Abstract
In contemporary western society, welfare work in general, particularly in education, has been struck by an endless series of policy reforms, discourses and technologies. These have consequences not only for the production of professional identity, but also for the way educational tasks are understood and handled. Inspired by the work of post-structuralist thinkers such as Foucault, Rose, Ball, Alvesson and Willmott, and the psychoanalytical thinker Žižek, the authors describe some of these consequences by analysing two examples which stem from the Danish educational context: upper secondary schools and vocational educational training. The first example shows how a ‘strong’ state logic results in a focus on numbers, which leads to a form of cynical leadership and an undermining of teachers’ professional judgment. The second example shows how leaders and teachers in a vocational training school, with help from critical utopian action researchers, seek to innovate their practices in accordance with ‘soft’ market logic. As a consequence, teachers’ professionalism is ‘hijacked’ by a new form of organizational professionalism.
Introduction
During the past 20–30 years, a discussion about the modernization of welfare work has been going on in most of the western world. A multitude of reforms and initiatives, usually within a neo-liberal framework, have been carried out in order to create desired changes, such as cost-effectiveness, user-friendly services and stronger control over the professions performing welfare work (Ball, 2008; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2005). However, a recent study concludes that the result of these reforms is, in fact, not ‘more for less’ but ‘less for more’ (Hood and Dixon, 2015) – that is, the reforms result in less direct service in return for larger expenses.
Thus, western welfare work seems to be in a state of crisis (Power et al., 2009; Vadolas, 2012). As Furedi (2007) has argued, we are living in an ‘age of anxiety’, meaning that ‘we have witnessed a range of different policies and techniques that function within a more or less organized ensemble of practices, techniques and rationalities concerning precautionary risk – a “dispositif of precautionary risk”’ (Dean, 2010: 466). Increasingly, various policy interventions are being created to provide us with the right tools to handle the crisis. Instead of a discussion of whether or not we are in a crisis, there exists a strong ideological belief that the ontological status of the western welfare state is clear and obvious.
As a consequence, it can be argued that the professions have lost their broader purposes in society. They are increasingly forced to reform their practices and use valuable time trying to handle various forms of risk by following narrow, measurable aims (Taubman, 2009). As Rose (1999b: 208) argues: ‘professionals and experts try to justify their judgements on the ground of objectivity, and frequently frame this objectivity in numerical form. Numbers are resorted to in order to settle or diminish conflicts in a contested space of weak authority’. Furthermore, numbers have become, if we use a concept from Žižek (2008b), ‘sublime objects’, which provide us with an ideological fantasy that if only we achieve the ‘right numbers’, we can secure our position in the global market and construct order in a disorderly and risky world.
Even if the existing research on the topic is rich and well developed (for example, Clarke, 2012; Richardson, 1997; Taylor, 2005; Van Thiel and Leeuw, 2002), the qualitative consequences of the present reform frenzy are underexposed. This is partly due to the fact that the reform processes are still going on at a more rapid pace than ever before (Rosa, 2010), and they are being struggled over, negotiated, managed and handled every day by the implicated parties – not least by welfare professionals and their leaders (Rüsselbæk Hansen and Frederiksen, 2016). Thus, rather than attempting to study what the consequences of the modernization of welfare work have been, we look at the modernization process as it takes place in two carefully chosen examples: upper secondary schools and vocational educational training in Denmark. These examples, we believe, are well suited to demonstrate some of the ideologically based discourses, forms of government and microprocesses involved in the modernization of welfare work. More specifically, these examples were chosen in order to show how the modernization processes in the education sector can, in fact, be played out rather differently and have different consequences depending on what we see as two specific management philosophies: the ‘strong’ state and the ‘soft’ market. We pose the following research question: How is the modernization of upper secondary schools and vocational educational training in Denmark handled by educational leaders and teachers, and what are the consequences for their mutual relations and the educational task?
The article is structured as follows: first, we review some of the existing literature on changes in welfare work. This includes a rather broad examination of profession and organization studies, followed by a more specific section on educational studies. Next, we describe our methodology. Third, we analyse our two chosen examples: upper secondary schools and vocational educational training in Denmark. At the conclusion of the article, we sum up and discuss our findings.
Existing research on changes in welfare work
Although our focus in this article is on the modernization of education as a specific form of welfare work, in the following review, we include discussions of other forms of welfare work and work in general. We do so because some of the developments described in these sectors seem to apply to education and, thus, are relevant to the understanding of educational reforms. 1
Profession and organization studies
To begin with, it is worth noting that we are here dealing with two historically distinct fields of research that have more or less fused today. That, in itself, is an indication of the changes which have occurred in the organization of welfare work: it no longer seems possible to study professions and professional work without taking into account the market-based and politically controlled organizations that these professions are operating in. Historically, profession studies (for example, Abbott, 1988; Durkheim, 1984; Larson, 1977; Parsons, 1968) have ignored the question of organization and more or less projected the professional as an autonomous guarantor of society's greater values. Likewise, organization studies (for example, Scott and Davis, 2007; Senge, 1993; Taylor, 1911) have ignored the ‘special’ things about welfare and professional work, and more or less projected organizations as a universal phenomenon.
Today's fusion of these two fields of research seems to occur in a rather systematic way: either researchers study professions and organizations from a professional point of departure, or they study professions and organizations from an organizational point of departure. We use this observation of the positions and movements in the field to present some relevant studies.
Studies of professions and organizations from a professional perspective
A long-time observer of professional and organizational change, who mainly studies these changes from a professional perspective, is Julia Evetts (2003, 2011, 2012). In 2003, she discussed the then rather new circumstance that professions and professionals were increasingly being employed in large, global, market-based organizations. One of the consequences thereof seemed to be that the actual meanings of ‘profession’ and ‘professional’ were altered. Rather than attaining their meanings from the professions, the state and central regulations, these terms now attained their meanings from organizational standards and targets. In some of her later works, Evetts (2011, 2012) has come closer to discussing the consequences of the current redefinition of the professions. As indicated by the term ‘service’, professional work is currently codified so that it fits contracts and evaluations made in the market. In this way, professional work has been ‘commodified’, according to Evetts. Moreover, as a result of the current push towards organizations, new inequalities are arising between and within professions.
Muzio and Kirckpatrick (2011) list a number of challenges, responses and opportunities that are arising in the professions due to the greater significance of organizations. Among the opportunities are so-called ‘colonizing tactics’. They involve professions utilizing the greater opportunities that appear in large organizations to favour their own professional projects. It could be in health, where ‘doctors may take on management roles and acquire business qualifications … in part, to buffer the practice of medicine against political and economic pressures of the environment’ (Muzio and Kirckpatrick, 2011: 396). Among the challenges are new forms of ‘restratification’ (also mentioned by Evetts), and professional projects that, in their attempt to accommodate new organizational demands, hollow out traditional notions of professionalism. Muzio and Kirckpatrick also mention an emerging body of research drawing on Foucauldian and post-structuralist perspectives to further research the redefinition of professions. These studies focus on the ‘hijacking’ of professionalism to enhance and ‘sneak in’ corporate/organizational notions of professionalism (Fournier, 1999; Kipping, 2011), and on the consequent mediation, transformation and creation of professional identities (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002; Karlsen and Villadsen, 2013; Waring and Currie, 2009). This happens through different techniques, such as performance appraisal, in-house training, mentoring and management by objectives, and even laughter. We see this body of research as very similar to our own contribution. Later in this article, we discuss the theoretical ideas from the post-structuralist position that inspired us; those same ideas are used in our analysis.
Somewhat contrary to Evetts, other studies (Ackroyd et al., 2007) argue that new public management reforms in the UK have, in fact, not been very successful in changing professional values and institutions. This is especially true in health care and social services, whereas housing seems to have been more open to change. They attribute this difference not only to ‘strategies of resistance’ among professionals, but also to the reform process itself: due to its confrontational nature, it has produced more opposition than would necessarily be the case had politicians and leaders listened more to the professionals involved and their ideals of work.
In the Scandinavian context, Brante et al. (2015) have recently conducted a larger study on changes and continuities in 17 professions across the public and private sectors. Their conclusions are somewhat similar to those of Ackroyd et al. (2007): the professions are on the defensive and are struggling to maintain their historical notions of professionalism. However, there are variances across the professions studied. A significant difference exists between the professions in the public sector and the professions in the private sector. Such differences can be seen in the professionals' experiences of cuts, steering and professional autonomy: groups such as teachers, social workers, doctors and nurses experience greater cuts and stronger external steering than groups such as economists, engineers and architects (Brante et al., 2015: 1082–1092). In other words, professions performing welfare work are more on the defensive than professions that have been historically proximate to markets.
In order to elaborate on this point, Hjort and Aili (2010) have argued for the appearance of what seems to be a new competency among professionals employed in the public sector – namely, what they call ‘prioritizing’. This competency develops due to the fact that welfare professionals must, on a daily basis, prioritize which ‘master(s)’ to follow: the economy, bureaucratic control systems or their own professional standards. Such prioritizing becomes necessary in even the smallest cases. For example, it could be when a kindergarten teacher must decide if she should (a) provide care to a child while he wakes up from his nap in the kindergarten; (b) spend time informing new parents (potential customers) about the ‘services’ in the kindergarten; or (c) work on attaining the goals in the national curriculum.
In a larger work, Hjort (2012) has attempted to describe changes in the core of welfare work. She uses the concept of ‘affective labour’ to describe these changes. Rather than maintaining its nature as ‘reproductive’ labour, welfare work is on the verge of becoming ‘productive’ labour, as is the case in male-dominated occupations (Holter, 2005) – that is, labour through which profit can – and should – be extracted. Hence, Hjort (2012) describes how even the core of welfare work seems to be changing. An example from a kindergarten can again be illustrative. If a kindergarten teacher provides care to a child after his nap not because it is required by professional standards but because his parents have paid extra for that ‘service’, the meaning of the action may change. The kindergarten teacher may become more detached in her caring – or the reverse: she may become overcaring as she seeks to ensure the satisfaction of the customer. Ultimately, the outcome of the interplay between the kindergarten teacher and the child may be changed: the child may adapt to a less caring kindergarten teacher or make demands as a spoiled customer.
Studies of professions and organizations from an organizational perspective
Researchers studying professions and organizations from an organizational perspective tend to view the new amalgamation of these two fields of research somewhat differently. Scott (2008), in a way, rediscovers the special features of the professions. He believes that these features are aligned with his neo-institutional theory, a so-called ‘pillars framework’, which he has developed, in part, as a reaction to a more classical idea of organizations as centred on goal-specificity and formalization (Scott and Davis, 2007: 36–37). Thus, he describes the professions as the ‘lords of the dance’ – that is, they are the key agents for upholding the institutions of society (Scott, 2008). 2 However, Scott also identifies changes in and threats to the professions similar to those pointed out by Muzio and Kirckpatrick. Among other things, he mentions a shift in the professional ethos, where ‘claimants to professional status have forsaken civic-minded moral appeals – “the social trusteeship” model that had long prevailed – to emphasize instead the value of “technical expertise”, as validated by the market’ (Scott, 2008: 232).
Noordegraaf (2011) argues that distinctions between professions and organizations, as well as those between professionals and managers, are reproduced in most research and are problematic. He sees his contribution as an attempt to overcome these distinctions, partly through a concept called ‘organized professionalism’. A main assertion behind this concept is that there is basically no contradiction behind organizational and professional features, as ‘organizing has been and will be an important dimension of professional work’ (Noordegraaf, 2011: 1349–1371). Furthermore, Noordegraaf observes that much research on the professions is normatively guided. To some extent, this should explain the reproduction of the aforementioned distinctions between professions and organizations, and those between professionals and managers. However, Noordegraaf draws normative conclusions himself on how professionals and researchers in the professions should proceed in the future: they must learn to adapt to a new reality because not adapting is risky. In this way, Noordegraaf is ambiguous in his methods of describing and prescribing reality.
The same ambiguity can be found in some Danish works on the so-called ‘new’ professionals (Hein, 2009; Larsen and Hein, 2007). Here, the ‘old’ professionals are described in accordance with the critical branch of profession studies as privileged social groups that have been successful in using what Weber (1978) called ‘social closure tactics’ to gain monopoly over restricted areas of work. At the same time, the ‘new’ professionals are prescribed through a range of imperatives: they must learn to cooperate with other groups, accept bureaucratic control systems, learn how to zigzag in loosely coupled organizations, find balances between routine work and creative work, and, finally, get used to being managed. In this way, a negative description is used for a positive prescription of a new and more adaptive professional.
To sum up, the strands of research within profession and organization studies tend to view the present amalgamation of these two fields of research from either a professional or an organizational perspective. Most of the studies agree that changes are happening, but there is still debate about the reasons for, methods and consequences of these changes. When it comes to welfare work, new challenges, opportunities and responses are pointed out. Some studies claim that not just the organization, but also the outcomes of welfare work have changed. Other studies claim that the welfare professions are, in fact, able to resist these pressures and defend their historical notions of professionalism.
Educational studies
According to Ball (2008), it is now possible to distinguish between three policy technologies working on a global scale to reform nations’ educational systems: market form, management and performativity. Our examination of educational studies focuses on the consequences of two of these so-called ‘technologies’: performativity and market form. However, we refer to these phenomena in ways that are closer to our own understanding – namely, as management philosophies: the ‘strong’ state and the ‘soft’ market. 3
The ‘strong’ state in education
Some studies argue that people like teachers are still able to resist some of the neo-liberal pressure and defend their professionalism (Al-Hinai, 2007; Datnow and Schmidt, 2005). However, many studies point out that teachers' working conditions and their professionalism are changing. New forms of state regulation have seen the light of day. As Ball has pointed out, teachers' performativity is regulated and measured more than ever before: Performativity is a technology, a culture and a mode of regulation that employs judgements, comparisons and displays as means of incentive, control, attrition and change based on rewards and sanctions (both material and symbolic). The performances (of individual subjects or organizations) serve as measures of productivity or output, or displays of ‘quality’, or ‘moments’ of promotion or inspection. As such they stand for, encapsulate or represent the worth, quality or value of an individual or organization within a field of judgement … One key aspect of the current educational reform movement may be seen as struggles over the control of the field of judgement and its values. (Ball, 2003: 216)
In education, however, no guarantees can be given. Nevertheless, a neo-liberal fantasy seems to be playing out, which assumes that guarantees can, in fact, be given (Žižek, 2008a), and that it is only a matter of finding the right ‘quick fix’. This seems to be a paradox, since educational reforms have been the norm since the end of the 20th century and still have not been able to provide such guarantees.
From a transnational perspective, we see a lot of neo-liberal reforms seeking to improve students’ learning output (Clarke, 2012). Today, it is not only up to teachers to constantly reform their (educational) practices, and improve and measure their students’ learning results. Within the contemporary school-effectiveness regime (Darling-Hammond and Rothman, 2011; Leithwood et al., 2004), it is also up to managers/principals to implement the ‘needed’ reforms and secure the correct learning results.
In a recent study, we have seen how teachers’ professionalism in both Canada and Denmark has become more oriented towards learning objectives, and how managers have been provided with increased power to control teachers’ teaching practices (Rüsselbæk Hansen et al., 2015). However, this tendency seems to be a bit ‘stronger’ in Denmark than in Canada. In Denmark, ‘[t]he school principal is positioned as the one facilitating the teachers’ daily work with planning, execution and evaluation of the teaching and regulating teachers’ working hours, preparation time, and conditions towards the end of high test scores’ (Rüsselbæk Hansen et al., 2015: 46).
School management has become what Ball calls a ‘key organizing principle’ for how schools should be organized. This means that managers or principals have been ‘transformed into chief executives’ and, in some ways, are becoming ‘over-professionalized’ at the expense of teachers’ professional autonomy, agency and judgment (Serpieri and Grimaldi, 2014: 94). In other words, some of today's politicians see teachers’ autonomy and agency as part of the educational problem that must be regulated and controlled.
Despite the fact that we can see an increasing tendency to acknowledge the importance of teachers’ agency (Biesta et al., 2015; Fendler, 2016), we argue that controlling, regulating and interfering in teachers’ daily work is still the norm in education. An example, which stems from an English context, makes this clear. In their article ‘Get off my bus! School leaders, vision work and the elimination of teachers’, Courtney and Gunther (2015) argue how a normalized acceptance of dismissing teachers in England has become evident. What we hear from Courtney and Gunther is that school leaders have been provided with a form of ‘tyrannical power’ to get teachers to live up to national standards. This has led to an ‘erosion of professionalism, which means that teachers are subjected to a regime of rewards and punishments where punishment may mean disposal’ (Courtney and Gunter, 2015: 396).
The ‘soft’ market in education
Education is a risky business. Not only must schools meet national standards and objectives, but they must also act as self-managing schools and compete in a quasi-educational market. This means that schools’ budgets depend on the number of students enrolled and the number of graduating students. In Denmark, this system was epitomized and introduced during the 1990s as the so-called ‘taximeter system’ (Ministry of Education, 1994).
Compared to the effects of a ‘strong’ state, it is somewhat more difficult to assess the consequences of the ‘soft’ market. Relations between the Ministry of Education and leaders/teachers are more indirect, invisible and non-specific in the market form. However, Ball (2008) argues that the market has a number of consequences for the actors involved in education and for the educational task itself. He talks about a new moral environment for both consumers and producers, that is, a form of ‘commercial civilization’. Within this new moral environment, schools, colleges and universities are being inducted into a culture of self-interest. Self-interest is manifest in terms of survivalism – an increased, often predominant, orientation towards the internal well-being of the institution and its members and a shift away from concern with ‘the community’. (Ball, 2008: 45)
Anders Fredriksson (2009) – also from Sweden – has looked more into teachers’ roles under the influence of the market. He has developed an index showing to what extent teachers in public schools and teachers in for-profit charter schools are influenced by the market. Not surprisingly, teachers in for-profit charter schools are influenced the most. They tend to develop what Fredriksson (2009: 301) calls a strong market orientation , implying, among other things, recognition of local management and ‘that teachers adopt the mission of the school and try to realise its spirit in the classroom’.
Stefan Andersson (2010) looks more positively at the developments in the Swedish education sector. He points out some of the negative effects of an education system governed by welfarism, such as excessive adherence to professionals, and, at the same time, he posits the idea that public interests are more likely to prevail in markets, where customers can vote with their feet. Also, markets are recognized for their ability to bring out creativity and ingenuity in the education sector.
Methodology
In our analysis, we draw on some of the thinkers and researchers introduced above. These are Foucault (1982, 1991a, b), Dean (1999, 2010), Rose (1999a, b), Miller and Rose (2008), Ball (2003, 2008), Alvesson and Willmott (2002), Alvesson and Robertson (2006), and Žižek (2008a, 2008b). We will use their perspectives as so-called ‘thinking tools’ (Rose, 1999b: xi) to think through, question and make sense of the empirical material represented by our two examples. Furthermore, it is this corpus of theory that informs our understanding of the two different management philosophies under investigation. While Ball (2008) refers to performativity and the market in a rather restricted way – namely, as ‘reform technologies’ – we wish to refer to and think about these phenomena in a broader sense. With the term ‘management philosophy’, we first of all wish to stress the rather conscious nature that these reform initiatives seem to have in different educational domains. They do not simply come as part of a global ‘reform package’ (Ball, 2008: 44); rather, they are invested with a national thrust and with certain power relations. Second, we wish to stress the indirect consequences that these management philosophies have for leaders, teachers and the educational task. We do not perceive them as doing the work themselves – as the term ‘technology’ may imply – but we do believe that they make some possibilities more plausible than others. In other words, we wish to enlarge and study concretely the room of possibility that is opened by these different management philosophies. 4
Methodologically, this article is inspired by ideas and procedures developed within the tradition of policy ethnography (Ball, 1994; Gustafsson, 2003). The basic idea here is to follow reforms and study their impact on various parts of the education system. Consequently, this type of analysis starts from a top-down perspective. However, following Ball's (1994) idea of ‘policy cycles’, it is possible also to adopt a bottom-up perspective. This implies studying policies from the perspective of those actors, institutions and organizations that the policies are supposed to have an impact on. In our analysis, we attempt to adopt both a top-down and a bottom-up perspective. We do so by following the policies – in this case, the ‘strong’ state and the ‘soft’ market as two specific management philosophies – and, at the same time, analysing how these are met, negotiated, accepted and rejected in our specific examples.
Empirically, we draw on experiences and various kinds of qualitative material (interviews, observations, documents, etc.) generated through previous projects in upper secondary schools (Rüsselbæk Hansen and Frederiksen, 2015, 2016) and a vocational educational school for basic health and care (Bøje et al., 2014, 2015). At the same time, we use experiences from our teaching on a Master's programme for school leaders, pedagogical leaders and teachers in upper secondary schools. 5 It is insights from these projects and pedagogical encounters, together with our readings of the current education policies, that are ‘written up’ as the two examples presented in our analysis. In this way, our examples are not simply the result of ‘cherry-picking’; they were not chosen to demonstrate a certain principle, key point or conclusion deduced from a grand theory. On the other hand, our examples do conform to the usual requirements of an in-depth case study (see, for example, Flyvbjerg, 2015). All in all, we see our examples as abductively derived (Jørgensen, 1993), following a middle course between deduction and induction.
The ‘strong’ state in educational reforms: upper secondary schools
The first example stems from a Master's course at the University of Southern Denmark (see above). On this course, we talked about the challenges and political demands that upper secondary school leaders and teachers are met with and must be able to handle. 6 What almost all the students focused on was how they could produce the right numbers by reducing student dropouts, securing high student grades, and getting high scores in student satisfaction evaluations and surveys. One of the participants on the course – an upper secondary school leader – told us how, over the years, he had wondered why the students at his school always got lower preliminary marks than the students at the other upper secondary school in his town, despite the fact that the students at the two schools got the same grades in their final examinations almost every year.
As he mentioned, we could be tempted to think that the students at the other school performed better during the year – but this was not the case, according to him. Instead, something else seemed to be the problem. According to this school leader, the problem was obvious: the teachers judged the students too ‘hard’ compared to the teachers at the other school in the town. The question is how he came to know this. We do not know because he never gave us an answer when we asked him. However, he told us that he had arranged a meeting with all his teachers. In that meeting, he demanded that the teachers judge their students more ‘softly’ in the future. ‘And voilà, the problem was solved’, he said.
This example demonstrates several things. First, it shows us that the school leader uses numbers to diagnose a problem – that something is wrong with the way the teachers award preliminary marks at his school. Second, it shows that numbers are used to identify problems, as well as to solve the identified problems. Third, it shows how numbers, in a paradoxical way, inform the leader about the reality ‘as it is’ and provide him with an opportunity to change reality according to how he wishes ‘it to be’ (see Rüsselbæk Hansen, 2016).
But what is the problem? Is it that the teachers at his school are judging the students too ‘hard’? Is it that the teachers at the other school are judging their students too ‘softly’? Or is it something else, such as teachers at one school not necessarily valuing the same things as the teachers at the other school, and vice versa? Taubman provides us with an example from another context that might be useful for us here, arguing that: the European Union's [EU's] decision to classify some country's meat system as risky or ‘below standard’ doesn't necessarily mean that that country's standards are lower; it means rather that the country's ‘problems’ are not the same as those the EU's standards addressed. (Taubman, 2009: 113)
What we find interesting in this example is that, on the one hand, the school leader assumes that the ‘symbolic numbers’ (students’ marks) are ‘mirroring’ reality. On the other hand, he acts as if the symbolic numbers are not ‘mirroring’ reality. The problem, as we see it, is that the leader acts in a paradoxical and cynical way; he believes and does not believe in the numbers at one and the same time. With his actions, he is undermining the ideological fantasy that both the teachers and the students are expected to conform to; he is furthering the idea that there exists some sort of correlation between student performance and numbers (Žižek, 2008a). Why should teachers and students trust this fantasy if a school leader can change students’ preliminary marks in a split second?
The governmental frame and fantasy
A central question is why he acts in this way. Following Žižek (2008b), we must not individualize the problem, which is that the school leader acts ‘stupidly’. Instead, we must also look at the governmental frame that makes such an action meaningful (Foucault, 1991a). Put another way, it is not enough to focus on the individual act because the real act is not this particular, empirical, factual intervention (or non-intervention); the real act is of a strictly symbolic nature, it consists in the very mode in which we structure the world, our perception of it, in advance, in order to make our intervention possible, in order to open in it the space for our activity (or inactivity). The real act thus precedes the (particular-factual) activity; it consists in the previous restructuring of our symbolic universe into which our (factual, particular) act will be inscribed. (Žižek, 2008b: 245)
So, even though upper secondary schools have become self-governing institutions, they have not been ‘set free’ to act in market terms. Instead, the ‘strong’ political regulation of these schools seems so powerful that school leaders might find it necessary to silence and remove (teachers’) voices that confront and criticize the political agenda because this can have severe consequences for the school (Courtney and Gunter, 2015). This might explain why the teachers did not protest or claim their right to judge the students based on their professional standards.
The ‘soft’ market in educational reforms: vocational educational training
As mentioned previously, our second example – vocational educational training – focuses on the role of the ‘soft’ market in educational reform processes. More specifically, the example describes changes in relations between leaders and teachers in a school for basic health and care due to a market-driven innovation project. 7
The way in which the project was conceived and initiated by the school's leader raises some interesting questions. At a first meeting, as pedagogic researchers, we tried to collaborate with him to define the background for and aim of the project. However, it turned out to be difficult. We could not very easily get into a discussion of what we saw as essential – namely, the pedagogic content of the project. Instead, the leader talked about external factors that made the project necessary: the school had recently been involved in a merger of four independent schools; it now wanted to integrate these schools, their personnel and ways of practice via an innovation project. Furthermore, the leader wanted to consolidate the school's (quite dominant) market position vis-à-vis other schools by becoming a so-called ‘centre of excellence’.
The role of the market in the desire to introduce innovations into the school seems quite clear: via an investment of 6.5 million Danish kroner, which included the funding of projects other than ours, the leader wanted to consolidate and, if possible, extend the school's market position. The pedagogic content, which could be used to this end, was of less importance. The leader would let us (i.e. the researchers) and the teachers find that out.
Conduct of conduct
To what extent, then, did the market have further significance for what happened pedagogically and relationally in the project? Initially, the answer is that the market played an indirect, albeit significant, role in deciding the type of government that could prevail in the project and influence the relations between the leaders and the teachers.
The type of government that prevailed in the project can be described in terms of Foucault's idea of ‘governmentality’. This term has been defined in multiple ways by Foucault himself and by many subsequent researchers (for example, Dean, 1999; Rose, 1999a). A usable definition stems from Foucault's text ‘The subject and power’: This word must be allowed the very broad meaning which it had in the sixteenth century. ‘Government’ did not refer only to political structures or to the management of states; rather, it designated the way in which the conduct of individuals or of groups might be directed: the government of children, of souls, of communities, of families, of the sick. It did not only cover the legitimately constituted forms of political or economic subjection but also modes of action, more or less considered or calculated, which were destined to act upon the possibilities of action of other people. To govern, in this sense, is to structure the possible field of action of others. (Foucault, 1982: 789–790)
How was this conduct of conduct played out in the relations between leaders, teachers and researchers? In the following sections, we give some examples of this, distinguishing between what we call ‘discursive’ and ‘emotional’ conduct of conduct. 8
Discursive conduct of conduct
The discursive conduct of conduct was manifested in the general way the project was conceived of and initiated by the school's leader. Stating a need for innovation amounts to structuring a field of action for others – in this case, for teachers and researchers. In this field, it was not possible to not innovate one's practice. Furthermore, not stating exactly what type of innovation is needed, but instead relying on teachers and researchers to find this out, amounts to calculating and utilizing the knowledge possessed by those one wants to govern.
Organization theorists Mats Alvesson and Hugh Willmott (2002: 630) point out that knowledge and skills are ‘key resources for regulating identity in a corporate context as knowledge defines the knower: what one is capable of doing (or expected to be able to do) frames who one “is”’. In the project, it was initially our (i.e. the researchers’) knowledge that was calculated, bought and used for government. Later, one could say that we became a tool – or kind of middle managers (see Bøje, 2016) – for the management by bringing in and utilizing the special knowledge possessed by the teachers. The last part happened, in particular, by emphasizing the project to be an action research project. At a first seminar with the teachers, we stressed that doing action research meant adhering to certain principles of democracy, emancipation, critical-utopian awareness and bottom-up development (see, for example, Nielsen and Nielsen, 2015). This was news to the teachers since, for the previous couple of years, they had been exposed to top-down, ministerially defined projects, such as lowering the dropout rate among students. In contrast to such projects, our emphasis on democracy, emancipation and bottom-up development seemed to help recruit some very dedicated and capable teachers, who were willing to invest knowledge, skills, extra time and energy in developing the so-called ‘actions’ that should bring about innovations in the school and lead it towards the goal of becoming a new centre of excellence.
Emotional conduct of conduct
As described, the above ways of conducting conduct (whether the researchers’ or teachers’) were discursive in nature. Knowledge, language and a certain vocabulary of action research were used to structure a field of possible/impossible action(s). Other, more physiological/emotional ways of conducting conduct were also in play, however. For one thing, food seemed to play an important role. During the project, food, beverages and snacks were in abundance. More precisely, there was an abundance of food, beverages and snacks after the location of the seminars and workshops was moved from the University of Southern Denmark to facilities at the collaborating school. Apparently, as researchers, we were not very good at seeing to the teachers’ well-being. At the same time, some of the teachers expressed uneasiness with the language and atmosphere at the university. So, the seminars and workshops were brought ‘home’ to the teachers, where food, snacks and beverages followed in abundance.
According to a psychoanalytical line of thought, food, snacks and drinks may act in a process of sublimation. In fact, it is regarded as a highly developed defence mechanism in our culture. We do not want to infantilize the teachers or to overestimate the psychoanalytical concepts, but we do find the amount and quality of the food, snacks and drinks consumed during the project to be remarkable. A cautious interpretation is that such objects came into play when the (discursive) conduct of conduct created too much anxiety among (some of) the teachers (Žižek, 2008b).
The same seemed to apply to the school's leader. He can be described as quite a hearty person, always dressed casually, with a big smile on his face, hugging and giving handshakes to everyone, recognizing his staff and striving to make them ‘feel good’. Moreover, he was first educated as a teacher, so he still resembled his staff in a common ‘teacher habitus’. According to Alvesson and Robertson (2006), downplaying hierarchy is a widespread strategy in many of today's post-bureaucratic organizations. It can symbolize progressiveness, flexibility, leisure and opportunities for participation in decision-making. Furthermore, it can contribute to the shaping of a shared corporate identity. It seems possible to interpret the leadership performed by the school's leader in these terms. Through his leadership, he may have represented an opportunity for identification with the teachers. His way of combining a ‘teacher habitus’ with a ‘leader habitus’ may have been, at one and the same time, a sufficiently safe and challenging means to continue the (discursive) conduct of conduct.
Finally, feelings of collectivity created in certain contexts seemed to be part of the emotional conduct of conduct. Alvesson and Willmott (2002: 630) refer to this technique as ‘group categorization and affiliation’, emphasizing that ‘this kind of identity regulation works through social events and the management of shared feelings more than through linguistic distinctions or cognitive operations’. In our example, this was particularly evident in the closing conference, where the results of the school's innovation projects (including ours) were presented to the wider public. A series of presentations was given by a number of ‘hot shots’ who had not been involved in the innovation projects. These presentations could be described as being delivered by, first, the ‘authoritative’ academic, providing expert knowledge; second, the ‘entertaining’ academic, talking about – and facilitating live onstage – team meetings and cooperation; and, third, the ‘motivating’ academic, making people stand up, hold hands, rejoice and acquire new ‘mindsets’. In particular, the last presentation style seemed to have an impact on people. What happened could more precisely be interpreted in terms of Durkheim's (1995) concept of ‘collective effervescence’ – a kind of electricity or shared feeling seemed to go through people, uniting them in a new religion and, thus, continuing the conduct of conduct.
‘Strong’ and ‘soft’ management philosophies: conclusion and discussion
In this article, we have attempted to analyse some of the current management philosophies involved in education reform, their ideological and structural underpinnings, the forms of government they make plausible/implausible, and the consequences they have for educational leaders, teachers and, ultimately, the educational task. With our analysis, we hope that we can start a critical discussion of these two hegemonic management philosophies that regulate professionals within education today. These philosophies are not neutral, as we have argued, but are value-laden and have various consequences for how we think about educational work in general, and for how work is done in practice in particular. We have referred to these two management philosophies as the ‘strong’ state and the ‘soft’ market, respectively. While our analyses give insight into the nature of these philosophies, and into the consequences they have for leaders and teachers, they show less about the consequences for the educational task. Therefore, we will merely discuss this last question on the basis of our analyses.
As a management philosophy, the ‘strong’ state seems to come into play – and be dominant – when an educational domain is too important to be ruled by market forces alone. Different constraints are designed by the state to control the market or ensure that ‘output’ lives up to expectations. In our first example – upper secondary schools – these constraints were used to reduce the number of dropouts, to enrol a fair share of socio-economically disadvantaged students, and to secure high grades and student satisfaction for all. Operationally, the ‘strong’ state implies a direct, hierarchical, measurable, disciplining and cynical type of rule – that is, it is a type of rule under which educational leaders are in no doubt that they are being ruled. Nevertheless, our first example shows that educational leaders can, in fact, initiate a new ‘numbers game’ in which they, on the one hand, express true loyalty towards what the numbers (and the rulers) ‘say’ and, on the other hand, manipulate the numbers (and rulers) according to their own strategic interests. In this way, the new numbers game seems to involve a certain dose of cynicism, whereby school leaders are able to see through the ideology of the state – but still act in accordance with it. As for teachers, our analysis suggests that their historically developed sense of professionalism comes under pressure when the new numbers game becomes a numbers ‘regime’. Unlike leaders, teachers cannot very easily question or manipulate the numbers. Rather, they are forced to accept them at face value and more or less perform in accordance with them. Their own professional voices are easily silenced, disqualified as false or dissent, or ultimately removed. At worst, it eliminates complicated conversations about the tasks of education and ‘the agonistic struggle as the very condition of a living democracy within and beyond the profession’ (Clarke and Phelan, 2015: 264).
The ‘soft’ market seems to prevail in educational domains where there is less political attention. In our second example – vocational educational training – the politics of education can be described as rather undramatic and consensual. As long as (1) enough students enrol in these programmes and (2) the number of dropouts is not too high, politicians seem to be satisfied. Hence, the market is allowed to prevail. Operationally, the ‘soft’ market gives room for an indirect, invisible, non-specific and seemingly non-hierarchical form of government – what we have described as ‘conduct of conduct’. In our second example, this conduct of conduct was used to bring innovations into a vocational school for basic health and care. This involved the discursive and emotional conduct of teachers’ conduct in the attempt to make them innovate in their teaching practices. This had consequences for teachers’ professionalism. It seemed to be ‘hijacked’ by a new form of organizational professionalism that prepared the way for a corporate identity shared by all personnel – including leaders. This mostly applied to the teachers who were fronting the innovation project; teachers who attempted to say ‘no’ to that project – or get out of participating in it – were less affected. The question is whether or not it is possible to say ‘no’ in the longer run. For the time being, new divisions and hierarchies between teachers were a corollary effect of the ‘soft’ market philosophy.
How may the core of welfare work – in this case, the educational task – be affected by these management philosophies? Based on our conclusions above, some possibilities seem more plausible than others. Following the logic of the ‘strong’ state, it seems possible that the educational task will be framed and classified in a rather ‘strong’ way. Just as numbers and output have become a benchmark for teachers’ work, they may easily become – and are already (see Ball, 2008; Taubman, 2009) – a benchmark for students’ learning. The educational task may simply become a matter of ‘producing’ the right numbers. Following the logic of the ‘soft’ market, other possibilities are discernible. To use the same vocabulary, the educational task can be expected to be framed and classified in more ‘soft’ ways, rendering a larger scope of action. However, our analysis suggests that the educational task may easily be defined by the core of market logic: supply and demand. One day, the demand may be ‘practice learning’ (as in the innovation project); the following day, the demand may be something else. Thus, the educational task may become highly flexible and short term – a matter of giving the right service at the right moment to the right customer.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.