‘I do not like what I am becoming but…’: transforming the identity of head teachers in Catalonia

Abstract

The aim of this article is to elucidate how a new system of school and teacher assessment in Catalonia is transforming the conceptions, practices and identity of head teachers, especially younger ones. It begins by considering the impact of global neoliberal policies on educational practices, highlighting their Foucauldian productive nature. It then examines the educational context of Catalonia during the last 30 years, emphasising the changing role of head teachers and the impact of neoliberal governance. This is followed by an account and analysis of in-depth interviews with four head teachers, focusing especially on how the head teacher’s objectives, practices and identities are being transformed, or produced, as a result of the new neoliberal ‘assessment regime’. It ends with a discussion on the importance of refusal and resistance to this process and the need to reconsider basic educational and social questions.

Keywords:

• Head teacher identity
• school assessment
• New Public Management
• OECD
• school governance

Acknowledgements

I would like to especially thank Paul Marshall (University of Vic, Barcelona) for his inestimable help with the paper.

Notes

1. It’s what, for example, Piattoeva (2015) highlights in her article on national examinations as a technology of government. It’s not a question of understanding (only) these examinations as a retreat of the state in favour of international organisms, but how numbers exercise power and how they become rooted and gain more power in the process.

2. Annual School Assessment project. Department of Catalan Education. 2015.

3. http://educacio.gencat.cat/documents/IPCNormativa/DOIGC/PEC_Avaluacio_centre.pdf

4. http://agora.xtec.cat/se-vallesoccidental3/intranet/file.php?file=Formacio_direccions/Avaluacio_centres.pdf

5. http://ensenyament.gencat.cat/ca/arees_d_actuacio/professorat/retribucions/estadis_de_promocio/

6. ^‘Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul’ Margaret Thatcher (1981. ‘Sunday Times’).

7. Catalan Institute of Public Policies Evaluation. http://www.avaluacio.cat/per-que-no-avaluem-les-politiques-publiques-com-els-farmacs-una-aposta-per-lexperimentacio-social/

8. Translated from Catalan. ‘Assegurar un sistema d’avaluació intern i extern com a garantia d’ajustament del sistema a llurs principis i finalitats, i, alhora, actua com a instrument imprescindible per a desenvolupar l’autonomia dels centres i les bases del Servei d’Educació de Catalunya, tot implantant la cultura de l’avaluació en el conjunt del sistema educatiu, la qual cosa ha de permetre un millor coneixement del funcionament i dels resultats del sistema.’ Italics are mine.

http://dogc.gencat.cat/ca/pdogc_canals_interns/pdogc_resultats_fitxa/?documentId=480,169&language=ca_ES&action=fitxa.

9. Translated from Catalan by the author. Italics are mine.

10. ENS/330/2014. Departament d’Educació. Generalitat de Catalunya.

11. http://www.isa-sociology.org/abstracts-dissertations/view-abstract.php?tl=419