Positionality is one of the four constructs within Holland et al’s theory. How they were positioned was a key element in the teacher educators’ narratives. They spoke of being positioned by managers and by students, sometimes caught between the two, and of their own positions being vulnerable and lacking in power. The power and capital that they had, as experienced teachers or teacher educators had been eroded. The teacher educators had
131 been subject to a range of powerful discourses related to the prevalent neo-liberal agenda, which had contributed to this process of change. Tensions and conflicts featured heavily in the stories, reflecting the pressures they experienced, how far they were able to enact their roles within these and the impact on how they positioned themselves and were positioned by others. Michael recalled the tension during his first few weeks of working in the institution between feeling very uncertain of his role in this new context, he had been simultaneously positioned as an expert, expected to know all the answers.
Holland et al (1998) note that socially constructed selves are subject to positioning by whatever powerful discourses they happen to encounter. However, for these teacher educators some of these discourses were contradictory. Michael talked about how the need to recruit sufficient numbers of students to meet targets or make courses viable conflicted with demands that student outcomes were uniformly good. The increasing prominence of the RKE agenda had led to conflicting pressures between meeting requirements to be involved in research whilst ensuring that the quality of one’s teaching was maintained. Being subject to conflicting discourses made it hard for the teacher educators to assimilate and appropriate these voices in ways that would lead to the agency that Holland et al and Braathe and Solomon had suggested. Even in the familiar context of their teaching, there were tensions. The actual job of the teacher educator, the day-to-day work, on the surface at least, had changed little. What had changed was what they taught and the conditions and context in which they were doing this. They were subject to the discourses related to the teaching profession and schools, referred to earlier, including Ofsted for whom performativity was key. In this, they reflected a world very similar to that described by Ball (2003). The standards agenda had had an impact on the selection of teaching topic and course content. Concerns about teaching content and teaching to meet the standards and Ofsted’s requirements were set in opposition to teaching in ways that the teacher educators, as experienced professionals, believed to be appropriate in creating autonomous and reflective practitioners, able to make professional judgements. Moreover, the student voice, reflected in surveys, indicated that teacher educators should provide more support for academic studies. This was seen to be in opposition with their belief that university study should be about developing independence and critical thinking.
132 The sheer amount of time that students were required to spend in schools also had a direct impact on what could be taught in university time, leading to difficult decisions around what to keep and what to shed in the teaching.
Alongside these tensions, some participants recognised the drive for greater school involvement in ITT and this created some apprehension in terms of how they conceived their relationships with partner schools.
Against the background of powerful discourses about the education of teachers and the purpose and place of the university as an institution, changes in the context had a significant impact on how the teacher educators were positioned within their world. Critical of the business model, they resisted the implications that students were now ‘consumers’ and their own positioning as ‘providers’ in a financial transaction. It was these changes in the underlying values that had made themselves felt, making the teacher educators question not only what they were doing, but also the why. Student satisfaction, as indicated by the survey responses cited earlier, related to how well they believed they had been prepared for their role, in terms of knowledge and practice. The teacher educators commented that the students seemed to be more interested in whether an element of teaching would help them to pass a course assignment or help directly with how to teach a topic or concept in schools. This meant that previous beliefs about the importance of producing reflective practitioners with the professional wisdom and ability to judge what was the best approach, identified as key by Biesta (2013a), had been marginalised. Within the move to ensure that students had the requisite competences, critical reflection and engagement with theory in any depth had retreated in importance. The change in relationships with the students also influenced how the teacher educators talked about positioning. For Helen, the move to students as consumers, demanding value for money and wielding considerable power, had proved a threat to her position as an authority on her subject area and as an experienced teacher.
For each of the newer teacher educators, there were particular challenges. One had entered HE with clear intentions to combine teaching and research and found it hard to combine the two. Whilst one was able to continue her own studies, initial uncertainties
133 about her teaching had been replaced with anxiety about own future within the institution. The third had expected that the position would involve responsibilities and allow for autonomy. Entrants into teacher education tend to be quite senior and experienced teachers. Being positioned at a relatively low rung on the management ladder of the university, they still wanted to be actively involved in what was going on, to have timely information, a voice and to feel part of all decisions.
Furthermore, they had learnt a role in schools. Over time, these roles had become embodied. They ceased to reflect on the nature of what they did and who they were, as teachers. Their new roles required them to think again about this and ruptured their sense of themselves as teachers. Influenced by their own experiences as students on teacher education courses, they had expectations of what this world would be like. Despite what they had to offer, in terms of ‘recent and relevant experience’, the experienced classroom teachers coming into teacher education in higher education talked of feeling disempowered. They referred to ‘feeling like an NQT’ when faced with the new demands and expectations of their teaching role from their adult students, their colleagues in the university and schools and their managers. At the same time, they were being asked for advice, perceived of as all knowing. Being positioned as an expert by others, whether one’s colleagues or by those outside, created tensions for new teacher educators. The cultural and symbolic capital that they had acquired by being successful in the classroom suddenly became of less significance once they entered higher education. This group positioned themselves as less powerful within the Figured World, needing to know the doxa, the culture and rules of the game, before they could play it with any confidence.
For the more experienced teacher educators, there were also uncertainties as they sought to enact roles in which they had previously felt themselves to be confident and competent. Government discourses suggested that their part in educating would be teachers was increasingly marginalised.The emphasis was on what could be measured rather than on the things that Biesta (2015:4) refers to when discussing subjectification - the development of wisdom, compassion and the whole person as a human being. The teacher educators had seen this as an integral element of their work with the students. This was perhaps best
134 epitomised by Andy: ‘We know all those students and the richness of those relationships that have evolved with them…’
The more experienced participants spoke of how things had changed. They had no choice or voice in how they were deployed; rather they were compelled to take on certain aspects of their roles. Combined with the lack of consultation, this had led participants to feel less valued within their organisation. Their habitus was being called into question. Their narratives reflect their attempts to work within this fluid, unstable environment, at times questioning their own worth, as they were required to see themselves from the point of view of these others.
There was a very different style of management, more interventionist than developmental and supportive. This had a double impact on those teacher educators who were both managed and managers. The increased emphasis on managerialism had left the teacher educators with little voice or capacity to redress claims or influence matters within this world, in effect, with little agency. There was an ever-present ‘they’, never precisely defined, who controlled things, such that the teacher educators conveyed a sense of themselves as being part of big impersonal machine, in which who they were, as individuals, their talents, experience and beliefs did not matter. Many decisions appeared to be taken higher up the management chain. In the past, the higher management at university, above the level of their own faculty, had seemed to have far less impact than was perceived as happening now. Indeed, there was reference to how their immediate managers used to protect them from the worst excesses. On the one hand, the teacher educators were less directly involved in the bigger picture of what was happening within the institution. On the other hand, they perceived that they were held more directly attributable for the hard data, key metrics of recruitment, retention and outcomes.
Some participants spoke of not knowing how they fitted into the bigger picture and this had caused anxiety and uncertainty. This was compounded by the fact that the meetings, the semiotic mediators that they had utilised in the past, proved harder to access. On the surface, this related to logistics and pragmatics. Some were unable to attend meetings during which they believed these matters were discussed. However, those who were able
135 to attend these meetings asserted that they felt that their opinions and ideas were not taken into account. Hence, the symbolic capital that they held was diminished in worth. Alongside the uncertainty, there was a feeling of disempowerment. If what one offers is comprehended as having less relevance and less worth, then one’s positon is de-stabilised; one becomes sub-ordinate to others more powerful.
There was a reluctance to position themselves as academics. This was not what they had come to do or be and so they resisted this. There was an uncertainty as to why they were doing this, a lack of awareness of how this fitted into the ‘bigger picture’. They knew that the REF was important but, equally, understood that any research that they might be involved with was unlikely to fulfil the relevant criteria. The teacher educators interviewed all indicated that they were curious, reflective and open to finding out more in order to enhance their own practice, knowledge base and understanding of what they did. They frequently had a history of doing this within schools. Indeed, those entering into teacher education, as well as having the experience, may also have had an extra drive to do this, so were self-selected to some extent. What was a concern was the formalisation of the process. There was an element of compulsion linked to continuing one’s academic studies, as evidenced by comments about line managers ‘pushing’ for this. This was seen as being about compliance with directives rather than about on-going professional development. It was about numbers and ticking boxes as much as quality.
The teacher educators had been made increasingly aware of their own part in the research agenda, which formerly resided within a separate department within their faculty. They had become party to discussions about the REF, about the need to share one’s research and to publish at a particular level. This was a culture shift from developing small-scale initiatives within their own department, sharing these ideas at local meetings or their own subject associations. Their history-in-person had not necessarily provided them with the skillsets to write at an appropriate level for an academic audience. Moreover, the REF’s association with competition was different to the collaborative working to which they had been accustomed. Knowledge exchange added yet another layer of tension. Previously, teacher educators had been happy to share their expertise in a particular area with those
136 working in schools. Partnership arrangements had stressed reciprocity. However, under the new regime, knowledge, ideas and insights were things to be sold, not shared. Whilst some of the teacher educators recognised that they had the necessary expertise, financial transactions for this were out of their experience and made them feel uncomfortable, rather than proud of what they could offer. They recognised the imperative for the institution to compete and to generate income as a key driver and this was in tension to their own understanding and experience of what the world of higher education should be about.
Being subject to the discourses and pulled in different directions with little capacity to answer left them lacking in a sense of individual worth and autonomy. There was a sense of loss. They had lost their symbolic capital, professional identity and agency. Any feeling of being appreciated for who they were, the knowledge and skills that they had and what they did had gone. They had lost what they perceived to be a sense of themselves as professionals and people. This sense of loss was intensified by uncertainty and not knowing what was happening in their own context. Uncertainty was a key theme and this had an impact on the amount of professional agency that they believed they had.
7.2 Question two: To what extent do the teacher educators describe