Session Information
23 SES 09 B, Policy Learning/Borrowing
Symposium
Contribution
In France, teacher education policy has recently been changed through the reform of Graduate Schools of Education requiring teachers to get a master degree to enter in the job and to be more focused on learning and teaching practices during their initial training. The publication of the PISA survey and its dissemination of its results within policy circles and the media has reinforced the idea of structuring the curriculum into basic skills and getting teachers better professionalized through the mastery of different standards as experts and reflective practitioners (supporting student learning, team work, cooperation with partners, professional development, etc.) (Pons, 2012). The idea of Lifelong Learning and professional development for further training is also emerging in different narratives and reports. However, the attachment to disciplines as well as to a “common culture” and Republican ethics remains strong among officials and practitioners and these values are driven against the market and competition whereas accountability mechanisms remain weak (Derouet, Normand, 2011). So, international influences, especially influences from non-European contexts like the US, are indirect and mediated by national debates and visions which blur international policy borrowing and transfer. However, such transfer can still be noticed in the areas of drop-outs, basic skills policy, controlled experiments and school effectiveness which paradoxically impact on the vision of the profession and its training (Seddon, Levin, 2012; Normand, 2012). When teacher education policy is included in a more national and global policy perspective, beyond the motto of a “reflexive practitioner”, it corresponds to possible future changes in terms of accountability and decentralization (with a recurrent debate on teacher assessment and school autonomy). Some evolutions are also visible through the restructuring of public services and the development of New Public Management, which has mostly been developed in major OECD nations such as the UK, Australia and the US, could impact on the profession as well (diversification of the recruitment, mobility, changes in the conditions of careers and pay) (Bezes & alii, 2012, Normand, 2017). However, there are strong oppositions from teacher trade unions but also between the Left and the Right political parties (and even within them). The results of the next general elections in 2017 should be decisive for the future of French teacher training and conditions of work.
References
*Bezes, P., Demazière, D., Le Bianic, T., Paradeise, C., Normand, R., Benamouzig, D., Evetts, J. (2012). New public management and professionals in the public sector. What new patterns beyond opposition? Sociologie du travail, 54, 1-52. *Derouet, J. L., & Normand, R. (2011). Caesars and Rubicon: the hesitations of French policymakers in identifying a Third Way in education and training. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 43(2), 141-163. *Normand, R. (2012). 11 The Doubts and Uncertainties of French Educators in the Face of Travelling Policies. World Yearbook of Education 2013: Educators, Professionalism and Politics: Global Transitions, National Spaces and Professional Projects, 184-195. *Normand, R. (2017). The French Republic and the Decline of Napoleon’s Bureaucracy. Towards New Public Management in Education. In Bildung für Arbeit unter neuer Steuerung Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. 265-282. *Pons, X. (2012). Going beyond the ‘PISA shock’discourse: An analysis of the cognitive reception of PISA in six European countries, 2001–2008. European Educational Research Journal, 11(2), 206-226. *Seddon, T., & Levin, J. (2013). Educators, professionalism and politics: Global transitions, national spaces and professional projects. Routledge.
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