School of Tomorrow
It was discovered Earthwise in a qualitative study of a primary school that the technicist approach of an OFSTED inspection weighed against the holistic and humanistic values of teachers resulting in a high level of trauma among them. Such trauma was School Tomorrow not an easy emotional reaction of the instant nor a result of school failure or absence of leadership since neither of these was applicable. It was, quite socially and politically manufactured. The teachers’ response must be understood in the context of government reform over the past ten years.
Here the specific emotions let off imply that the inspection in question had a latent function of professionalization. Professional uncertainty was created with teachers feeling confusion anomie anxiety and doubt about their capability. They also experienced an attack on their personal selves closely linked among primary teachers with their professional function. This manifested in the guise of mortification dehumanization loss of pedagogic values and of concord and altered and diluted commitment. One of the mechanisms for teachers to escape such adverse trauma is by changing identity and status from professional to technician.
The authors present results from the Harvard Medical School Cambridge Integrated Clerkship CIC an educational model in which students entire third year is a longitudinal integrated curriculum. The authors contrast the students’ knowledge online school, homeschooling, High school, primary school, children school, skills and attitudes upon graduation from the CIC with the students’ knowledge skills and attitudes upon graduation from traditional third year clerkships.
The authors contrasted 27 students finishing the first three years of the CIC 2004 2007 with 45 students finishing clerkships at other Harvard teaching hospitals in the same timeframe. There were no significant between group differences at baseline Medical College Admission Test and Step 1 scores second year objective structured clinical examination OSCE performance attitudes toward patient centered care and plans for future practice in any year. The authors contrasted students National Board of Medical Examiners Subject and Step 2 Clinical Knowledge scores OSCE performance perceptions of the learning environment and attitudes toward patient-centeredness.
PROFESSIONAL UNCERTAINTY
The OFSTED inspection in Talon could be regarded as a trigger for the changes necessary in the professionalization process. Viewed from within here it is not surprising that there was some confusion and disorientation among the concerned teachers and a distortion of sense of reality. This was matched by very significant anxiety.
As there were already perceptions of themselves as professionals were in trouble they started to question their ability and sufficiency in their anachronistic roles and in trying to satisfy the demands of the new ones but still burdened with the legacy of obsolete professionalism. But this doubt was a precondition to their initiation into technician status. School Tomorrow Fears and uncertainties were starting to enter and conventional means of coping no longer sufficed.
Confusion
There was a feeling of normlessness unreality and disorientation. I m completely bewildered Nike Year 3 despairingly noted during the week leading up to the inspection. Terrie Year 4 was completely confused Fosters totally present all the time now regardless of what I m doing.
I didn’t remember to bring School Tomorrow the National Curriculum booklet home over the weekend to jot down at the edge of this week’s plans precisely where it falls in and it spoiled my weekend. My partner had a bit of ranting on Saturday morning regarding my response to forgetting them.
There just normal people and if you know what you’re doing is okay and you have faith I said to him You dint understand as I sat there in floods of tears. Alison Year 5/6 spoke of a vanishing life I did 13 hours at the weekend from Friday night straight the way through to Sunday night. I cried out on Sunday afternoon. The sun was shining through the window I had sat there from 11 and it was half past 4 in the afternoon and I had to prepare the dinner and waiting for me was a mountain of ironing and I just wept and wept.
It s the realization that your life has vanished you know. Lovely afternoon and I would have enjoyed walking. I m not attending church either because it is too time-consuming.
Anxiety
The headteacher Malcolm was so tense in the week leading up to the inspection one in which OFSTED gave an account of 30% bad lessons and 15000 bad teachers according to extensive media reporting that his normally friendly demeanor School Tomorrow sometimes collapsed into depression. In one session he admitted that we had caught him on a low. He feared that the effort of a single poor teacher would bring us all into disrepute. His school only had six classes and only two in a single Key Stage so one bad report on a lesson would obviously determine the final conclusion of the report.
OFSTED inspections record achievement levels on the basis of the annual external SATs test scores against national norms. Everyone knew that before the inspection that they would be reported as underachieving in math’s and literacy since their previous test scores from a cohort of 20 inner city children indicated this underachievement.
As a result the head and staff were concerned about yet more reporting in terms of failure but also thought that the school did not need to be elementary school, private school, high school, special education, higher education, labelled as a failing school. Jackie part time SEN support observed When the Registered Inspector spoke to us for twenty minutes regarding procedures for failing schools and the levels of failure I thought Malcolm was going to be taken away in a stretcher he looked so sick.
LOSS OF SELF
The answers covered above can be interpreted as emotional preparation for professionalization. What the process centrally involves is a fundamental transformation in the teachers sense of self. By far the most revealing emotional reaction School Tomorrow from our teachers literally a cry from the heart is the attack on the teachers self for as indicated above the primary teachers self and the professional role are indistinguishable.
One is complete in the other. Altering them is agonizing in the extreme but again essential if tec Apician status is to be attained. These teachers’ words show how they felt dehumanized and mortified how they felt they had lost their pedagogical values and holistic harmony as individuals and how as a result their commitment to teaching had altered.
Mortification
In the groups Musgrove researched The central issue of social change was not competence but integrity as Terrie demonstrates here as she discussed feeling ashamed at having conceded to the OFSTED game during the week itself after having insisted first I won’t change my practice. Terrie shows here the moral issues of knowing being and keeping one’s real self. The passionate emotional investment in their selves as teachers and in teaching was especially emphasized when they were inspected by OFSTED when they felt that both their personal and their professional selves were being undercut. Emotions created by the OFSTED process spilled over into their home lives.
Nines life at home had become a prison where only work intruded. Work she brought home took over her life. As an individual she had to bear the emotional load alone. She got to see her friends less, her social and aesthetic existence were considerably cut down and as such there were instances when she felt a bit depressed. Brenda who resides alone as well spoke of staying on the phone hours on end discussing with friends OFSTED from the beginning and forgetting to ask them things about themselves forgetting birthday cards exiting parties early and concealing her.
Dehumanization
To be human is a crucial aspect of these teachers’ understanding of their work. They found the OFSTED methodology in conflict with this. Brenda vigorously expressed that she was a slot in a machine and then resignedly said that she will likely say something foolish in her interview with the inspector. Sunna called the Registered Inspector inhuman and declared that were not robots. Alison fell very ill during the lead-up to the inspection as did a number of other people.
She ‘was tired of being sick not being fit enough or having enough time to be able to be concerned and sympathetic about other people such as my elderly mother and the new teacher in the next room.’. She had worked in the school for more than 20 years coming a long way because she was devoted to this school. Brenda also had devoted herself to the school for more than 20 years. My family could not get why I wanted to work in the inner city but felt the stuffing had been knocked out of her and she lost a lot of confidence.
CONCLUSION
There must be alternative reasons for the teachers responses particularly if one considers these within the managerialist discourse. Perhaps School Tomorrow for instance were they incompetent and or ineffective and required chastisement and cultivation This does not seem probable based on previous history and track record of staff but more particularly in the context of the ultimate OFSTED Report which stated Overall standards of attainment are in general in accordance with national expectations for the ages of the children and generally sound in terms of their abilities The education is sound overall bid While there are deficits in sortie subjects the school is in compliance with the needs of the National Curriculum and RE.
There were criticisms e.g. of levels of achievement in mathematics and English but no value added consideration for this school with a high percentage of disadvantaged children so some of these criticisms are questionable validity see Fitz Gibbon 1995. Also a mean of 50% of teachers across the other four schools within our research to date where levels of achievement in these areas were above or average average exhibited comparable emotional responses to inspections.