Control and professional development: are teachers being deskilled or reskilled within the context of decentralization?

Wong, Jocelyn L. N.

doi:10.1080/03055690500415910

Cited by 34 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…The principles of NPM may lead to impoverished definitions of educational goals and values, and, accordingly, to a menace to teachers' professionalism, well-being and pride in their work. Teachers may feel transformed into administrative bureaucrats, largely deprived of the rewards previously accessible to the profession (Mintzberg, 1983;Bottery & Wright, 2000;Ball, 2003;Adcroft & Willis, 2005;Walsh, 2006;Wong, 2006;Fitzgerald, 2008;Troman, 2008;Allodi, 2009).…”

Section: The Values Of the Teaching Profession: Eroded Under Performamentioning

confidence: 99%

Teachers' Perceptions of their Work Environment in Swedish Junior High Schools

Westling

Fischbein

2012

Research in Comparative and International Education

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The aims of this study were to explore the organisational characteristics of junior high schools, to identify typologies of work environments and to explore the relationships between the type of work environment and how schools function. The educational profession and the role of teachers have been influenced by policies inspired by the principles of new public management (NPM). The Swedish version of the Organizational Checkup Survey is a general and expanded version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory. The present work analyses the 16 items concerning energy, involvement and accomplishment ('Relations to Work') and the 29 items concerning workload, control, reward, community, fairness and values ('Fields of Work'). The answers from 749 Swedish junior high school teachers from a stratified selection of 32 schools were analysed with a structural equation modelling approach. The means of the answers from the teachers from the same school were dichotomised and analysed with partial order scalogram analysis. The polarising variables contributing to the identification of four main profiles were reward and workload. There were gender differences: female teachers were more exhausted, felt more involved and were more dissatisfied with their workload than male teachers. There were also age differences, the younger teachers reporting, in particular, lower professional autonomy (control). The results show relevant differences between schools, and that teachers' perceptions of their work environment can be considered an indicator of school quality. The results of the comparisons are related to the conditions of high efficiency and deprofessionalisation of NPM-inspired educational organisations, and indicate a possible link between school organisation and teachers' perceptions of reward.

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Section: The Values Of the Teaching Profession: Eroded Under Performamentioning

confidence: 99%

Teachers' Perceptions of their Work Environment in Swedish Junior High Schools

Westling

Fischbein

2012

Research in Comparative and International Education

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“…The new situation meant an increased workload and uncertainty for teachers due to their lack of preparation for curricular decision making (Olek, 1998;Polyzoi & Cerna, 2001;Zogla, 2001). Interestingly, however, similar results have been reported from countries outside Eastern Europe that have also taken measures to reduce the level of centralisation in their curricular policies ñ such as Sweden (Lundahl, 2005), China (Wong, 2006(Wong, , 2008, Hong Kong (Lam & Yeung, 2010) and Australia (Kirk & MacDonald, 2001). …”

Section: Research On the Curricular Thinking Of Teachers And Their Inmentioning

confidence: 48%

“…The teacherís identity and the influence of teachersí attitudes and understandings of the success of educational reforms have been investigated in different countries (Craig, 2006;Drake & Sherin, 2006;M‰rz & Kelchtermans, 2013;Shkedi, 2006;Vulliamy, Kimonen, Nevalainen, & Webb, 1997;Wallace & Priestley, 2011). Also, formation of teacher identity related to curricular reforms (Handler, 2010;Sloan, 2006), the teacherís autonomy in making curricular decisions (Wermke & Hˆstf‰lt, 2014), teachersí ratings of the decentralisation of curriculum policy (Lundahl, 2005;Osei & Brock, 2006;Wong, 2006Wong, , 2008, the influence of participation in the development of school curricula on teachersí professional development (Law, Galton, & Wan, 2007;Priestley, Edwards, & Priestley, 2012), teachersí curricular beliefs and conceptual approaches in developing and implementing school curricula (Shawer, 2010;Van Driel, Bulte, & Verloop, 2007, 2008 and teachersí opinions of the possibility of implementing different aspects and components of curricula (Shkedi, 1998;Shriner, Schlee, & Libler, 2010) have been studied extensively.…”

Section: Research On the Curricular Thinking Of Teachers And Their Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating Estonian Teachers’ Expectations for the General Education Curriculum

Viirpalu

Krull

Mikser

2014

Journal of Teacher Education for Sustainability

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Finding a balance between a centralised and decentralised curricular policy for general education and seeing teachers as autonomous agents of curriculum development is a recurrent issue in many countries. Radical reforms bring about the need to investigate whether and to what extent different parties ñ and first of all, teachers ñ are ready to accept and internalise the new policies and roles as curriculum leaders to ensure the sustainability of curriculum development. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a questionnaire for investigating Estonian teachersí curricular work and preferences and to introduce the results of its piloting. The main topics covered by the questionnaire are teachersí experience and autonomy in using and developing curricula, their preparation for curriculum development and preferences and expectations for the best curricular solutions. The developed questionnaire can be used for investigating teachersí curricular work and preferences in different national contexts, thus enabling comparative studies across countries with different practices regarding curriculum policy.

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“…Despite their reduced professional remit, Chinese teachers seeking to maintain their own professionality are being given hope by the policy of "quality education" (suzhiyiaoyu), since one of the things it does is motivate them to nurture pupil self-learning (Wong 2006). As Simons (2002) has pointed out, however, this type of nurturing does nothing to alter the reality that the teacher is becoming a component of commercially oriented schools based on managerial perceptions of quality.…”

Section: School Culture In Managerial Strategies For Social Changementioning

confidence: 99%

“…While it is true that these regulatory tools, used to ascertain accountability, are meant to ensure consistency in the performances of pupils and teachers, in fact they are currently leading to the diminished professional responsibility of teachers, so this kind of accountability is a straitjacket. Wong (2006) also demonstrates the consequences of increasing the autonomy of schools while strengthening the "audit culture" through standards relating to the professional profile of the teacher in her research that is a response to the reforms of the education system in China. Her research shows that the attendant "marketization in education" and implementation of new managerialism in schools is shaping the work of teachers such that it can be seen as the deskilling of their work.…”

Section: School Culture In Managerial Strategies For Social Changementioning

confidence: 99%

School culture at risk of political and methodological expropriation

et al. 2012

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The aim of this article is to problematize the concept of school culture both as a concept and as a subject of investigation. It deals with the historical roots of this concept and the fact that it is shrinkinga consequence of the managerial imperatives of effectiveness and accountability in education. School culture, in relation to the quality of schools and the quality of education, has become the subject of audits, arrived at through a developed network of standardisation in education, testing and evaluation. The methodology of evaluation currently lending particular substance to school culture, however, generates different methodological perspectives on investigating school culture and thus research is becoming an instrument of political power. In the research it is then necessary to either abandon the concept of school culture or to free it from spinning round the cycle of evaluation/self-evaluation-a change in school culture-improving the "quality of the school"-a new evaluation/self-evaluation. One way to do this is to employ ethnographic approaches in research into schools and to understand school culture as a system of texts.

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Control and professional development: are teachers being deskilled or reskilled within the context of decentralization?

Cited by 34 publications

References 35 publications

Teachers' Perceptions of their Work Environment in Swedish Junior High Schools

Teachers' Perceptions of their Work Environment in Swedish Junior High Schools

Investigating Estonian Teachers’ Expectations for the General Education Curriculum

School culture at risk of political and methodological expropriation

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