International Journal of

Educational Research 37 (2002) 677692

Chapter 2
School reform and transitions in teacher
professionalism and identity
Christopher Day*
School of Education, Jubilee Campus, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NGB 1BB, UK
Abstract
In this paper transitions in the operational denitions of professionalism over the last 20
years will be discussed. As a consequence of (imposed) changes in the control of curriculum
and assessment and increased measures of public accountability, teachers in most countries
now work within cultures in which their careers are ever more dependent upon external
denitions of quality, progress and achievement for their success. Although many experienced
teachers have maintained their identities, nding room to manoeuvre within a general
reduction in their traditional classroom autonomy, the pressure on these and younger
colleagues is to comply with competency based agendas. In such cultures, attention to
teachers identitiesarguably central to sustaining motivation, efcacy, commitment, job
satisfaction and effectivenesshas been limited.
r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. The fashioning of a new accountability agenda
There are a number of key events which have changed forever the post-war
environment in which teachers teach and students learn in many countries.
Supported by claims of falling standards relative to those in competitor nations
which are deemed to be incompatible with the need to increase economic
competitiveness and social cohesion, successive governments have attempted to re-
orientate the strong liberal-humanist traditions of schooling, characterised by a
belief in the intrinsic, non-instrumental value of education towards a more
functional view characterised by competency based, results driven teaching (Helsby,
1999, p. 16), payment by results and forms of indirect rule from the centre (Lawn,
1996). It is important to recognise that what has happened to education is one
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*Tel.: +44-115-9514423; fax: +44-115-9514435.
E-mail address: christopher.day@nottingham.ac.uk (C. Day).
0883-0355/$ - see front matter r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0883-0355(03)00065-X
outcome of a larger ideological debate on the costs and management of the public
services in general. In England, for example, education as a public service was the
test bed for a raft of radical reforms from the mid-1970s which were born of political
new right ideology and economic pragmatism and which challenged the post-
Second World War monopoly which professionals in education, health, and the
social services had held. For education, as for all the public services, what we are
witnessing still:
yis a struggle among different stakeholders over the denition of teacher
professionalism and professionality for the twenty rst centuryy(Whitty, Power,
& Halpin, 1998, p. 65).
As part of this, new limits have been placed on teachers autonomy. Policies of
decentralisation of the management of budgets, plant, stafng, student access and
curriculum and assessment (Bullock & Thomas, 1997) have been accompanied by
centrally determined and monitored measures of pupil achievement. These have had
the effect of restricting the conditions under which teachers work, putting into place
a system which rewards those who successfully comply with government directives
and who reach government targets and punishes those who do not.
In the USA, for example, a high stakes testing regime has been established in order
to ensure that schools engage in a State determined improvement agenda for all
students to meet a prescribed level of achievement on State authorized tests. The
message is clear: improve or be taken over or closed down. In a recent wide ranging
evaluation over three years of the effects of such high-stakes testing on high schools
in Texas and Kentucky, New York and Vermont, Siskin and her colleagues (Siskin,
2003) found that although they have provided for a new tightening up of the
curriculum in certain areas and a new sense of purpose in teaching, the net effects
have been the massive growth of expensive measures of testing and curriculum
validation of traditional core subjects at the expense of those which are not. Whilst
teachers and teacher unions have welcomed the introduction and development of
new standards for curriculum and teaching they are reported to have been dismayed
by the quality and applicability of the new tests which form the basis for judging the
value of their work. Moreover, the high stakes testing measures do not yet appear to
have contributed to improvements in pupil achievements. Indeed, many more
students in urban and high poverty districts will be denied qualication as high-
school graduates (Carnoy, Elmore, & Siskin, 2003).
Teachers in most countries across the world are experiencing similar government
interventions in the form of national curricula, national tests, criteria for measuring
the quality of schools and the publication of these on the internet in order to raise
standards and promote more parental choice. Although school contexts continue to
mediate the short term effects of the intensication of work which is a consequence
of such reforms (Apple, 1986), the persisting effect is to erode teachers autonomy
and challenge teachers individual and collective professional and personal identities.
Furthermore, reforms of this kind are being reinforced by changes in pre-service
teacher training through which students now must meet the measurable require-
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C. Day / Int. J. Educ. Res. 37 (2002) 677692 678
ments of prescribed curricula and sets of narrowly conceived, instrumentally
oriented competencies in order to succeed.
Although reforms in schools are different in every country in their content,
direction and pace, they have ve common factors. (1) They are proposed because
governments believe that by intervening to change the conditions under which
students learn, they can accelerate improvements, raise standards of achievement
and somehow increase economic competitiveness. (2) They address implicit worries
of governments concerning a perceived fragmentation of personal and social values
in society. (3) They challenge teachers existing practices, resulting in periods of at
least temporary destabilisation. (4) They result in an increased work load for
teachers; and (5) they do not always pay attention to teachers identitiesarguably
central to motivation efcacy, commitment, job satisfaction and effectiveness.
Prior to this new work order, a compact had existed between government, parents
and schools in which, by and large, teachers were trusted to do a good job with
minimum direct intervention by government into matters of school governance, the
school curriculum, teaching and learning and assessment. In England and Wales, for
example, quality assurance (a term not yet invented in the 70s) was provided by Her
Majestys Inspectors (HMI), a relatively benign group of ex-teachers and lecturers
who had become civil servants and who were charged with monitoring and
maintaining standards through their connoisseurship judgements on quality (this
was also the case in many other West European countries). Local Education
Authorities (the equivalent of School Districts) were still responsible for curriculum
and professional support and employed either School Advisers or School
Inspectorsconsisting, like HMI, of ex-heads and senior teaching staffto achieve
this and monitor schools. Apart from a minimalist core curriculum, LEAs and
schools were able to exercise considerable choice with regard to the balance of the
curriculum taught (although most of secondary education conformed to a university
entrance driven national examination system for students at age 16 and 18), and this
was reected in different opportunities for students who lived in different LEAs.
Colleges of Education, responsible for providing the bulk of new teachers, also
exercised choice in their pre-service work, as did Universities in their post-graduate
one-year courses. Signicantly, continuing professional development (C.P.D.)
opportunities were largely left to the choice of individual teachers; teacher
development was a term widely used; and the curriculum in school was taught
not delivered. Curriculum developments in schools were initiated and managed
locally or by a national Schools Council, funded by government but governed by a
partnership between teachers professional associations and government. Value
added, accountability, training, performativity and performance management
were not yet even twinkles in the eyes of the policy makers. The nations primary
(elementary) schools were the envy of the world and headteachers were the power in
their own kingdoms, free to govern as they wished.
The new public management (Clarke & Newman, 1997, p. ix) illustrated in the
discussion so far, has been identied in which schools are opened to market pressures
through parental choice, given greater nancial autonomy and expected to improve
on a yearly basis in terms of both teacher and pupil performance through
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independent external inspection, pupil testing, annual performance management
reviews of individual teachers and associated annual school development plans and
target setting. In some countries league tables of results have been introduced and
made public; parents are encouraged to choose the school to which they send their
children; school governors (lay people) have been given more authority as schools
have become locally managed and centrally accountable. To ensure that schools
comply with these innovations, regular school inspections have become more
prescriptive (for instance, in England HMI became OFSTED, The Ofce for
Standards in Education) with judgements based upon a national assessment
framework. In England, there has been the naming and shaming of schools
which are categorised as being in need of special measures. Some schools have been
closed. Successful schools have been awarded Specialist, Lighthouse or Beacon
status and given more resources. And for schools with a negative evaluation, follow-
up procedures have been installed, putting more pressure upon the teachers. Among
the negative consequences of these (and other) centrally imposed initiatives have
been an increase in teachers work time, low morale, and a continuing crisis in
teacher recruitment and retention, especially in those schools which are in
challenging socio-economic contexts. Alongside (though not necessarily associated
with) these, has been a rise in dissatisfaction of their school experiences by a
signicant number of pupils, expressed in increases in absenteeism, behavioural
problems in classrooms and in the less easily measurable but well documented
alienation from formal learning of many who remain. Ball (2001) has described this
central drive for quality and improvement as being embedded in three technolo-
giesthe market, managerialism and performativity (Lyotard, 1979)and placed
them in distinct contrast to the post-war public Welfarist State.
2. Discourses of professionalism
Professionalism has been the subject of many studies over the last century.
Adopting a macro-perspective, Hargreaves has presented the development of
professionalism as passing through four historical ages in many countriesthe pre-
professional (managerially demanding but technically simple in terms of pedagogy);
the autonomous (marked by a challenge to the uniform view of pedagogy, teacher
individualism in and wide areas for discretionary decision taking); collegial (the
building of strong collaborative cultures alongside role expansion, diffusion and
intensication); and the post-professional (where teachers struggle to counter
centralized curricula, testing regimes and external surveillance, and the economic
imperatives of marketisation) (Hargreaves, 2000a, p. 153). Essentially, his work and
that of other researchers (Helsby, 1996; Robertson, 1996; Talbert & McLaughlin,
1996) illustrates the growth of challenges from governments to teachers agency, and
a contestation of control of curriculum content, pedagogy and assessment
historically associated with teacher professionalism. From a different perspective,
researchers have situated teachers within, for example, debates about restricted and
extended (Hoyle, 1974), referring to the extent to which they engage in learning;
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and proletarianisation, intensication and bureaucratisation (Ozga, 1995; Campbell
& Neill, 1994; Helsby, 1996, 1999), referring to the extent to which teachers work
has been affected by external prescriptive policy interventions which result in less
control; or autonomy of classroom decision making, a diminished sense of agency
(Gilroy & Day, 1993).
Reforms have changed what it means to be a teacher as the locus of control has
shifted from the individual to the system managers and contract has replaced
covenant (Bernstein, 1996). Yet, being a professional is still seen as an expectation
placed upon teachers which distinguishes them from other groups of workers.
Professionalism in this sense has been associated with having a strong technical
culture (knowledge base); service ethic (commitment to serving clients needs);
professional commitment (strong individual and collective identities); and profes-
sional autonomy (control over classroom practice) (Etzioni, 1969; Larson, 1977;
Talbert & McLaughlin, 1996). The emphasis on corporate management which many
reforms produce has, however, resulted in a sea change in the nature of
professionalism. Each teacher must now be a:
yprofessional who clearly meets corporate goals, set elsewhere, manages a range
of students well and documents their achievements and problems for public
accountability purposes. The criteria of the successful professional in this
corporate model is one who works efciently and effectively in meeting the
standardised criteria set for the accomplishment of both students and teachers, as
well as contributing to the schools formal accountability processes (Brennan,
1996, p. 22).
Sachs (2003) identies two contrasting forms of professional identity: (1)
Entrepreneurial, which she identies with efcient, responsible, accountable teachers
who demonstrate compliance to externally imposed policy imperatives with
consistently high quality teaching as measured by externally set performance
indicators. This identity may be characterised as being individualistic, competitive,
controlling and regulative, externally dened and standards-led: and (2) Activist,
which she sees as driven by a belief in the importance of mobilising teachers in the
best interests of student learning and improving the conditions in which this can
occur. In this identity, teachers will be primarily concerned with creating and putting
into place standards and processes which give students democratic experiences.
The former, she argues, is the desired product of the performativity, managerialist
agendas while the latter suggests inquiry oriented, collaborative classrooms and
schools in which teaching is related to broad societal ideals and values and in which
the purposes of teaching and learning transcend the narrow instrumentalism of
current reform agendas.
As a result of analysis and critiquing of different discourses of professionalism and
professionalisation in a post-modern age, Hargreaves and Goodson propose seven
principles which provide an alternative to current reform agendas: (1) Increased
opportunity and responsibility to exercise discretionary judgement over the issues of
teaching, curriculum and care that affect ones students. (2) Opportunities and
expectations to engage with the moral and social purposes and value of what teachers
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teach, along with major curriculum and assessment matters in which these purposes
are embedded. (3) Commitment to working with colleagues in collaborative cultures
of help and support as a way of using shared expertise to solve ongoing problems of
professional practice, rather than engaging in joint work as a motivational device to
implement the external mandates of others. (4) Occupational heteronomy rather than
self-protective autonomy, where teachers work authoritatively yet openly and
collaboratively with other partners in the wider community (especially parents and
students themselves), who have a signicant stake in students learning. (5) A
commitment to active care and not just anodyne service for students. Professionalism
must in this sense acknowledge and embrace the emotional as well as the cognitive
dimensions of teaching, and also recognise the skills and dispositions that are
essential to committed and effective caring. (6) A self-directed search and struggle for
continuous learning related to ones own expertise and standards of practice, rather
than compliance with the enervating obligations of endless change demanded by
others (often under the guise of continuing learning or improvement). (7) The
creation and recognition of high task complexity with levels of status and reward
appropriate to such complexity (Hargreaves & Goodson, 1996, pp. 2021).
Professionals themselves, from these perspectives, are said to have various, core
moral purposes and ethical codes (Hansen, 1995; Day, 2000a, b; Jackson, Boostrom,
& Hansen, 1993; Pels, 1999), pursuing teaching as an art, craft (technical) and
scientic endeavour (Friedson, 2001; Galton, Hargreaves, & Wall, 1999; Brown &
McIntyre, 1992). Such higher moral purposes of teachers (Sockett, 1993) are under
threat by teaching and learning agendas which focus upon improving schools and
raising student achievement within a restricted, measurable range of subjects,
abilities or competencies. Teachers broader identities, central to the exercise of the
kinds of professionalism described above, are being challenged. This new age has
been called post-professionalism (Ball, 2003), since teachers and other public services
workers succeed only by satisfying and complying with others denitions of their
work. The ethical-professional identities that were dominant in schools are being
replaced by entrepreneurial-competitive identities.
3. Professional and personal identities
ythe self is a crucial element in the way teachers themselves construe the nature
of the job. (Kelchtermans & Vandenberghe, 1994, p. 47).
Much research literature demonstrates that events and experiences in the personal
lives of teachers are intimately linked to the performance of their professional roles
(Ball & Goodson, 1985; Hargreaves & Goodson, 1996). In her research on the
realities of teachers work, Acker (1999) describes the considerable pressures on
teaching staff, not just arising in their work but also from their personal lives.
Complications in personal lives can become bound up with problems at work.
Woods, Jeffey, Troman, and Boyle (1997, p. 152) argue that teaching is a matter of
values. People teach because they believe in something. They have an image of the
good society. Kelchtermans (1993) suggests that the professional self, like the
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personal self, evolves over time and that it consists of ve interrelated parts: Self-
image: how teachers describe themselves though their career stories; Self-esteem: the
evolution of self as a teacher, how good or otherwise as dened by self or others; Job-
motivation: what makes teachers choose, remain committed to or leave the job; Task
perception: how teachers dene their jobs; Future perspective: teachers expectations
for the future development of their jobs (Kelchtermans, 1993, pp. 449450). So
teachers identities are closely bound with their professional and personal values and
aspirations. Where teachers are opposed to the values embodied in imposed change
it is difcult for them to adjust to new roles and work patterns (Woods et al., 1997).
Osborn, Abbot, Broadfoot, Croll, and Pollard (1996), in a large scale study of
English primary schooling, found that over the eight years of the study, while some
tensions were experienced in adapting to the new values in the reforms, the main
response of the teachers was one of incorporation of the changes. However, Helsby
(1999) in a study of secondary schools, and Menter, Muschamp, Nicolls, Ozga, and
Pollard (1997) in a primary school study, found that, at least temporarily, many
teachers professional identities, in which their values were embedded, were
undermined by the reforms.
Teachers sense of professional, personal identity is a key variable in their
motivation, job fullment, commitment and self-efcacy; and these will themselves
be affected by the extent to which teachers own needs for autonomy, competence
and relatedness are met. Reforms have an impact upon teachers identities and
because these are both cognitive and emotional, create reactions which are both
rational and non rational. Thus, the ways and extent to which reforms are received,
adopted, adapted and sustained or not sustained will be inuenced by the extent to
which they challenge existing identities.
Several researchers (Nias, 1989, 1996; Nias, Southworth, & Campbell, 1992;
Hargreaves, 1994; Sumsion, 2002) have noted that teacher identities are not only
constructed from the more technical aspects of teaching (i.e. classroom management,
subject knowledge and pupil test results) but, also as van den Berg (2002) explains:
ycan be conceptualised as the result of an interaction between the personal experiences
of teachers and the social, cultural, and institutional environment in which they function
on a daily basis (p. 579). Reporting on research with teachers in The Netherlands,
Beijaard (1995) illustrated the different patterns of change in teacher identities:
Mary remembers her satisfaction about her own teaching in the beginning
because she experienced it as a challenge. This challenge disappeared when she
had to teach many subjects to overcrowded classes. The second lowest point in her
storyline was caused by her time-consuming study and private circumstances at
home. Now she is reasonably satised, due to a pupil centred method she has
developed together with some of her colleagues. Peter is currently very satised
about his own teaching; he qualies his present teaching style as very adequate. In
the beginning of his career, however, it was very problematic for him to maintain
order. In this period he considered leaving the profession several times. The
second lowest point in his story line refers to private circumstances and to
problems in the relationship with colleagues (p. 288).
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Here we see the ways in which personal and professional environments affect
teachers identities both positively and negatively. This interplay between the private
and public, the personal and professional lives of teachers is a key factor in their
sense of identity and job satisfaction and, by inference, in their capacity to maintain
their effectiveness as teachers. In Marys case, increases in class size and role
diversication and intensication decreased the keen challenge she had felt on her
entry into teaching; in the case of Peter painful beginnings (Huberman, 1995) had
made it difcult even to survive. Common to both were the times when personal
problems in their lives outside the classroom affected adversely their attitudes to
teaching.
The architecture of teachers professional selves, in other words, is not stable, but
discontinuous, fragmented, and subject to change (Day & Hadeld, 1996). This is
not to say that teachers do not themselves in different ways seek and nd their own
sense of stability within what appears from the outside to be fragmentary identities.
On the contrary, much empirical research indicates that many nd meaning in their
work through a strong sense of moral purpose. Stronach, Corbin, McNamara,
Stark, and Warnes (2002) research with nurses and teachers, like others before it
(Nias, 1989; Kelchtermans, 1993; Hoyle & John, 1995; Bowe, Ball, & Gold, 1992;
Furlong, Barton, Miles, Whiting, & Whitty, 2000; Friedson, 2001; Hanlon, 1998),
claims that professionalism is bound up in the discursive dynamics of professionals
attempting to address or redress the dilemmas of the job within particular cultures
(p. 109). Their reading of the professional, as mobilizing a complex of occasional
identities in response to shifting contexts (p. 117), and their own data from teachers
in six primary schools in England resonates with much other empirical research on
teachers plurality of roles (Sachs, 2003) within work contexts which are
characterized by fragmentation and discontinuities (Huberman, 1995) and a number
of tensions and dilemmas (Day, Harris, Hadeld, Tolley, & Beresford, 2000) within
what is generally agreed to be a hostile external audit policy culture (Power, 1994);
and it does add to the considerable body of existing literature which highlights the
complexities and instabilities of teachers professional lives, which points to teachers
continuing sense of agency in their work and which recognizes that, excellence can
only be motivated, it cannot be coerced (p. 132). Yet one omission is the discussion
of the teachers personal identitiesall the more surprising because its presence
shines through in the teachers words which are used. If we are to understand
teachers professionalism, it is necessary to take account of personal and professional
teacher identities, the importance to these of self-efcacy, motivation, job
satisfaction and commitment and the relationship between these and effectiveness.
There is an unavoidable interrelationship between professional and personal,
cognitive and emotional identities if only because the overwhelming evidence is that
teaching demands signicant personal investment of these:
The ways in which teachers form their professional identities are inuenced by
both how they feel about themselves and how they feel about their students. This
professional identity helps them to position or situate themselves in relation to
their students and to make appropriate and effective adjustments in their practice
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and their beliefs about and engagement with, students (James-Wilson, 2001,
p. 29).
Many writers have argued that teachers derive their job satisfaction from
the psychic rewards of teaching (Lortie, 1975; Rosenholtz, 1989; Hargreaves,
1998a, b, 2000b). Central amongst these is the development of close relation-
ships and emotional understanding. Despite Riseborough (1981) arguing
some time ago that teachers have to feel right in order to do their job to
the best of their abilities, Hargreaves (1998b) points out that there have
been
few socio-politically informed analyses that put a prime emphasis on teacher
emotions in the context of how teachers work is organized and how it is being
reorganized through educational reform (p. 318).
Yet whilst the new right managerialist agendas now acknowledge the existence of
widespread teacher disenchantment and stress and its effects upon the quality of
teaching and learning, there are no signs that they recognise the crucial effects on
teachers emotional as well as intellectual identities. It is through our subjective
emotional world that we develop our personal constructs and meanings of our
outer realities and make sense of our relationships and eventually our place
in the wider world. In addition, these are also clearly related to our motivation
and state of attention. From a neuroscientic perspective, Le Doux (1998)
argues that the emotional brain may act as an intermediary between the
thinking brain and the outside world. There is an interplay between thought
and feeling and feeling and memory. When feelings are ignored, they can
act unnoticed and thus have unacknowledged negative or positive
inuences.
Our capacity to function intellectually is highly dependent on our emotional state.
When we are preoccupied our minds are literally occupied with something and we
have no space to pay attention, to take in and listen to anything else. When we are
frightened we are more likely to make mistakes. When we feel inadequate we tend
to give up rather than struggle to carry on with the task. (Salzberger-Wittenberg,
1996, p. 81)
When ooded by our emotional brain, as is the case of multiple reform agendas,
our working brain may have little capacity for attention to hold in mind the facts
necessary for the completion of a task, the acquisition of a concept or the making of
an intelligent decision. The performativity agenda, coupled with the continuing
monitoring of the efciency with which teachers are expected to implement others
plans for the kind of curricula and approaches to teaching, learning and assessment,
has ve consequences which are likely to reduce rather than increase effectiveness.
They:
(1) threaten teachers sense of agency;
(2) implicitly encourage teachers to comply uncritically (e.g. teach to the test);
(3) challenge teachers substantive identity;
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(4) reduce the time teachers have to connect with, care for and attend to the needs
of individual students;
(5) diminish teachers sense of motivation, efcacy and job satisfaction.
It is these sources of meaning which reforms that ignore or erode core values de-
stabilize, and which can destroy the sense of identity which is at the core of being an
effective professional. Paradoxically, then, imposed reform may in the long term
diminish teachers capacity to raise standards.
4. Two longitudinal research studies: the self and professionalism
Constructing, sustaining and renewing identity, then, are essential processes when
implementing school reforms:
ythe maintenance of a coherent story about the self is no longer a matter of
occasional xing if something goes wrong, but it is a continuing process in need of
continual reskilling. This is deemed necessary in order to weather transitions that
are part and parcel of everyday life (Biggs, 1999, p. 53).
Two recent research studies provide empirical data about the ways in which
reforms are affecting teacher identities and, therefore, their professionalism. The
rst, a recently published report of a cross cultural study which investigated the
impact of policy on the work of secondary school teachers in England, France and
Denmark (McNess, Broadfoot, & Osborn, 2003) found that in England the
perceived demand for delivery of performance had, emphasized the managerially
effective in the interests of accountability while ignoring teachers deeply rooted
commitment to the affective aspects of teaching and learning (McNess et al., 2003,
p. 243). It drew attention to the increasing body of work which illuminates the extent
to which the social and emotional aspects of teachers workthe emotional
investment of selfcauses them to be vulnerable to policy changes (Nias, 1996;
Acker, 1999; Hargreaves, 1994; Woods & Jeffrey, 1996) which reduce opportunities
for them to exercise creativity and develop caring relationships with their pupils
(Pollard, Broadfoot, Croll, Osborn, & Abbott, 1994; Woods, 1995; Woods et al.,
1997; Menter et al., 1997). Using Bernsteins pedagogic models (Bernstein, 1996, pp.
5763), the authors argued that curriculum pedagogy and assessment had moved
from weak to strong classication through the imposition of a highly prescriptive
national curriculum (Bernstein, 1996, p. 247) which had devalued the professional
pedagogic skills of the teacher (Bernstein, 1996, p. 248). This had undermined the
joint negotiation and close personal relationships between the teacher and pupil in
which teachers sense of personal identity in all countries is so bound up.
In Denmark, though reforms are different, the relatively loose national curriculum
framework has meant more preparation time for differentiated work with a
perceived effect on social cohesion and cooperative working (Bernstein, 1996, p.
253) and the recent availability of childrens test results on the internet indicates
further movement towards a performativity agenda. In terms of teacher
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professionalism (in England), as in these countries, the research suggests that the role
of teachers as knowledge constructors has been eroded, that autonomy in classroom
decision making has been constrained, that their roles have become more
instrumental and that their worth is judged principally on their success in complying
to central agendas. In Norway, too, there is now national testing, national measures
for judging the quality of schools, and increased competition between schools as
privately nanced schools are encouraged (Welle-Strand & Tjeldvoll, 2002). Similar
changes have been reported in Finland (Rinne, Kivirauma, & Simola, 2002) and
Sweden (Lundahl, 2002). In short, ownership of the three key components of
professionalism identied by Furlong et al. (2000, p. 4)knowledge, autonomy and
responsibilityis being contested.
These ndings mirror those emerging from the VITAE project (a four-year on-
going study of variations in teachers work and lives and their effects on pupils). This
project conducted a survey with 1400 teachers and is working with 300 teachers at
different phases of their careers in 100 primary and secondary schools in England.
Fewer than half the sample reported that their motivation was high, and one-in-ve
secondary teachers reported low motivation. The level of motivation varied with
years of experience. It was highest in the early years of teaching and then it declined,
particularly in those with more that 16 years of experience. For around half only,
motivation had increased over the past 3 years. For the others, it had declined. Half
the teachers reported high levels of stress, and nearly two-thirds of teachers in one
disadvantaged LEA reported that they were consistently and frequently affected in
their work by stress. The majority of teachers also perceived both a loss in time to
respond to the needs of individual pupils and to teach creatively (Day, Stobart,
Kington, Sammons, & Last, 2003). In the rst round of interviews, questions were
asked about the effects of policy, practice, pupils and personal biography. Analysis
of these showed that the overwhelming number of responses centred upon the self
in particular the effects of reforms on: (1) motivation and commitment; (2) beliefs,
ideologies and personal and professional values; and (3) efcacy and job satisfaction.
It was clear that these were core elements of the teachers professional identities.
When asked what helped them to be an effective teacher, the respondents pointed
to these core elements and to the emotional support of school cultures, individual
colleagues, social relationships in the staffroom, a sense of being valued and that
they were making a difference in pupils livesa sense of agency. Many spoke of
reforms as undermining their professionalism. They put you into a straightjacket,
gave less time for creativity, take time away from teaching to kids needs, de-skill,
make it impossible to follow up interests of pupils. There was too much lling in
paper at the expense of teaching. As one of the teachers explained it: Thats why
people dont enjoy teaching so much because there isnt that opportunity to put
something of yourself into your classroom.
Further issues arose from the survey and interviews which must be taken into
account in discussing changes in professionalism. First, there were differences
between those teachers (the majority) who had entered teaching before the reforms
and those who had entered during them (the latter were more positive about their
impact). Whilst more experienced teachers were critical of the erosion of
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opportunities to exercise their moral purposes and contribute as educators to the
education of the whole student, younger teachers seemed to be more content to
exercise their pedagogical skills within what was perceived by their older colleagues
as the narrower range of discretionary decision-making which was a consequence of
the reforms. In short, two different kinds of professional identity can now be
distinguished in the reform landscape: one is located in a broader vision for
professional identity which includes some responsibilities for care of the cognitive,
affective, social and societal parts of the education of students by professionals who
exercise broad moral purposes in their work; and the other focuses primarily upon
teachers whose success is measured primarily through their ability to educate
students to pass tests. This suggests that there may be an evolving transition in
teacher professionalism towards the more instrumental and technical. It is clear, also,
that the strength of the effects of reform upon identity are mediated not only by the
nature of the reform itself but also by teachers personal sense of vocationalism and
the leadership, cultures, and pupil populations of the schools in which they work.
5. Conclusion
If the quality of the education provided to students is to be maintained or
improved in the face of the increasing pressures and demands from a variety of
stakeholders, teachers must be assisted in sustaining their enthusiasm for, and
identication with their work which demands considerable investment of their
cognitive and emotional selves (Day, 2000a, b; Louis, 1998). Teacher commitment
has been found to be a critical predictor of teachers work performance, absenteeism,
retention, burnout and turnover, as well as having an important inuence on
students motivation, achievement, attitudes towards learning and being at school
(Firestone, 1996; Graham, 1996; Louis, 1998; Tsui & Cheng, 1999). As a
consequence of the new monitoring, inspection and public accountability systems,
in addition to the increased intensication of work through added bureaucratic tasks
directly associated with the performativity agenda, reforms have promoted high
degrees of uncertainty, instability and vulnerability for teachers (Ball, 2001, p. 7).
Kelchtermans (1996) study of the career stories of ten experienced primary school
teachers revealed two recurring themes: stability in the job: a need to maintain the
status quo, having achieved ambition, led to satisfaction; and vulnerability to the
judgements of colleagues, the headteacher and those outside the school gates, e.g.
parents, inspectors, media reports which might be based exclusively on measurable
student achievements. As vulnerability increased, so they tended towards passivity
and conservatism in teaching. Surprisingly, however, the relationship between
external reform, teachers commitment, identity, the environments in which they
work and the quality and effectiveness of their work is absent from the policies of
those who believe that it is possible to steer the daily activities in the classroom from
the centre. Nor has it been the subject of extensive research.
The implications for those wishing to change how teachers construe, construct and
conduct their work are clear. Individuals commitment to such change is essential.
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Changing operational denitions of professionalism require working closely with
teachers and their individual emotional and intellectual identities because unless
these are addressed reform is unlikely to succeed in the longer term. This suggests
rebuilding professionalism through sustained, critical dialogue, mutual trust and
respect. In a multidisciplinary review of the theoretical and empirical literature on
trust spanning four decades, Tschannen-Moran and Hoy (2000) highlight the need to
pay attention to trust, particularly in terms of change. They found that trust is:
*
a means of reducing uncertainty in situations of independence;
*
necessary for effective cooperation and communication;
*
the foundation for cohesive and productive relationships;
*
a lubricant greasing the way for efcient operations when people have
condence in other peoples work and deeds (p. 549);
*
a means of reducing the complexities of transactions and exchanges more quickly
and economically than other means of managing organisational life.
Conversely, distrust, provokes feelings of anxiety and insecurityyself-protection
yminimising (of) vulnerability ywithholding information andypretence or even
deception to protect their interests (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2000, p. 550).
Identity, so important in the lives of teachers, is not, then, something which is xed
or static. It is an amalgam of personal biography, culture, social inuence and
institutional values which may change according to role and circumstance. It is
often, less stable, less convergent and less coherent than is often implied in the
research literature (MacLure, 1993, p. 320). Yet sustaining a positive sense of
identity to subject, relationships and roles is important to maintaining motivation,
self-esteem or self efcacy, job satisfaction, and commitment to teaching; and
although research shows consistently that identity is affected, positively and
negatively, by classroom experiences, organisational culture and situation specic
events which may threaten existing norms and practices (Nias, 1989; Kelchtermans,
1993; Flores, 2002), successive reform implementation strategies have failed to
address its key role in effective teaching. Reform which addresses key issues of
professional identity, commitment and change is more likely to meet the standards
raising recruitment and retention agendas more efciently and more effectively than
current efforts which, though well intentioned, appear from empirical data to be
failing to connect with the long term learning and achievement needs of teachers and
students.
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