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Module SAE3701Author Hoffman, N.
Year of Publication 2016
Title Different rules for different teachers: teachers' views of professionalism and
accountability in a bifurcated educated system
Journal Journal of Education
Vol 65 (1)
Page numbers 123-153
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,Different rules for different teachers:
teachers’ views of professionalism and
accountability in a bifurcated education
system1
Nimi Hoffman, Yusuf Sayed and Azeem
Badroodien
Abstract
This paper reports the initial results from a representative survey of teachers in the Western
Cape regarding their views of professionalism and accountability. This is the first survey of
its kind in South Africa. Preliminary analysis of the data from 115 public schools suggests
that teachers at no-fee schools, who are predominantly black women, report facing the
greatest institutional burdens and the greatest need for institutional support, particularly
from the state. Related to this, they tend to stress pastoral care-work as central to being a
professional, while those at fee-paying schools stress their claims to pedagogical knowledge
and job prestige. This indicates that teachers at different schools are subject to different and
unequal institutions (or rules), where the kind of school that teachers work at often reflects
their race and gender positioning. It also implies that the concept of a bifurcated education
system, characterised by different production functions and outcomes for learners, should
be expanded to include teachers and deepened to include institutions.2
1
The financial assistance of the National Research Foundation (NRF) for the South African
Research Chair in Teacher Education towards this research is hereby acknowledged.
Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at, are those of the authors and are not
necessarily to be attributed to the NRF or its partners.
2
The authors would like to thank the Western Cape Education Department, the Department of
Basic Education, the South African Council for Educators, the South African Democratic
Teachers’ Union, and the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa, as
well as other stakeholders for their invaluable support for the project. The authors would also
like to thank all members of the Centre for International Teacher Education for providing a
consistently supportive and intellectually rich environment to conduct the research. The
special contribution of all the fieldworkers, especially Xolisa Mdleleni, is hereby
acknowledged.
,124 Journal of Education, No. 65, 2016
Introduction
This paper reports the initial results from a representative survey of teachers’
understandings of their work in the Western Cape, the first of its kind in
South Africa. The survey is ongoing; however, a descriptive analysis of the
current data from 115 schools is instructive. In this paper, we consider
teachers’ understandings of professionalism and accountability. We ask: how
do race, gender and class shape teachers’ understandings of their work, and
what does this reveal about how their schools function?
The paper proceeds as follows. We first sketch debates on professionalism
and accountability, and link these debates to literature on the bifurcated
education system and the role of institutions in reproducing inequality. We
then set out the research problem and design. In the descriptive analysis, we
consider the types of educational inequalities surveyed teachers face. We then
consider the interplay between teachers’ institutional positioning and their
perceptions of what professionalism consists of, whom they feel they should
be accountable to, and the obstacles they face in being professionals.
We find that teachers at no-fee schools, who are predominantly black women,
report facing the greatest institutional burdens and the greatest need for
institutional support, from both state and non-state actors. Related to this, they
tend to stress pastoral care-work as being central to their conceptualisation of
what it is to be a professional teacher, while those at fee-paying schools stress
their claims to pedagogical knowledge and job prestige.
These results add to the literature characterising South Africa’s education
system as a tale of two schooling systems, one for a multi-racial elite, and the
other for an impoverished black majority. The findings suggest that the
concept of a bifurcated education system should be expanded beyond learners
to include teachers, and that it should be deepened to include institutions that
are differentiated by race, class and gender. We argue that doing so lays the
groundwork for a causal analysis of how the bifurcated education system
reproduces itself. This is in turn useful for identifying counter-measures for a
more equitable system.
, Hoffman, Sayed and Badroodien: Different rules for different teachers. . . 125
Literature overview
The professional status of teachers is a contested one. Do teachers occupy the
position of the classical professions, such as doctors and lawyers, or are they
closer to other kinds of groups, such as nurses or social workers? At the heart
of this scholarly debate lie differing views of teachers’ claims to autonomy,
knowledge and service (Locke, 2004; Sexton, 2007; Gamble, 2010). The
strength of teachers’ claims to autonomy and knowledge is arguably related to
how they are perceived and governed by the state and the public in general.
The weaker the claim, the less their perceived status and esteem. The stronger
the claim, the more they are seen as members of a legitimate profession.
The debate over teachers’ professional status is not only scholarly but also
political. A number of scholars interpret the debate as an ideological contest
over different forms of educational governance (Sachs, 2001; Stevenson,
Carter and Passy, 2007; Hilferty, 2008). This debate is sometimes interpreted
in terms of a contest between ‘democratic’ and ‘managerialist’ views of
educational governance (Sachs, 2001; Whitty, 2006; Gamble, 2010;
Hargreaves and Fullan, 2013; Silova and Brehm, 2013). More ‘democratic’
views of educational governance are viewed as according greater value to
teachers’ agency and autonomy; they are understood to conceptualise
educational excellence as a form of horizontal collaboration between teachers
and various constituencies, including learners, parents, unions and the state,
where such collaboration enables teachers’ creative autonomy. In contrast,
more ‘managerialist’ views of educational governance are viewed as placing
less emphasis on the value of teachers’ autonomy; instead they are understood
to conceptualise educational excellence through vertical accountability to
state and/or corporate actors, so that education is standardised and efficient.
Insofar as teachers’ claims to professionalism are shaped by situational and
institutional factors, their professional standing is fluid and may change over
time (Day, Kington, Stobart and Sammons, 2006). In this regard, Hargreaves
(2000) argues that there have been discrete historical phases of
professionalism: the pre-professional age, the age of the autonomous
professional, the age of the collegial professional, and the post-professional
age. For Hargreaves (2000), teachers’ claims to professionalism were at its
height in the age of the autonomous professional, but have since been eroded.
He argues that in the post-professional period particularly, the state has
subjected schools to market principles such that they are governed under
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