Performativity, managerial professionalism and the purpose of professional development: a South African case study

ABSTRACT

Early post-apartheid policies envisaged a South African teacher who had autonomy to make professional judgements based on their school context and learners’ needs. However, over the last decade, the state has increasingly monitored learner achievement and teachers’ work. In this paper, we show how the professional development activities provided by the state for high school Life Sciences teachers focus primarily on measuring learner achievement and thus reflect organisational professionalism and managerial discourses which challenge the early post-apartheid vision of democratic professionalism. We present a case study of a cluster of Life Sciences teachers, generating data from interviews with eleven high school teachers and from observation of six professional development meetings. The findings show that the two main purposes of the activities in the cluster meetings are the improvement of learner results and the monitoring teachers’ curriculum coverage and assessment practices. We argue that the discourse of performativity and managerial professionalism narrows the purpose of schooling, influences the nature of state-initiated professional development opportunities and also informs the way in which the state and teachers view their work. This contradicts the initial vision of the democratic state and provides insight into how neoliberal discourses have influenced education in a post-colonial country.

KEYWORDS:

• Performativity
• managerial professionalism
• professional development
• Life Sciences teachers
• South Africa

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. Mpumalanga province has a population of 4 million people, of which1045972are learners in schools. This represents 8.2% of all learners in South Africa. There are 34 825 teachers in Mpumalanga which is 8.0% of all teachers in South Africa (Department of Basic Education 2019).

2. In Section A of the final Life Sciences examination paper, Question 1.1 comprises multiple choice questions for 20 marks, Question 1.2 requires definitions for 10 marks.