Creative and performativity practices in primary schools: a Foucauldian perspective

A number of policy texts are present in educational settings at any one time and each influences the power and significance of others. Policy discourses are one of the main means whereby policy texts, in the settings in which they operate, influence the value, the implementation and the embedding of those policies. However, a number of discourses operate at the same time in any given context and they also they influence the interpretation and implementation of them through the way in which practitioners manage policy processes. This research focuses on two such discourses in education, that of performativity and creativity and investigates how primary teachers manage these policies and how they are influenced by them

Institutional embrace and the postmodern professional

The post-modern teacher is one that has been fashioned over the last 20 year. S/he belongs to a 'greedy institution' in which teachers embrace its values and reproduce them as well as adding value by contributing to a continuous reinvention of it. Their professional identity is now one that is isomorphic with the school, one in which status and professional expertise are bound up with the image of the institution in the glo-na-cal environment of global, national and local. Web sites proclaim the character of the school but also celebrate their local status while national league tables pin point their level of achievement locally and nationally. Their global responsibility is mirrored in their commitment to raising achievement for the labour market and the national economy. The post-modern professional teacher is now a total teacher taking on everything and anything that policy demands as well as their own interests and values, for example contrasting performative and creative pedagogies. The commitment of the postmodern professional has been gained through the development of team work and collaboration, the necessity to improve performative targets and the survival of their institution in a market orientated environment. Economic imperatives drive education policy and they now include creative and entrepreneurialist market approaches, team cultures and a discourse of performativity. The Total Teacher has to ensure the raising of achievement by reaching targets based on external testing, support the institution in maintaining its market position and status, use team strategies and develop creative learners. This paper examines the life of the total professional who plays a major role in the development of the embracing institution

Creative and Performativity Policies in Primary Schools

Primary schools face a new situation, one in which policies promoting creativity no longer have to be fought for but are being promoted at government and national educational level alongside policies that focus on the assessment of school performance in inspections and national tests and encourage target setting. We sought to ascertain how these policy discourses, the contents of which have been perceived as conflicting (Jeffrey and Woods 1998), were affecting primary school management, teachers and learners. In this climate of accountability schools appeared to embrace performance and act innovatively and creatively. Our professional primary school teachers were team players who contributed to the presentation of the school as a unified, creative, inclusive and effective managerial organisation. The merging of the two policies was not pervasive across schools or within schools but there were some examples involving cross-curricular projects. More prominent was a ‘bolt on’ activity of creative teaching and learning such as special creative curriculum weeks or days. Schools found it necessary to ensure success in national tests by institutionalising lengthy SATS preparation for, in some cases, the whole of the Spring term. However, performativity as a progression from one achievement to the next was valued. Teachers, learners and parents considered it beneficial to have information about levels because, in a spirit of openness, all knew what to expect. Professional Identities The stress levels found in the 1990s, (Menter, Muschamp et al. 1997; Osborn, McNess et al. 2000; Troman and Woods 2001) appear to have dissipated along with any resistance from teachers who appeared to be more focused on coping strategies such as team building and appropriating testing and target setting for their own professional benefit. The performativity imperatives were internalised and sometimes generated guilt if they were unrealised but teachers sought to ameliorate these tensions or to resolve them. Where resolution was not possible they accepted the tension and lived with it, (Jones, Pickard et al. 2008) facing daily dilemmas, tensions and constraints but acting creatively with colleagues to manipulate the situation. Conclusion The creativity and performativity policies were integrated at an organisational level through the construction of a school culture of performance and institutional positioning in an open market but less integrated at the level of pedagogy. Where the merging of the two pedagogies did take place – as in 'smart teaching' - teaching creatively was the preferred form over teaching for creativity. The progression narrative was a major feature around which curriculum and pedagogies were organised but where external performativity dominated such as national testing creative teaching was marginalised to ‘bolt on’ fun time slots

The impact of New Labour's educational policy on primary schools

About the book: Michael Fielding looks at what the Labour Government has achieved in the last four years with its policy of 'education, education, education'. There has been widespread disappointment in New Labour's education policies, which on the whole have not steered too far wide of those put in place by Margaret Thatcher, including issues of marketisation, testing and performativity. Michael Fielding has called on the key policy thinkers in education to offer their opinions on what has happened in education over the first three to four years of the New Labour Government. Education policy is a controversial subject and with a General Election expected within the next few months, this book will be read widely by people within education, politicians and journalists and by others anxious to get to facts and avoid the spin. The subject matter and the presence of so many high profile educationalists make this an essential read

Qualitative data analysis in cross-cultural projects

Large-scale research projects, conducted in a cross-European context, are increasingly attractive to educational researchers and policy-makers. However, this form of comparative research across cultures brings problems concerning the standardization of data collection and analysis, particularly where ethnographic research is concerned, as it prioritizes a full range of qualitative research strategies. This paper outlines the use of a universal model and the approaches recently taken by two research teams and contrasts these with another recent nine-partner comparative European study that used ethnographic methods. We then describe the analytical procedures used in the project, which encouraged participant observation and individual researcher interpretation in order to generate grounded accounts and outline how they were culturally sensitive and meaningful to research teams who used varied analytical approaches. However, this raised difficult issues for the 'final' analysis and the production of a loosely coupled research report. Our pragmatic solution was a process of 'qualitative synthesis' whereby individual partner reports were collated by the Project Director and treated as data and a grounded theory approach was applied to generate tentative theory in respect of creative learning. The paper concludes by arguing that data generated by a loosely coupled approach to qualitative comparative research which uses a wide range of data collection methods can be effectively analysed with a qualitative synthesis

Coping collectively: the formation of a teacher self-help group

Some social movements theorists argue that contemporary social movements such as pressure groups and support groups are increasingly fulfilling the protest function of political parties and trades unions in post-industrial societies. Furthermore, these social, cultural, emotional and economic developments are occurring on a global scale. This article is an ethnographic account of teachers in an English local education authority who formed a self-help group for what they perceived to be 'bullied' (i.e. abused in the workplace) local authority and private sector employees. This was a mode of collective rather than individual coping. The identity work involved in self-renewal for these workers was a collective, social and political process, involving networking with other similar individuals and groups nationally. I argue that, given the decline in trades union powers, the teachers can be considered to be reinventing collectivity and collective protest. And the self-help group studied is not fundamentally different in character to labour movements of the past

Method in the messiness: Experiencing the ethnographic PhD process

About the book: Doing a doctorate in education is always a challenging and difficult process. Doing a doctorate in education that is based upon ethnographic research is even more so. This book draws together a series of semi-autobiographical reflexive accounts of the process of doing a doctorate using educational ethnography. The individual studies include research into school effectiveness, the experiences of Asian teenagers, sexual cultures in the primary school, mature students on Access courses, primary school management, the experiences of children with special educational needs, teachers' work intensification, the family and school experiences of Year 9 students and a Youth Training programme within English professional football. The range of topics shows how import ethnographic work has become in education. Most of the contributors are still at the early stage of their academic careers. Their writings have not yet attained 'classic' status - although some may be on the way to such status. The doctoral process is still a vivid memory in their minds and they have been able to drawn upon their fieldnotes and recollections to construct accounts that shed light on their experience and help to demystify it. The book will be of immense value for those who are thinking of doing a doctorate, for others still struggling through the process, and for their supervisors

Professional cultures of creativity and care in performative primary schools

The research team has undertaken sustained "involved" observation in six contrasting English primary schools located in contrasting Local Education Authorities. A main focus was how the headteachers and teachers implement performativity policies in the schools and the impact of this on their professional and personal "selves" as they also attempt to implement creativity policies. In this paper, we focus on the experience and perspectives of teachers working in professional cultures of creativity and care in very contrasting economic and social situations. English primary schools were noted for their creative pedagogic approaches and professional cultures of care (Nias, 1989). However, owing to reform agendas introduced for social justice reasons but also aimed at improving educational standards for increasing international competitiveness, both creativity and cultures of care have come under attack in performative primary schools (Troman et al., 2007). At the same time as performative policies are being introduced there is increasing advocacy for the adoption of creativity policies within English primary education. The research reported in this paper has been conducted over two school years in order to analyse the effects of new initiatives in terms of their impact on teacher identity and changing experience of their roles in these work cultures. The paper concludes by arguing that teachers are managing the conflicts involved in implementing these forms of policy but professional cultures of care and creativity, while creating spaces for resistance to performative pressures, also serve performative ends

Time for ethnography

Ethnography derives from traditional anthropology, where time in the field is needed to discern both the depth and complexity of social structures and relations. Funding bodies, seeking quick completion, might see ethnographies as unlikely to satisfy 'value for money' criteria, in spite of the rewards to be gained from time-consuming 'thick description', and rich analysis that gets close to the lived experience of participants in social settings. However, ethnographic time need not only be perceived of as a lengthy and sustained period in the field prior to writing. The authors suggest that there are different forms of ethnographic research time, each with specific features, and drawing on their experience of ethnographic research they exemplify them. They conclude by suggesting that the selection of the appropriate form is dependent on the contingent circumstances of the research and the main purpose of the research, and suggest strategies for developing this work in contemporary circumstances