Setting the Stage - Susan Robertson
Overview:
Dr. Susan Robertson of the University of Bristol
In 2000, Dr. Susan Robertson of the University of Bristol in England published A Class Act: Changing Teachers’ Work, Globalisation and the State. In it, she argued that in order to understand teachers’ work and workplaces, we need to understand the conditions and outcomes for their work. Robertson suggested that these had changed considerably over the past century, though she also noted that this difference was mediated by the strength of a collective set of visions and actions supported by teacher unions. So where are we in 2000? Have teachers’ work, market, and status deteriorated further, or have they improved? In this presentation, Robertson looks at key developments and evidence from around the globe and suggests that although there is much to be pessimistic about, there are also examples of places where teachers’ professional knowledge and expertise is properly invested in and where teachers are valued for the contribution they make to the creation of more equitable, knowledge-based economies and societies.
Segments:
- The Shifting Nature of Teachers’ Work
- Reviewing History: Teachers’ Work, Market, and Status
- New Global Context
- Education in the Marketplace and the Competitive Global Economy
- Impact of Restructuring
- The Invented Crisis in Education
- New Questions About Schools and Teachers
- Challenges to Moving Towards a Knowledge Society
Part 1 - The Shifting Nature of Teachers’ Work
Susan Robertson begins this presentation by explaining the origins of her book A Class Act: Changing Teachers’ Work, Globalisation and the State. Through four years of extensive research, she investigated teachers’ changing work and work conditions. She concludes in her book that “there is a simple lesson to be learned about teachers…the conditions associated with fast capitalism, the rise of the competitive contractual state and the tendency toward individualism and ‘doing well’ have created new fissures and progressively fragmented teachers as a unified category of workers.” She also argues that “at the end of the 1990s we see teachers as a collective being divided.” Finally, she further describes both the historical context and five unique teacher identities that have emerged.
Think about:
- Susan Robertson believes that “Ontario has grasped some of what it needs to think about…different kinds of policy making…to actually reframe or underwrite the kinds of working conditions that teachers actually deserve and do need in order to be able to do the work that they are actually contracted to do.” What is your reaction to Robertson’s view of Ontario’s progress?
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Part 2 - Reviewing History: Teachers’ Work, Market, and Status
Robertson looks back historically at three elements—teachers’ work, market, and status—that help us to see teachers being able to negotiate the kinds of working conditions that enable them to do their job well. She finds synergy with the research found in Ken Leithwood’s book. She highlights the historical strength of organized networks to negotiate on behalf of teachers so that they could retain some degree of licensed autonomy over their work and be responsible professionals. Robertson explains that there is a need to resist the divide-and-rule strategies and individualizing strategies, for example, individual performance pay, that are surfacing globally.
Think about:
- Of the three elements Robertson identifies which influence teachers’ ability to do their job well, which do you feel has the greatest impact on your job performance?
- Robertson stated, “Quite often policymakers tend to think that salary and other conditions are teachers’ preoccupations, but there are huge amounts of evidence to suggest that this is not the case.” Do you feel that this statement reflects the public’s perception as well? How can we change this perception?
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Part 3 - New Global Context
Robertson illuminates the broader agendas and big global picture in education. She stresses that around the world there is significant pressure to stimulate economic growth in the name of human capital formation in order to enable countries to compete in the global economy. Additionally, teachers are urged to be more efficient in delivering education at lower cost for greater returns as measured by global indicators. Teachers are also being encouraged to embrace the digital revolution in their classrooms in order to enhance learning. At the same time, teachers and schools are increasingly caught up in generating income for profit-based activities. Robertson also refers to recent initiatives to modernize the school, “but not the kind of modernizing that you and I are actually talking about.” In the face of these challenges, Robertson contends that we need to focus on the working conditions of teachers. We need to be aware that new actors and structures have surfaced in education; very large investments have come from international economic organizations such as the European Community, the World Trade Organization, NAFTA, the International Monetary Fund/World Bank, and from private firms such as Microsoft and Cisco Systems. Commercial organizations such as Sylvan Learning Systems, are redefining themselves to become education providers, joining the traditional players.
Think about:
- “Teachers are being urged to embrace the digital revolution in their classrooms in order to enhance learning. In many cases, these reforms are being put into place without sufficient attention to how teachers teach… and the very complex shifts in expertise that are taking place between teachers and young people as very adept users of these kinds of technologies.” Does Robertson’s statement aptly describe what you see taking place in your school/Ontario school(s)?
- Robertson outlines what she sees as the new global context in education. To what extent do you feel the pressures or directions in education that she describes?
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Part 4 - Education in the Marketplace and the Competitive Global Economy
Robertson emphasizes that education, a service sector that was once considered off-limits, is nowadays regarded as a sector for commercial investment. To emphasize the seriousness of her claim, she provides a number of international illustrations underlining her assertion that we need to be aware that these things are on the global horizon.
Think about:
- What is your reaction to Dr. Robertson’s statement, “Partnership is part of that new kind of language… how we ought to get more money into the system, how we need to modernize our schools, how we need to learn from business about how best to do the business of education… but I think we need to do some quite rapid learning about how not to learn those kinds of things as well”?
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Part 5 - Impact of Restructuring
Robertson takes a closer look at teachers’ work, market, and status following a decade or more of restructuring. She explains that there was sufficient concern about these issues that the OECD commissioned a study of 26 countries. The resulting report argues that a concerted effort is needed to attract more teachers into the system, develop better teachers’ preparation models, retain teachers in the system, and look at ways of recruiting. Robertson goes on to analyze teachers’ salaries and factors that help to retain teachers. She uses New Zealand as an example to demonstrate that teachers’ status plays an important role in attracting and retaining teachers. Also, in some countries there has been an increase in the use of unaccredited teachers, a response to recruitment difficulties. Robertson presents a study illustrating principals’ perceptions of how teachers or teacher-related factors hinder student learning. She concludes the segment with a discussion of the feminization of the teaching force as something important that unions reflect upon.
Think about:
- Robertson reiterates a point made by Eric Hirsch in his presentation: “Teachers’ accounts of things and head teachers’ or principals’ accounts of things are rather different and they can be as different by almost a 100 or at least 50 percent.”
- Do you see any parallels between New Zealand’s recent experiences and Ontario’s during the years of the Harris government?
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Part 6 - The Invented Crisis in Education
Robertson points out the irony of teaching being placed under significant pressure at precisely the same time that there is a great deal of talk about the need to develop knowledge-based economies and societies. She describes her past experience with the Alberta education system which demonstrated to her that the crisis in teaching was an artificially created crisis that had dramatic effects.
Think about:
- Compare the engineered teaching crisis in Alberta to the “created crisis” in Ontario during roughly the same time frame. Do you feel that this crisis had dramatic effects in the short or long term?
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Part 7 - New Questions about Schools and Teachers
Robertson presents the question, “Should we be modernizing schools, moving toward personalized learning (learning in other kinds of settings not called schools) to create knowledge-based economies?” She then provides a number of “school” scenarios, which are important to think about because they are ideas produced at the international level and gain traction at national and the sub-national levels (e.g., Ontario). She explains that we want to make sure that we have a sense of what alternatives are being promoted so that we generate our own alternatives. She ends this section by delineating the World Bank model, with the following caution: “You might look at the lifelong learning side of this model and feel it is what the progressive educators are really arguing for, and indeed it is. But when the World Bank wants to implement this model, particularly into the developing countries, what they want is for this to run through PPPs (public/private partnerships) and things like human capital contracts. It’s a very different governance model for the way in which this ought to be delivered.”
Think about:
- Do you feel our schools are “fit for purpose”?
- Respond to Dr. Robertson’s question, “Should we be modernizing schools, moving toward personalized learning (learning in other kinds of settings not called schools) to create knowledge based economies?”
- Does the World Bank model concern you?
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Part 8 - Challenges to Moving Towards a Knowledge Society
Robertson suggests challenging actions educators should take. She defines the following terms: Knowledge Economy 1, Knowledge Economy 2, and Knowledge Society. She concludes with the idea that we need “alternative imaginaries” and “mobilized political will” if we are to shape the education of our future young citizens and create a platform for a knowledge society.
Think about:
- “We can’t just presume that we have won a battle, that you have a set of politicians, in the case of Ontario, who can think in more complex ways about education as a public good, and a service, and not just something for the economy. Education is about the distribution of life chances not individual choices; therefore, it matters a lot what we do and how we think about education.”
- “So, where are we now in 2007? What are teachers’ ‘work,’ ‘market’ and ‘status’ situations following a decade or more of restructuring? Has more than a decade of restructuring and school effectiveness initiatives led to school improvement and to enhanced conditions for teaching and learning? Keep in the background that global agenda.”
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