Translating teachers as leaders of educational change: briefcases, biscuits, and teacher participation in policymaking

ABSTRACT

Global policy discourse promotes teachers as leaders of educational change who should have a voice in policy formation. ‘Teaching Scotland’s Future’, a major teacher education reform in Scotland, feeds off this vision. Taking an Actor-Network Theory inspired Critical Policy Analysis approach, I unpack the participation of human and non-human actors within the National Partnership Group, a network established by the Scottish Government to plan the enactment of the reform. I utilise Callon’s four moments of translation and Latour’s concept of the token to identify and examine spaces of interest translation. Drawing on interviews with human actors from the network, I discuss the involvement of classroom teachers, and demonstrate the multiple ways that the materiality of the policy process shaped their participation in the network, limiting their ability to inform further development of the policy agenda. I consider the implications of this for education reform and democratic policymaking.

KEYWORDS:

• Actor-network theory
• policy translation
• policymaking
• teacher leadership
• agents of change
• teacher voice
• teacher education

Introduction

Around the world, there is a growing awareness that for reform to be successful, the teaching profession, and those who represent them, need to be involved in shaping the policies that they are expected to enact. The importance of teacher voice in the policy process has been noted in literature (Brown, White, and Kelly 2021; Harris and Jones 2019) and within the global policy sphere (OECD 2010). In Scotland, it is promoted within policy discourse, where teachers are positioned as leaders of educational change (Donaldson 2011). A key part of this vision is the understanding that teachers should have a voice in the policymaking process (Muir 2022; Scottish Government 2022b). However, concerns have been raised about the extent to which this occurs in practice (Beck and Adams 2020). There is very little research that explores the experiences of teachers who have participated in this space.

Scottish education has developed a reputation for its distinctive style of policymaking (Cairney, 2013), which is often described as participative, inclusive, open and democratic (Britton, Schweisfurth, and Slade 2019; Menter and Hulmes 2011). This ‘network governance’ approach (Kennedy and Doherty 2012) tends to take the form of multiple implementation boards, partnership groups and advisory panels, to which a plethora of actors are invited to represent organisations and stakeholder groups from across Scottish education (Humes 2020). Selected actors often work as ‘advisors’ to government or occupy leadership positions in the organisation that they have been invited to represent and can therefore be considered as ‘policy elites’ (Ozga 2021). Given the relatively small population of Scotland (5.454 million), this policy community is close-knit (Humes 2020), which has allowed for the development of social norms and rules for participation that are unknown to those outside it (McPherson and Raab 1988; Murphy and Raffe 2015). All of this can make it incredibly difficult for new actors to enter and participate within this space and for alternative voices to be heard. This ‘Scottish style’ of policymaking and the nature of the policymaking community are well attended to in the literature (e.g. Humes 2020), however there is limited research on the materiality of this ‘style’, and little consideration of its role in shaping human actors’ participation in policymaking.

Policy networks – boards, groups and panels – are where policy decisions are made, agendas developed, and strategies agreed; spaces from which teachers are often excluded. This paper will contribute to the field by presenting findings from an Actor Network Theory (ANT)-inspired critical policy analysis (Diem et al. 2014; Taylor et al. 1997) of the involvement of classroom teachers in a network designed to inform an evolving process of policy enactment.

The empirical context for this analysis is the translation of a landmark policy initiative in Scottish education, ‘Teaching Scotland’s Future’ (TSF; Donaldson 2011). Emerging from a large-scale review of teacher education provision, TSF presented fifty recommendations for improving teacher education in its entirety, spanning initial teacher education, professional learning and leadership. Seeking to improve the quality of teachers and leadership in Scotland, the development of teachers as ‘leaders of educational change’ was positioned as central to this mission, but the concept was never defined.

Relatively quickly after its publication, a National Partnership Group (NPG) was established by the Scottish Government, aligning perfectly with the Scottish style of policymaking. The NPG brought together a range of actors from across education – policy elites, members of the traditional policy community and classroom teachers – who were tasked with working together to decide how the policy recommendations could be enacted at local levels.

Drawing on the ANT concepts of ‘translation’ (Callon 1986) and ‘token’ (Latour 1987), I conceptualise the policy process as one of interest translation, identifying several points of vulnerability and possibility for participation and enrolment. Translation is a messy, unpredictable and fluid process, requiring re-interpretation and contextualisation and is a necessary part of network formation. It is through this process that elements of a policy, such as an idea or a ‘token’, can be strengthened, distorted, weakened or silenced.

Drawing on the perspectives of human actors within the NPG, I trace the acts of policy translation, identifying key moments in the process. I unpack the participation of classroom teachers, paying particular attention to the materiality of the experiences that they share. This allows for an exploration of the materiality of the policy process and the identification of objects that have the potential to enable, restrict or silence human actors.

The aim of this paper is therefore twofold: (1) to reveal key moments in the process of policy translation, highlighting points of vulnerability and (2) to describe the participation of classroom teachers, considering the extent to which the materiality of the policy process shaped their participation.

Using ANT in policy analysis

ANT is best described as a set of ‘tools, sensibilities and methods of analysis that treat everything in the social and natural worlds as a continuously generated effect of the webs of relations within which they are located’ (Law 2007, 2). It is a divergent collection of conceptual and empirical work. Originating within Science and Technology Studies, ANT has ‘travelled widely’, shaping and being shaped by different research areas (Landri 2021). Concepts and tools emerging from ‘early ANT, ANT and After ANT’ (Landri 2021) are increasingly employed in education policy analysis (Fenwick and Edwards 2010, 2012, 2018). Much of this work attempts to understand how policy is enacted in local contexts. For example, ANT approaches have been used to understand how policies are disrupted and how they ‘come undone’ (Koyama 2014), the influence of school data on local practice (Ottesen 2018), the methods through which a prescribed curriculum becomes an enacted curriculum (Edwards 2012) and the roles that policy objects play in the enactment of policy within a school (Mulachy 2015).

Research on policy enactment demonstrates the malleability of policy, and follows the understanding that policies are ‘translated from text into action … with the resources available’ (Ball, Maguire, and Braun 2012, 3). It is understood that policy is formed in practice, occurring through recontextualisation. While this work is important, I argue that processes of policy development through formal networks, such as the NPG, should not be disregarded. It is here that possibilities for enactment are created and restricted. After all, it is only possible to interpret and recontextualise what is allowed to enter and leave this policy space.

Translation and the token

This research draws on the ANT devices of translation (Callon 1986) and token (Latour 1987) to analyse this early stage in the policymaking process. Translation helps us to understand what happens when ‘entities, human and non-human, come together and connect, changing one another to form links’ (Fenwick and Edwards, 9). It is through translation that networks are formed, and policy ideas, or ‘tokens’, can become stable, durable, distorted or silenced. Translation can be useful for looking at how ideas come to be silenced within the policymaking process. According to Arnaboldi and Spiller (2011, 646), policy translation should be understood as fluid and erratic, ‘Translation is the process by which [policy makers] spread their ideas, search for allies who are interested and believe in their ideas, and help them to make the innovation happen’.

Latour (1987) utilised the concept of the token to challenge the widely held view that ideas and objects ‘diffuse’ through society, instead arguing that the ‘spread of anything – claims, orders, artefacts, goods – is in the hands of people’ (Latour 1987, 267). When actors pick up a token, they change it in some way. This is explained best by Gaskell and Hepburn (1998, 66):

The token is usually not passed unchanged from hand to hand … The token is either ignored or taken up by people who see their interests translated within it. In the process of shaping it to their interests, these people usually modify the token. The path of the token is a product of the number and strength of the links that are established between it and a diverse group of other actors.

Gaskell and Hepburn (1998, 56) state that as actors take up and use the token, their actions are changed as they begin to see new possibilities with it. If we view a policy idea as a token, we see it as unfinished, waiting for patterns of possibility to be inscribed into it (Edwards 2012). This concept further emphasises the vulnerability of policy ideas during translation. Of particular relevance to this paper is the assertion that for a policy idea to become stable, and continue to exist outside of the machinery of policy formation, it requires buy-in from actors who are expected to enact it. This buy-in, or ‘enrolment’, is dependent on the ability of specific actors to form links with the token, and this requires a level of agency.

There are clear parallels between an ANT understanding of translation and the work of Ball and others on translation (Perryman et al. 2017; see also Skerritt et al. 2023). However one clear difference is that an ANT understanding of translation assumes relational symmetry between human and non-human actors in the process. This allows for an analysis of the materiality of policymaking and consideration of the different ways that non-human actors can shape policy development.

Callon (1986) showed that translation occurs through four ‘moments’: problematisation, interessement, enrolment and mobilisation. Hamilton (2012) writes that the use of the term ‘moment’ suggests two things: a freezing of chronological time sequence to allow us to look at an event closely, and also ‘moment’ in the sense of events occurring around a pivotal point. This can be particularly useful for guiding a policy analysis as it steers us towards specific events in the process.

Problematisation can be understood as a moment of definition: defining who and what is part of the network. Here, a policy might only exist as a vague idea or intention. There has been little attempt to enrol actors to take it forward, but some will be identified here as important to the mission. Edwards (2012) considers this stage as a form of gatekeeping.

During interessement, attempts are made to impose and stabilise the identity of actors identified in the first moment. It is during this stage that barriers to participation are built, such as the ‘material organisations of space and time’ (Nespor 1994, 14). This requires links between actors to be interrupted to lock allies into place, thereby creating a space in which the policy can grow. This might be recognised as the development of a policy agenda, represented in an array of documents.

The third moment, enrolment, is where material elements and devices are assembled to support actors to join the network. This is where ideas are most likely to be strengthened, weakened, distorted or silenced, in line with actors’ interests. Enrolment reminds us of the need to involve affected human actors from the outset of policy development (Arnaboldi and Spiller 2011). For the policy to stay alive, it requires ‘buy-in’ from those who are expected to enact it. However, to what extent can actors enrol and influence the evolving policy? To what extent is this process restricted or supported by other actors in this space?

In the final moment, mobilisation, previously unstable policy ideas are stabilised and represented by ‘one voice’. Policy might be regarded as ‘implemented’, or ‘black boxed’ in a further set of physical documents, but any perceived success is only temporary, given the unfinished nature of translation.

Identifying the token: teachers as leaders of educational change and other hazy concepts

The concept of teachers as ‘agents of change’ has gained considerable traction in education policy discourse and literature around the world (Pantić 2015; Robinson 2012). There is general consensus that its development is vital to the successful operation of schools (Brown, White, and Kelly 2021) and to the progression of social justice agendas (Florian 2009; Pantić 2015). Different iterations of this term, and associated concepts such as teacher agency (Biesta, Priestley, and Robinson 2015) and teacher leadership (Poekert, Alexandrou, and Shannon 2016), are often used in education policy to depict the type of teacher that is required within a reform movement. However, these concepts are rarely defined, leaving them open to interpretation during enactment (Ball et al. 2012; Robinson 2012). As Priestley (2013, 37) reminds us, ‘ … it is one thing for policy to frame teachers as agents of change. It is quite another to enable this to actually happen’.

There are different understandings of what makes a teacher an ‘agent of change’ (van der Heijden et al. 2015). In their systematic review, Brown, White, and Kelly (2021) found a distinction between change agents who are required to ‘deliver’ top-down external change, considered as ‘passive tools of policy delivery’ (Harris and Jones 2019, 123) and those who instigate bottom-up change based on grassroot needs. While the former has greater representation in the literature, much less is written about ‘bottom-up’ change, instigated and led by teachers themselves as part of a democratic process. Such an understanding would see teachers as central to educational change, rather than positioned as ‘passive recipients of externally mandated reforms’ (Brown, White, and Kelly 2021, 12).

Involving teachers in the development of policy has been promoted by several other authors writing in the area of teacher leadership (Harris, Campbell, and Jones 2022; Harris and Jones 2019; Wenner and Campbell 2017, 146). However, there is very little empirical work that explores how they influence or engage with policy outside of the school context. Harris and Jones (2019, 123) argue that there is growing recognition around the world that teachers need to play a central role in policy formation. They cite the ‘Flip the System’ movement, an international collection of literature which positions teachers as the ‘instigators, creators and implementors of educational change’ (123). Harris and Jones (2019, 123) suggest that the idea of teachers as co-constructors of policy is ‘long overdue in many education systems’. They contend that policymakers still seem to ignore teacher voice, preferring to receive guidance from global actors (Ozga 2021), which lack the day-to-day knowledge and experience of the classroom. They warn us that, ‘teachers and their collective professional voice should be a part of any decision making and policymaking process’ (123).

Teacher leadership and leadership at all levels

In this paper, I position teacher leadership as enmeshed with the concept of ‘agents of change’ (Wenner and Campbell 2017). While there is a great deal of literature that discusses teacher leadership, it escapes attempts at definition (Wenner and Campbell 2017) and theorisation (Torrance and Humes 2015). Despite this conceptual haziness, a homogenous understanding of what it means is often assumed within policy texts. In Scotland, the term ‘leadership at all levels’ has become popular in policy discourse following the publication of TSF (Mowat and McMahon 2019). Multiple terminology is used interchangeably, which further complicates conceptualisation.

The danger here is that the development of ‘teacher leadership’ becomes what Torrance and Murphy (2017) refer to as a ‘national policy fudge’: a vague and fuzzy policy concept that can be shaped to fit self-interests. They raise concerns about the terms ‘teacher leadership’ and ‘teacher leader’ being used in an interchangeable manner. They contend that the former is suggestive of ‘bottom-up’ leadership – open to all teachers – where autonomy, agency and creativity are promoted, aligning closely with the idea of ‘agents of change’, while the latter is more suggestive of formal leadership roles. A lack of shared understanding might have serious implications for how this concept is enacted in practice, with the potential for it to be used as a governing tool. They argue that one way to overcome a potential ‘policy fudge’ is to involve the teaching profession in the early stages of policy development.

‘Agents of change’ in Scottish education policy: the ‘token’

In Scotland, the terms ‘agents of change’, ‘leaders of (educational) change’, ‘teacher leadership’ and ‘leadership at all levels’, have been used extensively within Scottish education policy discourse to position teachers as agentic, empowered and autonomous, trusted as leaders of the profession (Forde, McMahon, and Dickson 2011; Mowat and McMahon 2019; Torrance and Humes 2014), and as co-constructors of the curriculum (Priestley 2013), aligning with a democratic model of teacher professionalism (Sachs 2016).

TSF has been instrumental in promoting this trend, firmly stating that teachers should be ‘agents of change, not passive or reluctant receivers of externally-imposed prescription’ and that ‘ … teachers must be able to engage directly and willingly with the change process’ (18). It recommended that the teaching profession should not be ‘driven largely by external forces of change’ and that teachers should be ‘prime agents’ in the change process (14). Finally, it stated that teachers should be ‘key actors in shaping and leading educational change’ (4). These concepts were not accompanied by definitions or explanations, leaving them open to interpretation.

There are clear parallels between these statements and teacher leadership: for teachers to be leaders of educational change, they must first be able to influence educational change from the bottom-up (Torrance and Murphy 2017); change should not be decided externally but by the teaching profession themselves (Brown, White, and Kelly 2021) and their voices must be heard within the policy process (Harris and Jones 2019). For me, this is the central message within TSF, the token.

The term ‘leadership at all levels’ (Donaldson 2011, 4) is used to suggest that every teacher should see themselves as a leader, but there is little attempt to move beyond this or to connect it to the concept of influencing change. While the token emerged at various points in the main body of the report, it was not mentioned explicitly within the recommendations. Given its centrality to the reform, there was perhaps an assumption that it implicitly fed into other areas of the recommendations. On one hand, this permeability might have allowed for the enrolment and mobilisation of the token, if picked up and shaped by the right actors, but on the other, there was a risk that it could be overlooked.

The NPG set up to enact TSF invited teachers and senior leaders to contribute to the policy in various ways, and this included extending an offer to classroom teachers and school leaders to sit on the NPG, in the absence of teacher union representation. The alignment between policy agenda and process here is striking. This connection, whether intended or accidental, provided a unique opportunity to explore the enactment of teachers as leaders of educational change in a policy process; a policy process which itself was designed to enact this very concept at a national level.

Methodology

This research is rooted firmly within the field of critical policy analysis (CPA; Diem et al. 2014; Taylor et al. 1997). CPA highlights the importance of exploring the process by which policy is made, in order to illuminate critical ‘issues of power and interests … questions of who is involved in policymaking, how processes of consultation are arranged and whose interests they serve’ (Taylor et al. 1997, 19). CPA allows policy researchers to explore who is sitting at the ‘decision-making table’ and to identify who has a voice in the policy process.

Within this approach, I drew on aspects of ANT to conceptualise the process as translation and to explore the materiality of the policy process, identifying actors that restricted and/or enableed the participation of classroom teachers. I drew on Callon’s (1986) four-phased model of translation to guide my analysis. I conceptualised the central vision of TSF, teachers as ‘leaders of educational change’ as the token: an idea that moved through the NPG during the process of interest translation, vulnerable to distortion, at risk of being ignored. The analysis did not trace how the token changed or how it changed others but used the concept to demonstrate the vulnerability of policy ideas and to further demonstrate the importance of involving human actors who are expected to enact these policy ideas in practice.

This paper presents findings from semi-structured interviews conducted with 22 members of the NPG, in ‘real time’, while the NPG was in operation. Invitations were circulated to members using publicly available membership lists. Participants included policy elites and members of the ‘traditional policy community’; individuals working within local authority, universities, GTC Scotland, Education Scotland and third sector organisations; and individual teachers. Conducting research with policy elites and others involved in the policy process required careful consideration and navigation of methodological and ethical issues (Grek 2021). As interviews occurred while the NPG was in operation, there was a level of political sensitivity that surrounded them. Some participants appeared restricted in what they could say, others used it as an opportunity to promote political or strategic positions. Given the close-knit nature of the policy community (Humes 2020), and that publicly available membership lists included names and workplaces, great care had to be taken to protect the anonymity of participants, their workplace, and the organisations that they were invited to represent.

The interview questions were designed to encourage participants to share their experiences of participating in the NPG, and this included reflections on the materiality of the process and the identification of objects of policymaking. Qualitative data was analysed using an ANT-inspired lens that allowed for a reflexive identification of themes (Braun and Clarke 2019) while also attending to participants’ descriptions of materiality.

Analysis was ultimately guided by the following research questions and structured around Callon’s (1986) four phases of translation:

1. What was the nature of translation, where did it occur and who or what is in/excluded from these spaces?

2. To what extent was teachers’ participation enabled or restricted, and who or what played a role in this enabling or restricting?

Adopting Hamilton’s (2012) understanding of ‘moments’ allowed me to ‘freeze chronological time’ to look more closely at three pivotal points around which events turned: the development of the NPG, participation in the NPG and the construction of the NPG report.

The development of remit points and membership lists

The NPG, in operation from March 2011 to September 2012, was provided with the following remit: ‘to discuss how the recommendations in Graham Donaldson’s report, Teaching Scotland's Future, could be implemented’ (Scottish Government 2012, 2). It is here, during interessement that attempts were made to impose and stabilise the identities of human and non-human actors, and barriers to participation were constructed. The organisations represented by human actors, powerful institutions in Scottish education, might also be recognised as actor-networks, made up of multiple actants that collectively generate power (Fenwick and Edwards 2010, 720): legislation, guidelines, buildings, reputations, functions and roles in other networks. Their reputation and identities are ‘block-boxed’, irrefutable, and powerful.

Structurally, it was made up of three sub-groups, with each discussing recommendations pertaining to one of three areas: initial teacher education, career-long professional learning and leadership; a reference group; and a main group to which the sub-groups and reference group were required to report. Each sub-group was tasked with a set of remit points, which were developed by civil servants. Their relationship to the agenda set out in TSF is best explained by one of the actors:

Well, it wasn’t the recommendations so much. It was the remits so that what we were given as a sub-group was remits, which didn’t necessarily match the recommendations.

It would be relatively easy to overlook this detail, viewing it as an irrelevant part of the policy process. However, the actors were therefore required to translate a reinterpretation of Donaldson’s recommendations, not the recommendations themselves, working within the ‘possibilities and constraints of the materials’ (Gaskell and Hepburn 1998, 74). However, here we see gaps in the network through which the token might fall. Given that this part of the process was predominantly executed by civil servants, there was minimal opportunity for a wider group of actors, including teachers, to frame the developing policy agenda together at this stage, which raised some concerns:

I don’t think blind acceptance of anybody’s report … is the way forward for any kind of mature education system … we should have had perhaps a bit more flexibility about that, which didn’t exist.

The size and scope of representation was somewhat surprising for a policy network in a relatively small country (with a total of 39 members, not including the strategic reference group). Membership consisted of actors representing organisations across Scottish education who were indicated as having a role in policy enactment: ‘it’s designed to bring together all the key partners who are involved in delivery’ and ‘who would need to make a change’. There was an awareness across actors that the purpose of the NPG was to ‘bring people together and get them involved’ and to ‘drive forward the programme’. Despite this, teachers were initially excluded by the ‘material organisation of space’ (Nespor 1994, 14). Several teachers reported being invited in January 2012, around halfway through its lifespan:

I, as a teacher, was brought into the partnership group after it was established as an afterthought.

What we seem to be moving to is that policy is being made and we involve at a later stage. That’s a move. But what we want to get to is that practitioners are involved in making the policy with policy-makers. And I think we missed that.

Although these teachers are listed as members of the NPG in black-boxed policy texts (Scottish Government 2012), they were not present for its whole duration. The membership lists and the lack of invitation restricted interest translation and enrolment.

It is important to note that teacher unions, were never formally invited: ‘The key people were missing. Those who democratically speak for Scottish teachers.’

Throughout the network, there was an awareness that even when teachers were invited, they were underrepresented within membership lists:

Were there missed opportunities? I don’t think we got enough teacher representation

I think at one point [my colleague] and I did comment that of all the meetings we were at … we were the only two people who were actually in the classroom.

Membership lists and invitations can be identified as key actors that shaped the participation of teachers, throwing into question the ability for teachers to translate their interests, enrol in the network and pick up the token.

Interest translation in the NPG

The NPG was in operation from March 2011 to September 2012. The findings I provide here afford a small insight into the experiences of specific human actors in policy translation: teachers. This analysis paid particular attention to network enrolment and the extent to which teachers were able to translate their interests into the developing policy agenda as it evolved. To do so, I paid particular attention to the materiality of the NPG and the role that non-human actors played in restricting and/or enabling interest translation. The first two themes that I discuss are intended to provide a contextual understanding of network environment, while the subsequent themes consider the materiality of the process and the powerful roles of physical and digital objects.

Agendas, minutes and other documents

Often overlooked as standard features of formal meetings, agendas and minutes from previous meetings were identified as powerful actors in shaping the policy process. These documents determined the patterns of possibility for discussion, assembled stories of actor participation and decisions made in the network, and presented a list of action points to guide subsequent phases of work. One actor reflected on the restrictive function of the agenda:

I asked at the third meeting did the team think we were fulfilling our remit … the response was that that would probably be covered by the time we got to a different point on the agenda. And then the meeting ended and that was it.

This concern was omitted from the minutes, therefore further reducing the likelihood of further discussion on this issue:

I was interested also that that comment wasn’t minuted. It didn’t appear in notes.

The minute-taker can be recognised as a powerful actor who was able to forge links with the materiality of the process to guide policy translation and the participation of actors.

The lack of transparency in the construction of documents, and confusion around the wider process, left some actors feeling unsure of how to participate, as reflectedby this classroom teacher:

At the end of the process, I wasn’t terribly sure how much contribution I made to it … had I been more sure of what was expected of me, I could have probably been more use to begin with. I think that’s because of this process they used.

… sometimes we were charged with tasks to do … and neither of us were terribly sure what was expected of us. And a bit of what I did then appeared on a further document. So, it was quite puzzling.

Document construction and circulation is part of a wider process, likely defined by a pre-existing culture. While those on the ‘inside’ will be familiar with the policy community’s distinctive culture and rules for operating (Britton, Schweisfurth, and Slade 2019), it will be less familiar for those actors who are not part of it. This culture, constructed and held together through an assemblage of processes, reports, unspoken rules, histories and past experiences, permitted the participation of human actors to who it was connected, but restricted the participation of those who were not.

Self-perception and perception of others

Throughout this paper, I have argued that classroom teachers are best placed to communicate the current day-to-day realities of classroom practice. This type of contribution is essential for democratic and effective policy translation. It is therefore somewhat disconcerting that despite having a physical position in the NPG, this teacher felt unable to contribute:

I didn’t often say anything … there wasn’t really anything that I could actually add … 

This feeling was also reflected by other actors within the network:

With all due respect to them, I think they were out their depth because I’m not sure they were able to bring an awful lot to the table … I don’t think they were asked enough questions either.

… they don’t speak on high-level groups like that … You could probably count on one hand the amount of times [they] opened [their] mouth, if that.

These can be understood as examples of the way that the materiality of the network - the design, location and format of the meetings - favoured those who were familiar with it, while constraining others and creating a sense of disconnect, not just experienced by classroom teachers themselves, but observed by other actors in the network.

Despite the need to connect TSF to the realities of the classroom, there was a sense that even if teachers did contribute, their input would have held less clout than a contribution from a policy elite:

If you have been in a very senior position in Scottish education for 20 years and you speak, whereas if you are a class teacher for two years … people will perceive you differently.

Policy elites, and ‘insiders’ from the traditional policy community can be recognised as being in relatively durable positions within the NPG, their black boxed identities, their reputations and the materiality that accompanies them, ensuring a prominent position for interest translation and ‘speaking out’. The position of new actors, in this case, classroom teachers, was less stable, and they were disconnected from the actors from the traditional policy community. From the offset, classroom teachers began from a less privileged position.

Physical space of the meeting rooms

NPG meetings occurred within formal meeting settings, often taking up a large portion of the school day, which was reported as problematic by classroom teachers. Meetings were held within government buildings, and one teacher reflected on the disconnect between the materiality of the meeting room and the materiality of the classroom:

In the morning I would be organising and managing three maths groups, or looking at three different things, and language, hearing reading groups as well … You don’t think about anything other than what you are actually doing. And then to be able to take a step back and think about the structures that allows that to happen.

This highlights perceived differences between two physical spaces and how this perception shaped the teacher’s physical actions. In the classroom, they organise, manage, watch and listen; immersed in leading multiple forms of learning. In the NPG meeting, they were silent, restricted. They felt that they were required to reflect on wider educational structures, but this was a task which was difficult when faced with physical reminders of the contradiction between these worlds:

I found it quite difficult going from within the classroom and then an hour later, sitting at a board table … with paint on my face and whatever else.

We had coffee. It is like a different world. You have got your briefcase. You have got your coffee and shortcake and no-one is screaming in your ear so … it was different.

Objects from the classroom – paint and ‘whatever else’ – and objects from the policy-making space – the board table, the briefcase, the coffee, the biscuits – served as reminders of the difference between the formality of the NPG and the reality of schools. They become symbols of exclusion, acting as barriers to interest translation and enrolment.

Trains, phone calls, and ‘other meetings’

Actors spoke about ‘other meetings’ that occurred between smaller groups of selected actors and ‘offline conversations’. These tended to occur between actors who knew each other as part of the ‘close-kit’ existing policy community, or who already worked together in entangled policy networks. These ‘offstage conversations’ were described as ‘more meaty than the onstage’ by one policy elite. One actor reflected on the productivity of conversations that they had had with other actors on trains, travelling to and from official NPG meetings. There was a general sense that it was within these alternative physical spaces that open and honest discussions could be had, conflicting interests could be shared and links between human and non-human actors could be formed. These physical spaces therefore became important actors in themselves, providing opportunities for interest translation and network enrolment, but only for those who were invited.

The publication of the NPG Report

The NPG published their own report of recommendations in September 2012 (Scottish Government 2012): an important moment in policy mobilisation. The report contained 20 recommendations for enacting TSF, including the recommendation to establish a new body to oversee further stages of ‘implementation’: the National Implementation Board (NIB).¹

The NPG report is an important object that emerged from the process of policy translation, but given the fluid and erratic nature of translation, this can only be regarded as a snapshot of a moment in time. An important question to ask here is who or what was part of this process?

It largely fell to the co-chairs and the secretariat to produce the final report. And in essence that meant the secretariat was doing a lot of the drafting and redrafting. There was a lot of editing.

Two actors reflected on the implications of this:

The secretariat … ended up with actually a very influential hand … The final report didn’t always have all the nuances … 

It just seems to have lost a lot of the colour. It’s probably been put into civil service speak you know, and you think, I hope there aren’t points that they’ve lost.

This captures the very essence of policy translation. The work of the network – online and offline conversations and meetings, consultation events and seminars – was black boxed into a set of recommendations for government (Scottish Government 2012). Some actors were well-placed to translate specific interests into the emerging policy vision, while others were not. While one consequence of this process might be the dilution of policy ideas, it is worth bearing in mind that translating the activity of the NPG into ‘civil service speak’ might be regarded as a necessary part of the policy process. It is therefore somewhat unsurprising that no trace of the token can be found in the main body of the report.

Concluding comments

The aim of this paper was twofold: (1) to conceptualise the policy process as moments of interest translation and (2) to explore the participation of teachers within this, identifying human and non-human actors that shaped their ability to translate their interests into the evolving policy. By focussing on three pivotal moments in translation: the development of the NPG, participation in the NPG and the construction of the NPG report, I traced the materiality of the policy process and identified multiple non-human actors that restricted teacher participation: remit points, membership lists, invitations, working documents, objects from the classroom (paint), objects from policymaking (coffee, briefcases and board tables), agendas, minutes and physical and geographical spaces. All of these ‘things’ reveal the exclusionary nature of the NPG and the different ways in which the material geography created feelings of disassociation for the human actors who were identified as being most central to the policy: classroom teachers.

The findings presented here provide a very small insight into one timebound policymaking process. The findings are not intended to be taken as representative of teachers’ experiences across policy spaces; however, they do reveal some important considerations for the involvement of teachers in policy development. In any attempts to engage actors who are new to policy-making processes, the strength of a policy community’s assumptive world, and the materiality that sustains it, should not be underestimated. Easily overlooked and regarded as irrelevant features of daily life, these ‘things’ matter for human actors: they shape how they can respond and have the potential to create feelings of alienation and dissociation.

The NPG was a landmark moment, filled with potential for changing our collective understanding of what it means for a teacher to be a leader of educational change. At the time of writing, we are now over ten years on from the publication of the NPG report and the establishment of the NIB. There has been limited research on the enactment of TSF, although a government commissioned review of its implementation suggested evidence of progress (Scottish Government 2016). Many of the changes proposed were structural in nature, and their material enactment can be observed across Scottish education (Beck and Adams 2020). Although recent policy discourse has continued to position teachers as empowered and agentic (e.g. Muir 2022; Scottish Government 2017), this is alongside calls for increased accountability and performativity, and a general shift towards datafication in line with international trends and collective attempts to demonstrate a narrowing of the poverty-related attainment gap (Scottish Government 2022a).

Despite these contradictions in policy direction, there continues to be growing awareness that substantial changes need to be made to the way that teachers are supported to engage with policy development (Harris, Campbell, and Jones 2022). In Scotland, a significant effort has been made to develop mechanisms to enable teachers to inform current education reform, for example through the National Discussion (Scottish Government 2022b). However, little is known about teachers’ experiences and agency in these spaces and the extent to which they believe that their voices can genuinely inform change. If we are serious about teachers leading educational reform, an important initial step would be to acknowledge the tensions that exist between policy narrative and the restrictive materiality that embodies the Scottish ‘style’ of policymaking.

Disclosure statement

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

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by University of Glasgow.

Notes on contributors

Anna D. Beck

Dr Anna D Beck is a Senior Lecturer in Education at the School of Social and Environmental Sustainability, University of Glasgow. Her research explores processes of policymaking in education through a critical policy sociology lens, with a particular focus on the democratic legitimacy of policy networks and the (mis)representation of teacher voice.

Notes

1 Although I do not analyse the NIB in this paper, it is interesting to note that it had formal representation from teacher unions, but no individual classroom teachers.