Teacher Professional Learning in a Neoliberal Age: Audit, Professionalism and Identity

This paper examines the current shape of teacher professional learning, or in-service teacher education, in Australia. Increasingly, teacher professional learning is positioned as both a sure-fire solution to some of the intransigent educational problems of our time, as well as a policy problem in and of itself. In this paper I explore some of the dominant discourses surrounding teacher learning, such as those related to professional standards, teacher professionalism and teacher quality, which regard teacher learning predominantly as about skill acquisition and competency development. I argue that the civil society aspirations of the Melbourne Declaration will better be met by conceptualising teacher professional learning as ‘identity work’. The paper concludes with some questions that might be used to guide thinking about teacher learning and development consistent with these aspirations. This paper explores the landscape of teacher professional learning, or in-service teacher education, in contemporary Australia. It takes as its starting point the notion that teacher professional learning is currently constituted as both a policy problem and a policy solution, and argues that a tension exists at both ends between generative visions of teacher professional learning and technical-rational, auditable notions of ‘professional development’, both of which are simultaneously in play. It posits that the lens of teacher quality which is generally in use in discussions of teacher learning is less helpful in realising the civil society aspirations embedded in the Melbourne Declaration’s educational goals for young Australians (MCEETYA, 2008) than the lens of teacher identity, and suggests some guidelines that might advance generative teacher professional learning consistent with these goals. The paper is presented in three parts. In the first I explore the current constitution of teacher professional learning as both policy problem and policy solution, examining some current Australian conceptualisations of teacher professional learning as represented in education policy and reflected in three key and dominant educational discourses. In the second, I explore the concept of teacher professional learning as ‘identity work’, drawing on a three year study of teacher professional identity. In the final section, I suggest some approaches to teacher professional learning that might embrace its complexity and support both the profession and Australian society in realising the goals of the Melbourne declaration. To begin, a note about teacher professional learning and teacher professional development and the difference between the two. While the ‘learning’ variant was first coined in the 1990s to distinguish more active forms of professional learning for teachers from the more passive implications of ‘professional development’ (Lieberman, 1995), in recent years the terms have become more conflated and used interchangeably. Indeed professional learning has become something of an educational buzzword in the 21 st century: highlighting the propensity of neoliberalism to co-opt and comandeer both language and ideas, many ‘professional Australian Journal of Teacher Education Vol 38, 10, October 2013 36 development’ providers and organisations re-badged their professional development programs as ‘professional learning’ programs some years back while arguably changing little about the way that programs are conceptualised or delivered. Examples of this might include the NSW Department of Education and Communities Training and Development Directorate becoming the ‘Professional Learning Directorate’, while the ‘Professional Development’ arm of the NSW Association of Independent Schools now delivers “professional learning courses” rather than the “professional development courses” of the past. Professional learning constitutes the processes that teachers engage in when they expand, refine and change their practice. ‘One shot’, ‘spray-on’ (Mockler, 2005) or ‘drive by’ (Senge, et al., 2000) professional development experiences may lead to professional learning, but on their own do not equate with it, regardless of what providers of ‘professional learning courses’may argue. For the purpose of this paper, given the interchangeable use of the two terms by key shapers and providers of professional learning/development, claims in relation to both will be examined. Teacher Professional Learning: Both Problem and Solution In the parlance of contemporary Australian education policy, teacher professional learning and development, sometimes referred to as ‘teacher training’, is constituted as a policy problem (Cochran-Smith, 2004). Typically this manifests in claims of teacher quality or lack thereof, wherein a response from the state in the form of regulation and standardsiation is required. The recently launched National Plan for School Improvement (NPSI) positions its ‘teacher performance and training’ initiative as “mak[ing] sure the best and brightest people are running Australian schools and teaching in classrooms” (Australian Government, 2013), and the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers and accompanying Australian Teacher Performance and Development Framework are positioned as the key technologies through which this goal is to be realised. At the same time, however, teacher professional learning is constituted as a policy solution, for in this environment where the doctrine of ‘teacher centrality’ (Connell, 2009; Larsen, 2010) reigns, teacher professional learning and development become critical to addressing the ‘crisis’ of teacher quality (Mockler, 2013): our only hope for realising the goal of creating ‘great schools’ (Commonwealth of Australia, 2008; Gillard, 2012). Creating ‘good’ and effective teacher professional learning, then, is both a policy problem in and of itself, as well as a solution to the problem of ‘bad’ or ineffective teachers. The shape of teacher professional learning as policy problem and policy solution is best understood, however, through examining the three linked discourses of teacher quality, teacher standards and accountability, and teacher professionalism as they are currently playing out in the Australian context. The ‘Teacher Quality’ Agenda and Professional Learning Peter Taubman (2009), argues that the ‘teacher quality’ agenda is a key tenet of what he views as the transformation of education at the hands of neoliberal ideology, involving, among other phenomena, . the rhetoric of blame and fear and the promulgation of heroic narratives of exemplary teachers, which, coupled with the wide-spread use of tests, render teachers and teacher educators susceptible to the language of policy and the lure of business practices and make possible Australian Journal of Teacher Education Vol 38, 10, October 2013 37 teachers’ psychic investment in various aspects of the transformation (p.12-13). This has involved the development of professional standards for teachers and the use of these standards to attempt to ‘raise the quality’ of members of the teaching profession. As Judyth Sachs and I have argued recently, regulatory and measurement-oriented performance cultures, often operationalized in the application of professional teaching standards, have had a damaging effect on teacher autonomy and professional identity (2012). In England, the United States and Australia, these standards have formed the basis for accreditation processes with the dual purposes of providing a level of ‘quality assurance’ and positioning teaching in some way alongside those ‘real’ professions such as medicine and law. The tangible connection of teacher quality to standardised testing through, for example, the introduction of performance pay based on test results in some educational jurisdictions (Apple, 2011), has further cemented this relationship, bringing teachers and governments into a dangerous deal that risks sacrificing good student learning to expediently improved test scores. In Australia, where the Australian Education Act (2013) enshrines the intention to be ‘Top 5 by 2025’ (on international standardised tests) in legislation, linked to the provision of ‘great teachers’, this connection is further amplified. Within the teacher quality agenda, we have seen a shift in the past decade from a discourse focused on teaching quality to one focused on teacher quality (Mockler, 2011a). The shift is a subtle but important one. Embedded in a focus on teaching quality is a desire to support and foster teacher professional learning, to encourage pedagogical and curricular innovation and risk taking and to collaboratively determine and pursue good teaching practice. Conversely, embedded in the ensuing focus on teacher quality is a desire to narrowly measure and quantify teachers’ work (usually represented simply in test scores), to standardise practice and attribute blame to teachers where their students fail to ‘measure up’. The significance of sound and effective professional learning is largely absent from this discourse, despite reminders that countries such as Finland, where results on standardised international tests are seen as enviable, have generally low levels of surveillance of teachers and high budgets earmarked for teacher professional learning (Sahlberg, 2007, 2009, 2011). Furthermore, this conceptualisation of teacher quality feeds into notions of “good teaching as embodied rather than practised” (Gore, Ladwig, & King, 2004, p. 5), linking back into the “heroic narratives of exemplary teachers” named by Taubman (2009), positioning the core of teaching as about teachers themselves rather than the practices they engage in in the course of their work. Visions of actual quality in education rely on an understanding that as a human and messy business one size never fits all, and this works at cross purposes with the neoliberal desire to catalogue and standardise practice. As Raewyn Connell reminds us: Education involves encount