Raising and doubling ‘standards' in professional discourse: a critical bid

Abstract

In this article, a deconstructive survol of the term ‘standards' suggests that the concept contributes to an ‘outside-in' professionalism masquerading as ‘inside-out' professionalism. In examining a case of ‘standards' in action, the authors point out the inadequacy of ‘standards' as tools of appraisal with remainders, reductions, displacements, elisions and embellishments – mistranslations – being inevitable. The second part of the article addresses the external world of standards, as a form of power applied by state agencies to professional work and identity, in which the application of standards typically strip out subjectivity, and with it much of the immeasurable dimensions that constitute professional action. Rather than writing off ‘standards' as yet another bureaucratic self-delusion, the authors take note of Strathern's call for a ‘new political and managerial discourse of uncertainty' and suggest that professional or peer review would benefit if parties to the appraisal process, inter alia, undertake the ‘risk' of decision, acknowledge the inevitability of ‘incomplete evidence', engage in extended empathy and avoid overly reductive quantification.

Keywords:

• standards
• professionalism
• performance review
• appraisal

Notes

1. Such statements are now so common that it is an effort to recall their insanity: even a god might balk at such a ‘responsibility’. In effect, such declarations are a form of contemporary secular prayer: in the bureaucratic argot, ‘deliver’ us from evil.

2. As we understand it, the Australian assessment system works more directly from journal prestige. But it would not in future, the Australian authorities having discovered that such a crude league table is subject to game-playing. Margaret Brown (ex-Chair, RAE Panel for Educational Research, 2008) was adamant that the RAE/REF system would not go down that route. As a former BERJ Editor for 11 years, Stronach would say that BERJ entries up to 2008 varied from 2^∗ to 4^∗, in current jargon, although there would also be some ‘1^∗’s that really should not have made it into the journal. The 2009 BERJ impact factor is 1.035, up from 0.791 in 2008, i.e. in 40th place out of 139 in SSCI rankings.

3. In the neoliberal world order, the priority is of course reversed.

4. Policy-makers are very well aware of this, and spend much effort if not intellect, in trying to reduce the area of normative expertise – via ‘metrics’ – that link performance to management in ways undiluted by professional discretion. That is part of what we called Mission Impossible.

5. Thanks to Jo Frankham, CERES (see Frankham and Tracy 2011), for pointing out the problems of this conundrum.

6. PETE (Pupil Evaluation of Teacher Effectiveness) (Heron, Stronach and Whiteley 2006) seemed to work well because of the two-way nature of the appraisals. Both appraiser and appraisee were subject to a mutual appraisal.

7. A ‘focal point’ is not a logical or empirically inevitable meeting point. Schelling’s (1970) example envisages an ‘extended empathy’, as we illustrated above, leading to two parties, on the basis of incomplete evidence, deciding what conclusion was most likely to be reached by the other party. His example is two parachutists who are supposed to work together. They land separately, lose each other, but each has a map showing the locality, with houses, fields, farms, hamlets, river and bridge. Schelling argues that both are likely to work out that the other will think the other is thinking (etc.) that the bridge is such a ‘focus point’. Schelling’s thesis, incidentally, was designed to address the imponderables of political and military behaviour in the Cold War. How could the US better read the mind of the Soviet Union?

8. Schelling gives examples of such compromises, such as the agreement to form a truce along the Korean 38th Parallel in 1953.