Professor Gerald Le Tendre, Pennsylvania State University
This paper can be downloaded from: http://www.wun.ac.uk/ideasanduniversities/seminars.html
Cross-national trends in teacher work roles and working conditions
February 25, 2009 by ideasanduniversities
Dear Gerry,
Many thanks for a wonderful paper. I think we all learned a great deal from it, and enjoyed it enormously.
Could I begin with a request? I think you mentioned that you had published some of the research recently. Could you post the reference or references as I know that several of us would like to read your work in more detail?
Then I had a couple of questions.
1. To what extent do we need to bring a gender analysis into study of the issues that you raised? I’m thinking of comparisons between math majors and math education majors, and comparisons between different countries.
2. You pointed to what we might call ‘the tyranny of the measurable’ towards the end of your paper, and the need to provide measurements but also to challenge that process. In seeking to do this, do we also need to be aware of the way in which the emphasis on the measurable empowers those who manage fields in which they have no actual expertise? Measures of performance (in this case qualifications) are called for on the grounds that those who provide funding must see value for money, especially public money. But in fact the power and status of managerial elites might be seen as just as important in determining what happens.
Finally, for those participating in all the seminars, might I suggest that your paper addressed some themes that have cropped up in other seminars.
1. Isomorphism arising from the desire to perform well in ranking competitions. KaHo Mok and Rosemary Deem have talked about this in relation to world rankings of universities.
2. Isomorphism at one level, with diversity at another. In the last seminar Ivar Bleiklie talked about convergence and isomorphism in discourse about the organization of universities, but diversity in actual practice. It seemed to me, and please correct me if I’m wrong, that something similar might be going on when we compare trends in teachers’ work roles and conditions.
3. The call for those involved in education to become involved in politics outside their educational institutions. You called for teachers and academics to become leaders in their communities. Last year David Shankland called for university academics to engage with politics outside the university as the best means to defend eductional ideals against managerial culture.
Once again, many thanks for a very clear and stimulating paper.
Very best wishes,
Ian
Dear All,
Many thanks, again, to Gerald LeTendre for a very interesting presentation.
I think Ian’s comments highlight an extremely interesting point — managers and policy makers who are not necessarily field experts and, on the flip-side, field experts who are not necessarily policy or managerial experts. This is something that I think Ivar Bleiklie’s presentation has in common with Gerry’s presentation.
In the realm of higher education organization, we wrestle with the question of faculty shared/self-governance vs. the trend toward (need for?) bureaucratic steering. Can we, in academia, fill both rolls sufficiently — the expert scholar and teacher as well as the policy/administrative expert who contributes to the management of the institution? From the perspective Gerry raised, can the K-12 teacher be an expert teacher, a disciplinary expert, and someone trained to undertake the “other” roles he or she will necessarily encounter?
It seems we are left with the weighty, underlying question(s): What is an educator actually expected to do? What do we want them to do? In turn, what does it mean to train an educator? Does training/preparation need to include more diversity of skills or would it be better (at least theoretically) to try and keep those skills, responsibilities, and duties in different spheres?
Finally… Gerry touched on a significant historical reality that is more powerful than we realize sometimes. Public schools and educators have — from the very beginning — been amassing an ever-growing sphere of influence and responsibility from teaching the “Three Rs” to socialization and citizenship training to health monitoring, social work, and community development, etc.
In the United States we are often torn between the belief that schools can fix everything (if they don’t you just need better leadership or better schools) and a counter-argument that schools need to “get back to basics” where math teachers are mathematicians, English teachers poets, and biology teachers medical professionals (and, ideally, theologians who can navigate both “Origin of Species” and “Genesis”). We want highly skilled teachers who are intellectual professionals, civil servants, and camp counselors all at the same time. Furthermore, our system is tied up in a very long, murky, and bumpy history of local control. We want local control to reflect our needs, values, and priorities. *And* we want to ensure that everyone everywhere has the same (or same quality) education.
Do we (any of us) really know what we want from teachers and schools, and are our policy goals/decisions informed by an complete understanding of how and why our schools look they way they do now?
I’m not sure we can successfully maintain all these visions within a single system and I’m not planning to argue for/against any particular perspective. But, until policy makers, educators, and others can openly and seriously consider these different missions and expectations, it seems that the a big piece of the discussion will be missing.
Gerry’s presentation was particularly helpful in bringing these questions to the surface for me. And thanks (so far this year) to Ivar’s discussion of higher education governance and Adam’s discussion of diversity and inclusion we’ve been fortunate to have a foundation of complimentary topics and perspectives that inform and enrich these considerations.