Session Information
23 SES 01 C, Policy Reforms and the Regulation of Teachers and Their Work
Paper Session
Contribution
Market-based logics have had a profound influence on education policies over the past several decades (Anderson & Cohen, 2015; Ball, 2003, 2015; Clark, 2013; Furlong, 2004; Rose, 1989). Globally, neoliberal rationalities have altered the landscape upon which education policy is formed, giving rise to a series of accountability policies that allow for the measurement, evaluation, and comparison of education products and producers (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). This re-articulation conceptualizes education as a market entity, where schools must compete for resources by demonstrating excellence. This is done via quality indicators, such as test scores, retention and graduation rates, and the like.
In Stephen Ball’s (2003) seminal piece—‘The Teacher's Soul and the Terrors of Performativity’— he argued that market logics have fundamentally reconfigured education via a set of performativity technologies that ‘employ judgements, comparisons and displays as means of incentive, control, attrition and change based on rewards and sanctions (both material and symbolic),’ (Ball, 2003, p. 216). Teachers ‘know’ themselves as relational subjects to others (e.g., colleagues, students, etc.) (Rose, 1989), which is made determinable by numbers and categories of judgment (e.g., exemplary, proficient, unsatisfactory). Teachers know their performative worth and are incentivized (again, materially and symbolically) to undertake ‘intensive work on the self’ (Dean, 1995, p. 581) to be excellent and exceptional teachers (Ball, 2003).
Against this backdrop, the U.S. has implemented a set of policies and grant programs that incentivize states and school districts to develop and implement teacher evaluation systems that are data-driven and competition-based. These contemporary teacher evaluation systems rely on numerical indicators of teacher performance (e.g., rubrics, value-added models [VAMs]), so as to render teachers and teacher ‘quality’ visible, measurable, and comparable. Teachers are ranked and compared and then materially and symbolically disciplined via personnel actions. These include, but are not limited to, targeted professional development, one-on-one conferences with evaluators, performance-based pay, and potential termination. The purpose of this study was to understand the ways in which such evaluation systems discursively remake the ‘teacher’ into a calculable object of knowledge—thus conditioning the possibilities for ‘excellent’ teacher performance and self-disciplined behavior (Ball, 2003).
While this particular study took place in the U.S., it is within reason to suggest that the analysis and findings are applicable far beyond one country’s borders. Such policy trends are global in nature and are currently affecting countries around the world. Our ever-growing interconnectedness demands that we situate our analyses within global perspectives and remain cognizant that policies do not emerge in country-specific vacuums (Ball, 2012). As such, this study seeks to provide but one more piece to the international conversation about the neoliberal regime within which education policies are currently formulated.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Anderson, G., & Cohen, M. (2015). Redesigning the identities of teachers and leaders: A framework for studying new professionalism and educator resistance. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23, 85. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v23.2086 Ball, S. J. (2003) The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity, Journal of Education Policy, 18 (2), 215–228. Ball, S. J. (2012). Global education inc: New policy networks and the neo-liberal imaginary. Routledge. Ball, S. J. (2015). Living the Neo‐liberal University. European Journal of Education. Clarke, M. (2013). Terror/enjoyment: performativity, resistance and the teacher’s psyche. London Review of Education, 11(3), 229-238. Dean, M. (1995) Governing the unemployed self in an active society, Economy and Society, 24(4), 559-583. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison, London: Allen Lane. Foucault, M. 1980. “Truth and Power.” In Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, edited by C. Gordon, 109–133. New York: Pantheon. Furlong, J. 2004. “Intuition and the Crisis in Teacher Professionalism.” In The Intuitive Practitioner: On the Value of Not Always Knowing What One is Doing, edited by T. Atkinson and G. Claxton, 16–31. Maidenhead: Mc Graw-Hill. Rose, N. (1989) Governing the Soul: the shaping of the private self (London: Routledge). Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge university press.
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