Meek Dictators or Modern Professionals? Perceptions of Teacher Autonomy among Teachers in India

• In Event: Educator and leadership perspectives in South Asia

Proposal

Meek Dictators or Modern Professionals? Perceptions of Teacher Autonomy among Teachers in India


By many descriptions, the work of teachers in India is heavily controlled (Batra, 2005; Kumar, 2015; Majumdar & Mooji, 2012; Ramachandran et al., 2008). They are told which textbooks to use, exams to give, and children to teach. This reflects a colonial history of schooling in India (Seth 2007), post-independence state expansion (Jain, 2018), recent socioeconomic reforms (Ramachandran et al., 2018), and the nature of teacher autonomy globally (Ingersoll, 2009; Wermke & Hofstad, 2014). Related to the conference theme, the teaching profession is under intense pressure from digital reforms in management, curriculum, and evaluation.
In an institutional culture that is both hierarchical and experiencing major upheavals, this study asks:
- How do teachers in India perceive their autonomy?
- How do such perceptions vary across different teacher factors?
- What might these answers suggest about the changing institutional role of teaching in India?

Framework - Autonomy in a Post-Colonial Context
This study uses teacher autonomy as a framework, defined as “those perceptions that teachers have regarding whether they can control their work environment” (Pearson & Hall, 1993, p. 173). It is related to higher job satisfaction (Worth & Van den Brande, 2020), less teacher turnover (Fernet et al., 2014), and lower stress (Pearson & Moomaw, 2006). It is fascinating because of its perceptual nature, context-dependence, and multidimensionality (Cribb & Gerwitz, 2007; Pearson & Hall, 1993), which together make it well-suited to exploring institutional structures.

India’s colonial bureaucratization is an additional framework. Several studies have shown how the interplay of culture and governance influence perceptions of autonomy internationally (Erss, 2018, Lennert de Silva & Mølstad, 2020, Mausethagen & Mølstad, 2015). Yet, there has been little exploration of the autonomy of Indian teachers. Education in colonial India was defined by control (Seth, 2007), with centralized exams and bureaucratized management creating what Kumar (2015) called a “textbook culture.” Teachers acted as “meek dictators” (pp. 69-71), exercising tyrannical control inside their classroom to counterbalance bureaucratic powerlessness. Post-independence created a “control raj” (Ramachandran et al., 2008, p. 71) that kept teachers as “passive agents of the state” (Batra, 2005: 4349).

Recent neoliberal reforms are changing the profession (Jain, 2018) but the underlying “bureaucratic stranglehold of teacher autonomy” (Majumdar & Mooji, 2011, p. 80) remains. By exploring such perceptions, this study seeks to understand how teachers make sense of their autonomy within the context of larger institutional reforms in India.

Study Context and Method
This study used surveys created by Pearson and Moomaw (2006) and distributed in six government, private, and government-aided schools serving students of middle and low socioeconomic background in the city of Chennai. This is a region with a well-developed education system (Nilakantan, 2022), and is thus an ideal site to study the effects of bureaucratization and decentralization in schools. There were 177 participants across different school types and levels (Table 1). We then interviewed a sample of teachers chosen from each context. We performed chi-square tests of independence to determine statistically significant trends. Interviews were coded inductively and analyzed for major themes (Saldaña, 2021).

Findings: Autonomy or the Illusion of Control?
We found high overall perceptions of autonomy. These were highest in the classroom and curricular domains. Participants also demonstrated a high degree of connection to teaching and satisfaction with their job, where over three-quarters had a “net agree” response (Figure 1). Strikingly, 13 of the 29 survey items had over 85% of participants who responded with a “net agree” (Table 2). There were several statistically significant variations across gender, experience, and school type. Overall, a picture emerges of teachers with high perceptions of autonomy over teaching, and less perceived control over curriculum or evaluation. They are satisfied with their jobs while recognizing their limited discretion (Table 3).
Our open-ended questions showed a different picture. Teachers expressed a desire to improve their environments and control their work. Some wanted more extracurricular activities, better labs, and relief from administrative duties. They shared a desire to choose teaching strategies, discipline methods, lesson formats, and syllabi. One participant captured the feeling of constraint, saying they would like support “choosing different ways to teach [students]...but the prior permissions for each of these is so huge.”

While many expressed professional pride, there was an undercurrent of dissatisfaction. “Teachers are treated as a resource these days,” said one teacher, while another said “No I am not satisfied. Nowadays teaching is result (marks) oriented. Maintaining records, clerical works.” Yet another mentioned “everything is decided by management..teachers are [a] mere puppet.” Capturing the feeling of enacting a bureaucratic agenda, one teacher elaborated: “…the word autonomy itself is a surprise in schools.” For this collection of teachers, autonomy is a mirage and they are nothing more than puppets.

The findings are paradoxical; teachers overwhelmingly reported strong perceptions of autonomy even as they worked in an institution defined by its regimented structure.. Interpreting the findings from the frame of organizational theory and culture can provide an insightful starting place to understand the institutional position of teaching in India.

Teachers felt they controlled how to teach but less so what to teach or the conditions of teaching. This is consistent with research in the United States (Ingersoll, 2009) and the United Kingdom (Worth & Van den Brande, 2020). The divide between perceived classroom autonomy and heavily regulated conditions elsewhere are characteristic of “loosely coupled” institutional arrangements where the influence of bureaucrats extends only to the doors of the classroom (Mehta, 2013).

It is striking that autonomy is high when schools in India are so controlled. Teachers in India are positioned within classrooms as the absolute arbiter of knowledge (Seth, 2007); yet, teachers work within the bounds of a “textbook culture” (Kumar, 2015). The findings show that teachers reconcile their complex positionalities by seizing control to hide their general powerlessness. That is, teachers feel higher autonomy in the classroom because they have such little autonomy elsewhere. In a region with a long history of teacher control, a measure of autonomy, however circumscribed, is treasured.

Author

• Madhu Narayanan, Florida International University