Re-making teacher professionalism in England: localism and social responsibility

2017

Teaching and teacher education in England have been subject to thirty years of sustained public scrutiny and political intervention (Furlong, 2013). A range of technologies have enhanced central control and promoted cultures of disciplined self-steering. These include systems of specification (through Teachers’ Standards), measurement and comparison (through the audit of ‘hard’ performance indicators and periodic inspection of schools and teacher education), and prescribed forms of reflexive self-monitoring (quality assurance and evaluation processes). This article offers a critical analysis of the re-positioning of teaching and teacher education in England achieved by successive government…