Consultants of conduct: new actors, new knowledges and new ‘resilient’ subjectivities in the governing of the teacher

Abstract

This article explores the administration of the teacher and teacher education from a critical governmentality perspective. It explores some of the current authorities and knowledges implicated in the governing of teachers, and how these characterise, connect to and operationalise a neo-liberal modality of government. A case study of the influential, school-based provider of teacher education in England, Teach First, is drawn upon in order to investigate some of these relations of power as can be observed in a particular policy site and governmental encounter. In particular, the article investigates and critiques the increasingly popular (managerial) discourse of resilience inscribed into the Teach First competencies and values. Resilience informs one of the pedagogical ends of the organisation's Leadership Development Programme, within which it is traded and exchanged as an approved capability. The article considers some of the wider implications of this discourse for the changing nature and value of knowledge in education, and in imagining and realising a more equitable present and future.

Keywords:

• teachers
• teacher education
• governmentality
• consultants
• knowledge
• discourse
• resilience

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Colin Mills for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I am also indebted to the two anonymous reviewers who greatly contributed to the final version.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Patrick Bailey is a Ph.D. student within the Faculty of Policy and Society, UCL Institute of Education, London, UK.

Notes

1. A version of resilience also derives from ecological literature (see Reid 2013).

2. Resilience is one valued capability included the Coalition government's recent ‘Character Education’ policy, and there has been a recent report published by the University of Nottingham (Day et al. 2011) entitled Beyond survival: teachers and resilience. The latter has looked at the ‘demands of teaching’ and how to ‘sustain teachers when the pressure builds up’ (p. 1).

3. All schools have their own admissions criteria, although all must abide by the central government admissions code.

4. See The importance of teaching: the schools white paper (DfE 2010).

5. As part of the programme, participants can attend careers fairs and undertake summer internships at partnering organisations.

6. http://www.teachfirst.org.uk/.

7. https://www.edapt.org.uk/.

8. https://www.edapt.org.uk/news/2013/07/blog-what-did-i-learn-on-teach-first#.U1ZYW_ldV8E.

9. http://www.teachfirst.org.uk/OurWork/Programme.aspx.

10. http://www.teachfirst.org.uk/.

11. http://www.teachfirst.org.uk/.

12. http://www.teachfirst.org.uk/.

13. Available from: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/a-teacher-speaks-out-im-effectively-being-forced-out-of-a-career-that-i-wanted-to-love-9695706.html.