Abstract
An academic, Peter Dinniss, discussed the then emerging issue of professionalism in the early childhood education sector in 1974. “There has been much debate over the term ['professional'] together with discussion as to whether teaching is a profession” (1974: 11).
On the cusp of the 21st century, the Education Council (now renamed Teaching Council) of New Zealand consulted with teachers on their register about a professional code. This article follows the emergence of the professionalism discourse.
I examine traces of the ‘strategies, tactics and procedures’ in a genealogy of the managerial technicist process of education. My interest lies in emergent ‘responsibilization’ of teachers over the period. I examine the power/knowledge of the ‘profession’ in Aotearoa, New Zealand, as teachers invent and govern themselves. I ask if the Council’s discourse of professionalism through registration of individuals can be re-envisioned through the collective and democratic practices evident in parent-led services.
Keywords
Introduction
Historically two early childhood education (ECE) philosophies are unique to New Zealand. Playcentre is a family co-operative which developed during world war two, in part to offer opportunities to socialize to women and children while many men were overseas on military duty. Ngā Kōhanga Reo
1
was launched in the 1980s in an attempt to reverse a decline in Te Reo Māori (the Māori language) as a language immersion nest for young children and their whānau. Despite both indigenous models privileging parents and family as the principal teachers of young children, their role as professionals has been diminished in the 21st century. In this paper I trace the history of the technicist construction of ‘teacher as professional', using mainly examples from the state agency, the Education (previously Teachers and now Teaching) Council of New Zealand over the past few decades. The Education Act 1989 requires a ‘reasonable and consistent’ standard for all teacher appraisals. The Teachers Council was established under this act, as were regulatory measures to bring all ECE services under consistent licensing requirements. Carmen Dalli (2012: 3) sets out tensions between different discourses: [Is] a ground-up definition of early years professionalism … needed based on practitioners’ own perspectives of what professionalism entails … [or is] [t]he ongoing marketization of early childhood education with its corporate trappings and increasing focus on measurable outcomes … part of this neoliberal technicist move[?]
This article does not attempt to join this discussion. Rather, it attempts to examine the overarching technicist discourse that surrounds, and sometimes overwhelms, the process of ‘professional
One critic, Gerald Grace, was a Professor of Education at Victoria University (1986–89) Wellington, at the time of the passing of the Education Act 1989. Grace argued education was a ‘public good’ because ‘it places a high priority upon social justice, equity and the attempt to establish a fair society’ (1988: 13). In New Zealand both Grace and Mark Olssen were early critics who named the ‘dominant discourses’ of neoliberalism. They plotted the policy shift from perceiving education as a public good, to seeing education as an economic investment, a private, tradeable, good. Michel Foucault (2010: 325) saw neoliberalism as that which seeks ‘to extend the rationality of the market … to domains that are not exclusively nor primarily economic’. Foucauldian genealogy makes use of documents to seek out the power/knowledge of the discourses that constitute and govern professional individuals. The relationship between the discursive and extra-discursive is central as the state agencies implement policy over time.
Early childhood teachers, despite holding three-year degrees in teacher education, may be viewed as ‘less’ professional than their colleagues in the compulsory sector. They are outside the norm which is modeled on the ‘classroom’. In ECE services teachers perform as a team. It is by employing judgments and comparisons – what Stephen Ball (2000) calls ‘performativity' – that ECE teachers are constructed. Meanwhile, Playcentre parents and Ngā Kōhanga kaiako and whānau barely enter the discourse of professionalism, being defined as ‘parent-led' members of the sector. Yet, I argue, their philosophies may offer ways to challenge the technicist construction of teachers, whereby ‘all staff working in teacher-led services will hold teaching qualifications’ (May, 2008: 4). This paper offers a genealogy of this marketization of education defined as technical by Carmen Dalli (2012). Genealogy is anti-history in that it seeks out the stops and starts; it abhors teleological progress. It seeks out the subjugated knowledges, those no longer privileged, which may perhaps be found in sites no longer valued. It seeks to look behind the knowledge/truth that professionals can be managed to improve, to tailor their conduct to the culture of the site. It challenges the taken-for-granted assumptions of edu-management. Self-critical subjects can reflect on their docility in attempting to articulate new visions shorn of some of the performativity of ‘the professional teacher'.
Some discursive dissonance between the liberal and technical
The modernist technicist approach
to study the subject as an object himself: the formation of procedures by which the subject is led to observe himself, analyze himself, interpret himself, recognize himself as a domain of knowledge (Foucault, 1994: 461).
The technicist discourse is widespread and instrumental in that its discourses shape teachers and teaching as merely a ‘skill' that can be made more efficient by standardization. The contemporary discourse is what Olssen et al. (2004: 191–192) call educational managerialism which is ‘preoccupied if not obsessed with the notion of “quality” [... whereby the neoliberal] values of “efficiency, effectiveness and control” in effect devalue “interpersonal trust”’ .
Supra-national organizations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have invested in the managerial quality discourse in ECE. The OECD
As the joint publication by the Education Council and Education Review Office,
I suggest that the carefully chosen indicators of the Council’s
The registered teacher demonstrates firstly to the educational leader and secondly to the Education Council their ‘improvement', using their ‘performance review' (2017: 8). The education ‘leader' is central to education management, be they a pedagogical leader, charged with envisioning praxis among the team; or one responsible for selecting, appointing, appraising and possibly disciplining staff.
While the term ‘leader' can often be synonymous with ‘principal' in the schooling world, those making staffing decisions in the ECE sector may be ‘owners'. The state's ‘investment' in the compulsory sector ensures training is offered for its ‘leaders'. Education leaders are deemed to manage their education site for improved outcomes. Ethics become the responsibility of each registered teacher, rather than jointly-held mores of the community. The ECE centre will develop a centre philosophy which acts as a ‘branding' of the key curricula. These will often state that the philosophy is drawn from the curriculum
In the ECE market any advertising to the community-of-interest demonstrates how their programme differs from adjacent centres. Value may be added by offering ‘transition to school', Pacific languages, Steiner or Montessori, sessional or full-day sessions, among others. Competition is especially evident in the teacher-led ECE sector, where each ‘centre-as-firm' is free to manage in the interests of its shareholders.
Often, when leaders have both pedagogical and managerial responsibilities, there may be tensions between the two roles. Leadership is often designated by ‘roles’ within the ‘firm’ whose prime rationale is ‘education as business for profit’ (Duhn, 2010: 51), where professionalism and quality are tools, competitive
A postmodern discourse affirming the local
[I]n every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to ward off its powers and dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade its ponderous, formidable materiality (Foucault, 1971: 210– 211).
Genealogy as a tool does not offer solutions, merely sites for local and specific struggles to the dominance of any discourse. However, it can make evident spaces for local struggles, nodes where the discourse is most dense. Perhaps these can be, as Wendy Brown (2011) suggests, a ‘prophylactic against the reduction of us to specks of human capital’ (126).
Genealogy allows one to reflect back in time, to a period where current performative concepts were not ‘taken for granted'. It allows the researcher to ask whose voices are privileged and whose are presently seen as illegitimate. It can point to nodes where contemporary power/knowledge creates ‘assemblages', which offer sites for exploration of present ‘truths'. Rather than any teleological track of progression, genealogy seeks not only emergences but descents and concepts that have withered. My thesis is that as the performativity discourse of ‘professionalism' emerged, community trust in teachers descended driven by the modernist view of accountability. As the teacher performed in the marketplace for the private good of the centre, the Education Council, the profession, the concept of ‘public good' descended. Teachers as subjects are constructed and construct themselves through the ‘savoir' (Foucault, 1994: 459). As Helen Aitken (2006: 3) notes ‘participation shapes not only what we do, but also who we are, and how we interpret what we do’. It is about the stories we tell ourselves about our performances, our roles as teachers. However, a second concept, ‘connaisance' (Foucault, 1994: 459), supports the multiplication of the objects of any discourse. Below I set out the density of the discourse of accountability to the ‘firm’ as centres trade in the education ‘market place’.
There was a time where this technistic discourse barely existed. An academic, Peter Dinniss, discussed the emerging issue of professionalism in the ECE sector in 1974 and asked if teaching is in fact a profession (1974: 11). Those teaching in the ‘preschool’ sector could be untrained, volunteers, nurses, parents or kindergarten teachers. There was no one ‘sector’, but a number of models.
In New Zealand two initiatives emerged to meet specific local needs. The Playcentre movement emerged to support women with training in ways to bring up their children, as well as freeing others for vital war work. Ngā Kōhanga Reo, four decades later, aimed to reverse the trend of Māori language loss. Within a generation there had been radical changes in the ECE sector. The sets of practices, the ‘connaissance' for both education and care services and the two local initiatives were very different in the 1970s and early 1980s. Governing bodies were voluntary, and less concerned with accountabilities and focus on ‘outputs'. Sessional Playcentres and kindergartens were partly funded by the Department of Education. Full-day care centres and creches were unregulated until 1962, and then came under the auspices of Social Welfare. Early in the ECE movement, the focus was on social justice, support for the poor and disadvantaged. Kindergartens had emerged late in the 19th century. They were initially run by philanthropists and parent volunteers. Creches had been less successful because of strong disapproval about working women being separated from their infants. Society’s views changed during the second world war, with women largely shouldering the responsibilities of child care and work outside the home. The oft-quoted philosophy of the first Labour government (1935–1949) was that: every person, whatever his [sic] level of academic ability, whether he be rich or poor, whether he live in town or country, has a right, as a citizen, to a free education of the kind for which he is best fitted and to the fullest extent of his powers (quoted in Grace, 1991b: 28).
In 1974, the New Zealand Council for Educational Research held a symposium in Wellington where three acknowledged experts examined the state of preschooling. Training, Marie Bell thought, would support a greater emphasis on teaching. Geraldine McDonald felt there may be tensions between being a teacher and conducting a play programme. Peter Dinniss (1974: 15) examined the possibilities for professionalism in a sector that was largely voluntary and sessional. Current statements regarding purposes of preschooling ‘lack the kind of precision which one needs to guide a professional enterprise’. He utilized Lieberman’s (1956) definition of a profession, including ‘hav[ing] a long period of training … exercis[ing] a broad range of autonomy and responsibility’ with a self-governing body of practitioners, and having a code of ethics. So was teaching in fact a profession? Terms such as ‘preschool teacher' were to be superseded by that of ‘educator'.
The period between 1960 and 1990, Olssen et al. (2004: 174–197) argued, were ones where there was a high level of trust in teachers and teaching. The neoliberal state they characterize as low trust. Teachers need constant monitoring for accountability. Their performance should deliver skills in their ‘clients’ that are of use – even at five years of age – to future employers. For example, economist James Heckman and colleagues (Biroli et al., 2017:1), in an economic evaluation of long term outcomes, noted ‘the Reggio [ECE] Approach significantly boosts outcomes related to employment, socio-emotional skills, high school graduation … [in their empirical study] of its effects on children's life-cycle outcomes’. Moreover, such educational experiences pay dividends in the long term. Heckman has written extensively on how ‘good quality’ ECE can mitigate the effects of poverty and poor parenting. It is a technical fix – an investment that pays dividends, he argues.
As education and care centre numbers expanded in the 1990s as a result of the push to get women into work and training – a direct result of the adoption of Human Capital theories – women were able to leave their children in ‘quality' centres. These were deemed to be ‘teacher-led’ for regulatory and funding purposes, while Playcentres and Ngā Kōhanga Reo were labeled ‘parent-led’ and funded differentially. The power/knowledge interest of the Education Council extended only to the former. The latter were ‘freed’ to develop with minimal state interest, while the former were partially state-funded. Two local initiative, Playcentre and Ngā Kōhanga Reo, were specifically excluded by the Education Council as their staff are not required to be registered.
This paper argues it is time to ‘take up the challenge thrown down by the agencies of New Right ideology' (Grace, 1991b: 205); to assert once more that education is a public good, to ‘be mediated through a publicly provided service [rather than] a commodity in the marketplace … mediated by the normal operation of market forces'. By the 21st century the notion of education as a ‘public good' has become a subjugated concept. Perhaps there may be seeds of such discourse, even within the Education/Teaching Council (e.g. Tataiako, 2011), which could re-emerge to enhance the concept of professionalism in ECE.
The emergence of the technicist discourse
An international ECE and education report (OECD, 1977) examined provision for children from birth to school-age across nine countries. Using a new lexicon, the authors suggested the state needed to consider the issue of ‘supply and demand’ of teachers (9). In 1979, those attending the second Early Childhood Convention in Christchurch heard economist Brian Easton position the family as a ‘production unit’ to enhance state knowledge (Easton, 1979: 11–12). Economists, Easton concluded, needed a theory of family to support policy development.
The term ‘good’ at that time was under challenge across western countries as a term that privileged its economic meanings. In the 20th century education goods were defined by economic price theory where competition in the marketplace ensured traders got the best price. Chicago School of Economics theories in the mid 20th century explored the efficiency of price for educational service (e.g. Heckman, 1973). Such economic theories – including public choice and human capital theories – achieved dominance (see Olssen et al., 2004: 172). Many of these ideas were supported by supranational agencies such as the OECD. NZ Treasury early, drawing on New Right economic truths, countered the public good argument. Education tends to be thought of as a natural sphere for government intervention because it is a social or public good … in the technical sense used by economists, education is not in fact a ‘public good’ … education shares the main characteristics of other commodities traded in the marketplace (Treasury, 1987:33 cited in Grace, 1992: 30).
Childcare was unregulated until 1985, the year the Department of Education took over responsibility for childcare services from the Department of Social Welfare. Historically only Colleges of Education offered teacher credentials, and only kindergarten teachers were trained by the state. Ngā Kōhanga Reo was overseen by a department of Māori Affairs. As Helen May (2013) summarized it, it was only since the development of the three-year diploma qualification phased in between 1988–1990 that former Colleges of Education and – nowadays – University providers have been able to offer equivalent qualifications to teacher education candidates in both the early childhood and schools sector (May, 2013,4). the early childhood education sector gives top priority to high quality service provision. The actions of government, the informed choices of parents and the greater professionalization of the sector itself will all contribute to continuous pursuit of excellence.
Sites for struggles: Narratives of belonging
Peter Moss (2018) is one who has written on struggles against the economic discourse (e.g. Moss, Dahlberg and Pence, 2000; Moss, 2014). There is no ‘essential child, nor any essential teacher’. Supra-national organizations such as the OECD do education a disservice when they attempt comparisons across sectors and countries. Researchers, such as Borili et al. (2017), Moss suggests, see what they expect to see, and miss important aspects of differing ontologies. Moss has written extensively on the community focus of Reggio Emilia ECE (e.g. Moss, 2008). Rather than being pods for training future workers, he suggests ECE centres should take civil approaches such as being places for democratic practice, for creating culture, and for building solidarities within the community. What the Reggio Emilia philosophy offers is a perspective that draws on local knowledge and parental input, as teachers utilize sites and symbols of local history as sites for active learning. Evaluation of children's learning leads teaching. Teachers train and develop their professional persona in dialogue with colleagues, families and experts in the field, including for example dance, painting, narrative storytelling. They collectively document children’s learning and build evaluative responses within their team.
Moss (2018) has offered three propositions which could underpin the practice of evaluation and which offer new responses to neo-liberal ‘scientism’:
evaluation in ECE (all human services) is both unanswerable and essential there is a dominant ‘language of evaluation’ in today’s ECE the dominant language is just one of many possible ‘languages of evaluation’ and we need to evolve these alternatives.
Moss acknowledges that teachers need evaluation, that we operate within a discourse of accountability for our status and professional discipline. We should privilege the local, where narratives of belonging, arising from specific historical and social conditions have arisen. Anne Grey suggested a 'relational definition which accepts the contested nature of professionalism as one that must always incorporate critical reflection, discussion and debate. In this way, professionalism in ECE is more than a set of attributes, or a set of standards, but is always in the process of being socially constructed – an open-ended on-going discussion that is constantly changing and evolving.The knowledge created would be context-specific and relative to each individual and group, rather than fixed and certain' (Grey, 2012: 11).
Both these initiatives draw on theories of communities of learners (see Aitken, 2006; Rogoff et al. 1996). ‘A community of learners is always in a process of transformation, especially with the inclusion of newcomers who may not understand the traditions’ (Rogoff et al, 1996: 398). Learning is a process that draws on the social, cultural and historical ontologies and epistemologies. It is never fixed, but seeks understandings of teaching and learning as an ongoing process. Ngā Kōhanga Reo draws on Te Ao Māori, on collective understandings of being such as whānau, hapū and iwi. Much of their wisdom comes from the past through pūrākau and narratives about humankind’s place in the world. Leaders may be important ancestors, such as Maui, who was innovative, mischievous and challenging. Māui-mohio, Māui-atamai, Māui-toa (Rameka, 2013: 13) are names that denote his qualities of knowledge, quick-wittedness and bravery. The verb ako is comprehensive in that it subsumes both teaching and learning in the one word. Kaiako implies that teachers and learners are bound in an interrelationship that is always changing, never static. Currently the ECE curricula document
Socio-cultural assessment remains a poorly understood concept in many education and care centres, however its reliance on the holistic view of community, family and child privileges local possibilities and constructions of the child. The definition in Kei Tua o Te Pae (Ministry of Education, 2004: 3) is ‘assessments that make visible learning that is valued so that the learning community (children, families, whānau, teachers, and others) can foster ongoing and diverse learning pathways'. An evaluative assessment is unique to the centre, family and child, and drawn from deep listening to this community’s joint interests (White, 2012). It is only these people who can make formative judgements about the child and their learning either at the time of recognizing a moment of learning, or later in an evaluation such as in discussion with the child. The ECE centre, Te Kōhanga Reo o Ngā Kuaka (Ministry of Education, 2009: 37) is an example. The team integrated ‘prior knowledge of the whānau and the knowledge of the children so … they were able to become a community of collective learners’. Winton Playcentre parents put on ‘working theory glasses’ to engage children and the education team in new ways of recognizing learning (White, 2012: 23).
While post-war discourses suggested the woman should be a homemaker, Playcentre offered a radical space while appearing to accept the role. In a community of learners, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Each person has ‘multiple opportunities to get involved with the subject matter, connecting with different individuals’ (Rogoff et al., 1999: 407). In Playcentre, as in Kōhanga, ‘learning involves the whole program in a continual process of renewal and change within continuity, as new generations come to play the roles of newcomers and oldtimers in the community. becoming part of the structure’ (Rogoff et al., 1999: 401). They, too, offer perspectives removed from the ‘technicist’ emphasis on the individual teacher.
While the Education Council and ERO supported a teleological ‘improvement’ as teachers move from acolyte to leader, maybe the local can enhance, deepen-the-local in relational, socio-cultural ways (see, for example, Education Council and Ministry of Education, 2011). Perhaps the Council is exploring the ‘wrong problem’ in seeking leadership for ECE given that in the technicist discourse, leadership has become a synonym for principals or service leaders rather than learners collaborating to solve local problems. The emergence of a new discourse may exist – for example in ‘teacher appraisal system that specifically includes Māori learner achievement as a focus’ (Education Council and Ministry Education, 2011: 12). Such evaluative tools as those of Moss and Grey may allow space for the ‘parent-led’ services that have been ‘othered’ by the dominance of new public management theories such as human capital. Rather than a ‘private good', an ‘exploratory good' could emerge. Such an exploratory good, based on an understanding of the partial, the tentative, could make use of pastoral techniques and strategies, and narratives arising from the local sites – seeking open-ended understanding of potentiality within the service.– Professional teachers surrounded by their community may become more ‘relational’.
Being a professional for early childhood teachers may involve new actions such as deep listening to local context, history and behaviour. This genealogy may assist in making the materiality of the term ‘teacher-as-professional’ more open to new ways of valuing.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Thanks to two peer reviewers who gave valuable feedback on an earlier draft.
As this paper went to press, registered teachers recieved an email (20 August 2019) noting that the Teaching Council was rethinking appraisal, and creating ‘policies that demonstrate professional trust, freeing teachers up to focus on their development journey'.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.