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Teacher Education Reform as Political Theater: Modernization Dramas in Global Neoliberal Contexts

Wed, March 8, 11:30am to 1:00pm, Sheraton Atlanta, Floor: 1, Georgia 3 (South Tower)

Proposal

Purposes
Policy-makers around the world increasingly turn to teacher education reforms to improve the quality of education. Reforms that are introduced make teacher education more practice-oriented, school-based, or market-driven (Furlong, Cochran-Smith, & Brennan, 2013). The most visible example of these changes is teacher education reforms in the UK where proliferation of tracks into the teaching profession has undermined the vitality of university-based teacher education programs (Ellis & McNicholl, 2015). Similarly, teacher education in the US, Australia, and several European countries find itself under the threat of ultimate extinction (Townsend, 2014). Prior research has suggested that these globally-circulated policies (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010) position teachers in the center of global neoliberal governance (Robertson, 2012) and re-define notions of professionalism (Evetts, 2008). Yet what is missing from these observations is the connection between teacher education reforms, educational commodification, and growing inequality on the global scale. The purpose of this paper is to problematize current conversations on global teacher education reforms by offering a new lens through which to examine the processes entailed in these transformations. This new lens of political theater highlights how these reforms facilitate the spread of conservative social change (Apple, 2006) and entrench social inequalities on the global scale.

Theoretical Framework
The new lens proposed in this paper is the conceptual framework of political theater. Drawing on theories of theater, performance, and spectacle (Boal, 1979; Goffman, 1959, 1974; Turner, 1974; Debord, 1994; Edelman, 1988; Willett, 1964), this framework provides tools for examining educational policy-making and teacher education reforms in global neoliberal contexts from a new angle. It explores the dramaturgical techniques that policy-makers use to convince their audiences to accept their problem definitions and their directions for change. The framework of political theater provides new conceptual vocabulary to the study of global transformations in education. The use of scripts, props, character-building techniques, and masks in the analysis of reform processes allows researchers to problematize the processes unfolding in educational contexts and demystify policy-makers’ claims about reforms’ intended but perpetually failing outcomes.

Modes of Inquiry
This paper brings together the findings of a multi-sited ethnography of teacher education modernization in the Russian Federation and an overview of literature on teacher education reforms around the world. Drawing on the multi-sited year-long ethnography of policy construction and contestation, I explored how policy-makers employ masks, narrative illusions, and special effects to draw the audience’s attention to the shortcomings of university-based teacher education. I also examined how reformers use transnational policy scripts, such as as the McKinsey report (Barber & Mourshed, 2007), to construct and solve the problem of “low quality” teacher preparation and rely on international assessments results as props for their modernization drama. Next, I applied these analytical techniques to reports of teacher education reforms in other international contexts to highlight what policy-makers attempt to obscure and make invisible for the audience in reform processes.

Data Sources
This papers draws on two sets of data sources. First, it relies extensively on the analysis of 80 interviews, 15 focus groups, as well as over 50 observations of classes and public events that were collected in the Russian Federation over the span of the last three years. This set also includes national-level policy proposals, academic publications, and newspaper articles that focus on teacher education modernization in Russia. The second set consists of secondary sources that describe and analyze teacher education reforms in international contexts published in English language academic publications (i.e. The Educational Forum, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, and Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy). The juxtaposition of the two sets illuminates ways in which the framework of political theater can be productive for exploring teacher education reforms that have been circulating across the globe.

Results and Conclusions
The framework of political theater reveals ways in which policy-makers construct crises out of manufactured data or exaggerated representations of international assessments’ results to stir the audience (consisting of the general public as well as the educational community) to accept transnational policy scripts. Furthermore, this framework highlights ways in which the audience is expected to occupy a passive role of acquiescence and acceptance of the predetermined ways of educational change. When combined with marketization of education and deprofessionalization of teachers, this passive role ensures a turn towards a conservative social change, which perpetuates social inequality.

Significance
The significance of this paper lies in offering new lens to examine global teacher education reforms and to problematize how the alleged pursuit of quality education often results in reinscribing social inequality around the world.

References
Apple, M. W. (2006). Educating the "right" way: Markets, standards, God, and inequality. New York: Routledge.
Barber, M., & Mourshed, M. (2007). How the world's best-performing systems come out on top. London: McKinsey & Company.
Boal, A. (1979). Theater of the oppressed. New York: Urizen Books.
Conquergood, D., & Johnson, E. P. (Eds.). (2013). Cultural struggles: Performance, ethnography, praxis. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Debord, G. (1994). The society of the spectacle. New York: Zone Books.
Edelman, M. (1988). Constructing the political spectacle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ellis, V., & McNicholl, J. (2015). Transforming teacher education: Reconfiguring the academic work. London: Bloomsbury.
Evetts, J. (2008). The management of professionalism: A contemporary paradox. In S. Gewirtz, P. Mahony, I. Hextall & A. Cribb (Eds.), Changing teacher professionalism: International trends, challenges and ways forward (pp. 19-30). Oxon: Routledge.
Furlong, J., Cochran-Smith, M., & Brennan, M. (Eds.). (2013). Policy and politics in teacher education: International perspectives. London: Routledge.
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Anchor Books.
Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing education policy. London: Routledge.
Robertson, S. L. (2012). Placing Teachers in Global Governance Agendas. Comparative Education Review, 56(4), 584-607.
Townsend, T. (Ed.). (2014). International perspectives on teacher education. London: Routledge.
Turner, V. (1975). Dramas, fields, and metaphors: Symbolic action in human society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Willett, J. (1964). Brecht on theatre: The development of an aesthetic. New York: Hill and Wang.

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