In summary, the review in this chapter has shown that many studies on secondary
schooling and teachers’ work in Tanzania over the past two decades have ended up
reproducing problems faced by schools and teachers such as inadequate textbooks, funds, and teachers in schools, and lack of laboratories that constructedpoor educational
achievement. It is very interesting that Tanzania’s secondary researchers did not dare to
analyse what is in those available textbooks. The idea that textbook contents and organisation have discursive and ideological effects on teachers and students has not crossed their minds. Further, very few researchers have investigated why there were no textbooks in schools and classrooms and how teachers performed their work in such contexts. That is, as Apple (1986) argues, texts are political and cultural artefacts representing the political economy and sociocultural views of the producers, distributors, and consumers. Although in the context of marketisation in Tanzania such resources were published, distributed, and consumed by individuals and groups from diverse sociocultural, political, and economic orientations, no study has specifically
addressed teachers’ work politics and cultures reshaped by marketisation policy texts and discourses.
Similarly, although most of these Tanzania’s literatures continued to show that
secondary schooling and teachers’ work faced less access to resources, knowledge,
inadequate teacher training, and fewer educational achievements, these studies face severe epistemological and methodological limitations. This is because they do not apply critical and poststructuralist approaches. As I discuss in Chapter 3, these approaches are relevant for exposing and challenging the various forms of inequalities, oppression, and power relations that are produced and reproduced through CR and
teachers’ work in the face of policy reform challenges as discussed above. These approaches are relevant, especially in the context of marketisation and other education
policy reforms where secondary schooling and teachers’ work were open to struggle for
various powerful competing and contradictory groups operating in the areas of CR financing, production, and distribution as discussed in Chapter 1. Thus, because of such epistemological weaknesses, such scholars continued the passive culture and failed to expose the various interests and effects of the policy reforms and powerful competing groups involved. If we want to expose and challenge the interests of these groups and emancipate our teachers, students, and society from the political effects of such policy reforms, studies need to be critical and poststructural.
Further, critical and poststructural approaches are relevant if we want to expose the sociocultural and political meanings reconstructed through written and spoken policy texts and CR produced and reproduced at points of production, distribution, and consumption. It is important to analyse how these policy text meanings reshape teachers’ work. Therefore, there was a need to conduct an ethnographic study to fill this
gap. I consequently aimed to critically analyse the politics of teachers’ work from
historical, cultural, and political perspectives because MCR are cultural products and their production, distribution, and consumption have social, political, and economic implications for the curriculum, pedagogy, and evaluation.
2.6.1 Problem statement, study’s rationale, and contribution to knowledge
As the above discussions have shown, the focus on teachers’ work in Tanzania in the context of marketisation policy reforms has opened Tanzania’s secondary schools and
teachers’ work into struggle and competition among different capitalist publishing
companies and financial institutions with different economic and political motives. Marketisation also changed the government’s role as a key player to a facilitator in education provision. Supporters of marketisation argued that such a change would improve curriculum process and knowledge and skills construction. It is imperative to critically examine how marketisation policy reforms reshape Tanzania’s secondary
teachers’ work and professional identity and, thereby, motivation, experiences, beliefs, and effectiveness.
Moreover, over the past few decades, poverty and inequality reduction, gender empowerment, and curriculum change policies foreground the teacher’s role and
secondary schooling for quality education and access as empowerment vehicles. For example, both EFA and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) talk of improving educational access, equity, and quality (Mushi, 2009). Similarly, both the National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty and the National Vision 2025 highlight education as a tool for poverty and inequality reduction. However, such policies coincided with marketisation policy reforms that emphasised educational privatisation. Further, marketisation and privatisation coincided with secondary education expansion politics over the past two decades, thus increasing pressures over school administrators and classroom teachers.
Textbooks are the major inputs in schooling and teachers’ work in developing
countries’ contexts. However, as I also discussed, MCR production, distribution, and
consumption is an area of intense political and ideological struggles because of competing and contradictory discourses of business corporatisation that has dominated education around the world. Further, MCR consumption is also influenced by the historical, political, sociocultural, and economic contexts of its production, distribution, and consumption. Thus, there is a contradiction and dilemma between the increased demand for education and MCR and struggles from global capital, national governments, and communities. All these have shaped and reshaped teachers’ work in the classroom, and more pressures are being created.
However, there is less research evidence whether these policy reforms in Tanzania have improved educational quality, equity, and access. What is available is evidence of deterioration in quality, equity, and access in the provision of education at secondary education (URT, 1982, 1984, 1995a, 1995b, 1999b, 2004d). Few studies
have investigated the effects of marketisation on teachers’ work. Therefore, this study contributes in understanding the nature of teachers’ work within these political and ideological struggles and examines strategies for improving teachers’ work.
This study thus informs curriculum policy research, theory, and practice in Tanzania by informing policymakers, administrators, teachers, and students on the discursive and constitutive effects of marketisation policy reform. The study’s findings add to current knowledge on the effects of educational privatisation and marketisation on teachers’ work by delineating the challenges imposed by markets and relevant improvements required on the curriculum, pedagogy, and evaluation. This study is therefore a contribution to the on-going debate on education privatisation and
marketisation as opposed to public provision that emerged in the late 1980s as discussed in this and previous chapters.
2.6.2 Purpose of the study
The purpose of this study was to critically analyse the politics and culture of teachers’ work in the context of marketisation policy reform innovation in one national setting of a case study of three secondary schools between 1992 and 2012. The study aimed to answer the overarching question: How do marketisation policy texts and discourses
shape and reshape secondary school teachers’ subjectivities and work practices?
2.6.3 Research questions
The study and the data collection process critically analysed and deconstructed marketisation policy texts and discourses to discern their constructive and constitutive
effects on teachers’ work through the following questions:
1. What policy texts and discourses were constructed in the process of marketisation policy interpretation in secondary schools?
2. How do marketisation policy texts and discourses reshape secondary school
teachers’ subject positions and pedagogical codes?
3. How do the subject positions and pedagogical codes constructed by marketisation
policy texts and discourses reshape teachers’ pedagogic practices and official
knowledge construction?
In the next chapter, I discuss the theoretical approaches I selected to answer these research questions. These approaches underscore the epistemological and ontological positions that suited a critical analysis of the effects of marketisation policy reforms on
teachers’ work as implied in this chapter.
CHAPTER THREE
THEORISING MARKETISATION POLICY PROCESS AND
DISCURSIVE EFFECTS ON TEACHERS’ WORK
3.1 Introduction and chapter overview
In this chapter, I discuss the theoretical approaches I take to understand the discursive effects of marketisation policy reforms on teachers’ work. I consider these theories in relation to other contemporary theoretical positions applied in education policy analysis over the past five decades. These approaches, I consider, inform understanding of the political and sociocultural nature of teachers’ work in complex and dynamic contexts, and the values of institutions and individuals involved in the policy process. These approaches reject the assumptions that there is a single theory that perfectly explains marketisation policy effects because of its complex and dynamic processes and consequences. Policy analysis therefore requires a ‘theoretical toolbox’ rather than a single theory (Ball, 1990, 1994, 1997b). Such a ‘toolbox’ informs our understanding of the multiple interpretations of policy texts and discourses made in different local, institutional, and societal contexts in which schools and teachers are a part. The toolbox also relies on multiple sources of evidence to complement the weaknesses of each other.
Based on the above arguments, two epistemological positions were relevant for this study. They are Critical Policy Studies (Marshall, 1997; Muganda, 1999; Taylor, 2004) and Poststructuralism (Culler, 2008; Derrida, 1997; Foucault, 1972, 1977, 1978, 1980; Scheurich, 1997). However, as I use Critical Policy Studies include three theoretical approaches: Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Fairclough, 1989, 1992, 2001, 2013, 2015), Theory of Pedagogic Discourse (Bernstein, 1971, 1975, 1990, 1996, 2000), and critical ethnography (Anderson, 1989; Carspecken, 1996). These theories form my ‘interpretive resources’ to understand the constructive and constitutive effects
of marketisation policy and politics on teachers’ work. I employed these epistemologies
to analyse marketisation policy and politics through a ‘policy trajectory’ framework that considers policy from the contexts of text formulation, influence, and practice at the local, institutional, and societal levels of interpretation (Ball, 1994).
I organise this chapter in four parts, beginning with an introduction and overview. The second part discusses the meaning, nature, and scope of educational policy and policy analysis. The third section traces the developments in education
policy research by clearly delineating the shifts in epistemological and ontological positions in policy analysis research. I show that public policy analysis has moved away from the traditional to interpretive, critical, and poststructural theoretical approaches. The section concentrates more on CDA and Bernstein’s (1990, 1996, 2000) theory of pedagogic discourse as forms of critical policy studies. It further discusses poststructuralist theorising of the discursive construction and constitution of teachers’ work subjectivity and cultural practices. Section four concludes and summarises the chapter by highlighting the theoretical toolbox I have selected to guide my study, among those discussed.