Session Information
23 SES 06 A, Teacher’s Work and Professionalism
Paper Session
Contribution
This paper explores the role of institutional memory and precedent in the responses of public service professionals and their managers to UK government initiatives intended to develop integrated or cross-professional working between 2003 and 2011. The New Labour administration (1997-2010) produced a series of legislative initiatives designed to develop integrated or ‘trans-professional’ work in education, health and related services; key in this were the 2003 “Every Child Matters” agenda (DfES 2004, 2003) and subsequent 2004 Children’s Act and 2007 Children’s Plan. These initatives are seen however to have had limited effect in the UK, as indeed they have elsewhere. Enduring professional identities and habitual and ‘remembered’ practices have proved resistant to top-down managerial change. Similarly, we argue, governments have persisted with habitual policy structures to bring about this change (often influenced by the habits of evidenced-informed policy in health and education). Indeed, the evidence of the past six months suggests that the new Conservative-led coalition government (May 2010-present) has persisted with this imperative for integrated and cross-sectoral working.
Literature available at present suggests that practitioners are required to overcome traditional professional boundaries, to erode professional silos, to develop multi-disciplinary teams and a trans-professional knowledge-base centred upon ‘the child’. In effect, they are being asked to ‘reconceptualise’ their practice and learning rather than just ‘remodelling’ it (Cameron et al. 2010). Further, policy makers are also challenged in breaking the habits of top down implementation models in steering cultural change in schools and agencies. As such, for policy-makers, managers and practitioners, these new practices of working together involve a radical change of thinking, a breaking of habit, and a loss of identity, which to date, the UK’s institutional structures have proved resistant to.
This paper addresses these issues, to offer a new perspective on the challenges of integrated working,through the following research questions:
- To what extent have precedent and memory of earlier responses informed the policy of New Labour and the Conservative-led Coalition?
- To what extent does institutional memory enhance or inhibit the development of integrated working?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Cabinet Office (2010) Building the Big Society. Cabinet Office publication 18/5/2010. Available online at http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/407789/building-big-society.pdf [Accessed 18/1/2011] Cameron, C., Moss, P., Owen, C., Petrie, P, Potts, P and Wigfall, V. (2010) Working together in Extended Schools and Children’s Centre’s Thomas Coram Research Unit: London Institute of Education DfES (2003) Every Child Matters Norwich: The Stationery Office. Available online from www.dfes.gov.uk/everychildmatters [Accessed 10/4/06] DfES (2004) Every Child Matters: The Next Steps. Norwich: The Stationery Office Gross, D. (2000) Lost time: On remembering and forgetting in late modern culture. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press
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