Primary Teachers, Inspection and the Silencing of the Ethic of Care

James Reid

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781787568938
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación primaria

This book offers a unique and critical explication of teachers' understanding and experience of care during a period of regulatory scrutiny and 'notice to improve'. Written followingresearch in a primary school in the north of England, it draws on the findingsof an institutional ethnography to reveal the institutional mediation ofthe teachers' everyday work. Written from a critical interpretivist standpoint, the focus moves away from care as essentialist practice by foregrounding theteachers' talk, through 'I' poems, to explicate the political mediation ofcare.

Care is understood, experienced and operates in a social milieu. It is not fixed and, importantly, isnot understood as a practice or an emotional exchange between one person and another. In this book, Joan Tronto's (1993) argument for a 'political ethic of care' isutilised as a conceptual framework for understanding teachers' experiences.It is an alternative to approaches that individualise a teacher's caringpractices as only belonging in the intimate, proximal domains of care givingand care receiving.

Chapter 1

Developing Understanding of Teachers’ Everyday Work During a Period of Inspection

1.1. Kathryn’s Poem: A Teacher’s Experience of Teaching in the Panopticon

I wasn’t here at the beginning of this
I am an oldie
I was 22 when I got my first job

I think the responsibility, a lot more responsibility
I liked to think of myself as being innovative and creative
I did do lots of different things
I think it has tweaked now
I had to sort of throw myself into that
I am pretty good at it now

I think some aspects that are better
I think maybe the children are getting a better education
I certainly teach them more specifics
I would never have been teaching
I was never taught myself
I think we are teaching them ‘how’
I think it is healthy to learn a lot of methods

I do question sometimes
I think sometimes that can be counterproductive
I think some sides of it are onerous

I think the planning side is far too onerous
I don’t quite see the point
I do it twice

I could do without

I am waiting for the year when my life becomes more organised

I think there are several factors
I am a factor
I am someone who wants to do my job well
I will dot ‘I’s and cross, cross ‘t’s
I want to be seen
I am not handing in something substandard
I have always been someone of that nature
I need someone to say

I haven’t been asked to do that for a long time
I was not in the practice of planning
I would only plan for maybe two or three days
I have to teach
I deviate from doing
I might plan it
I won’t do it
I am redoing something
I don’t know. It’s accountability

I would say on the whole
I have certainly been happier here than I was at my past school
I am still working hard
I was working hard before
I am doing all this bloody work

I think that can be aggravating
I fell victim to this a couple of years ago
I inherited a class
I was told these are the levels
I wish I had been a stronger person
I think it has been the practice in this school
I adopted people who had just pushed up
I have had that happen to me and it’s horrible

I don’t know directly what they think of me
I hope they think I do okay
I held my end in the Ofsted
I got good feedback
I know I am very certain
I feel I have done my job
I have been observed, I don’t know how many times now
I didn’t do that very well
I’ll do it better next time
I know through doing
I’ve never known the like!
I have never known the like!
I have never known it
I have never known it before
I just find it fascinating
I know when I started
I thought, why?
I just don’t know

I am, I am!

I still want to do my best
I felt I had to somehow justify
I was worthwhile to have
I was going to come in and be valued

I have done what I would do
I would like to feel I do my job well
I would like to feel I can hold my head up
I have done the best that I can
I got in a bit of a flap panicking the first term
I was asked to give reading assessments in October
I am sorry
I have them four afternoons a week
I am doing the best I can
I don’t teach them literacy
I don’t teach

I was offered the permanent post
I have come through; they can put a tick next to my name
I am not someone who is causing alarm

1.2. Introduction

Kathryn’s poem is offered without explanation or context. Having read her poem, I invite you to consider what it reveals about Kathryn’s experience in Crosstown School during a period of inspection? What is her understanding of herself as a teacher, her everyday work, her relationships within the school, how her work is mediated and how external relations of power shape her as a teacher and a woman?

This is the story of Crosstown Primary School, a school in the north of England, during a period of inspection by the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) in which the school was judged as ‘performing less well than it might in all the circumstances reasonably be expected to perform’ and, therefore, requiring improvement. It draws on the findings of an institutional ethnography (IE) (Smith, 2005), when I had privileged access to the teachers and school throughout the inspection period (Reid, 2016a). IE explicates how people in their everyday experiences take up various texts that mediate their work. Texts may be paper based; for example, policy documents or guidance, or artefacts, tools, material objects and talk. In explicating the texts that mediate teachers’ work, IE reveals relations of ruling, or relations of power, through which the everyday work of people in a local site is directed by those removed from the intimate, social relations of that site.

The institutional ethnographer does not enter the local site with any a priori ideas of concepts, issues or problems. The ‘problematic’ for investigation is revealed from the everyday work and talk of the people within that local site (Smith, 2005). Consequently, the teachers’ experiences and understanding of ‘care’ became a problem for investigation since, within minutes of my first time in the school, I was told, ‘we are a very caring school’. The comment by Brenda, the head teacher, was deliberate and made to convey a message about a disjuncture in experience of which I was not yet aware. Subsequently, care was a consistent aspect of the teachers’ talk and was a significant feature of the ethos of the school.

A concern for care is consistent within studies of teachers’ work over time; for example, the seminal Plowden Report (Central Advisory Council for Education (CACE), 1967) and Jenny Nias’s (1989) Primary Teachers Talking, both of which were written at a time of particular ideological struggle, raised teachers’ concerns about the purposes of teaching and the developing instrumental requirements of education. The former implicating care; the latter increased governmentality of teachers’ work and was indicative of how politics pervades teachers’ everyday work (Tronto, 1993). While the concept of care was foregrounded in Crosstown, it was vocalised from a perception of being ‘other’, that is, the teachers’ understanding themselves to be other than the desired professional required by externally imposed frames of accountability.

The teachers were concerned about being ‘different’, ‘a risk’ and ‘at risk’ on a number of different levels. An obvious interpretation is a risk through poor teaching and professional performance to the children’s education and outcomes. Assessed from the standpoint of the external observer, the Ofsted inspector, the teachers were graded, ‘outstanding’, ‘good’, ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’ on the quality of their practice and their ability to improve pupil’s outcomes over each term in an academic year. There were individual outcomes from ‘outstanding’ to ‘requires improvement’ and, therefore, differentiation within the staff team. It could, of course, be argued that this is a typical outcome given the range of knowledge, skills and experience in any staff group. However, the issue for the teachers at Crosstown was both personal and professional. It is easy to conclude that a teacher who receives a ‘requires improvement’ grading is professionally a risk to the overall assessment of the quality of provision in the school and also risky to her pupils and colleagues. On a personal level, she is also aware of the difference between her and her colleagues with a higher grading and comparison and, perhaps, envy is inevitable. This is also the case for the teacher who receives ‘outstanding’ but who is unwilling to celebrate her success, since to do so would risk further the morale of colleagues. The embodiment of the inspection process also moves beyond the boundaries of the school to other areas of the teacher’s life and, for example, can also develop challenges to those relationships. Consequently, their aim, also vocalised by Brenda, was to ‘do whatever is necessary to get out of this’. This aim was both professional and personal; the objective was to enhance the reputation of the school as a good and caring school and to reflect the teachers’ concern for each other and others.

Care, therefore, is understood and experienced in a social milieu. It is not fixed and, importantly, I do not posit care simply as a practice or an emotional exchange between one person to another. It not only involves relationships but also moves beyond this to the political, to ‘relations of ruling’ (Smith, 2005). This involves how teachers’ practices of care are coordinated and mediated through institutional relations. In this context, ‘institutional’ relations of ruling involve texts including the policies, guidance and wider regulatory texts that are taken up by teachers as an aspect of their everyday work within a performative agenda for schools. Consequently, in positing political and social power as an aspect of teachers’ everyday experiences of care I foreground Joan Tronto’s (1993) argument for a ‘political ethic of care’ as an appropriate theoretical and epistemological model; and as an alternative to approaches that individualise teachers’ caring practices as only belonging in the intimate, proximal domains of caregiving and care receiving.

In developing this argument, the ‘ethic of care’ is understood in relation to the three branches of moral philosophy – metaethics, normative ethics and applied ethics. Typically, metaethics’ concern is moral principles and questions of where our moral judgements come from; for example, is it a matter of the will of a powerful deity or individual reason or ego? Normative ethics focus on moral standards and notions of what is right or wrong based on duties or the consequences of actions. Applied ethics attempt to resolve the questions of the previous two branches for specific contexts and issues; for example, the standards, duties and consequences of care. Although these may be presented as three distinct branches of moral philosophy there is inevitably crossover in their boundaries, for example, care may be presented as an applied ethical concern since it involves a controversial (sometimes) aspect of human interaction and work. However, this also depends on understanding more general normative notions of choice, dependency, rights and responsibilities which help to frame the moral boundaries of care work. This, in turn, involves metaethical questions such as where do rights come from? Whilst it is important to understand the conceptual framework for care in light of these three branches of moral philosophy, its structure is also drawn from a particular theoretical and epistemological standpoint. I argue, therefore, at the metaethical level, care is a matter of political and social interaction rather than individual reason; normative ethics involve considerations of power and responsibility rather than duty or consequence; and finally, the applied ethic of care is achieved through a political theory. In this regard, the political ethic of care brings together the three orienting approaches to moral philosophy to form a coherent conceptual framework for understanding teachers’ experiences of care during a period of ‘notice to improve’.

1.3. Beginnings

During an informal lunchtime, when I was exploring with the teachers their experience of working with parents, their talk turned to other concerns, in particular, their thoughts and feelings on having recently been judged by Ofsted as a school requiring improvement. They talked of ‘stress’, ‘action plans’, ‘school improvement partners’ (SIPs) and needing to change their working practices so that they could shed the ‘damaging’ and ‘critical’ judgement and be recognised for the ‘good school that we are’. I noted that the conversation was animated, if not agitated, and they were vocal of their feelings. They were ‘frustrated’, ‘unhappy’ and ‘angry’ about the inspection judgement, their treatment during the inspection process, and what they viewed as an ‘unfair’ outcome. In my notes, I wrote how ‘all but one of the group looked to the senior teacher… as a sign of permission needed following the inspection outcome’. I questioned this as an indication of power at play, specifically involving those exerting power from the outside.

I followed the teachers’ lead in the conversation and we discussed Ofsted requirements, their sense of being unfairly treated, the implications of having a ‘notice to improve’ and what they needed to do to achieve a better outcome during subsequent monitoring inspection, which would be within a year. I accessed the Ofsted report, a public document, which recommended that the school needed to take the following actions to improve:

• Increase the rate of pupils’ progress and raise attainment in English, mathematics and science in Key Stage 2 by:
  – improving the quality and consistency of all teaching to a good or better level to ensure pace and challenge for pupils in all lessons;
  – checking that pupils have targets and always know how to achieve them.
• Further improve the quality of leadership and management by:
  – ensuring that monitoring of teaching and learning focuses more consistently on pupils’ learning;
  – giving subject leaders more opportunities to check on their subjects so that they can make informed decisions about what needs doing to secure improvement;
  – using information about pupils’ performance more systematically to drive and secure improvement.

The foregrounding of targets, monitoring and performance management and the teachers’ collective desire to demonstrate ‘improvement’ brought to mind issues of performativity in teachers’ work (Ball, 2003). Moreover, I began thinking about teachers as policy actors (Ball, Maguire, Braun, & Hoskins, 2011) and ‘chaos’ (Dewar, 1998) in the enactment of law and regulatory requirements relating to children and their families. This arose in part because of my previous professional role as a social worker who had experienced Ofsted inspections, albeit not in an educational context. In particular, I was aware of their collective desire, voiced by the head teacher, to ‘do whatever is necessary to get out of this’, to get out of notice to improve. I was also conscious of the teachers’ comments about how they managed their time differently indeed of how potentially time-poor they were. This was a persistent theme throughout my contact with them as the following comments from several of their diaries demonstrate:

• ‘Finished work at 10:10 p.m. … absolutely shattered’.
• ‘Most of us there to 5:30 p.m. tonight. Even me who usually on Friday is off like shit off a shovel at 3:30 p.m.’
• ‘Another night not until 6:15 p.m. this week … after spending the past two weeks staying until 5:30 p.m. plus.’

This insight into the teachers’ experience of inspection gave rise to a unique possibility of observing the teachers’ experiences during an inspection period (indeed I was present during an inspection visit) and of developing an understanding of the organising power of the inspection process. Several questions began to shape the research:

• What are teachers’ experiences of the inspection process and ‘notice to improve’?
• How does an inspector’s report of a particular school reflect wider national and global policy?
• What dilemmas do teachers identify when working within a performative framework?

Following discussions and consultation with the deputy head teacher and head teacher, as gatekeepers, and their subsequent consultation with their colleagues, I was given permission to enter the school, weekly on a Friday with additional days and block weeks where appropriate. Ad hoc contact continued with the school over five years. The focus of my research would be on the teachers’ experiences of inspection and not on the pupils. Consequently, a role was negotiated for me to be in school as a volunteer with unhindered access across the school as long as there was no disruption to the children’s learning. However, my intention initially was to undertake a critical policy analysis and I had not thought of, until my subsequent meeting with Brenda on my first day in the field, care as a problematic for investigation.

1.4. A Pen Picture of Crosstown Primary School

Crosstown is a small maintained community primary school in a suburb of a large city in the north of England. There are approximately 196 pupils on a roll; the number fluctuating by small amounts as pupils move in or out of the area during the academic year, with a single intake each year. The pupils are aged between four and eleven through Reception class, Key Stage 1 (five to seven, rising eight) and Key Stage 2 (eight to eleven).

The majority of staff and pupils are of White British backgrounds with a small number from other ethnic backgrounds. The school catchment area includes a ward in the top 10 percentile for social deprivation nationally. Consequently, the school receives higher than average funding from the government to pay for free school meals and additional support. Twenty-five per cent of pupils receive free school meals. However, the number of pupils with special educational needs or a statement of special educational needs is just below the national average.

With the exception of the site manager all of the staff at Crosstown are women; consequently, all of the participants in the re...