The Gender Politics Of Educational Change

Amanda Datnow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135714789
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

What is the relationship of gender to the micropolitics of school reform? This book explores this timely research question, revealing the everyday struggles that happen between different factions of teachers with different definitions of what school means for students. The focus of this struggle, however, may not be on education, but rather on such underlying issues as gender. Using case studies, the author shows how gender politics can be used by teachers to delay reform.

1 A Framework for Understanding the Gender Politics of Educational Change

This chapter situates this book about the gender politics of educational change within extant research on the following three areas: school change, gender and teaching, and the micropolitics of schools. I start with a review of the research on school change and how it contributes to our knowledge of the meaning of reform for teachers. I then review the significance of the culture of the school and existing power relationships among individuals in shaping the school change process. I argue that the literature on the school change process oversimplifies the role of teacher agency in reform and portrays culture as monolithic and shared, downplaying the importance of the micropolitical struggles that may ensue as teachers with varying ideologies grapple with reform. Most importantly, I critique the inattention to gender in the school change literature, arguing that what we have learned about the role of gender in teachers’ work lives is significant in shaping the process of school change.

To round out my review, I use a micropolitical perspective which focuses on the conflict between interest groups, ideological diversity, and political action to address the power and politics of school reform. I propose that we understand gender politics by looking at the politics of representation, the competition among factions over the meaning of objects or events. The key to the politics of representation is the connection between power and discourse. Taken together with the literature on school change and gender, this provides the necessary framework to explain the role of gender politics in affecting reform.

I now turn to a discussion of the school change literature, focusing on the powerful assumptions about teacher agency in creating successful school reform.

Assumptions about Teacher Agency in School Reform

Teachers are considered by most policymakers and school change experts as the centerpiece of educational change. Therefore, not surprisingly, most reform efforts are directed at teachers, and the involvement of teachers in the school reform process is seen as critical by school change theorists. Policies aimed at decentralization, including grant maintained schools in the UK, charter schools in the US, and selfmanaging schools in New Zealand, to name a few, all rely on teachers to ‘reinvent’ school This belief that teachers have agency, the capacity to change the existing state of affairs, has informed reform agendas beginning in the mid-eighties. These reform agendas have emphasized upgrading standards for teachers, providing incentives linked to student achievement, and restructuring schools in order to give teachers a greater role in decision making. This formula for reform has continued into the 1990s, with the emergence of the systemic reform movement (Smith and O’Day, 1991). In sum, policy makers suggest that teachers have the capacity to dramatically improve schools; all they need is freedom at the local level to do so.

School change experts also echo the belief that schools are best changed from the bottom up (Fullan, 1991; Heckman and Peterman, 1997; Sikes, 1992; Wideen, 1994). After all, change efforts which involve imposed, top-down mandates of externally developed curricular innovations have proven to create great dissatisfaction among teachers and ultimately lead to no change at all (Sikes, 1992). Therefore, teachers need to ‘own’ the process of change, and reform efforts need to be grounded in an understanding of teachers’ lives and development (Fullan and Hargreaves, 1996; Hopkins and Wideen, 1984; McNeil, 1988; Sikes, 1992). If teachers are involved in planning and implementing reform, they will find it meaningful, rather than attributing it to the actions of others. Furthermore, when teachers are involved in the change process, it is more likely that important and useful ways of formulating and solving problems will surface (Sarason, 1996).

According to school change experts, teachers must not wait for the system to change, they must push for the kind of professional culture they want through ‘skilled change agentry’ (Fullan, 1993). The change literature emphasizes the need for ‘indigenous invention’ in which those inside the school bring about meaningful school reform (Heckman and Peterman, 1997; Sirotnik and Oakes, 1986). In the process of indigenous invention, teachers critically examine their current educational practices and create local solutions for school improvement and a means for assessing their progress. Through this locally developed process of school improvement, teachers arrive at the ‘empowered school’ (Hargreaves and Hopkins, 1991). In sum, teachers are seen as very active agents, capable of making a significant difference to the existing state of affairs at their schools. Thus, the job of restructuring schools rests, to a large extent, upon their shoulders. In this way, recent reform agendas tap into fundamental societal beliefs about individualism and grass-roots notions of change (Alexander, 1987).

Although a teacher-centered approach is fundamental to successful school change, it has some limitations. Most notably, the assumption that ‘teachers can change the world’ has one major shortcoming: it does not recognize the dynamic nature of the school reform process and the complex realities of locally developed school reform. Certainly, as the literature points out, teachers are not just pawns in the reform process but are active agents in reform. Success is not simply guaranteed when teachers ‘buy into’ new ideas. In fact, teachers act in a variety of ways in response to reforms: some teachers push or sustain reform efforts; others resist or actively subvert these efforts. Yet we know very little about how teachers take on these different roles in reform, particularly resistance, or about how teachers with antagonist roles and ideologies grapple with the day-to-day process of school change. In sum, the notion that teachers can change the world does not take into account the negotiations that happen among teachers at the local level as they struggle to redefine what ‘school’ means for students.

School Culture and the Process of Change

Undoubtedly the culture of the school plays an extremely important role in influencing the politics of reform among teachers. Although the politics of educational change is often not explicitly addressed, the school change literature provides insight into how the culture of the school impacts reform efforts (e.g., Lipman, 1997; Sarason, 1996; Stoll and Fink, 1996). The school change literature correctly highlights that schools have distinct cultures which must be understood because these cultures impact the role of teachers in reform efforts. The success of school reform often relies upon ‘reculturing’ in addition to restructuring, as the school culture may serve to hold in place organizational structures which inhibit school improvement (Hargreaves, 1994). Finally, changing school cultures requires a deconstruction of hierarchical power relationships. Each of these key points is discussed in more detail below.

School change theorists argue that every school has its own culture which is socially constructed by the members within it (Fullan, 1991; Lieberman, 1995; Sarason, 1990; Stoll and Fink, 1996). For these theorists, the school culture includes shared meanings among educators about the role of school in society, the organizational structure within the school, and the climate for change. This shared school culture, in simple terms, is ‘the way we do things around here’ (Deal and Kennedy, 1983). Not surprisingly, the school culture plays a very important role in how teachers in schools respond to change efforts. Educational change efforts which have ignored the culture of the school have proven unsuccessful (Corbett and Rossman, 1989). Thus, for change to be successful, the culture of the school must be one which is supportive of change efforts.

Likewise, because the school culture is inextricably connected to the school structure, a change in the structure must be accompanied by a change in the culture, and vice versa (Hargreaves, 1994). Because traditional school practices are reinforced by the ideologies and group norms that comprise the culture of the school, it is often impossible to establish a collaborative school culture without addressing existing organizational structures. Accordingly, those who push for simply changing the structure of schools ‘underestimate the traditions, assumptions, and working relationships that profoundly shape existing practice. Consequently, they also overestimate the power of structural changes to alter such practice’ (Hargreaves, 1994, p. 255). For these reasons, restructuring must be accompanied by reculturing, as cultures are formed by and framed by specific structures (ibid.).

The role of status and power in shaping the culture of the school also runs through some of the school change literature. In Revisiting the ‘Culture of the School and the Problem of Change’, Sarason (1996) states that in the first edition of his widely read book he

underemphasized how power suffused all relationships in that culture: students vs. teachers, teachers vs. principals, principals vs. higher levels of administration, superintendent vs. board, the board vs. the political establishment, and that establishment vs. centers of power in the state capital, (p. 338)¹

Sarason now asserts that ‘coming to grips with the realities of the school culture requires alterations in long standing power relationships that will engender conflict and controversy’ (p. 339). In many ways, by focusing on power relationships, Sarason gets to the heart of the cultural politics of school change. In fact, it ,is the power relationships which form the school culture that critically impact the process and progress of school change.

Competing Ideologies, Micropolitics, and Gender in School Change

Most policymakers and school change theorists imply that general change strategies, which rely on an understanding of a universal school culture, will work in any school, with any faculty, at any time, regardless of local context. The problem here is that there is not one culture that defines all schools, or even any one school. In this regard, there are several specific areas in which the school change literature falls short, perhaps because it tends to focus more generally on the process of change, rather than the actual substance of change, that is, what happens inside the ‘black box’ of school reform (Fullan, 1991; Huberman and Miles, 1984; Wideen, 1994). As the very title of this book suggests, school change is much messier than we think. Ideological differences, micropolitics, and gender dynamics among teachers are all part of a school’s culture and, accordingly, all play into the school reform process.

The School Culture as a Site of Ideological Difference

The school culture is an ideologically contested terrain, and school change theorists do not directly deal with the ideological differences among teachers that might inhibit reculturing and/or restructuring. The literature tends to emphasize the values, norms, and habits that are held in common—the shared content of school culture, portraying culture as unitary and monolithic (see Blackmore and Kenway, 1995; Hargreaves, 1994). This oversimplified view of culture exaggerates consensus, ignoring conflict and the micropolitics of schools. In fact, the school culture itself may be the subject or site of a struggle over competing ideologies among educators, as teachers from various subcultures often have differing opinions on what to change and how to change it.

If we are to understand the political actions of teachers in reform and the various subcultures which may exist, we must delve deeper into teachers’ ideologies: the beliefs teachers hold about teaching, schooling, and life in general. Teachers naturally vary in many objective dimensions, including the grade levels they teach, their subject areas, length of experience, gender, racial and ethnic background, and the type of teacher training they received; no doubt, these variations may greatly impact their ideologies and in turn their classroom practice and propensity towards reform (Sarason, 1996).² As research on teacher development has pointed out, efforts to change teachers’ practices are always impeded by the differing values, beliefs, and assumptions that teachers hold (Nias, in press).

Critical theorists define teacher ideology in more political terms than the school change theorists, in a way that is particularly helpful for understanding the cultural politics and contested nature of local school change. Critical theorists see ideology as a set of lived meanings and practices that are often internally consistent (Apple, 1985; Giroux, 1984). Ideology can play a role in securing domination of one societal group over another. That is, teachers’ ideologies are produced in the course of their interactions within the school context and the larger society in which they exist. In this way, ideologies can also operate in the service of dominant societal norms and the existing social structure (Apple, 1985). As Giroux (1984) argues, ‘If we are to take human agency seriously, we must acknowledge the degree to which historical and objective social forces leave their ideological imprint on the psyche itself (p. 318). Critical theorists stress the importance of social, political, and economic conditions around issues of race, gender, and class as shaping ideology. This wider, more explicitly political definition of ideology is important for understanding the politics of educational change.

Although gaining insight into teachers’ ideologies can help make sense of their political action in reform efforts, none of the literature, with the exception of Ball (1987), has made this connection. School change theorists do not suggest strategies for change in a school culture in which ideology is contested among teachers. Since teachers’ ideologies are rooted in their life experiences and interactions, teacher agency in reform is deeply embedded within a larger societal context, not just within the school. Moreover, teachers’ ideologies vary as each individual teacher makes meaning of his/her world in a different way.

Yet, more generally, subcultures of teachers may share common ideologies. Teacher subcultures often share common ideologies about the purpose of education, how schools should be organized, and the role of the teacher. There are likely to be several teacher subcultures within a school depending on its history and the orientation and commitment of individuals and groups of teachers (Westoby, 1988). Subcultures may be collegial, cooperative, share a common vision, and engage in reflection and democratic decision making; or they may be quite the opposite, embodying norms of isolation and negative attitudes about schooling (McLaughlin et al, 1990).

Teacher subcultures are especially apparent in secondary schools, where the traditional organizational structure groups teachers into subject departments. However, teachers in any school may form subcultures on the basis of ideological similarities or common interests (Hargreaves, 1994; McLaughlin, 1994). For example, in their search for a self-affirmation or in the interest of achieving a greater voice in the school, teachers may group with other like-minded teachers. This can result in ideologically diverse factions or ‘balkanized cultures’, which may provide self-reference for individual members, but can impede whole school change efforts when they take on a political complexion (Hargreaves, 1994; Nias, in press). In addition, particular teacher subcultures, if collaborative, can enhance teachers’ professional growth or, if balkanized, can contribute to teachers’ entrenchment. Bringing such divergent groups together takes very skilled leadership and constitutes a significant, yet seldom recognized, barrier to school change (ibid.).

In sum, because change is mediated through cultures of teaching (Fullan, 1991; Sikes, 1992; Siskin, 1994), knowledge of teacher subcultures leads to a better understanding of how teachers behave politically in school reform and of the interplay of their agency with the school culture and structure. Clearly, different teacher subcultures perceive change in different ways, which in turn affects their decisions to resist or support reform efforts. More specifically, teacher subcultures play an important role in providing a source of identity for teachers and a source of political power, status, and ideological differences. Teacher subcultures can become the base of political agendas (Ball, 1987; Siskin, 1994). In a school undertaking reform, we can expect to see ideological subcultures of teachers struggling over the issue of whose definition of the school will prevail. This was certainly the case in the schools discussed in this book. What is most interesting about these schools (and likely others) is that particular teacher subcultures grouped not only around common ideologies, but also, notably, around common gender, into male and female groups.

Gender and School Change

Nowhere in the current school change literature is there mention of gender. I am not the first to recognize this void (Blackmore and Kenway, 1995); however, as far as I know, this book marks the first analysis of gender in the research on school reform. The lack of attention to gender (and race and ethnicity, for that matter) is interesting, given the fact that gender can operate on the societal level as a system of power relations. In most societies, men simply have more power, controlling government, business, law, and public discourse. These social relations of power are played out on the terrain of everyday public discourse in societal institutions, including schools. Therefore, it would follow that gender would impact the process of change in most, if not all, social institutions.

While there is a dearth of literature on the intersection of gender and school reform, there is a plethora of literature on gender and teaching more generally. This research focuses on three major areas: the gendered nature of teaching as a profession (particularly at the elementary school level), the divergence of career opportunities among men and women teachers, and the counter-hegemonic, anti-sexist efforts of feminist te...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Introduction
• 1. A Framework for Understanding the Gender Politics of Educational Change
• 2. Central High School: The Case and Its Context
• 3. Teachers At Central High School: Identities and Ideologies
• 4. The Competition Over What ‘School’ Means At Central
• 5. Common and Diverging Themes In the Gender Politics of Educational Change
• 6. Implications for School Change
• Appendix: Sample Teacher Interview Protocol for the Beyond Sorting and Stratification Study
• References