Teacher Capability and Effectiveness: Conceptualizing Contemporary Teacher Education Reform in "Input-Output" Terms

• In Event: 53.036 - Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Education Inequalities: Exploring Alternatives to the "Neoliberalism" Critique

Abstract

Objectives
This paper has two major objectives. First, to explore how the professional educator is constituted within the ‘input-output’ foundations of contemporary teacher education reform. Second, to argue that the emergence of high-stakes accountability policies in teacher education connect to issues of teacher capability and teacher effectiveness, both of which act as a proxy for accountability measures and utilized as a means of surveillance of teacher work (Ball, 2003).

Perspective(s)/theoretical framework
The paper is methodologically framed on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, specifically his notion of a ‘logic of practice’ (1977, 1990). Understanding the nature of a problem, this paper endeavours to reject absolutist or discrete research paradigms, so as to more fully engage with the influences and representations that not only shape and control but also conceal. By parsing teacher capability and teacher effectiveness into their respective elements, the critical researcher can explore the conflicting policy interests and struggles arresting teacher education and the work of classroom teachers.

Methods/techniques
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as described and understood in critical policy studies (Taylor, 2004) is the technique of analysis undertaken to examine data sources. I draw on CDA as an interdisciplinary method, in order to examine how policy texts influence and shape cultural and social practices. The paper will use CDA to analyse how policy plans and reports on teacher education reform position classroom teachers in economic terms, as the primary producers of educational change.

Data sources
There are two principal sources of data. The first is the US government regulatory initiative Improving Teacher Preparation: Building on Innovation (2016) and the second is a national teacher education report commissioned by the national government of Australia Action Now: Classroom Ready Teachers (2014). I draw on cross-national policy documents in order to illustrate shared ‘policy mobilities' (Ball, 2016).


Results/conclusions
The paper contributes to debate about the nature of contemporary teacher education reform highlighting the importance of key accountability indicators (e.g. teacher capability and teacher effectiveness). These reforms impose surveillance measures onto teachers’ professional work, moving in between the highly-regulated school and the decentralized school, marking teachers as the ‘unique selling point’ in markets of equity and productivity.

Scholarly significance
In seeking to transcend restrictive accounts of teacher capability and teacher effectiveness, the paper advocates for progressive approaches to teaching and learning beyond the limitations of simplistic ‘input-output’ analyses, the latter often reflecting the aggregates and superficialities of market behaviour. Incomplete constructions of pedagogic problems reify the complexities of classrooms often reducing and more importantly, aligning the work that encapsulates fields like teacher education to the broader imperatives of economic change promoted by the world of finance.

Author

• Andrew Skourdoumbis, Deakin University