Democracy and teachers: the im/possibilities for pluralisation in evidence-based practice

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we draw on policy sociology and democratic theory to illustrate how evidence-based practice not only limits teachers’ capacities to exercise professional discretion and authority, but also jeopardises the democratic project of schooling more broadly. Using theoretical concepts from Foucault’s discipline with Connolly’s pluralisation, we argue that evidence-based practice disciplines teachers to comply with a prescribed set of criteria, which constrains their capacity to respond to the evolving and emergent needs of their students and communities. Our argument is built from two projects conducted separately, but concurrently, in Australia and Denmark. The projects involved in-depth interviews with teachers, extensive observations within schools, and the collection and analysis of policy documents and artefacts. Using illustrative excerpts from both studies, we show how teacher participants expressed and embodied inclinations to do (or be) differently, but nonetheless felt the need to adhere to what the evidence established as the right way to do or be. In our view, this points to an increasingly rigid ontological space through which teachers can do, be and become, which raises questions about the extent to which an ‘ethos of pluralisation’ is possible within these schools.

KEYWORDS:

• Pluralisation
• pluralism
• democracy
• professionalism
• teachers
• evidence-based practice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by the Australian Research Council [grant number DE190101140]: Jessica Holloway

Notes on contributors

Jessica Holloway

Dr. Jessica Holloway is a Senior Research Fellow and Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow within the Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education (ILSTE) and the Research Centre for Digital Data and Assessment in Education at Australian Catholic University. Her research draws on political theory and policy sociology to follow two major lines of inquiry: (1) how metrics, data and digital tools produce new conditions, practices and subjectivities, especially as this relates to teachers and schools, and (2) how teachers and schools are positioned to respond to the evolving and emerging needs of their students and communities. Her recent publications include the article ‘Teachers and teaching: (re)thinking professionalism, subjectivity and critical inquiry’ in Critical Studies in Education and the book Metrics, Standards and Alignment in Teacher Policy: Critiquing Fundamentalism and Imagining Pluralism (Springer Nature, 2021).

Maria Louise Larsen Hedegaard

Maria Louise Larsen Hedegaard is a Ph.D. student at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark. Her Ph.D. project focuses on how transnational trends and logics within education condition understandings of democracy and democratic formation in Elementary schooling. Her research draws on educational philosophy, political philosophy and poststructuralist theory and covers transnational, national and local education policy as well as concrete teaching and classroom practices.