Educational change at the school site

Educational change, including trends in Western countries’ towards educational accountability, correlation of literacy standards with economic rationales, and high-stakes testing in schools, has been described as affecting Australian teachers’ roles at the classroom level. Clarke (2001) noted that such changes have had impact “beyond the rights of individual teachers to … the integrity of the teaching profession” (p. 46). Williamson and Myhill (2008) argued that a pervasive and growing market ideology in education and

politicisation of education has contributed to increasing pressures on teachers’ time, with growing work-related expectations upon teachers across Australia, including Tasmania.

Teacher deprofessionalisation and related issues were seen by

Williamson and Myhill (2008) as consequences of these educational changes. A number of other writers endorse their views and recognise issues as

including performance-based pay; trends towards uniformity and testing; and a divide between teachers’ site-level focus on students and a system or

bureaucratic focus on inputs and measurable outcomes (Beck & Young, 2005; Munt, 2004). Accountability requirements have been identified as affecting teachers at all stages in their careers, with some beginning teachers actively discouraged from exercising their professional judgement which “may

legitimate educational inequities by diminishing overt expression of control” (Achinstein, Ogawa, & Speiglman, 2004, p. 593).

Educational change affects the classroom site particularly through expectations and pressures from the school hierarchy. In Olsen and Sexton’s (2009) school-based research, accountability and performance pressures are identified as originating from a broader government or social perception of crisis or issue, and culminating in pressures pushed onto the school and classroom level. Those authors described such tensions as being created and exacerbated “by centralizing and restricting the flow of information, by constricting control, by emphasizing routinized and simplified

instructional/assessment practices, and by applying strong pressure for school personnel to conform” (Olsen & Sexton, p. 9). These analyses of hierarchical processes communicate a warning to all teachers in classrooms, not only those involved with testing required by education systems.

Teachers’ changing roles in this accountability-driven school context, according to Valli and Buese (2007), result in pressures for teachers at the classroom level to improve student literacy outcomes, as well as with

“expanded responsibilities outside the classroom and intensified work within the classroom” (p. 523). Their research found that teachers’ negative opinions towards high-stakes tests were accompanied by teachers’ feelings of guilt, stemming from extolling the benefits of testing tasks of which they themselves were not convinced.

Educational accountability and high-stakes testing pressures have been further identified as contributing to teacher and student loss of motivation and related impacts on classroom control:

When teachers feel these administrative pressures, or when they believe that their students are extrinsically motivated or not motivated toward school, they are more likely to be controlling with students. It is possible that these conditions may directly affect teachers’ behaviors or that they may undermine teachers’ feelings or autonomy an motivation toward their own work, which in turn may lead them to be more controlling with their students. (Pelletier & Sharp, 2009, p. 180)

Finnigan and Gross (2007) argued that teachers’ decreased motivation and other negative effects of accountability demands are exacerbated in schools or situations in which morale is also low. Further, “teachers responded less to the incentive (or threat) built into the policy and more to the value they placed on their professional status and the individual goals they had for students” (Finnigan & Gross, p. 624). Their work is consistent with research by Olsen and Sexton (2009) who pointed out that the classroom site, and working with students (rather than school administration), is the teacher’s “refuge” or preferred consideration (p. 22). Similarly, Pelletier and Sharp (2009) stated that “the more teachers understood and agreed with the school mission and its associated goals, they less they suffered from emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, and the more personal accomplishment they felt” (p. 180).

Other research has reached similar findings. For example, Churchill, Williamson and Grady (1997) wrote that Australian teachers’ cynicism about personal motivations behind changes in educational policy is intensified when

they perceive that changes are neither overly beneficial for teachers or

students, nor as permanent. When teachers do accept the value and benefit of educational initiatives, on the other hand, claimed Muir, Beswick and

Williamson (2010), teachers can be considered more likely to comply through their practice. Research by Brown (2004) concluded that “the success or failure of such policies may hang on the conceptions and meanings that teachers give to those policies” (p. 301).

Classroom change driven by policy demands can have both positive and negative results. Research notes that policy values interactive and well- paced teaching approaches (Cotton, 1995), but according to English,

Hargreaves and Hislam (2002), the reality is that teachers often feel too pressured by competing academic demands to genuinely incorporate such methods into their classroom environment. Despite these findings by English, Hargreaves and Hislam, Warne (2006) suggested that classroom literacy teaching and learning can, in the face of increasing externally driven change, both cooperate with and minimise, or subvert and ignore, testing pressures.

Research results reflect a degree of ambivalence in the field; the full effects of these educational trends and changes remain obscured or unclear. Future research is indicated to identify and more fully consider impacts, at all levels of education and in government. Luna and Turner (2001) urged

informative research to minimise negative classroom effects and build on teachers’ and students’ strengths, interests and progress.

2.2.2.2 Senior school staff responses to educational change.

The school impacts of accountability reforms and high-stakes literacy testing not only affect the individual teachers and students who face testing in the classroom. Senior school staff are also affected because they are a mediation point between system and site levels (Freebody & Wyatt-Smith, 2004), and are expected to oversee translation of educational changes into the school reality. As actors in this process, according to White-Smith and White (2009) and Wilson, Croxson and Atkinson (2006), principals too have particular

experiences as a result of changes at the school level and their need to develop localised and considered responses to their situations.

Neoliberalism and market ideology in education, as already noted, have contributed to the popularity of school performance rankings. In the UK, the public demand for comparative school performance rankings, particularly between similar schools, has ensured senior school staff and principals’ drive to achieve comparative school success (Wilson, Croxson, & Atkinson, 2006). The principal’s role, already political and politicised, also involves

expectations of mediating system-site translation issues (Crow & Weindling, 2010; White-Smith & White, 2009), such as having to either submit to or buffer schools from external accountability expectations (Rutledge, Harris, & Ingle, 2010). Research regarding school principals’ roles demonstrates the importance of strong and positive principal leadership in mediating policy change at the school level. Principal leadership involves complex roles, and principals are expected to navigate varying demands exacerbated by the

already-present accountability and testing requirements (Crow & Weindling; Rutledge, Harris, & Ingle; White-Smith & White).

2.2.2.3 Educational change above the classroom level.

The current education context for Australian schools places contrasting demands on those who work at the school site. Florian and Rouse (2001) highlighted the often-contradictory expectation upon schools, particularly government-run schools, to engage in inclusive practices, while simultaneously demonstrating constant student academic improvement. Schools play a crucial role in relation to student academic success (or failure), which has translated into policy and curricula demands for targeted student improvement

(Blanchard, 2003). In many countries, including Australia, what has been termed an ‘achievement gap’ is particularly evident across lines of race and ethnicity (Nguyen, 2010; Sherman & Grogan, 2003). Stakes are high, both at the system and the (school) site levels, to not only be seen to be addressing student non- or under-achievement, but to in fact work towards solutions and improvements. It is those actors at the school and classroom sites, however, whose work towards these goals is most vigorously scrutinised and held accountable.

School-level education does not occur in a contextual vacuum, and literacy teaching cannot be reduced to a prescription; much work goes into teaching and assessing student literacy at the individual and class levels, a “mix [of] psychology, history, literature, politics, sociology, linguistics, economics, art, science, philosophy, poetics and aesthetics with passion and dispassion,

with pragmatism and vision” (Boomer, 1998, p. 20). In contrast, however, education policy pushes uniformity and standardisation, economic ideologies and increasing management, which negates the importance of teachers’ and other school actors’ expertise and knowledge (Grant, 2009; Smith, Edwards- Groves, & Kemmis, 2010). Brooks, Maxcy and Nguyen (2010) reflected that “educational prospects for students of differing backgrounds and

characteristics – ethnic, religious, cultural, economic, linguistic – remain unsettled and unsettling” (p. 3), and argued that changes in educational policy and system demands upon the site level should consider the value within difference. Those already working hard at the site level, those authors say, will likely struggle to implement imposed context-inconsiderate mandates (Brooks, Maxcy, & Nguyen).

A range of policy implementation issues is raised in the literature. For example, for Busher (2006), policy should reflect site realities and needs, particularly those of students’ effects upon the classroom site, involvement in decisions to directly affect them, and enthusiasm for learning or other

classroom tasks. Such moves, he urged, are the only way of ensuring student schooling success (also Brookhart & Bronowicz, 2003; Dutfield, Allan, Turner, & Morris, 2000; Whitty & Wisby, 2007; Zion, 2009). Given that research has suggested that students absorb media messages about market and individualist ideology (Ochoa & Pineda, 2008), schools could be encouraged to incorporate these proposals into implementation strategies. Apple and Beane (2007; Beane & Apple, 2007) strongly argued the importance of positive school-wide

responses to current trends in order to empower all school actors and engender education institutions that could provoke positive social change.