Inequalities in the Teaching Profession

A Global Perspective

M. Moreau

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137328595
• eBook ISBN: 9781137328601
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Théorie et pratique de l'éducation

Countering the commonplace view of teaching as inclusive, this collection highlights the persistence of inequalities in the teaching profession. It explores the ways in which gender, ethnicity, social class and other identity markers shape teachers' experiences in a range of institutional and national contexts.

Part I

Mapping and Understanding Inequalities in the Teaching Profession

1

Introduction: Theorising and Mapping Inequalities in the Teaching Profession

Marie-Pierre Moreau

Inequalities in the teaching profession, the parent pauvre of education research?

Since the 1970s, equality issues in education have generated a wealth of research in many regions of the world. This extensive corpus has shed light on how education contributes to the formation of learners’ identities and on how social class, gender, ethnicity and other identity markers play out in this process (see, for example, Archer and Francis, 2007; Gillborn, 2008; Martino and Meyenn, 2001; Mills, 2003; Modood, 2003; Modood and Shiner, 2002; Moss, 2007; Reay, 2002; Skelton and Francis, 2003; Spender, 1982; Willis, 1977). Crucially for governments, groups and individuals with a concern for social justice, this work has shown that education can open avenues towards social change (Bowles, 1983; hooks, 1994), yet simultaneously represents a site where social divides reproduce (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1970).

However, schools and other education settings do not solely represent a site for learning: they provide employment opportunities to a range of occupational and professional groups, including school teachers, the focus of this volume. Compared with learners, teachers appear to be the parent pauvre of research and policy intervention addressing social justice issues in education. The relative wealth of studies exploring the relationship between teachers’ and students’ identities, including the way teachers contribute to the production of gendered, raced and classed identities among learners (Allard, 2004; Causey et al., 2000; Echols and Stader, 2002; Kannen and Acker, 2008; Olmedo, 1997; Walkerdine et al., 2001), has not been matched by a similar amount of research on the effects of social structures and school cultures on teachers’ identities. In relation to this point, Allard and Santoro (2006) argue that, ‘Too often, the focus is on developing student teachers’ understandings of how gender, ethnicity, “race” and class shape learner identities but how these also shape teachers’ identities is rarely explored’ (p. 116, emphasis in original).

While Allard and Santoro’s comment was made in relation to research, their point finds particular resonance in relation to policy. When policy-makers have been concerned with identity and equality issues in the teaching profession, such concern has usually been driven by instrumental motives, that is, the need to understand how the composition of the teaching body affects students in relation to their academic performance, behaviour or identity formation, rather than by some interest in teachers per se. In that respect, the debate on ‘boys’ underachievement’, which has been ongoing in a range of countries since the late 1980s (for example, in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK and the United States), provides a striking illustration. In these countries, concerns for bringing more male teachers, in particular Black male teachers, in the profession have been driven by the view encapsulated in government reports and policy texts that this will automatically bring benefits for boys, while simultaneously reviving the status of the profession through its statistical and normative ‘masculinisation’ (see, for example, Canadian Teachers’ Federation, 2002; DfEE, 1998; Education Queensland, 2002). Such views have been profusely criticised by feminist researchers, who have highlighted the lack of empirical evidence and the flawed assumptions undergirding this argument (Epstein et al., 1998; Francis, 1999; Francis and Skelton, 2005; Hutchings, 2002; Hutchings et al., 2008; Moreau, 2011b). In addition, it has been noted that this policy focus usually disregards the issues faced by women and minority ethnic teachers (such as access to the most rewarded and prestigious segments of the profession and experiences of sexist/racist abuse in and out of the classroom) or even compounds these, for example when women teachers are blamed for ‘feminising’ boys and hindering their academic performance (Skelton, 2002).

While there may be a lack of interest for inequalities in the teaching profession, one would be mistaken, however, to conclude that there is an absence of research activity in this area, as evidenced by the original contributions gathered in this volume. Indeed, researchers have explored how teaching offers a range of opportunities to individuals from a range of backgrounds, and how these opportunities are constrained by processes of exclusion and marginalisation which permeate national, local and school cultures. While this book focuses on inequalities based on identity markers such as race, gender and class, it does acknowledge that power relationships take other forms. For example, school managers usually have considerably more power than classroom teachers (Blase and Blase, 2002; Coleman, 2002). Some educational institutions and subjects are more valued than others, often resulting in a hierarchy of teachers, based on whom and what they teach (Chapter 2; Palheta, 2011; Richards and Acker, 2006; Santee Siskin and Warren Little, 1995). In particular, secondary school teaching usually confers higher status than primary teaching (Chapter 3). These divides, however, often reflect the broader power relationships at play in society, with individuals belonging to dominated groups tending to concentrate in the segments of the teaching profession associated with the lower levels of financial and symbolic capitals.

The development of a feminist sociology of women teachers

From the 1980s onwards, second- and third-wave feminists have played a key role in documenting the experiences of women teachers. Much of this work has explored how social expectations of women constrained the opportunity for them to enter the teaching profession during the 19th and 20th centuries (for example, Acker, 1989, 1994, 1999; Brehmer, 1980; Clifford, 1981; Cortina and San Román, 2006; De Lyon and Widdowson Migniuolo, 1989; Grumet, 1988; Hoffman, 1981Markowitz, 1993; Miller, 1996; Prentice and Theobald, 1991; Rogers and van Essen, 2003; Schmuck, 1980; Tamboukou, 2003).

While there had been some earlier work on women teachers, this scholarship has developed on an unprecedented scale and has been associated with a paradigm shift, departing from a sociology of education, work and the professions which either ignored women, blamed their ‘less successful’ careers through a ‘deficit’ discourse or correlated their presence with the decline of the status of the profession (see, for example, Etzioni, 1969). This has led to studies exploring the cultural association of women with children and care (Beatty, 1990; Chan, 2004; Chapter 3) or what Gannerud has described as ‘a long-lasting appreciation of the relationship between teaching as “women’s work” and related to mothering, where the positioning of women close to children is both normal (needing no analysis) and acceptable (needing no critique)’ (2001, p. 61).

While it is indeed the case that, in many countries, the majority of school teachers are women (Eurydice, 2013; UNESCO, 2010), their proportion varies significantly across subjects, phases and levels of responsibility (Hutchings, 2002), as well as across countries and periods of time. As noted by Acker (1994), ‘The relative proportions of men and women, of single women and married women, of female head teachers and male head teachers, have all varied over time in response to government policies, wars, population trends, social attitudes and economic circumstances’ (p. 83). Other work has concentrated on the social construction of teaching as a suitable occupation for some women, and on how this has evolved over time. In particular, some of this literature recalls how, in some countries, the figure of the ‘spinster’ teacher became increasingly vilified and pathologised between the two world wars, leading the way to an image of teaching as a profession suitable for married women, who had previously been excluded from the profession due to the ‘marriage bar’ or to implicit social norms which condemned their participation in the teaching profession (Cacouault, 1984; Cacouault-Bitaud, 1999; Oram, 1989; Schroeder, 1991).

Other feminist scholars have concentrated on providing explanations of the under-representation of women in the most prestigious and rewarded segments of the teaching labour market (Eurydice, 2013), with many focusing on the so-called glass ceiling (Wirth, 2001). As well as critically exploring the cultural link between leadership and masculinity (Mahony et al., 2004), these studies have considered how headteachers’ and governors’ prejudiced attitudes towards women, national welfare policies, teachers’ working conditions and the gendered division of domestic and care work hinder the progression of women teachers on the career ladder (Coleman, 2002; Moreau, 2011a; Moreau et al., 2007, 2008).

Some of the most recent work in this area, often informed by a feminist post-structuralist perspective, has focused on the regimes of surveillance to which women teachers are subjected, both inside and outside the classroom. In contrast with earlier feminist work, which had emphasised how the opportunities offered to this group are constrained by social contexts, this scholarship tends to foreground women teachers’ agency and resistance, as argued by Essen and Rogers (2003) and as illustrated by the work of Tamboukou in the UK (2003) and Mallozzi in the United States (2012; see also Chapter 6).

Post-colonial and feminist theories and the development of a scholarship on Black and minority ethnic teachers

During the 1980s and 1990s, a scholarship informed by post-colonial and critical race theories explored the lives of Black and minority ethnic teachers, including barriers to entry in the profession and experiences of racism for practising teachers (Foster, 1998; Osler, 1997; Troyna, 1994). The implicit association between femininity and Whiteness which underpinned many studies of women teachers became challenged by Black feminists (for example, Hills-Collins, 1990), who called for the redefinition of feminist frameworks to reflect the experiences of Black and minority ethnic women and, more generally, for a more intersectional approach to social structures of power (Crenshaw, 1989). It led to a range of studies informing the experiences of Black and minority ethnic women teachers (Bangar and McDermott, 1989; Casey, 1993; Henry, 1995). Only recently has some similar work on Black and minority ethnic men teachers emerged (Brown, 2009, 2011; Lewis, 2006; Lynn, 2006; see also Chapter 10).

The existing literature on teachers and race comes predominantly from the United States, as well as, to a lesser extent, from the UK and Canada. In the United States, as recalled in Brown (2012), earlier theorisation of Black teachers goes back to the 19th century. Some of these accounts discuss the contribution of Black teachers, with some emphasising the benefits of providing Black teachers to the Black community and others questioning the assumption that all Black teachers are automatically in a position to provide a valuable experience to Black students (see, for example, Blackshear, [1902] 1969; Woodson, [1933] 2000) – a debate which remains vivid to this day.

The studies of teachers and race which emerged in the 1980s and 1990s challenged earlier discourses which had blamed and pathologised Black communities, often through a psychological lens (Hannerz, 1970; Moynihan, 1967). This work explored Black teachers’ pedagogy and how this and their wider experiences were shaped by politics of race (Foster, 1991, 1998; Howard, 2001; King 1991; Ladson-Billings 1994; Osler, 1997). While the perceived need for attracting more Black (male) teachers to the profession has a long history in the United States, this debate was further reignited by the election of Barack Obama to the US presidency, with the introduction of a nationwide campaign to increase the presence of Black men in schools (Williamson, 2011, in Brown, 2012). Policies concerned with the racial diversity and representativeness of the teaching profession have also emerged in other regions of the world. In the UK, the government and a number of high-profile politicians have made calls for attracting more Black and minority ethnic teachers, particularly men, in the profession (see, for example, Abbott, 2002; DfEE, 1998). In Australia, a range of initiatives have been implemented over the past 40 years to increase the numbers of Indigenous teachers in schools (see Chapter 4).

While most authors concur in thinking that the attraction of Black and minority ethnic teachers to the profession represents a cause for celebration, the rationale underpinning the perceived ‘need’ for Black (male) teachers has attracted a number of criticisms. In particular, it has been argued that constructions of the Black male teacher as ‘the ideal pedagogue and role model for the Black male student’ and ‘the central agent of social change for Black male students’ feed into a wider discourse which essentialises race and gender and constructs Black teachers as a homogeneous group (Brown, 2012, p. 297). By presenting the Black teacher as a ‘saviour’, it is also implicitly assumed that Black children need ‘to be saved’ and Black communities need to be ‘fixed’ (Brown, 2012; see also Chapter 10). This discourse ‘reifies problematic raced and gendered stereotypes that privilege the physical capacities of African American men, rather than their mental and pedagogical capacities to work with Black male students’ (Brown, 2012, p. 311). Also problematic is the fact that Black women and Black girls are usually absent from this policy intervention. Similar constructions of Black and minority ethnic teachers are not unheard of in other countries. In the UK, the call for more Black teachers has sometimes been problematically justified by the need to tackle ‘gang violence’ (Johnson, 2007, in Callender, 2012) although there is evidence that Black and minority ethnic teachers do not necessarily envision their role in those terms, nor see themselves as ‘cultural experts’ (Basit and Santoro, 2011).

Other research on this group has specifically focused on barriers to entry in the profession, and retention issues, for example, pointing to discrepancies between the composition of the teaching workforce and the student population, to the difficulties faced by some Black and minority ethnic teachers in finding work in schools and to their commonplace allocation to schools which are difficult to staff (Callender, 2012; DCSF, 2008; Maylor et al., 2006; Santoro et al., 2011), although there are major differences across countries and ethnic groups. Other studies have highlighted experiences of racism for practising Black and minority ethnic teachers. For example, Foster (1993) has observed that Black teachers ‘often report feeling alienated from the school and its culture, outside collegial and friendship groups’ (p. 103). Some of this work also highlights the resistance of predominantly White communities to this group (Casey, 1993; Foster, 1998) and how their credentials and skills are questioned by parents and colleagues (Carrington and Tomlin, 2000; Osler, 1997; Siraj-Blatchford, 1991). Other work has shown that Black and minority ethnic teachers can be disadvantaged in achieving leadership roles (Hargreaves, 2011; Powney et al., 2003). While evidence of the significance of religion in teachers’ lives remains scarce, Black and minority ethnic teachers from religious minorities can experience multiple prejudices, particularly Islamophobia in the case of Muslim teachers living in the West (Osler, 1997, 2003).

However, not all minority ethnic groups have been given the same level of attention (see Chapter 4). In addit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• Part I: Mapping and Understanding Inequalities in the Teaching Profession
• Part II: Teachers, Equality and Identities
• Part III: Understanding Social Divides and Moving towards Social Change
• Conclusion
• Index