The ‘good’ teacher in an era of professional standards: policy frameworks and lived realities

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of contemporary education policy levers that seek to standardise and measure teaching quality through the deployment of professional standards and increased surveillance of teachers' work. These policy frameworks-with a focus in this paper on the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers-are contrasted against the experiences of five Australian primary school teachers, using interpretative case study analysis to demonstrate the contradictions, tensions and fragile discursive construction of the idealised 'good' teacher. Implications for teacher agency and autonomy are considered, and propositions are generated for policy frameworks that support and enhance quality teaching, rather than reducing the complexities of teaching to a set of standardised metrics.

Institutional exclusion and exploitation of language teachers

“…In addition, OERs are used as an excuse for not paying teachers for preparing teaching aids since they are expected to draw on these freely available resources that they had volunteered to create. There is an assumption that the digital teaching material is an adequate substitute for the teachers' professional expertise (Mirrlees & Alvee, 2020;Salton et al, 2022). By standardizing courses and promoting efficiency using these OERs, teachers' roles have been reduced and de-skilled.…”

“…The idea of standardizing our practice has merits and is generally well-intentioned; however, it has opened the gates for the deprofessionalization of teaching (Salton et al, 2022). Experts within our field assumed that if we had a defined set of skills and knowledge, we would be able to legitimize our profession (Richards, 2010;Salton et al, 2022), and that standardisation would also create a culture of accountability within the field (Valeo & Faez, 2013).…”

“…The idea of standardizing our practice has merits and is generally well-intentioned; however, it has opened the gates for the deprofessionalization of teaching (Salton et al, 2022). Experts within our field assumed that if we had a defined set of skills and knowledge, we would be able to legitimize our profession (Richards, 2010;Salton et al, 2022), and that standardisation would also create a culture of accountability within the field (Valeo & Faez, 2013). However, standardization has also allowed our skills and knowledge to be broken down into oversimplified tasks that can be automatized, digitalized, or reduced to simply a set of instructions decontextualized from the richness of the classroom experience (Salton et al, 2022).…”

“…Experts within our field assumed that if we had a defined set of skills and knowledge, we would be able to legitimize our profession (Richards, 2010;Salton et al, 2022), and that standardisation would also create a culture of accountability within the field (Valeo & Faez, 2013). However, standardization has also allowed our skills and knowledge to be broken down into oversimplified tasks that can be automatized, digitalized, or reduced to simply a set of instructions decontextualized from the richness of the classroom experience (Salton et al, 2022). Standardization has also exacerbated deprofessionalization and inequity practices within our field.…”

“…For example, teacher evaluations based on the professional standards set by professional associations are used in performance evaluations. These performance evaluations are not being used as potential PD tools for improving teaching; rather, they are weaponized against teachers (Salton et al, 2022) where managers use them to marginalize minority groups, privilege employment to specific groups, and compound employment precarity in others. Standardization has framed teachers as the problem instead of addressing the systemic issues affecting the quality of education.…”