comparative analysis. European Educational Research Journal, 6(3), 203–213. Eurydice. (2004). Keeping teaching attractive for the 21st century. Report IV - The teaching profession in Europe: Profile, trends and concerns. Brussels: Eurydice. Retrieved online November 13, 2006, from http://www.eurydice.org/ressources/eurydice/pdf/0_integral/043EN.pdf 78

EUROPEAN SCHOOL TEACHERS’ WORK Eurydice. (2005). Key data on education in Europe 2005. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. Retrieved online November 13, 2006, from http://www.eurydice.org/ ressources/eurydice/pdf/0_integral/052EN.pdf Goodson, I., & Sikes, P. (2001). Life history research in educational settings. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Goodson, I. (1998). Storying the self: Life politics and the study of the teacher’s life and work. In W. F. Pinar (Ed.), Curriculum: Towards new identities (pp. 3–20). New York: Garland. Hanlon, G. (1998). Professionalism as enterprise: Service class politics and the redefinition of professionalism. Sociology, 32(1), 43–63. Kreuger R. A. (1988). Focus groups: A practical guide for applied research. London: Sage. Mannheim, K. (1952). The problem of generations. Essays on the sociology of knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Morgan, D. L. (1988). Focus groups as qualitative research. London: Sage. Müller, J., Hernández, F., Sancho, J., Creus, A., Muntadas, M., & Larrain, V. (Eds.). (2007). European schoolteachers work and life under restructuring. Deliverable 4 of the Profknow project. http:// www.ips.gu.se/profknow Norrie, C., & Goodson, I. (2005). A literature review of welfare state restructuring in education and health care in European contexts. Report No 1 from the Profknow project. http://www.ips.gu.se/ profknow OECD. (2006). Education at a Glance. Paris: OECD. Sachs, J. (2001). Teacher professional identity: Competing discourses, competing outcomes. Journal of Education Policy, 16(2), 149–161. Schön, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner. New York: Basic Books. Simola, H. (2005). The Finnish miracle of PISA: Historical and sociological remarks on teaching and teacher education. Comparative Education, 41(4), 455–470. Jeffry, B., & Troman, G. (2004). Time for ethnography. British Educational Research Journal, 30(4), 535–548. Webb, R., Vulliamy, S., Hämälänen, S., Sarja, A., Kimonen, E., Nevalainen, R. (2004). A comparative analysis of primary teacher professionalism in England and Finland. Comparative Education, 40(1), 83–107.

Jörg Müller Center for the Study of Change in Culture and Education, CECACE Caroline Norrie Education Research Centre University Of Brighton Fernando Hernández, Juana M. Sancho, Amalia Creus and Verónica Larraín Center for the Study of Change in Culture and Education, CECACE

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JORGE ÁVILA DE LIMA, JARMO HOUTSONEN AND ARI ANTIKAINEN

6. TEACHERS’ EXPERIENCES OF RESTRUCTURING Problems and Possibilities of a Generational Approach

INTRODUCTION

The problem of social generations has consistently interested prominent European thinkers, from Comte down to Mannheim (1952) and to Ortega y Gasset (1933, 1948). The sociological relevance of generations is based on the assumption that they are the agents of major cultural changes so each new generation brings forth and embodies a specific Zeitgeist that signals significant transformations or breakthroughs in social life (Berger 1960, 10). In this chapter, we discuss issues related to the generation concept as a tool for understanding professionals’ experiences of restructuring. This discussion aims to analyze the implications of restructuring of the welfare state for the work and lives of teachers in seven European countries. We start by developing a conceptual discussion of the notion of generation, its strengths and limitations. Then we discuss how the idea of generation might be helpful for understanding professionals’ experiences of and responses to restructuring in education. This is followed by a summary of some scant observations about generations that we did in the PROFKNOW project. We close the chapter with a discussion of challenges in using the concept of generation in this type of research. Although we were not able to find common generations in our data, we suggest that the concept itself can be useful in the analysis of structural changes. THE CONCEPT OF GENERATION IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Use of the “Generation” term Kertzer (1983, 126–7) identifies four categories in the use of generation as a concept in the social sciences, noting that “many sociologists simultaneously use more than one”. First, there is generation as kinship descent. It is used to refer to either parent-child relations or the larger universe of kinship relations, or for developing a measure of the “length of generation” that is suitable for studying population replacement in demography. This usage is very common in studies of value transmission from parents to children, studies of relations between parents and their descent as it proceeds through adulthood, studies of social mobility and studies of immigration. The concept is used to describe the content and direction of social changes occurring through kinship lineage, such as value transmission, I.F. Goodson and S. Lindblad, (eds.), Professional Knowledge and Educational Restructuring in Europe, 81–97. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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social mobility and immigration. Second, there is generation as cohort, which has been extended beyond that of birth cohorts to cover any succession of a given group through time. Third, there is generation as life stage. Finally, there is generation as a historical period characterizing people living in a particular historical period or event. Ryder (1965) argued for a restriction of the generation term to its kinship descent meaning. Indeed, the term “generation” originates from the Greek root “genesis”, which signifies the sequencing of biologically connected groups based on time of birth (Vincent 2005, 581). According to Ryder, the term cohort is preferable for addressing other interpretations of the term generation, because it unambiguously refers to the succession of people passing through a given social system. Likewise, Kertzer (1983, 128) argues that generation “is a relational concept bound to the realm of kinship and descent; it is not an appropriate tool for dividing societies into segments or populations into aggregates”. The term life stage is similarly clear and appropriate for referring to a particular segment of the life course although it refers only to age, not history. To this we want to add that for many research purposes the term career stage would be equally more appropriate than that of generations, although we recognize that in some studies, participants from distinct career stages are likely members of distinct cohorts or generations. The key point here is that career stages and generations do not necessarily overlap. A good example of this is Goodson, Moore and Hargreaves’ (2006) research, where the writers refer to a “generation” of teachers which actually comprises early-, mid- and late-career stages. To solve the conceptual ambiguities, Pilcher (1994, 483) proposes that we use generation to refer to kinship relations and social generation when referring to cohortrelated phenomena. Similarly, Vincent (2005, 582) holds that, since the meaning and the theoretical grounding of the concept of ‘generation’ is so diverse, it should be systematically “used with a qualifier (historical, demographic, political, cultural, familial, chronological, etc.), while “cohort” would be “restricted to the use of chronological, observer-defined categories”. Despite the apparent advantages of adopting the cohort terminology, one cannot ignore a major problem in its use, that of cohort boundaries. It is easy to identify a cohort when its members are connected to a formal organization which they enter, experience organizational processes as a group and leave at known times. In this case, each group of individuals comes almost as a “package” (e.g., a school class) whose members are easily identifiable (Rosow 1978, 67). Each of these packages experiences events and specific social forces as a group, and these events and forces can be markedly distinct from one group to the other. However, outside of formal organizations, the clarity of cohort boundaries vanishes. In this case, it becomes difficult to divide people into distinct successive groups that differ meaningfully from one another. The difficulty lies in drawing a line that defines where one cohort ends and the following begins. The problem is then, as Rosow (1978, 68) puts it, “how to create a series of discrete cohorts from a continuous flow of people”, using criteria of time and age. Commenting on this problem, Rosow concludes that it demonstrates that “what we are really unclear about is whether cohort is only a conceptual or also an empirical unit”. 82

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If cohort were only a concept without any empirical meaning, then we might simply divide continuous time in arbitrary demarcations, separated by fixed uniform intervals, for example, dividing people into so many generations per century – three, according to Mannheim (1952); six, following Ortega y Gasset (1958). In this case, the important thing would be that each generation displayed a distinctive feature that set it apart from the others. Compared to this requisite, where it begins or ends precisely would become relatively unimportant. However, as Rosow (1978, 68) underlines, “if cohorts are differentiated by events and experience, then they must have an empirical as well as conceptual basis”. The main issue is that these events and experiences differ in kind, so that “cohorts are distinguished more by qualitative than quantitative differences” (emphasis added). Cohort differentiation is not based on ordered points located on a continuum, but rather on a series of qualitatively significant discrete factors (ibid., emphasis added). Because these factors possibly produce developmentally unique experiences, their integration into this or that cohort cannot be achieved arbitrarily. This is why “an uncritical classification of persons into cohorts on the premise that we are only constructing several class intervals out of continuous age data violates the essential character of the concept” (ibid.). The professional lives of teachers are structurally linked to formal organizations of education and work, which offer rather normative phases for career steps. In addition, formal organizations are targets of normative change as new laws are enacted to regulate educational institutions. New norms that regulate for instance the qualifications and entry into a profession or the salary may divide people into different groups the membership of which often has concrete consequences for individuals, such as the possibilities of obtaining a particular position or the timing and benefits of retirement. Most teachers follow rather similar sequences and paces of entry and exit in their careers, albeit with some vertical and horizontal differentiations. For this reason, it could be possible to identify distinguishable cohorts of teachers. A Qualitative Approach to Generations Generations are more easily and significantly identified at breaking points in history (such as wars, political revolutions, major natural catastrophes, or deeply troubling social or economical events) which clearly divide the “old” from the “new”, the “elders” from the “youngsters”, in terms of historical experience and sentiments. A good example is the “generation of 1945” (popularly referred to as the “babyboomers”, or the “lucky generation”), i.e., the cohort that was born at the end of World War II. Kauppila et al. (2005, 235) state, in their study of Finnish teachers: “a generation is not just a social cohort but a generation embodies its collective identity in response to traumatic or formative events”. Among these events the authors highlight the Second World War, the swift structural change that both provoked and resulted from mass migration between 1960 and 1975, and the economic recession of the early 1990s. It is crucial to recognize that, although based on history, generations are always current and transforming in the course of time and new events. In addition, these key social-historical milestones will possibly vary from country to country, which makes international comparisons between generations particularly complex. 83

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These types of significant events are the kinds of triggering factors whereby age cohorts become generations. They sort a society population into distinct segments, not so much according to peoples’ views about the relative merits or demerits of the event, but rather as a function of their experience of them (Eyerman & Turner 1998, 100). One should, however examine these “collective identities” or “collective experiences” critically. There can also be important transformations in the formative social structures that agents do not perceive or experience but that contribute to the development of particular generational dispositions (Bourdieu 1990, 292 n. 11). Subjective perceptions and feelings that the researcher obtains in interviews for instance, may not represent accurately and truthfully the real-life conditions. For instance, the gradual changes in social structures may not be perceived by the informants. Yet, they may have bearing on people’s conduct and dispositions. Moreover, “generational experiences” and other forms of classifications and representations of social reality establish a logical and moral order of society (Durkheim 1965, 30–1). As “generational experiences” trigger strong emotions, such as respect and loyalty, and are maintained in various discourses, symbols and rituals, they may also obscure the observation of social conditions and relations of power. The Confounding of Age, Cohort and Generational Effects Ryder’s (1965), Kertzer’s (1983) and Pilcher’s (1994) arguments for the use of “generation” strictly in the kinship sense have not been heeded by many social scientists, with the exception of demographers, who tend to adopt the cohort terminology widely. Therefore, many still employ “generation” in the sense of “cohort” and this use is widely disseminated in the literature, taking the “generational effect” to mean a “cohort effect”. It is also important to distinguish between cohort, generational, and life-course (or aging, maturation) effects. As Dowd (1979–1980, 214), comments, “ontogenetic change (biological maturation) only partially accounts for observed age change. Indeed, some of what has been previously considered to be age change is actually differences among cohorts due to their unique demographic composition and historical experience”. The issue is thus whether aging as such has a similar or even a stronger effect on attitudes and behaviors than the mere experiencing of certain historical conditions and events. Another important question is whether the change in views and behavior within a cohort is due to the aging of its members (the “maturation” hypothesis) or to some general societal process or trend. In Berger’s (1960, 20–21) view, “differences in ‘mentalities’ due to the differing historical circumstances under which they were formed may frequently persist over time strongly enough to remain only slightly affected by the conservative tendencies of aging”. However, as Kertzer (1983, 130) argues, “we cannot attribute differences between people of different ages to their life-course position without determining whether these differences stem instead from cohort [or generational, we would add] characteristics”. We want to argue that this must not be regarded as an “either-or” issue: one must admit the simultaneous presence of maturation and cohort effects. In fact, the 84

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current view on “aging-period-cohort (APC) influences” presupposes that “a complete explanation of life-cycle phenomena requires inclusion not only of all three component effects but also the more often utilized measures of social location like income, SES, education and others” (Dowd 1979–1980, 214). Things become even more complicated when we think about the career phase in relation to age, cohort and generational effects as well. Intuitively, the perspective on many professional issues of those who are at the beginning of their careers differs from those who are already planning their retirement. In order to distinguish between the potential effects of age, cohort, generation and career stage we should construct very sophisticated research designs. Obviously, the reliance on retrospective interviews of representatives of presupposed generations alone would not be enough but we would also need to organize longitudinal and follow-up studies. Mannheim’s (1952) Work on Generations Mannheim’s (1952) work on generations has deeply influenced sociological writing on the issue. The author’s sociology of generations is one particularization of his more general interest in the sociology of knowledge (Pilcher, 1994, 482) Mannheim proposed to theorize how knowledge is conditioned by people’s location in given socio-historical structures. This way of putting the problem was of considerable interest for the PROFKNOW -project, which focuses on issues of professional work, life and knowledge within the context of restructuring. Indeed, for Mannheim, besides social class, generational location is a key factor behind the existential determination of knowledge. In our view, this may operate not only in terms of general social knowledge, but also more specifically in terms of professional knowledge. Mannheim (1952) regarded the generation as a particular type of social location. It is not regarded as a concrete social group and it does not develop naturally or out of consciously willed ties established between numbers of individuals. In other words, its formation does not necessarily result from the conscious development of a feeling of unity and solidarity among its members. In this respect, it is structurally analogous to the social class, although materially both can be quite dissimilar. Indeed, just as class position can be thought of as location shared by a set of individuals in the economic and power structure of a given society, without necessarily being aware of it or in interaction with one another, so “the unity of generations is constituted essentially by a similarity of location of a number of individuals in a social whole” (ibid., 290). In sum, both concepts refer to people sharing a similar location in a given social structure. According to Mannheim (1952), members of a generation are “similarly located” in the sense that “they all are exposed to the same phase of the collective process”; more precisely, “they are in a position to experience the same events and data, etc., and (…) these experiences impinge upon a similarly ‘stratified’ consciousness” (ibid., 297). The author emphasizes that “mere contemporaneity becomes sociologically significant only when it also involves participation in the same historical and social circumstances” (ibid., 298). 85

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Just like the mere fact of class location does not necessarily involve the existence of a consciously constituted social class, so the mere phenomenon of generational location does not in itself lead to the constitution of generations as reflexive, actively self-organized social entities: “the location as such only contains potentialities which may materialize, or be suppressed, or become embedded in other social forces and manifest themselves in modified form” (ibid., 303). Generation “as an actuality” only exists when its members participate in “the common destiny of this historical and social unity” (ibid.). This excludes those contemporaries who remain unaffected by significant historical events: generations “actualize” themselves “only where a concrete bond is created between members of a generation by their being exposed to the social and intellectual symptoms of a process of dynamic destabilization” (ibid.). On the other hand, within the same actual generation, the author distinguishes “generation units” (ibid., 304), i.e., segments of a generation which expresses divergent forms of intellectual and social response to the unique historical stimulus that all members of the actual generation experience in common. The units simply work up the circumstances of their common experiences in distinct, specific ways. In Mannheim’s work, time is not conceived as a linear, external and quantifiable phenomenon – it is also recognized as a qualitative, interior experience. As Pilcher (1994, 496) points out, this distinction has “profound consequences for the concept of generations and their measurement”, since “the time interval separating generations becomes subjectively experienceable time” (Mannheim 1952, 282), rather than time measure quantitatively in years or decades. The logical result of this is that “contemporaneity is [then] conceived, not as the coexistence of persons between two sets of dates, but as a subjective condition of having experienced the same dominant influences” (Pilcher 1994, 486). Mannheim insisted on the notion of the “non-contemporaneity of the contemporaneous” to underline the idea that not all people living at the same time share the same history. This is in agreement with our previous argument that the definition of social-historical generations should be based on qualitative criteria, rather than on numerically precise cohort boundaries. The approach taken here is thus much closer to the romantic-historical formulation of the problem of generations referred to by Mannheim (1952), which delimits generations on the basis of “an interior time that cannot be measured but only experienced in purely qualitative terms” (ibid., 281), than to the formulation that seeks to quantitatively estimate the duration of generations. This is why, commenting on Pilcher’s notion of “the non-contemporaneity of the contemporaneous”, the author states that “different generations live at the same time. But since experienced time is the only real time, they must all in fact be living in qualitatively quite different subjective eras” (ibid., 283). In this context, for each person, the “same” time is a different time – “it represents a different period of his [sic] self, which he can only share with people of his age” (ibid.) To take a more critical stance towards the Mannheimian approach to the problem of generations, we could argue that it contains strong subjectivist, idealist, and even positivist tones. It is subjectivist in its emphasis on the significance of ‘participation’, which downplays the importance of objective and external social reality. It is idealist, 86

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though objectivist, in its use of concepts that refer to collective ideas or shared experiences. This also moves the analysis of material structures, which are implied in the concept of social location, to the periphery. In addition, the Mannheimian approach is somewhat ambivalent as it starts from the idea of generational location, continues through the collective or shared experiences to the sociological significance of consciousness. Yet, it does not really manage to solve the conceptual and empirical relations between these three theoretical constructs. In the application of research methods, the critique mentioned before means that one cannot resort only to subjective perceptions and accounts in the research of generations. More precisely, we need objective data and theoretical constructs that break the common experiences and discourses of generations. This is important because generations may contain not only conscious and expressed experiences but also deeply embedded dispositions and practices, linked to structures, both of which the agents are not aware of. Internal Differentiation in Generations There are multiple dimensions of experience that may fragment a single generation, and Mannheim’s (1952) labored discussion of ‘generation units’ proves the difficulty of comprehending not only the “unity” of a generation, but also its internal heterogeneity (Berger 1960, 14). Phenomena that may divide a generation internally include the multiparty system, the geographical dispersion of intellectual communities, professional occupation, gender, ethnicity, or social class. By this we mean that the meaning of age differs as a function of people’s other key social and biological characteristics. Moreover, these characteristics are not necessarily only additive, but interactive. Berger (1960) exemplifies this with occupation: an athlete is regarded as old at 30, while a presidential candidate is considered young at 50. In other words, there are important differences in the “average age at which the incumbents of different social and occupational roles are considered ‘young’, ‘mature’, ‘old’, etc.” (ibid., 15). According to Berger (1960): What this means is not only that members of the same age-groups may experience their most productive or representative period in different decades, but also that what they produce may be affected by different series of events. For these reasons it is essential, when using the concept of generation in a cultural sense, to specify generations of what, because it is only in a demographic sense that people in the same age-group constitute a homogeneous unit, and because the character of any cultural generation depends in part upon the relationship of ‘youth’ to years, and upon the average length of its vital or effective period – which differs according to occupational milieu. There are, in short, literary generations, political generations, musical generations, etc.; the length of each fluctuates, and the age-range which constitutes the ‘younger’ generation in one may be considerably older (or younger) than the age-range constituting the ‘younger’ generation in another, to say nothing of the internal differentiations which may fragment a single cultural generation however defined (ibid. 15–16, emphasis in the original). 87

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PROFESSIONAL GENERATIONS AND RESTRUCTURING

In sociological research we are usually interested in how the characteristics and actions of human beings differ and vary in populations. Then we try to explain those differences and variations in terms of various social and cultural conditions indicated by various factors and classifications. Usually we hypothesize at the beginning of the research which factors and classifications are appropriate and significant in a given research problem. For instance, it is common to analyze how people’s practices and opinions differ in terms of multiple factors and classifications such as social class and gender. Generation or cohort is one such factor that could be used as a classification to discriminate among the members of population in question. In our research project we have assumed that generation is a significant factor in terms of which teachers’ actions and conceptions vary. Although we have assumed that generation would be a significant discriminating factor we have to be open to the possibility that it will not be so and that there are other factors that better explain the differences and similarities. Ryder (1965, 844) wrote that “the members of any cohort are entitled to participate in only one slice of life – their unique location in the stream of history”. This unique location in history makes people deal with events and respond to them in particular ways. In this respect, restructuring is no different from other major social processes. People’s experiences of and responses to social events and processes are framed by their socialization experiences. This socialization makes them develop particular orientations to social situations. Mannheim (1952) and others emphasized that individuals’ key orientations in life are developed in a critical period of human development, a couple of years before people turn twenty. The notion of a “fresh contact” of early adults with major social changes is emphasized by Mannheim (1952). His privileged focus on early youth stems from his belief that, in a dynamic social system, oncoming new generations are the first to incorporate into their behavior system the continuous shifts in society’s objective conditions of existence. According to Mannheim, in a society such as ours, characterized by the continuous emergence of new age groups, “our culture is developed by individuals who come into contact anew with the accumulated heritage. (…) a fresh contact (meeting something anew) always means a changed relationship of distance from the object and a novel approach in assimilating, using, and developing the proffered material” (ibid., 293). In fresh contacts (e.g., when an individual leaves his social group), “a quite visible and striking transformation of the consciousness of the individual” takes place (ibid.). In the case of the succession of generations, individuals who share a common time location collectively begin a “new life”: “In youth, (…) where life is new, formative forces are just coming into being, and basic attitudes in the process of development can take advantage of the molding power of new situations” (ibid., 297). Mannheim particularly values the phase of early youth, because, in his view, “the possibility of really questioning and reflecting on things only emerges at the point where personal experimentation with life begins – round about the age of 17, sometimes a little earlier and sometimes a little later” (Mannheim, 1952, 300). 88

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This quotation shows quite clearly the subjectivist accent in Mannheim’s sociology. Moreover, the author claims that the ‘up-to-datedness’ of youth therefore consists in their being closer to the ‘present’ problems (as a result of their ‘potentially fresh contact’ […]), and in the fact that they are dramatically aware of a process of de-stabilization and take sides in it. All this while the older generation clings to the re-orientation that had been the drama of their youth (Mannheim 1952, 300–301). Mannheim’s contention that people’s youth experiences are the most formative of their lives and lead them to experience the social and cultural world in particular ways appears to be supported by the findings of research in developmental psychology (Pilcher 1994, 489; Schuman & Scott, 1989). Glenn (1976) also shows that the major impact of a cultural shift in individuals’ sociopolitical orientations takes place within younger cohorts. In other words, the degree of change or modification of people’s sociopolitical attitudes is higher in younger generations experiencing a “fresh contact” with the existing social structure, than in older ones. The implication is that older people do change in response to historical events or trends, but they display a much more limited range of response to these events or trends, when compared to younger people, who display a much higher degree of change (ibid.). To use Dowd’s (1979–1980, 223) words, “older people respond less feverishly to the winds of change than do their younger counterparts”. Early formative experiences thus lead to the emergence of a generation’s “orientation” – “its distinctive perceptions, values, and attitudes” (Rogler 2002, 1018). Once this orientation crystallizes, it is believed to affect social change and peoples’ experiences and reactions to it long after the “cataclysmic” events that were at its origin. In other words, over time, historical experiences are converted into psychological dispositions. The concept of life stage is thus important in a theorization of the emergence of new generations because it identifies when persons are particularly vulnerable to the impinging historical event. If they are vulnerable, they become potential recruits into the emerging generation. This is especially true of young adults because they are at the cusp of their early formative years and therefore are susceptible to significant personal change in their orientations and personal identities. They are also liable to such change because they are in critical transitions from dependent roles in their families of orientation to roles entailing adult responsibilities in families of procreation. They are “coming of age” (Newman 1996, 379, quoted in Rogler 2002, 1016). It is interesting to note here that in the research on class and gender the formation of identities is said to start very early on, even before children enter school. Then it is possible that generational characteristics really take form in the early adulthood. Or, research has focused only on those generational characteristics, such as political orientations, the formation of which occurs at that state of age. Then research has neglected those generational characteristics the formation of which occurs earlier in life, such as handwriting learned at school. Moreover, in many professions education and socialization occurs after the age of twenty, which means that the formative years of professional generations and thus their essential orientations to work and knowledge develop later than Mannheim suggested. Finally, it could also 89

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be possible that the formative years of generations in the modern and postmodern ages occur later that in Mannheim’s time because of overall changes in society, such as a more prolonged formal education. In this respect, Eyerman and Turner (1998) have developed a theory of the generational embodiment of culture, which is based on Bourdieu’s (1990) notion of habitus. Turner (1998) himself defines “generation” as “a cohort of persons passing through time who come to share a certain common habitus or lifestyle” (ibid., 302). The main idea behind this reasoning is that key formative experiences in people’s lives have long-lasting effects. It is assumed that specific birth cohorts enter a system, organization or process with different values, attitudes or perspectives on given issues which thereafter do not change as the cohort ages. Bourdieu’s (1990) notion of habitus refers to a set of dispositions to act and of perceptual evaluation frames that is at once a product of social and historical circumstances and processes and a construction of the individual. This set of dispositions and evaluation frames is embodied in individuals, imprinted and encoded in them throughout their socializing and learning experiences, and manifests itself in their actions and perceptions in diverse historically formed social contexts. This Bourdieusian concept of “habitus” is a useful tool for understanding the taken for granted, common worldviews that are found among the multiple members of a generation. Actors belonging to the same generation are believed to share a common understanding of their historical experience: “generations share a picture of ‘their time’ or a script of the drama of their collective development in the course of ‘their’ historical phase” (Corsten, quoted by Vincent 2005, 581). These formative experiences are thus behind the way people respond to and interpret restructuring initiatives and processes. In the case of professionals such as teachers, schooling, professional education and training are important factors in habitus formation. Indeed, cohort differences in the duration of education, the time of its completion in terms of age, the nature of instructional materials and the content of the curriculum, provide “an indelible differentiation of cohort character and behavior” (Ryder 1965, 846). Participants in the PROFKNOW project differed significantly in terms of access to different amounts and kinds of formal education, and this may contribute to their habitus, and through it, to their views of restructuring. Despite all that we have said so far regarding generations and habitus, we would like to add a further note of caution. As we have seen, Mannheim views the identity of generations being formed through experiences lived in adolescence, especially during the transition to adulthood. It links history and life course in a creative way, but it could be criticized to represent a too static view which assumes that generations don’t change as they age. However, as Vincent (2005, 583) puts it, “if generational experience is in some sense fixed by early experience, how do we incorporate change and creativity into the agency of the ageing generation?” Generation members may interpret current events on the basis of an established culture, but their mode of interpretation can itself change (Vincent 2005, 583). Thus the view that generations are learned and established definitely in adolescence is simplistic. It is in this sense that Vincent (2005) underlines that generations are reflexively constructed – people experiencing, re-evaluating and re-creating the 90

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meaning of ‘their time’ – they are not simply working out a programmed set in adolescence” (ibid.). Interpretive models that assume that individuals inevitably carry with them the ‘stamp’ of their generation in which they were born can thus be misleading in that they portray subjects as simply internalizing or refracting collective norms, thus dispossessing them from any sense of agency. As Blaikie (1999) points out, in this type of framework, subjects and their lifestyles are produced as effects. This sort of view collectivizes the experiences of individuals comprising a generation. Referring to older people, the author writes: While one could hypothesize a situation in which solidarities will develop amongst elders, there are a number of reasons why this has never occurred: several age-groups co-exist as pensioners, yet each cohort exhibits a different awareness of social change; older people are segregated amongst themselves, especially according to income; retirement itself disperses individuals who might once have benefited from the collective focus of the workplace. Indeed, there is no reason why old age, any more than femaleness, blackness of workingclassness, should be made to represent a monolithic social experience (Blaikie 1999, 130, emphasis in the original). There are many aspects of restructuring that are likely to provoke differentiated experiences and responses from professionals located in different social-historical generations. To illustrate this, we will take Hargreaves (2005) study on how teachers’ age and career stage affect their responses to educational change. In their early career young teachers are more energetic, enthusiastic and open to change. In their midcareers, teachers with established positions, and more confidence and competence, are more selective towards new initiatives. Finally, recurrent experiences of educational change along with weakening bodies make most late-career teachers resistant to change. In another study on a “generation” of American and Canadian teachers who began their careers in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, Goodson, Moore and Hargreaves (2006, 42) identified nostalgia as “the major form of memory among a demographically dominant cohort of experienced older teachers”. In this study, teachers’ nostalgia refers to feelings of loss regarding the social mission of the teaching profession. These feelings fuel teachers’ reactions and responses to the demands of educational change, and they are influenced by the agendas of teachers’ generation: “historically situated missions formed decades ago that teachers have carried with them throughout their careers” (ibid.). The authors stress that “midto late-career teachers’ resistance to change is not only a consequence of age and stages of life and career (….), it is also related to what teachers experience generationally – memories formed and situated in particular historical periods that retain and sometimes increase in importance as teachers mature” (ibid., 43). The members of the generation are thus regarded as “the bearers of certain historically situated experiences of teaching over time” (ibid.). These teachers formed such experiences in their early years of teaching and adulthood: they were rooted in the formative period of their first educational experiences (e.g., the first school, the first charismatic principal, etc.). 91

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On the other hand, while the older generation has arisen in a period of relative and growing postwar prosperity, experiencing very high levels of employment and significant material benefits (e.g., retirement at a relatively early age with high pensions), the younger generations which entered the labor market in the 1980s and 1990s have faced much more difficult market conditions (flexibility, casualization, high risks of unemployment, lower pension prospects and retirement at a much higher age). In short, generation concepts may be extremely relevant for a full understanding of professionals’ experience of restructuring. TEACHER GENERATIONS IN THE PROFKNOW PROJECT1

The practical research strategy in the PROFKNOW project was organized so that each partner carried out a similarly designed qualitative study in their own country. The study sites of the national case study reports on teachers were urban multicultural schools. Three teachers were selected in each country to participate in the research based on the following lengths of work experiences: 30 years, 8–10 years, and about a year. For practical reasons these criteria could not be used exactly. In some participant countries, it was particularly difficult to find teachers who were very early in their career. The national studies started with life story interviews to produce free flowing narratives of teachers’ professional lives. These were followed by thematic interviews with a common set of themes, such as working conditions, work-life balance, knowledge sources, relations to colleagues and clients, and professional status and autonomy. Finally, ethnographies were produced by shadowing each teacher for three days at their work. In addition to this, the partners, except in Finland and Ireland, conducted focus group interviews in order to cross-check the themes. The analysis of the interviews was basically an attempt to look for particular themes relevant for welfare state restructuring from the perspective of the informants. Also the national case study reports were based on common guidelines. The general purpose was to examine how teachers perceive and talk about the structural changes related to their professional work and lives. We also launched a survey in Finland, Ireland, Spain and Sweden. All surveys were carried out as national probability samples of teachers2. On the basis of what we have said so far about generations, it would have been natural to expect that the way teachers experience restructuring and interpret it be strongly affected by their socialization trajectories marked by the social context in which they were born and brought up, by the qualification levels they have acquired and by the education they have attended to become certified practitioners. Some of the chapters in this book demonstrate that teachers belonging to different age-groups or cohorts have experienced varying social, political and economic processes, events and conditions. In the countries of the PROFKNOW project, there has been, for instance, successful overthrow of dictatorships, reforms in educational systems, changes in teacher education, severe economic recessions, and other similar structural phenomena. However, we were able to find only very scanty observations that could be subsumed under the category of generation in our interview and observation data. In addition, our survey was so designed that the dispersion in age groups with 92

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respect to some response variables might be better accounted by the respondents’ stage in their professional career than by genuine generational effects. We would expect that a group of people who have lived through similar experiences, conditions and events in history would obtain more or less durable dispositions, orientations, styles and manners that characterize the whole group. For instance, individuals who entered into the work force at the dawn of a severe economic recession may assume distinctive orientations to work and career. Certainly, our informants belong to various cohorts, live in different career stages and use some vocabulary in their interviews that refers to age and time. There have been changes in educational policy and legislation and teacher training and recruitment, but there were not any significant differences in teachers’ generational dispositions, styles or orientations to work. Yet, the national reports do describe some differences between individual teachers that could be loosely regarded as generational. In Sweden, the informants did not represent distinctive generations, but the younger teacher found it more difficult to obtain a permanent position as a teacher. The English report argues that older teachers have managed to secure more economic and cultural capital for themselves in the form of pension and health care plans and early retirement than the younger ones who have not been able to collectively protect their social benefits. Furthermore, younger teachers experience less stable work careers. The Greek report divides teachers into “old” and “young” on the basis of issues relating to their perception of their social status and of their relations to parents. The young teachers see that their profession is socially devalued, whereas the old teachers, for whom teaching has primarily meant upward social mobility, regard their status and identity is strong, as well as their position with respect to their relations with the parents. The young, on the other hand, feel that they have to struggle to get parents’ respect. The young also see that in the end it is the parents who are the recipients of their services whereas the old think that the children are the final receivers. The Spanish report does not really find clear-cut generations, but mentions that “younger” teachers have difficulties in establishing stable work careers. However, this was already the case earlier and therefore it probably relates more to the career stage of the research participants than to changes in historical conditions and related generations. In the same vein, the Portuguese report mentions that the younger teachers find it quite hard to enter into the profession permanently. The report shows that this was easier for the older teachers, although they did have to travel far away from home for several years to secure a permanent job. The Finnish study does not report directly about generations, but it shows that the oldest teacher who participated in the study had a longer perspective on and personal experiences about previous structures. In addition, the representative of the oldest age group says that her old type of teacher education in the seminary was of poor quality. Instead, all the younger teachers regarded highly their universitylevel teacher education. The Irish report describes some differences between the old and the young teachers but regards these differences as being more due to extra-school societal 93

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influences than to influences generated within the educational system. For the old female teacher, teaching (together with nursing and lower positions in the banking or civil services) was the only feasible option for a work career. For teachers in her age group, teaching was meant to be a job for life. On the contrary, for the young male teacher, teaching is not necessarily a job for the entire life, and he also tries to find a balance between work and life by not taking work home. There are several possible reasons for the small number of observations of facts that could illustrate the operation of generational factors in the PROFKNOW project. First, we researched in-depth a very small number of cases of teachers in each country. It was obvious that we were not prepared to find such a strong social and cultural diversity in Europe, as our results reveal. Second, the abstract concept of generation was not properly brought down to more concrete observable indicators, for instance by focusing on the style of teaching, such as teachers’ relationships to children. If we would have found differences between teachers belonging to different age-groups, we could have started to interpret these observations relative to teachers’ formative experiences, for instance, as pupils at school or as students at teacher training. Third, interview texts might be difficult research material for a generational analysis, because they do not necessarily expose teachers’ more hidden dispositions. Long-term observations at work could have produced more productive data for generational analysis. In this respect, the three-day per participant shadowing observation protocol that we employed may have proved to be insufficient for a more complete grasp of the operation of generational dispositions in teachers’ practice and discourse. Finally, one might also admit that – despite contrary arguments by some previous research (Goodson et al. 2006; Hargreaves 2005) – there may have simply not been any really generational differences in teachers’ relation to the issues that we studied in the PROFKNOW project. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Humans seem to have a special predilection to think that by naming something we are enabled to understand it. This is particularly true when it comes to talking about generations. But as soon as we begin attempting to dissect the term and to observe indications that should belong to its domain, we are faced with enormous challenges. Social scientific language has not been very precise in the meaning it attaches to terms such as “generation”, “cohort”, or “age group”. The use of the idea of generation in contemporary social science is contaminated by considerable conceptual confusion, given its adoption of the folk usage of the term in its analytical vocabulary. Moreover, it is not quite clear which empirical observations should fall into a class named as generation. Our understanding of generation can be enhanced by looking at it as a cultural construction. Wohl (quoted by Rogler 2002, 1017) put forward a metaphor that could be helpful: It is not a zone of dates; no it is an army of contemporaries making its way across a territory of time. It is more like a magnetic field at the center of which lies an experience or series of experiences. 94

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This cultural approach to generations opens space for distinct individuals being at different distances from the center of such a magnetic field, so that the experience of the same historical event or process will leave a much deeper impression on some than on others. In other words, important social-historical conditions and events have a clear signature orientation, but their influences on individuals vary. Moreover, individuals are equipped with varying behavioral and perceptual orientations. This is a way of relaxing the apparently mechanistic notion of generation which allows for conceiving of generations less as monolithic collectivities than as entities composed of members who experience the orientations of their time with different emphases and effects in their personal trajectories. The key sociological idea that makes the concept of generational location (Mannheim, 1952) so attractive for understanding restructuring and professional identity is that these locations may help produce a strong sense of before and after that clearly demarcates a new social space. These social spaces that are opened up can then breed new forms of individual and collective identities. In restructuring processes, the members of the older generation are required to adapt to discontinuities of cultural and institutional change. Restructuring has also provoked, or at least reinforced, “the erosion of a predictable framework for an ageing identity, previously supplied by the welfare state” (Phillipson & Biggs 1999, 159). This potentially makes comparisons between generations and the way they differentially experience restructuring particularly important. But comparisons across generations are complex undertakings. One problem has to do with “the difficulty of distinguishing between characteristics which are indeed intrinsic to aging, and those which merely appear to be so because of the cohort contribution to the age vector in times of change” (Ryder 1965, 858). Ideally, one would be capable of disentangling the effects of historical period and cohort from those of life stage or career stage, with which the former may be confounded. This is by no means an easy task, but what seems to be clear is that historical period, life stage and cohort factors interact with one another and all play an important role in human development (Rosow 1978, 66). Comparisons across generations are made even more complex by the possibility that the centrality of generation may be different for different birth cohorts. As Eyerman and Turner (1998, 98) suggest with the post modernization of culture there may a greater fluidity in generational identity and memory. In the traditional sociology of generations, it was assumed that the history of generations as cohorts would resemble the life careers of individuals in the sense that the social history of the generation would be marked by its coming into existence, its rise to maturity, its involvement in the labor market and its final retirement and extinction. As labor markets and lifestyles have become more flexible and fragmented, it may be that generational experiences become markedly different. However, as the authors also note, it may be that precisely because of the contrast between the material prosperity and stability of the older generation and the growing uncertainty of employment and security that the younger one is faced with, the 95

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sense of the latter as a separate entity can become even more reinforced. Another difficulty is that the meaning of sharing a common historical location can be adumbrated by other factors such as education, occupation, marital status, and so forth (Ryder 1965, 847). This may have precisely occurred in the PROFKNOW project. While the cultural aspects (i.e., a common identity) are crucial in any study that includes the generational dimension, we feel that, as some authors (Turner 1998; Vincent 2005) have advocated, there is the need to also add a political economy dimension to generational analyses. Turner (1998, 302), for example, insisted that besides the cultural dimension, “‘generation’ also refers to a cohort which has a strategic temporal location to a set of resources as a consequence of historical accident and the exclusionary practice of social closure (…) against subsequent generations”. This view underscores the notion that distinct generations may develop antagonistic collective economic interests and have conflicting interests regarding issues such as, for example, employment, retirement and pensions (e.g., more difficult life chances increasingly marginalize younger cohorts). Similarly, it underlines that each generation’s interests are revealed not only by what its members say, but also by the way they participate actively in these conflicts. It is perhaps the shortage of observational data on teachers’ experiences in times of restructuring that explains, at least in part, the difficulty in culturally and qualitatively identifying generations as key explanatory factors in research projects such as the one that we developed. NOTES 1 2

Results and reports of PROFKNOW project can be obtained at http://www.ips.gu.se/profknow. In the end, the Spanish survey was considered unreliable, because of serious errors in the sampling and distribution of questionnaires by a private contractor.

REFERENCES Berger, B. M. (1960). How long is a generation? British Journal of Sociology, 11(1), 10–23. Blaikie, A. (1999). Can There be a cultural sociology of aging? Education and Ageing, 14(2), 127–139. Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Dowd, J. J. (1979-1980). The problems of generations and generational analysis. International Journal of Aging and Human Developemnt, 10(3), 213-229. Durkheim, E. (1965). The elementary forms of the religious life. New York: Free Press. Eyerman, R., & Turner, B. S. (1998). Outline of a theory of generations. European Journal of Social Theory, 1(1), 91–106. Finch, J. (1986). Age. In R. Burgess (Ed.), Key variables in social investigation. London: RKP. Glenn, N. D. (1976). Cohort analysis’ futile quest: Statistical attempts to separate age, period and cohort effects. American Sociological Review, 41, 900–904. Goodson, I., Moore, S., & Hargreaves, A. (2006). Teacher nostalgia and the sustainability of reform: The generation and degeneration of teachers’ missions, memory and meaning. Educational Administration Quarterly, 42(1), 42–61. Hargreaves, A. (2005). Educational change takes ages: Life, career and generational factors in teachers’ emotional responses to educational change. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(8), 967–983. Kauppila, J., Ahvenharju, A., Moore, E., & Antikainen, A. (2005). Teacher generations in Finland: A biographical study of the key experiences and life-course trajectories of teachers. In A. Antikainen (Ed.), Transforming a learning society: The case of Finland (pp. 235–253). Bern: Peter Lang.

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TEACHERS’ EXPERIENCES OF RESTRUCTURING Kertzer, D. I. (1983). Generations as a sociological problem. American Review of Sociology, 9, 125–149. Mannheim, K. (1952). Essays on the sociology of knowledge. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Ortega y Gasset, J. (1933). The modern theme. New York: Norton. Ortega y Gasset, J. (1958). Man and crisis. New York: Norton. Phillipson, C., & Biggs, S. (1999). Population ageing: Critical gerontology and the sociological tradition. Education and Ageing, 14(2), 159–170. Pilcher, J. (1994). Mannheim’s sociology of generations: An undervalued legacy. British Journal of Sociology, 45(3), 481–495. Rogler, L. H. (2002). Historical generations and psychology. American Psychologist, 57(12), 1013–1023. Rosow, I. (1978). What is a cohort and why? Human Development, 21(2), 65–75. Ryder, N. B. (1965). The cohort as a concept in the study of social change. American Sociological Review, 30, 843–861. Turner, B. S. (1998). Aging and generational conflicts: A reply to Sarah Irwin. British Journal of Sociology, 49, 299–304. Vincent, J. A. (2005). Understanding generations: Political economy and culture in an ageing society. British Journal of Sociology, 56(4), 579–599.

Jorge Avila de Lima Universidade dos Açores, Portugal Jarmo Houtsonen Department of Social Sciences University of Eastern Finland Ari Antikainen, Department of Sociology University of Joensuu

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7. CONCLUSIONS Developing a Conceptual Framework for Understanding Professional Knowledge

In section 1 we have described how we developed our research study and methods so as to capture data comparing professional work and life in different European contexts (objective 1). In section 2 the detailed studies of restructuring and professional knowledge in teaching and nursing are presented (objectives 2 and 3). In our conclusion we present a conceptual framework for analysing professional knowledge in restructuring organisations (objective 4). Our conceptual framework tries to capture the complexities which arise when different national and regional contexts intersect with different professional settings and generational and historical periodisations. To try to interrogate the complexities of this juxtaposition we have focussed on two levels of analysis – what we call systems narratives, the policy discourses which emanate from governing agencies and work life narratives, the viewpoints presented by practitioner teachers and nurses. By collecting and analysing these two kinds of narratives we can provide a specific snapshot of the complexities of context, profession and generation. Since our objective is to develop a complex conceptual framework we chose this narrative focus very carefully. It built on the strengths of the research team which included international experts on life history studies and generational analysis. Moreover it provided crucial insights into how restructuring initiatives emanating from governments intersect with the work life perceptions and narrative accounts of practitioners in the field. We judged that this intersection is crucial in developing our conceptual understanding of how restructuring works in the zone of professional knowledge. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING SYSTEM NARRATIVES

Restructuring as a World Movement Our ProfKnow studies have employed Meyer’s concept of educational reform as ‘world movements’ embodying some of the features of more broadly-conceived social movements (Meyer, 1992). This text deals with educational restructuring as a “world movement” and has the ambition to use this framing for furthering our understandings of the harmonisation I.F. Goodson and S. Lindblad, (eds.), Professional Knowledge and Educational Restructuring in Europe, 99–109. © 2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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of re-structuring policies and its relation to teacher’s professional knowledge in seven European Countries. Considering the complexity of social life our question is: how could the world movement argument qualify as a non-universal concept that gives space both to diversities and to dynamic change and transitions? It is from this perspective, (with reference to Foss Lindblad, Zambeta & de Lima, 2007) that we will discuss the circulation of models, standards and ideas involved in educational restructuring from two alternative understandings of such flows of disseminated objects; by way of diffusion and by way of translation (see Serres, 1983; Latour 1990) and make use of some arguments about this distinction that we have borrowed from the actor-network theory horizon, as well as from the Scandinavian form of institutionalist theory. According to both models, each, flow will be in need of some mediator/s, a “something” that disseminates and embodies the flow and, also, have the power to interrupt a flow, make it stop, continue or make it non-working. The differences between the two models lie in how an eventual change in meaning, use or practices should be understood and what it is that decides the destiny of a flow (whether or not it will die or eventually grow strong). Additionally, the performative and active nature of translation, a phenomenon which also has been called imitation (Di Maggio and Powell; 1983) as well as hybridization (Boyer, 1996), stands in brief contrast to the possibility of a stable and unchangeable nature assumed for disseminated objects. According to the diffusion model, the adoption of ideas, concepts and standards over wide territories can be explained by reference to the ways in which they have, or have not, gained acceptance within some groups of people. This means that disseminated objects also risks to be neglected and met with resistance from local actors or, alternatively, transformed into new meanings which change the intention of the whole operation and makes it a failure. However, the model presuppose that disseminated objects do have specific identities and origins and also that they have some specific destiny of possible trajectories; it may e.g. be easy to understand the success of the Xray in view of its superior functionality or, reversely, to understand the failure of Betamax (a video recorder) on basis of the power of its competing variants the VHS. In both cases, any objection to the success/failure of the objects would be a sign of explainable circumstances in qualities and/or surroundings. In contrast, and according to the translation model’, the identities and origins of the disseminated objects are always uncertain and always in the hands of humans, who each and everyone can act in different ways; use it, modify it, ignore it, betray it etc. Whatever will happen to the dissemination it will transform, i.e. be translated and take a form or a meaning it didn’t have before. This makes each enactment of an idea or standard a part of its constitution and translation must be understood according to the changes of translators as well as to changes of what is translated (see Latour; 1990, Czarniawska & Sevon, 2005). According to the translation model, whatever the destiny of the dissemination will be, it will be a result of some collective action and never a reason for it? In the understanding of education restructuring as a world movement these two models of dissemination will make a difference. The diffusion model will understand 100

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and explain varieties in use and meanings of disseminated objects (ideas, models, artefacts) by references to the powers of its disseminating actors and recipients (mediums) and will give privilege to such analytical categories as nations, institutions, professions and classes. The translation model will, on the other hand, put us in the different position of having to explain the varieties of the disseminated objects by references to the specificities of their embodiments and translations and will by this also widen the categories of actors. Within this model, mediators become now also surprisingly unreliable in terms of outcomes as it will most likely and most often involve complex chains of mediators and translations. With reference to the Profknow project, we will use these two models as a way to exemplify, discuss and make some concluding remarks about education restructuring as a world movement. In the next section we will present a brief overview of the world movement argument in relation to the issue of education restructuring and try to clarify some problems as well as some promising hypothesis that we think it gives rise to. PERIODISATION

Our work on studying generations as originally planned (see introduction) has led us to conceptualise historical periods of restructuring. In identifying generations we began to capture a pattern of historical periods of vital concern for the organising and positioning in relation to certain events. This is why our conceptual analysis focuses on periods of unease and develops a theory of long waves of educational reform. The work uses the French historical methodology developed by the ‘Annaliste’ School of historians. They focus on particular conjunctures where broad-based restructuring is promoted. It is possible to identify particular historical periods where maximal ‘windows of opportunity’ for broad-based restructuring exists. For this reason it is crucial when dealing with educational transitions and reform initiatives to identify and understand historical periodisation and its conceptual and methodological limitations. The definition of periods allows us to define the possibility for professional action and professional narratives at particular points in historical time. We have found in the ProfKnow project that the capacities for action and narrative construction differ greatly according to the historical periods studied. Moreover we can begin to see how each country, and in some cases regions, have different systemic trajectories. These historical trajectories mean that restructuring approaches each state or region from, so to speak, a different angle. Historical periods and trajectories can be seen as refracting centralised restructuring initiatives. As we argued in studying translation and diffusion gives us access to the processes of refraction (see Goodson 2004). Because of the complexity of historical periodisation we asked each national team to prepare their own historical analysis. There periodisation tells us important facts about changes in education and health care in their respective national contexts. But they also tell us about the manner in which different national teams organise their ways of dealing with these state institutions. Their perceptions of welfare state developments are themselves therefore periodised. 101

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Table 1. Periodisation in national contexts – published in the profknow report National case

Periods

Basis for distinctions

ENGLAND

1945–1979: Progressive narrative on welfare state expansion. 1979–1997: Marketisation narrative. 1997–2007: Narrative of the middle way: targets, tests and tables.

The neo-liberal breakthrough as an organising principle.

FINLAND

1945–1969: Preparatory phase building the welfare state. 1970–1989: the golden age. 1990–2007: restructuring.

The welfare state as an organising principle and the planning romanticism.

GREECE

1945–1967: Post war period. 1967–1974: dictatorship. 1975–1989: welfare state building. 1991–2007: restructuring.

Dictatorship.

IRELAND

1970–1986 - the demise of apprenticeship and increasing secularisation. 1987–1997 - envisioning the future partnership a new approach. 1997–2007 - opening the floodgates of reform.

Secularisation and modernisation stories.

PORTUGAL

1945–1974: dictatorship. 1974–1976: revolutionary period. 1977–1985: normalisation. 1985–2007: restructuring.

Revolution as an organising idea.

SPAIN

1939–1976 Dictatorship. 1977–1990 Normalising. 1990–2000: welfare state building. 2000–2007: restructuring.

Dictatorship story.

SWEDEN

1945–1975 Welfare state expansion - services for all. 1975–1992: Decentralisation and deregulation. 1992–2000: Marketisation. 2000–2007: Quality agenda.

Welfare state story.

We enclose a summary chart of these perceptions. Although we have employed the term dictatorship in the Southern European cases, our national teams have pointed to internal ‘transitions’ within those periods and to growing patterns of ‘modernisation’. Nonetheless the late evolution of welfare states in the South stands in sharp juxtaposition to the post-war social democracies in the North. Sweden and Finland and England see fast expansion after 1945. But England, and Ireland, move rapidly into reform mode through the 1980’s. This neo-liberal style of restructuring then becomes a broad-based movement across all countries but building on sharply different trajectory foundations. 102

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NARRATIVES AND WORK LIFE NARRATIVES

Our major work packages have operated at the level of system narratives (especially WP.1 and WP.2) and work life narratives based on life history interviews and miniethnographic observations (especially WP4. and WP.5). Dennis Beach has helpfully summarised the main aspects of public sector restructuring in the following table: Table 2. The noted outcomes of public service restructuring in the case studies – published in the profknow report

– – – – – – – – – – – – – –

– – – – – –

Decentralisation Development of an emphatic discourse of privatisation and marketisation (habituation) Company formation Conversion of public services to private Business takeover of education and care supply and teacher and nursing supply The creation of quasi markets for consolidating the processes of privatisation Authorities forming agencies for contracting out services to private suppliers Costs of administration shifted from costs of public ownership and control to costs of managing and monitoring outsourced delivery Increased costs from franchise effects (un/under-employment) on public employees The increased objectification of labour and increases in the value form of labour A dissemination of a view of learners and care recipients as economically rational, self-interested individuals and the reconstruction of supply in line with this vision A redefinition of democracy in terms of consumer choice An increased objectification of teachers and nurses, learners and patients, care and curricula and (increasingly) professional education and educators as factors of production The creation of a labour buffer (surplus army of labour) in the education and care sectors at the same time as (at least in some education sectors) posts are increasingly difficult to fill and notoriously difficult to maintain continuity in Increased class differences in terms of education and care supply and consumption: i.e. in terms of who provides care and to/for whom Increased inequalities in service work conditions Increases in quick training programmes to maximise economic gains Increases in judgement of performances according to consumer values Standardisation of instruction and assessment Sacrifice of the critical mission of professional education/training to practical and technical training in economic interests 103

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But the restructuring of systems is not only achieved by the enunciation of policy discourse; restructuring only works if it is in some way harmonised and orchestrated (to use a musical analogy) with teachers’ and nurses’ work life narratives. In Section 1 we have shown how restructuring is a world movement and Beach delineates above some of the key characteristics of the world movement in the current conjuncture. This conjuncture was discerned in Section 2 when we looked at historical periodisation. With growing force in the seven countries in the 1980’s this became a generalised movement in our seven countries in the mid 1990’s. Crucially however, we saw how the restructuring of educational systems in European nation states builds on different trajectorial foundations and historical periodisation. There turn out to be critical zones of refraction in understanding how restructuring initiatives are translated and diffused in a specific milieu. Table 3. Published in the profknow report

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We have been able to discern a range of responses when juxtaposing systems narratives and work life narratives. In the next section we provide examples from most of our case study countries. But this should not be taken to mean countries react monolithically to restructuring initiatives. There are a variety of points of refraction or milieu membranes through which restructuring policies must pass: national systems, regional systems, school board systems – right through to individual schools and individual classrooms and teachers. This means that a wide range of responses are possible even if certain national characteristics of response can be evidenced. The following chart provides a framework for analysing the various main configurations found when juxtaposing systems narrative and teachers and nurses’ work life narratives. A number of national case studies highlight the different juxtapositions but as noted this is not to argue that national responses are monolithic. The English case study for instance finds compelling evidence of integration and of restructuring effecting professional change towards what we call ‘re-framed’ professionals. ‘Traditional professionalism was contested under Thatcherism with the rise of market narratives and socialist discourses were silenced to a great extent during this period…. Under New Labour teachers and nurses have become re-framed to work in new circumstances.’ The report adds. ‘In the last ten years under New Labour professionals have been re-framed. Teachers and nurses are now more flexible professionals, their authority has to be earned through team-working, collaborating with clients and life long learning. Meanwhile increased regulation has been introduced…’ ‘Hence integration and restructuring have happened but not uniformly, not without contestation and not at all monolithically; contestation, resistance and decoupling can be found in places.’ The report notes. ‘Teachers and nurses are trapped in the gap between government rhetoric and political narrative about choices and entitlements and the reality of the classroom or the hospital situation. The interviews highlight the unease of professionals with overriding national policies. Using choice and competition as methods of raising standards in public services is seen as intrinsically contradictory and causing greater inequalities in society and taking professionals away from the aims of putting clients first. However the lack of a national underlying oppositional ideology (with socialism having been dropped by the Labour Party) leads to inward motivation and increased professional localism.’ England poses an interesting case given the historical periods and trajectories we have evidenced earlier. One of the countries to build up a strong welfare state after 1945, England became a leader in neo-liberal restructuring initiatives aimed at transforming, if not dismantling, this welfare system. In Sweden and Finland the welfare system has proved more durable and politically sustainable. Hence both the Swedish and Finnish studies show how restructuring has been contested and often, if attempted, sidestepped by professionalism. 105

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‘The slogan personality is the most important instrument of work is predominant among Finnish teachers, indeed the practicing teachers emphasise that the long science-based teacher education, except practical training periods, provides only a theoretical foundation for professional work. For them the most important source of knowledge is the practical activities, common sense, everyday experiences and learning by doing. In addition, personal hobbies and activities outside the school are valued as well. Indeed according to some recent studies the opportunities to draw on personal interests and to exercise independent judgement are among the most important motivations for being a teacher’. This example is common in the established welfare societies of Sweden and Finland as they once were in England. The belief in professional autonomy as motivation and creative leaves loosely-coupled or decoupled restructuring strategies. Significantly Finland, where professional autonomy is deeply entrenched and restructuring policies least intensive, produces highly successful educational indicators. This appears to be an efficient and motivated professional system which builds on a belief in professional expertise, judgement and commitment. Without these elements it is difficult to see restructuring working smoothly however intensive and politically promoted it might be. Certainly restructuring has the features of a world movement that political elites are promoting but we can see how the different historical periodisations and trajectory crucially refract this process. In Sweden and Finland deeply entrenched systems of social democracy and professional expertise appear to be enduring. Now let us turn to the very different historical periodisations and trajectories in Southern Europe. As we noted these countries: Portugal, Spain and Greece, came late to welfare systems and social democracy. Hence the restructuring world movement enters these societies at a different stage, and so to speak, at a different angle. The result of this trajectory of engagement is clear in the way that restructuring initiatives are refracted. In Portugal contestation and resistance seem endemic. The report is eloquent and very clear: ‘The strategies developed by the teaching profession have been mainly reactive: they express mostly a systematic rejection of the initiatives proposed by the central administrator than a proactive and anticipatory presentation of new forms of structuring and promoting the professional group….Only recently (since the end of the eighties have the unions discussed a structure for the teaching career, but even then, they have done so… in a primarily reactive manner, trying to keep things the way they were and resisting any attempts of change, rather than proposing structural changes that might improve the quality of professional practice and its outcomes.’ This Portuguese response shows how the role of periods and trajectories is a vital conceptual tool in understanding how restructuring initiatives are received by professional groups, received and then refracted. The periodisation and trajectories in Greece have considerable similarities and for the older generation who knew the revolutionary period can be clearly evidenced. Here though, generational restrictions 106

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can more clearly be drawn than was the case in Portugal where generational conformity seems more substantial. Generational differences in the professional strategies towards restructuring are expressed as differentiated attitudes towards intensification of working conditions. Senior teachers and nurses tend to ignore the pressures and they use experience and collegial learning as the main way to cope with new demands at work and compensation for the lack of up-to-date knowledge. Working conditions are experienced as more intense and pressurising on the part of the middle aged teachers. Hierarchies among this age group are more peculiar since their formal qualifications vary substantially (some of them having two years initial education, some others four years plus additional university ‘equation’ training). Younger teachers and nurses tend to come from a richer socio-economic background and they all have university qualifications. They experience restructuring not as part of historical consciousness regarding the transitions the profession is undergoing but as a frustrating client oriented working environment. Personnel shortages add to this feeling. Substantial generational differences refer to the confidence in syndicalism as an effective professional strategy. In both the teaching and the nursing profession, the older generation is aware of the contribution of collective action in proposing and defending professional strategies. However, the younger generation of nurses and teachers are not interested in syndicalism and do not become active members partly because the image of syndicalism has faded as part of the more general mistrust in politics. The Spanish case study is a beautifully constructed analysis of some of the complexities and refractions of restructuring when viewed from below at the local level. Their analysis confirms the essential point about periodisation and trajectories and generations. ‘Talking about restructuring both in education and health requires us to talk briefly about structuring. As we have already said, the very late development of Welfare State in Spain has to be acknowledged when dealing with restructuring. Only doing this one can understand the specificity of the Spanish case, which is something like a compressed and anomalous history of the Welfare State in Europe. Public health and education institutions were firstly developed in democracy in the 90’s. Before that, as we know, there were timid build-ups by Franco’s regime. Up until 1967 in health and 1970 in education there wasn’t a comprehensive system for providing basic services to most citizens. So basically what we see during the nineties is the building of the kind of welfare institutions that most European countries developed after the Second World War. A decade later, the first clear symptoms of their dismantling were manifest.’ The report shows responses that are quite like aspects of the Portuguese and Greek (certainly older generation) work life narratives. ‘The recent history of the Spanish educational system just mentioned provided a quite concrete picture of restructuring from a system’s narrative. However, 107

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it failed to be identified as a meaningful player for the teachers themselves. A high degree of scepticism and cynicism was observed regarding the impact of policies in everyday practices. First and foremost the material tells that the three teachers perceive their profession and their work on a daily, personal basis rather then embedded in large socio-political contexts. Therefore, restructuring wasn’t thought of as a kind of local expression of global dynamics, so a very interesting gap remains between their conception of the system and the theoretical causes and explanations some theorists of the field may put forward. Even when drawing explicitly the attention to changes in the legislation from our side, this was not perceived as influencing day to day business, either because changes are too cosmetic or lacking the necessary time to become applied practice. The educational projects associated with the different political parties were met with a dismissive shrug, unable to affect their working conditions towards the better. What happens on the level of politics is perceived as having little or nothing to do with the real necessities in the school. ‘Sophia (5): I don’t care about a lot of political things, but on your daily life… That’s also why I believe a little less each day in political things. I mean, the little I know, they disappoint me so much that beyond my daily life, why should I care about politics’ Rosa’s view is similar: ‘In her eyes it is not that the actual laws don’t function but rather that they are missing the necessary resources to be actually implemented’. The Spanish case points up to conceptual complexity of professional responses, highlights the differences between the teachers noted above and nurses, and between diverse local settings. Their warning is important, a health warning against conceptual over-generalisation. By comparing our cases it becomes apparent how varied and often contradictory processes of ‘restructuring’ are. They comprise many facets, temporalities and scales. Thus having been said it is clear how historical periods and trajectories operate in identifiable ways to refract restructuring initiatives. We have clear evidence that the main responses delineated in the earlier chart of restructuration, contestation, resistance and decoupling can be found in our case studies. Moreover our work on generational periodisation and trajectories is of great utility in understanding the pattern of responses. Theory is always of specific rather than general use. We too need to be parsimonious with our general ambitions. But if there is a message to those in governing agencies who sponsor restructuring initiatives it would be to advise a similar caution in promoting over-centralised, over-generalised expectations and edicts. We have seen how a world movement like restructuring has been widely promoted in Europe. We have also seen how the response has varied immensely and how sensitivity to generations, periodisation and national trajectories helps explain the process of refraction. 108

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At the end point of the multi-layered refraction process sits the individual or professional. Still we should remember a key player, probably the key player in the process. Alienate your professional groups and your restructuring rhetoric will remain just that – political rhetoric. Let us end then with a recognition of the central and inestimable value of the professional contribution of teachers and nurses in the actual delivery of that about which the rest of us merely pronounce. The professional teacher was described in this way by an experienced Finnish teach education and remember Finland’s exemplary performance in education. ‘Good teacherhood is a personal quality, not a skill learnable by heart. Already at the classroom door one could see if the teacher trainee had enough charisma, enthusiasm, aura and know-how. That was completed by an easy and respectful attitude towards the pupils. Theory could not help if the sentiment was wrong.’ Indeed theory could not help if the sentiment was wrong – neither, we are tempted to add, will restructuring if the professional sentiment is wrong. REFERENCES Boyer, R. (1996). State and market: A new engagement for the twenty-first century? In R. Boyer & D. Drache (Eds.), States against markets: The limits of globalization (pp. 84–116). New York: Routledge. Czarniawska, B., & Sevén, G. (2005). Global ideas. how ideas, objects and practices travel in the global economy. Liber & Copenhagen Business School Press. DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 48, 147–160. Foss Lindblad, R., Zambeta, E., & de Lima, J. (2007). Education restructuring as a world movement: On the production of educational change in political and professional contexts. A contribution to the symposium Atlantic crossings: Comparative conversations on professional cultures of teaching and institutional restructuring as a world movement at the AERA 2007 meeting. Goodson, I. F. (2004). Change processes and historical periods: An international perspective. In C. Sugrue (Ed.), Curriculum and ideology: Irish experiences international perspectives. Dublin: The Liffey Press. Latour, B. (1990). Drawing things together. In M. Lynch, & S. Wolgar (Eds.), Representation in scientific practice (pp. 19–68). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Meyer, J. W., et al. (1992). School knowledge for the masses: World models and national primary curricular categories in the twentieth century. Washington, DC: Falmer Press. Serres, M. (1983). Noise. SubStance, 12(3), Issue 40, 48–60.

Ivor Goodson Education Research Centre University of Brighton Sverker Lindblad Department of Education University of Gothenburg

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