Teachers and teaching: (re)thinking professionalism, subjectivity and critical inquiry

ABSTRACT

The collection of papers presented in this issue of Critical Studies in Education adds to the expansive body of work on teachers and teaching. Collectively, the papers draw our attention to new ways the field is problematising the emerging and evolving conditions that shape the work, lives and identities of teachers. With this editorial introduction to the issue, I not only summarise the various themes of the collection, but also offer a provocation that I hope will inspire new questions moving forward. As critical researchers, we have an obligation to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions – not only by looking outwards at the policymakers, edu-businesses, and intergovernmental agencies (e.g., the Organisation for Economic and Co-operation Development [OECD]), but also by looking inwards and challenging our own assumptions about power, discourse and subjectivity. The authors in the special issue take up both challenges in their geographically diverse accounts of ‘the teacher’ and ‘teaching’, demonstrating what it means to do critical research well.

Introduction and background

Teachers and their practice have been, and continue to be, important sites of critical research. From teacher-related policy, to pedagogy, professionalism and training (to name a few), the study of teachers and teaching has been critically examined within and across a variety of empirical sites, theoretical perspectives, and methodological approaches. The collection of papers presented in this issue of Critical Studies in Education (CSE) adds to this already expansive body of work but draws our attention to new ways the field is problematising the emerging and evolving conditions that shape the work, lives and identities of teachers. The papers were assembled after they were accepted for publication, as the editorial board saw an opportunity to reflect on how critical researchers have been thinking about this space over the past few years. With this editorial introduction to the issue, I not only summarise the various themes of the collection, but also offer a provocation that I hope will inspire new questions moving forward. At the time of writing, this feels particularly apropos as the world continues to grapple with the consequences of COVID-19 and how education might evolve accordingly.

As I was reading through past CSE’s articles on teachers and teaching, I was reminded of Raewyn Connell’s paper (Connell, 2009), Good teachers on dangerous ground: towards a new view of teacher quality and professionalism – one of CSE’s most downloaded and cited papers – which looks at the complex ways the ‘good teacher’ has meant different things to different people at different times in history. Connell’s attention to teacher quality and professionalism captures significant points of engagement for the field, both now and at the time of the paper’s publication. At the same time, Connell’s historical approach makes clear how constructs like ‘teacher quality’ and ‘professionalism’ are always being (re)made as products of available discourses at a particular time and place.

Connell’s argument is grounded in what I view as one of the central assumptions that distinguishes critical research from more positivist work on teachers and teaching. While much of the positivist-oriented research has sought to define, measure and develop teacher quality (see, for example, Darling-Hammond, 2015), critical approaches have tended towards onto-epistemic positions that draw out or highlight relations of power. Critical scholars start from an assumption that notions like ‘teacher quality’ are socially and politically constructed, and our pursuits to understand such constructs are equally dependent upon the contexts and discourses that guide our inquiries (e.g., Berkovich & Benoliel, 2020; Moore & Clarke, 2016; Simmie et al., 2019; Taubman, 2010). In doing this work, critical scholars of ‘the teacher’ and ‘teaching’ have drawn across theorists, including but not limited to, Carol Bacchi, Basil Bernstein, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault and Nikolas Rose to show how quantification and standardisation have been particularly influential in shaping what counts as teacher quality (see, for example, Ball, 2003; Mockler & Stacey, 2021; Perryman et al., 2017; Simmie et al., 2019; Wilkins, 2011). Importantly, this work has problematised how discourses of data and evidence shape ‘ideas about “good teaching” [and] are embedded in the design of educational institutions, and lurk in our talk about curricula, educational technology and school reform’ (Connell, 2009, p. 214).

What is clear from the past decade of critical research is that ‘good teaching’ has become almost entirely defined by metrics that can be captured and reported via digital techniques (Lewis & Holloway, 2019; Selwyn et al., 2021; Taubman, 2010). What is less clear, however, is how various theoretical understandings of teachers and teaching have led to subtly and profoundly different claims about the effects of such quantified discourses and trends. Often framed as disagreements about what is happening within schools, or across contexts, it is worth considering whether these are rather the result of onto-epistemic differences about what teaching is, who teachers are, and what it means to know these things. In other words, sometimes ‘tensions’ within critical research seem to be misplaced or treated as disagreements over what is ‘actually’ happening, rather than as something stemming from fundamental differences in researchers’ views of reality and knowledge. For the purposes of this editorial – based on my own experiences, as well as the contents of the articles of this issue – I will use teacher-related policy, with a particular focus on teacher professionalism, as an illustrative case to ground my comments.

I should start by making clear, though, that I did not conduct a systematic review of the literature for this editorial. I should also acknowledge that ‘teachers and teaching’ is vastly broad in scope, making it impossible to comment on the field in its entirety; that is, if we can even call it a distinct ‘field’. Therefore, the following observations are not meant to be exhaustive, but rather reflect my own experiences of reading, writing and reviewing across these areas. I have also used the papers included in the issue to help define the boundaries of my argument.

Teachers in relation to policy and discourse

Questions about the relationship between teachers and policy/discourse have provided much inspiration for critical inquiry since Connell’s (2009) paper. Such questions have been pursued in a variety of ways, with emphases usually on how policy impacts on teachers and their practice. Although an oversimplified view of the work, these questions are generally framed in two main ways: (1) the teacher as a subject of policy (cf. Bacchi, 2000; Ball, 2003; Foucault, 1977, 1980; N. Rose, 1999; S.J. Ball, 2012; N. S. Rose, 1996); and (b) the teacher as an actor with varying degrees of agency in relation to policy (cf. Bourdieu, 2002; Biesta, 2010). Regardless of its theoretical resources, most current critical research has some level of agreement that policy significantly alters teachers’ capacity to exercise discretion (e.g., Ball, 2016; Perryman, 2009; Taubman, 2010). Similarly, there is some consistency in the view that quantifiable data are increasingly positioned as the privileged form of knowledge about teaching and learning; and that discourses of neoliberalism, performativity and quantification have influenced the responsibilities and subjectivities of teachers across most education systems worldwide (e.g., Burke & DeLeon, 2020; MacDonald-Vemic & Portelli, 2020).

Amidst these agreements, however, there are also lines of tension regarding how we view teachers and their relationship to policy, which has significant implications for how we frame our arguments, disagreements and recommendations for the field and for practice (where applicable). One example that I come across often, and which is also a common thread through the papers of this issue, is related to teacher professionalism. I expand on this below and emphasise how the respective conversations seem to hinge on theoretical, rather than empirical, differences. What I hope to achieve by bringing their theoretical differences to the fore is to nuance some of the ways we discuss how modes of governance, like quantification and standardisation, are impacting teachers and teaching.

The de-/re- and new professionalism of teachers

Whether teachers are professionals, or whether teachers are treated as such by themselves and others, are just some of the questions that have been asked explicitly and implicitly within critical research for some time. In 2016, Judyth Sachs asked ‘Teacher professionalism: why are we still talking about it?’, a question she has visited several times throughout her writing (e.g., Sachs, 2001, 2003). Many critical scholars have similarly argued that cultures of performativity and accountability have had a profound influence on how teacher professionalism is defined, as well as what is required to either improve the professional judgment of teachers or protect teachers’ professional autonomy (see Biesta et al., 2015; Mockler & Stacey, 2021; Selwyn et al., 2021). Within this broad coalition, the teacher is often positioned as an actor who is affected by, but who also has agency to interpret and respond to, policy in different ways. Here, professionalism is framed as something constructed, usually externally, and imposed on teachers (see Sachs, 2016).

It is also something that exists somewhat on a spectrum, where policy can serve to de-professionalise teachers or reduce teachers’ capacity to exercise their professional discretion. Looking at similar policy trends, but from a different theoretical perspective, other scholars have problematised ‘professionalism’ as something that is always being (re)negotiated and which should not be conceived in binary ways. Rather, this broad group speaks more of the new or re-professionalisation of teachers (see Anderson & Herr, 2015; Moore & Clarke, 2016; Zeichner, 2010) and how policies, particularly those related to accountability and managerialism, are fundamentally changing who the ‘professional teacher’ is (see also Ball, 2003). In this view, the teacher is often positioned as a subject of policy, who is constituted through and by discourses and conditions of possibility (cf. Foucault, 1980).

When thinking about the distinction between the teacher as a subject of policy and the teacher as an actor in relation to policy, new questions then emerge regarding what and how we might critique ideas around teachers and teaching. On one hand, it raises important questions about how, and to what end, policies are impacting teachers and their work. Simultaneously, it also shapes our capacity to critique practices that are potentially harmful for students, communities and teachers. What seems to happen is that in an effort to critique a particular policy, the teacher is positioned as its solution. For example, when claims of de-professionalisation are used to critique policies associated with accountability and evaluation, it is usually the teacher who is positioned as the necessary expert whose professional autonomy should be protected. However, as is clear in the articles within this issue, teachers’ subjectivities, practices and knowledges are themselves based on deeply problematic logics and discourses. Therefore, it is important to think about how teachers are not simply neutral actors affected by policy but are also subjects of policy, and this should be open to critique.

As I see it, debates about the degree to which a teacher’s practice is affected by policy, as if policy and practice are separate things (Bowe et al., 1992; Gale & Densmore, 2003), can sometimes lead to debates about whether the teacher needs defending (as is sometimes the case around de-/professionalism). This can obscure the notion that teacher practice and the teacher subject are products of the very same policy discourses that are oftentimes being critiqued. In other words, when we frame the problem vis-à-vis de-/professionalism, then two things occur: (1) we assume a previous version of teacher professionalism existed and this was better; and (2) we create a scenario that forces a defence of teachers as individuals in need of protection. With the first assumption, we limit possibilities for problematising the teacher as a construct of conditions that may or may not serve the interests of all students (see articles in this issue by Bernardes, Black, Otieno Jowi & Wilcox and Thomas & Vavrus). With both, we create a normative view of professionalism while often (and paradoxically) critiquing policies aimed at prescribing definitions of ‘good’ teaching.

Having said that, there is an argument to be made about who is ultimately authorised to establish the criteria for qualities like ‘professional’ or ‘good’ teachers. Sachs (2003, 2016) might say that having the authority do so about one’s own occupation is a defining feature of professionalism, or democratic professionalism as she calls it. I can agree with the premise that teacher ‘professionalism’ has taken on multiple forms and functions over the years and that it is often defined externally and hierarchically. However, I also find myself wondering about how such arguments around professionalism shelter teacher subjects from productive critique. In the following summaries, I try to draw attention to how each of the articles in this special issue variously attend to these questions.

Article summaries

In different ways, the papers in this special issue suggest how teacher subjectivities are shaped by conditions of possibility. Collectively, they show how critiquing conditions (rather than the teachers themselves) provides a means for problematising ‘the teacher’, while also advocating the well-being of teachers as humans. The respective authors offer compelling examples of how critical scholars can emphasise teaching as a political and value-laden exercise, and therefore treat the teacher subject as also being constituted through political and value-laden discourses.

In her article, Teacher-entrepreneurialism: a case of teacher identity formation in neoliberalizing education space in contemporary India, Achala Gupta (this issue) looks at how teachers and teaching practice have been shaped by the neoliberal conditions of education in India. In so doing, she illustrates how ‘teachers both respond to and contribute to the neoliberal impulses driving education in the Indian context’ (p. 6). In a setting where schooling has been privatised and commodified, a new market for private tutoring has emerged, and this has become an increasingly common venture for teachers to pursue. Gupta argues that such for-profit tutoring (or ‘shadow education business’) is a product of the environment, where conditions are ripe for teachers to exercise their entrepreneurial identity. In other words, her teacher participants were subjects of a neoliberalised schooling system, and therefore had become subjects of neoliberalisation themselves. As such, she draws from post-structural thinking on subjectivity to argue that neoliberalism is not something that is simply done to schoolteachers, but rather that it is something which fundamentally changes who they are (see also Ball, 2003; Ball & Olmedo, 2013). Such a process then perpetuates the neoliberalisation of schooling by encouraging teachers to participate in the shadow education business of tutoring. Importantly, her argument is not focused on the ethical dimension of the tutors’ actions, but rather on the environment that has made such actions even possible and desirable. Gupta thus shows us that teachers’ undesirable and unfair practices can be critiqued by focusing on the conditions that produce teacher subjects who embody such problematic discourses.

With another look at how neoliberal conditions are shaping teachers and their environments, Chris Gilbert (this issue) looks at a policy that requires teachers to clock in and out of work each day. The article, Punching the clock: a Foucauldian analysis of teacher time clock use, adds to the growing body of literature on the various and relatively mundane (see also Ong, 2007; S.J. Ball, 2012) ways that teachers’ work is shaped by neoliberal discourses. Gilbert draws explicit attention to how such policies situate teachers within a working-class discourse, which in turn positions them as non-professionals. Invoking Foucault, the paper illustrates how policies shape the everyday practices of teachers, producing ‘productive bodies’ who are subjected to, but also who subject themselves to, constant surveillance and discipline. Aligning with similar critical scholars, Gilbert reminds us that such practices become normalised over time, and we must therefore be willing to ‘exercise power in ways that produce counter discourses, opposing subject positions, and that contribute to the formation of educational environments characterized by trust, professionalism, and respect’ (p. 14).

Melissa Barnes and Russell Cross (this issue), with their paper “Quality’ at a cost: The politics of teacher education policy in Australia’, turn our attention to initial teacher education (ITE) – a site once treated as a separate domain of interest but now centred as a critical site for understanding how teachers and teaching are impacted by the logics of accountability and ‘evidence’. Using Cochran-Smith, Piazza and Power’s (Cochran-Smith et al., 2013) four-dimensional framework of the ‘politics of policy’, Barnes and Cross problematise a policy initiative in Australia that requires student teachers to pass the Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education (LANTITE). The authors work from the assumption that teacher subjectivities are shaped by discursive conditions that, at present in Australia, privilege a discourse of inputs. They argue that ‘a discourse of inputs shifts attention from the complications (and cost) of reworking the internal complexities of teacher education, to ensuring quality is more carefully addressed at the outset, through better processes of teacher selection’ (p. 5). Another important issue they raise is about the role of ITE programs. Defining the problem as a matter of inputs means that potential teachers are screened before entering the program. In doing so, student teachers are not expected to develop into ‘quality teachers’ within programs, which raises important questions about whether ITEs are rendered redundant in this discursive framing of the problem. It is worth noting that such concerns are playing out in England, where critics warn the government’s plan to overhaul the ITE accreditation system will shut down many university-based ITE providers (see Weale, 2021).

Ganiva Reyes’ paper (this issue), Integrated networks of care: supporting teachers who care for Latina mothering students, provides an interesting way of disrupting the ‘teacher as hero’ trope that sometimes permeates discourses around teachers and teaching. Reyes strikes a careful balance as she rethinks the relationship between teacher wellbeing and teachers’ responsibilities for care. By drawing from ‘communal and justice-oriented theories of care from women of color’ (p. 3), she crafts a compelling argument for linking obligations of care to teachers and students. She shows how teachers’ wellbeing can be prioritised while also maintaining teachers’ responsibilities for others as a non-negotiable expectation. She looks specifically at teachers of Latina mothering students to show that both teachers and students require supportive environments and that care for one does not have to come at the expense of care for the other. Her analysis is contrasted against a backdrop of schooling that privileges individualism and competition, which is a common ethos across education systems globally (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). She argues, however, that integrative networks of care, which distribute caring responsibilities and consider the needs of teachers and students, can also create more inclusive and just environments for all.

In their article, The Pluto problem: reflexivities of discomfort in teacher professional development, Matthew Thomas and Frances Vavrus (this issue) centre their own discomfort in order to de-centre their Anglo, Western positionalities. Drawing on postcolonial theory, they critique their own experiences as U.S.-educated scholars working alongside a group of Tanzanian teacher educators to facilitate a professional development workshop for aspiring teachers in Tanzania. In doing so, they bring a new lens to problematise the notion of ‘good pedagogy’ by foregrounding the ways knowledges from the Global North are often imposed upon the Global South. Based on their own experiences, they explore how they bore witness to the way ‘knowledge hierarchies’ are shaped by enduring colonial histories and logics. They use a series of vignettes to illustrate the various conflicts between their own and their Tanzanian colleagues’ approaches to pedagogy. Rather than framing these approaches as ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ pedagogical choices, Thomas and Vavrus instead use these contentions as objects of reflection to grapple with the ways knowledge is deeply value-laden and context-dependent. Their analytical reflections invite us to think about our own epistemological assumptions and how these shapes our pursuits of knowledge. I also see this work as encouraging the field to reflect on how such assumptions shape what it means to be a teacher and to know good teaching. Without such reflexivity, we fail to address the injustices that come from unjust conditions.

In their paper, Teachers’ critical interculturality understandings after an international teaching practicum, Rogerio P. Bernardes, Glenda Black, James Otieno Jowi and Kevin Wilcox (this issue) critique a teaching practicum that a group of Canadian teachers experienced in Kenya. The group of Canadian and Kenyan authors argue that such excursions can be deeply problematic, especially when viewed through a lens of critical interculturality (Walsh, 2015). They argue that international teaching experiences can perpetuate preconceived notions about the Other, as well as reinforce positions of power. The particular programme studied for the paper was funded by a non-governmental agency, which meant there was little time for educative preparation or reflection for the visiting teachers. As such, the authors argue that the Canadian teachers were not challenged to think about their own privileged positions and how systems of colonialism and globalisation have contributed to the conditions of the Kenyan students. Rather than attributing matters like poverty, for example, to global and historical factors, these teachers instead saw these as distinct problems of Kenya. In doing so, the teachers were positioned as being there to save the African students, rather than to develop critical intercultural understandings that might help challenge the enduring assumptions about the Global South. Like Thomas and Vavrus, Bernardes and colleagues do not write explicitly about teacher professionalism, but arguments like this help critical scholars view teachers as subjects of potentially problematic discourses that deserve to be critiqued. As the authors make clear in their article, teachers as humans can have good intentions, but the conditions that shape their identities and knowledges can never be treated as neutral.

In the Special Issue’s final paper, Re-professionalizing teaching: the new professionalism in the United States, Jory Brass and I bring together two studies that were conducted with U.S. teachers 10 years apart. The respective studies, one conducted by Jory in 2003, and the other by me in 2013, capture key policy moments around teacher standardisation and evaluation in the US. In 2003, President Bush’s No Child Left Behind initiative was in its early stages of implementation; while in 2013, President Obama’s initiative, Race to the Top, was beginning to reshape most schooling systems across the country. Drawing on Evett’s (2011) ‘new professionalism’ framework, we use interviews with teachers from each policy era to see how shifts in discourse can rapidly change teacher subjectivity and teacher professionalism. Importantly, we use ‘new professionalism’ as a conceptual and navigational tool, rather than as a rigid framework to scope any moves towards de-professionalisation. Our intention was to provide a discursive orientation that could help the education field name and grapple with shifting modes of governance in which their work and their selves are attuned to aims, values and managerial practices adapted from the private sector. In other words, we challenge the binary views of professionalism, while also arguing that shifting policy discourses can have profound influence on how ‘professionalism’ discourses construct the teacher subject.

Clearly, the papers in this collection are broad in scope – in terms of context, empirical sites and theoretical perspective – but they do have common threads that provoke interesting questions about how critical scholars might extend and challenge our understandings of teachers and teaching. Primarily, they illustrate how to think of teachers in terms of the conditions that shape the teacher subject – this includes the knowledges, features and logics that provide the foundation upon which the teacher (i.e., the subject who is certified as a teacher) and teaching (i.e., the practice that is qualified as good teaching) are constituted. This is important for problematising the material and discursive systems that sometimes produce unequal, unjust and exclusionary environments for students and communities (local and global), which can happen even when the teachers themselves have the best of intentions. Together, the papers ask us to question how to de-centre our view of the teacher as an individual, so that we can instead think about the teacher as being constructed through historical, political and social means that are always shaped by (and shaping of) privileged forms of knowledge and norms.

Reflecting on the papers in this Special Issue and taking the opportunity that writing its introduction affords me, I want to reiterate my position that teachers, as humans, should be treated with dignity and respect in critical research. I have argued extensively about the need to protect teachers’ wellbeing and to prioritise their role in policymaking, pedagogical decisions and curriculum choices. I feel strongly, though, that we must do this while simultaneously problematising ‘the teacher’ as a subject of potentially troubling discourses. This is especially urgent when it comes to disrupting epistemic injustices that often fall along lines of gender, race, geography, class, and so forth. As Connell (2009) reminds us, teachers are almost always of the state – they are certified, governed and (oftentimes) employed by the state. Thus, they act in the interest of the state, for better or worse. This is not an argument about agency; that is, I am not concerned in this instance with the degree to which teachers are able to exercise their autonomy and/or agency in relation to the state. Rather, I draw attention to how apparatuses of the state (e.g., accreditation systems, certification processes, ongoing credentialing procedures, etc.) shape what counts as the ‘good teacher’ (see also Connell, 2009), and thus what programmes like ITE, professional development and accountability systems must impose accordingly on teachers. From this perspective, it becomes possible to critique ‘the teacher’ as a subject of the state, while maintaining the unyielding position that teachers’ wellbeing should be defended at all costs.

Concluding thoughts

Working from different theoretical assumptions can lead to different forms of critique, as well as different recommendations for moving forward. I believe these differences are what make the field so generative, but I also think that too often these differences are glossed over, or altogether ignored, leaving questions about whether seeming ‘disagreements’ are products of different ‘happenings’, or else products of different assumptions regarding reality and knowledge. On one hand, difference of opinion is a good thing, as diverse ideas and worldviews are foundational to thriving academic environments and especially to democratically oriented knowledge production. Yet, when the difference is attributed to notional ‘findings’ rather than theoretical perspectives and resources, the discussion about how the field responds, especially in cases of dangerous policies and practices, can be very difficult.

In CSE, the explicit position of the journal is that submitting authors should not represent their data as ‘findings’, as this assumes a positivist view of reality and knowledge. That is, ‘findings’ suggest that knowledge is ‘out there’ waiting to be discovered, rather than something that is constructed by the researcher(s). This forces critical scholars to engage with their own positionalities and interrogate how their worldviews shape their inquiries, analytical approaches and claims. As it pertains to the field of teachers and teaching specifically, such engagement can help challenge assumptions like the ‘teacher as hero’ trope (see Reyes, this issue). In my view, this requires explicitly theorising the relationship between the teacher and policy or the teacher and discourse, in order to generate philosophical debates and to avoid defending unjust practices in the name of critiquing ‘bad policy’.

As critical researchers, we have an obligation to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions – not only by looking outwards at the policymakers, edu-businesses, and intergovernmental agencies (e.g., the Organisation for Economic and Co-operation Development [OECD]), but also by looking inwards and challenging our own assumptions about power, discourse and subjectivity. As researchers, many of us sit in positions of immense privilege, where our own subjectivities are mediated by the very discourses and logics (e.g., data-driven, performativity, etc.) that shape the objects of our critiques. Therefore, what kinds of questions can critical researchers ask when it comes to better understanding teachers and teaching? How do we de-centre our view of the teacher as an apolitical actor, and consider, rather, the teacher as being shaped by discourses of privileged knowledge and power? I urge critical scholars to consider these questions as we continue to pursue important understandings regarding teachers and teaching.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [DE190101140].

Notes on contributors

Jessica Holloway

Jessica Holloway is a Senior Research Fellow and Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow within the Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education (ILSTE) and the Research Centre for Digital Data and Assessment in Education at Australian Catholic University. Her research draws on political theory and policy sociology to follow two major lines of inquiry: (1) how metrics, data and digital tools produce new conditions, practices and subjectivities, especially as this relates to teachers and schools, and (2) how teachers and schools are positioned to respond to the evolving and emerging needs of their students and communities. She recently published a book titled Metrics, Standards and Alignment in Teacher Policy: Critiquing Fundamentalism and Imagining Pluralism (Springer Nature, 2021).