Post‐welfarism and the reconstruction of teachers’ work in the UK

A key rationale for the UK education reforms of the 1980s and 1990s was a desire on the part of agents within the state to control more directly the work of teachers. In a variety of ways, the reforms were designed to contribute to a reconstruction of the work of teaching. The first part of this paper considers the roots of this intended reconstruction. The second part explores the impact of the reforms on the culture of teachers’ work, focusing on three kinds of consequences ‐ emotional, social and pedagogical. The paper draws on loosely‐structured interviews with secondary school teachers, carried out as part of a study of the culture and values of schooling in the light of the shift from wel‐farist to post‐welfarist policies in education.

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Sharon Gewirtz

Sharon Gewirtz is a Lecturer in Social Policy at the Open University. She has researched and published extensively on education policy and is co‐author of Markets, Choice and Equity in Education (Open University Press, 1995) and Specialisation and Choice in Urban Education (Routledge, 1993).