Supporting disadvantaged students in an English primary school: matters of entrepreneurial and traditional professionalism

Abstract

This paper explores issues of teacher professionalism. The focus is on the competition, control and standardisation that tend to be associated with ‘entrepreneurial’ professionalism on the one hand, and the autonomy, care and criticality that tend to be associated with ‘traditional’ professionalism, on the other. The paper presents a series of descriptive observations of classroom and school practice and segments of interview data gathered from 11 administrative and teaching staff at a primary school in England. These data illustrate how forms of entrepreneurial and traditional professionalism are operating in the school’s attempts to support its disadvantaged students. Such illustration highlights the tensions and complexity associated with the enactment of both forms of professionalism but, ultimately, the ways in which the current sociality of performativity engulfing schools is relegating traditional versions of professionalism to the margins.

Keywords:

• Teacher professionalism
• entrepreneurial professionalism
• traditional professionalism
• disadvantaged students
• English schooling

Notes

1. In England, school inspections are regularly carried out by Ofsted. Schools are evaluated in relation to specific management, teaching and student performance criteria, which leads to an assessment rating that ranges from ‘outstanding’ to ‘good’, ‘requires improvement’ and ‘inadequate’. A rating of ‘inadequate’ is likely to lead a school into ‘special measures’ with the Department directing the school in question to change its management through working with a sponsor – e.g. another school or group of schools deemed to be better performing (Ofsted, 2015). ​This is what occurred at Ruby Primary School.