eprintid: 10020727
rev_number: 9
eprint_status: archive
userid: 587
dir: disk0/00/02/07/27
datestamp: 2014-10-31 12:52:08
lastmod: 2017-12-07 21:37:32
status_changed: 2014-10-31 12:52:08
type: thesis
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Tseng, Chun-Ying
title: A discourse analysis of teacher professionalism in England since the 1980s
ispublished: unpub
divisions: B14
note: Thesis: (PhD) University of London Institute of Education, 2013.
abstract: Teacher professionalism is a concept with a contentious history. In the midst of wider
research debates concerning professionalism, however, less attention has been paid to
the processes in which professionalism is discursively constructed. This thesis attempts
to explore the conflicting notions of de/re-professionalisation and is mainly about the
investigation and identification of the recurring and salient discourses of teacher
professionalism in England since the 1980s. By addressing the changing power relations
between teachers and the state, this thesis aims to examine closely the ways in which
contemporary teachers have been made and remade via education policy centred on
discourses of professionalism. This is done by examining policy and practices of both
teacher education and school management. Through a discourse analysis of policy
documents and data from 18 interviews this thesis argues that a new sense of
performative professionalism in England has been produced via a neoliberal education
policy that rests on the discourses of practicality, standards and management. A
practical-based mode of teacher formation, standards-driven policies and systems of
managerial control in schools work together interdiscursively and produce new ways of
being professional.
Specifically, the 'making up' of new teachers with particular performative dispositions
and sensibilities is facilitated by an interplay of heterogeneous powers, which involves
assembling different forms of power — sovereign power, disciplinary power and
governmentality in complex and subtle ways. 'New' teachers are technical experts
operating within a delimited space of autonomy and expected to follow directives;
concurrently, they are framed as having 'freedom' and made 'responsible' for performance outcomes. Teachers are disciplined and empowered simultaneously within
this dual transformative process. Moreover, professionalism is a discursive technology,
which turns teachers into agents of governmentality who produce the human capital
needed by the economy and serve the interests of capital. Teachers are made docile and
productive at the same time.
date: 2013
date_type: completed
official_url: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.577628
oa_status: green
thesis_class: doctoral_open
language: eng
primo: open
primo_central: open_green
full_text_status: public
pages: 292
institution: Institute of Education, University of London
thesis_type: Doctoral
citation:        Tseng, Chun-Ying;      (2013)    A discourse analysis of teacher professionalism in England since the 1980s.                   Doctoral thesis , Institute of Education, University of London.     Green open access   
 
document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10020727/1/__d6_Shared%24_SUPP_Library_User%20Services_Circulation_Inter-Library%20Loans_IOE%20ETHOS_ETHOS%20digitised%20by%20ILL_TSENG%2C%20C-Y.pdf