Teacher Judgement, And Educational Professionalism - Academic Assignment Help

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Q-What is Education For? On Good Education, Teacher Judgement, and Educational Professionalism?

Introduction

Much of what has been happening recently in educational policy and research in many countries worldwide is having a profound impact on educational practice and more especially on the position of the teacher.Today, many voices from across the policy -, research - and practice-spectrum claim that the teacher is the most important ‘factor’ in the educational process (Hay McBer, 2000; OECD, 2005; Sammons & Bakkum, 2012 and, for the European policy dimension, Stéger, 2014).While such claims do stem from a concern about the ways in which teaching and schools can ‘make a difference,’ they are often linked to rather narrow views about what education is supposed to ‘produce’ — taking their cues from large scale measurement systems such as PISA which continue to focus on academic achieve ment in a small and selective number of domains and subject areas. Claims about the importance of the teacher are also problematic because they tend to see the teacher as a ‘factor’ and believe that, in order to increase the ‘performance’ of the educational system, it is important to make sure that this ‘factor’ works in the most effective and efficient way possible.The fact that this ‘factor’ is a human being and, more importantly an educational professional who should have scope for judge ment and discretion is all too often forgotten (Ball, 2003; Cowie, Taylor & Croxford, 2007; Keddie, Mills, & Pendergast, 2011; Wilkins, 2011; Priestley et al., 2012). 

In this article, I seek first to indicate why I think that teacher judgement is essential in education and what kind of judgements teachers need to make. I do this in the context of a discussion about the problematic impact of the language of learning on the theory and practice of education. Here I argue for the need to refocus the discussion on the normative question of good education, rather than on technical questions about effective education or competitive questions about excellent education. This requires that we focus above all on the question of the purpose of education and have an informed understanding of the particular character of how this manifests itself in education, i.e. as a multi-dimensional question. It is only against this background that one can indicate what particular judgements are ‘at stake’ in education and what this implies for teaching and the teacher. Secondly, I discuss recent changes in the context in which teachers are supposed to enact their professionalism and act professionally. I argue that three tendencies that are often presented as developments in the ongoing professionalisation of teaching and that can be found in different forms and guises in schools, colleges and universities — treating students as customers; being accountable; and replacing subjective judgement with scientific evidence — are undermining rather than enhancing opportunities for teacher professionalism. Taken together, the two lines of the article provide indications as to how teacher professionalism might be regained and reclaimed in the context of the discussion about education and its purpose. 

In the past decade I have written about a phenomenon which I have referred to as the ‘learnification’ of educational discourse and practice (for the term see Biesta 2010; for the wider analysis, see Biesta 2004, 2006, 2013; see also Haugsbakk & Nordkvelle, 2007). ‘Learnification’ encompasses the impact of the rise of a ‘new language of learning’ on education.This is evident in a number of discursive shifts, such as the tendency to refer to pupils, students, children and even adults as ‘learners;’ to redefine teaching as ‘facilitating learning,’ ‘creating learning oppor tunities,’ or ‘delivering learning experiences;’ or to talk about the school as a ‘learning environment’ or ‘place for learning.’ It is also visible in the ways in which adult education has been transformed into lifelong learning in many countries (Field, 2000; Yang & Valdés-Cotera, 2011). 

The rise of the language of learning is the outcome of a range of loosely connected developments in the theory, policy and practice of education. These include the critique of authoritarian forms of education that focus solely on the activities of the teacher and conceive of education as a form of control (see, e.g. Freire’s critique of ‘banking education’; Freire, 1970); the rise of new theories of learning, particularly constructivist theories (Richardson, 2003; Roth, 2011); and also — and this is particularly relevant in the shift towards lifelong learning, although it is not all that is at stake in this shift — the influence of neo-liberal policies that seek to burden individuals with tasks that used to be the responsibility of governments and the state (Biesta, 2006).The language of learning has not only impacted on research and policy, but has also become part of the everyday vocabulary of teachers in many countries and settings (Biesta, Priestley & Robinson, in press). 

What is the problem? Perhaps the briefest way to put it is to say that the point of education is not that students learn. Formulating the issue in this way is relevant because many discussions about education (in policy, research and practice) keep using the language of learning in this abstract and general sense.1 In contrast I wish to suggest that the point of education is that students learn something, that they learn it for a reason, and that they learn it from someone. Whereas the language of learning is a process language that, at least in English, is an individual and individualising language, education always needs to engage with questions of content, purpose and relationships. We must also bear in mind that the word ‘learning’ can refer to a very wide range of phenomena.Think, for example, of the difference between what it means to learn to ride a bike, to learn the second law of thermodynamics, to learn to be patient, to learn that you are not good at some thing, etc.This is another reason why the suggestion that education is simply about making students learn or about facilitating their learning is potentially misleading, both for students and for teachers. 

The problem with the language of learning — both the language itself and the ways in which it is used and contextualised in research, policy and practice — is that it tends to prevent people from asking the key educational questions of content, purpose and relationships. Rather, they talk in abstract terms about promoting learning, supporting learning, facilitating learning, about learning outcomes, student learning, etc., and too quickly forget to specify the ‘of what’ and the ‘for what’ of the learning2 This indicates that the language of learning is insufficient for expressing what matters in education, just as theories of learning are insufficient to capture what education is about. At most such theories provide us with insight into the dynamics of the learning that takes place in educational contexts and settings — provided they do not approach learning in an abstract and general sense, but are aware that learning the second law of thermodynamics is a very different thing from learning to be patient. But such theories in themselves do not give us access to and insight into the construction and justification of these contexts and settings themselves. For this, we need theories of education and educating. 

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