Description
In the transition to knowledge economies, national governments have made the link between educational competitiveness and future economic prosperity (Robertson, 2008). This is reinforced by the unprecedented political interest in the PISA league tables which rank the comparative effectiveness of education systems internationally (Grek, 2009). Although some question the ‘what works’ rhetoric of transnational knowledge actors such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, teacher quality is considered central to system improvement (Barber and Mourshed, 2007; OECD, 2009). Paradoxically though, as knowledge becomes the new global currency, teachers’ cognitive legitimacy is increasingly undermined (Hargreaves, 2003). Governance by comparison (Martens and Niemann, 2010) has created a Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) founded on standardization, narrow curricula, low risk approaches to learning, corporate management practices and test-based accountability (Sahlberg, 2016). Thus, whilst the rhetoric of knowledge economists extols innovation, teachers’ work is reduced to the technical delivery of content (Stevenson, Carter and Passey, 2007).Although the above analysis is a useful heuristic for understanding the current deficit view of teachers’ professional knowledge, it risks generalization. For, despite an apparent convergence in global educational discourses of teacher quality, their materialization in policy reforms is contingent upon the actors involved in their transfer (Robertson, 2012). Equally, there are variations in the degree to which teachers, represented by their trade unions, are considered ‘knowers’ within the policy process (Lilja, 2014; Stevenson and Carter, 2007). Most qualitative policy studies focus on one government document in one national context (see Kennedy, Barlow and MacGregor, 2012) and, whilst insightful, their textual, temporal and spatial limitations weaken claims of trends within the profession more generally. This paper aims therefore to compare the dominant discourses of teachers’ professional knowledge, the nature of their emergence and the extent to which they are profession-led within two distinct European contexts: England and Sweden.
| Period | 17 Apr 2018 |
|---|---|
| Event title | American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting 2018: The Dreams, Possibilities, and Necessity of Public Education |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | New York, United States, New YorkShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |