Master teachers as professional developers

Abstract

As education’s main workforce, teachers have been the target of policies designed to shape and affirm new versions of professionalism. This paper examines this issue as it is exemplified by the Teachers of Teachers Network (TTN), a program developed by Chile’s Ministry of Education. As a program designed to identify and reward high quality teachers, it draws from New Public Management’s version of professionalism, which promotes managerial cultures based on individual, test-based incentives. TTN members are granted the opportunity to become entrepreneurs, offering professional development (PD) services to other teachers. As a program designed to develop high quality teachers, it draws from a sociocultural version of teacher professionalism based on the development of interpersonal relations that enhance the collective capacity to solve problems. The results of the current study highlight limitations of implementing teacher quality policies that simultaneously draw from contrasting ideas of professionalism. The five TTN teachers participating in the current study resolved these contradictions by concealing their TTN status and (re)presenting themselves as members of the regular teaching force (peers). Through these discursive moves they subverted the possibility of trust, a key nutrient for collegial learning. These findings are interpreted through Hargreaves’ capital theory of school effectiveness and improvement.

Keywords

Teacher leadership teacher professionalization teacher networks new public management

As the target of policies seeking to improve the quality of education, teachers are left to manage the priorities, roles and identities required to respond to the conflicting demands of their workplaces and policy mandates (Gleeson and Knights, 2006; Ranson, 2008). In this paper we examine this issue as it is exemplified by a program developed by Chile’s Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) to identify, reward, develop and retain exemplary teachers working in state-subsidized schools. The Red Maestros de Maestros (Teachers of Teachers Network, TTN) purports ‘to strengthen the teaching profession by making the most of the capacities of teachers who have been accredited for their excellence, thus contributing to the PD of all classroom teachers’ (Beca, 2005: 5)¹. Through a four-stage assessment process, teachers may become accredited and hired by the Ministry, universities or schools to provide state-funded PD services. The TTN strategy is also used in other parts of the world, as for example the National Board of Teaching Standards in the United States and the Advanced Skills Teachers in Australia (Ingvarson and Chadbourne, 1997, cited in Margolis and Deuel, 2009).

Policies designed to strengthen the teaching profession represent projects to shape and affirm new versions of professionalism (Beijaard et al., 2000; Gee, 2000–2001; Spalding et al., 2011; ten Dam and Blom, 2006). As we discuss in the next section, TNN provides two competing versions of teacher professionalism, thus alternative markers to define oneself and others as a professional. As a program designed to identify and reward high quality teachers professionalism is fashioned by the adoption of New Public Management, thus placing individual teachers as the target for improvements through incentives and test-based accountability. As an initiative to develop high quality teachers, TTN conveys a version of professionalism that stems from sociocultural theories of professional learning, which place the school and the collective of teachers as the target for improvements, fostering civic forms of accountability.

Using a multiple-case study design we examined how the vocabularies provided in both frameworks were used by five TTN members to define themselves as professionals, as well as the teachers who participated in professional development (PD) workshops they led. By studying practitioners as policy implementers, this study sought to provide insights into the possibilities and limitations of the effects envisioned by policies purporting to strengthen the quality of the teaching force. By examining how teachers negotiate policies oriented by New Public Management, the current study also sought to provide insights into how this particular ideology penetrates and naturalizes the version of professionalism that underpins current initiatives to ‘modernize’ the Chilean teaching force.

The results of the current study highlight limitations of implementing teacher quality policies that simultaneously draw from contrasting ideas of professionalism. TTN teachers participating in the current study resolved these contradictions by concealing their TTN status and (re)presenting themselves as members of the regular teaching force (peers). Through these discursive moves they subverted the possibility of trust, a key nutrient for collegial learning. These findings are interpreted through Hargreaves’ (2001) capital theory of school effectiveness and improvement.

Competing versions of teacher professionalism: TTN as an expression of New Public Management

The modernization of the education sector in countries around the world has involved the adoption of managerial practices common in the private sector – what is known as New Public Management (NPM) (Comber and Nixon, 2009; Gleadle et al., 2008; Gruening, 2001; Gunter, 2008; Hoveid and Hoveid, 2008; Martínez, 2004). In Chile, the main features of NPM, as characterized by Wittmann (2008), have shaped the last 30 years of educational reforms. This has entailed initiatives such as: the involvement of private providers exempt from regulations inherent to public administration; administrative value placed on outputs rather than on procedures; accountability systems based on standardized assessments external to the schools; competition as an incentive for improvement; and the dichotomous construction of educational administration, placing policy and operational administration at the ministerial level and lower administration at the municipal level (for a thorough analysis of these initiatives see a review prepared by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (2004)). As we show next, several of these characteristics are expressed in Chile’s current teacher evaluation system, which contains provisions for assessment, PD and financial incentives. This evaluation system is required for teachers working in the municipal sector, whereas teachers employed by state-subsidized private providers may participate on a voluntary basis.

Chile’s teacher evaluation system

To become a member of the TTN, teachers must undergo a four-stage assessment process. First, teachers are evaluated on the professionals standards defined in the Framework for Good Teaching, which describes teaching tasks in relation to four dimensions: planning, creating a classroom environment conducive to learning, teaching for learning, and professionalism. Four sources of evidence are required to judge the quality of performance on these tasks: a portfolio with samples of teachers’ work including a video of a class session, a self-evaluation questionnaire, a structured interview with a peer evaluator, and a report from the school principal. A university-based center scores the assessments and local committees are directly responsible for implementing the system within each municipality and deciding the performance level assigned to each teacher.

Depending on the results obtained from this evaluation, different PD and incentive paths are offered. Teachers evaluated as performing at a ‘Basic’ or ‘Unsatisfactory’ level (below minimum expectations) should be provided by their employers with specific PD opportunities in order to improve (funding comes from MINEDUC). Only teachers rated as ‘Unsatisfactory’ must receive PD and are reevaluated the following year. Teachers in all other levels are reevaluated every four years. Two consecutive ‘Unsatisfactory’ evaluations lead to dismissal.

Second, teachers rated as ‘Competent’ or ‘Distinguished’ may choose to take a paper-and-pencil test that measures pedagogical and content knowledge in the primary subject they teach. A successful performance on this test entitles the teacher to the Variable Bonus for Individual Performance. The bonus is given for four years and amounts to an increase ranging from 5% to 25% of the minimum national salary for teachers. Third, these teachers can also voluntarily access the Pedagogical Excellence Bonus by completing an additional examination and submitting a portfolio. A financial bonus for the next 10 years, with the amount correlating with the years of teaching experience, is given to those who score at the ‘Competent’ level or above. Now teachers can seek accreditation to become a member of the TTN.

The accreditation process involves the construction of a portfolio that provides evidence of the applicant’s mastery of a set of competencies defined in the Framework of Competencies for Teachers of Teachers. The framework includes the following dimensions: 1) creating an environment for adult learners, 2) leadership and contribution to the PD of peers, 3) teaching for the learning of adults, and 4) contextualization of the educational process. Once accredited, TTN members are asked to develop PD proposals that may facilitate ‘an interchange that will allow for the acquisition of new skills, competencies and knowledge by those who developed the proposals as well as by those who are direct beneficiaries of this activity’ (Beca, 2005: 5). These may involve personal proposals or the participation in institutional projects implemented by external consultants contracted by MINEDUC. This work represents additional income as TTN members are required to remain as classroom teachers with a reduced load.

As shown in Table 1, the vocabularies and devices to define teacher professionalism provided by the teacher evaluation system align closely with the main tenets of NPM. To be recognized as an exemplary teacher TTN members must walk ‘through linear progressive career stages in a hierarchy of increasing professionalism and/or managerial competence’ (Gleeson and Knights, 2006: 282), expressed through progressively more demanding assessments. As we explain in the next section, this version of professionalism is antagonist to the version promoted by the sociocultural perspective that underpins the idea that exemplary teachers can become teacher leaders who support learning communities among peers.

Table 1.

Distinctions between versions of teachers’ work expressed by New Public Management and sociocultural perspectives on teaching and teacher learning.

New Public Management	Sociocultural perspectives on teacher learning
1. Teaching as an individual performance.	Teaching as collaborative and distributed, interactive professionalism (Schechter, 2010).
2. Teacher quality is a matter of individual choice and effort.	Teacher quality is produced through a dynamic relationship between the teacher and the work context.
3. Professional development is understood as meeting performance standards.	Learning is the core of teachers’ professional development (Hofman and Dijkstra, 2010).
4. Good teaching can be codified in a specialized language and clear work outcomes are defined by policy makers. This enables a definition of the products to be generated which are subject to evaluation by trained scorers, defining and restricting what is deemed a valuable performance.	Good teaching requires content and pedagogical knowledge which may be codified, plus an understanding and enacting of the moral and ethical dimensions of teaching as advocates for social justice (Grossman, 1992; Liston and Zeichner, 1991).
5. Primarily, external incentives will prompt teachers to achieve excellence. Teachers will seek to maximize financial rewards as well as to minimize sanctions.	Primarily, motivation based on ‘vocation’, a commitment to children’s growth, and to service, as well as to advancing their own professional learning.
6. Professional and managerial cultures based on consumerist forms of accountability that emphasize competition and choice (Ranson, 2003, cited in Gleeson and Knights, 2006).	Professional and managerial cultures based on civic forms of professional accountability for interpersonal relations among school professionals that enhance the quality of everyday life and collective capacity to solve problems (Sebring et al., 2006).
7. Teachers as leadership as enterprising selves displaying autonomy in a labor market characterized by flexibility. The teacher as a knowledge worker actively manages his/her knowledge, displaying his/her capacity to offer this product to potential clients (Gleadle et al., 2008).	Teacher leadership as policymaking, service and solidarity. In Chile, the tradition of the teacher as a public servant with a social mission (Avalos and Assael, 2006; Nuñez, 2004).

TTN as an expression of sociocultural perspectives on teacher learning

PD, a key component of educational reform throughout the world, has increasingly adopted approaches based on a sociocultural theory of professional learning (Avalos, 1998; Lieberman and Miller, 2004). This shift is supported by research on effective PD which identifies school-based activities involving teams of teachers as a key practice (Desimone, 2009). From this perspective, teachers are constituted as subjects who actively construct knowledge as members of a learning community that ‘continuously inquire into their practice, and, as a result, discover, create, and negotiate new meanings that improve their practice’ (Skerrett, 2010: 648). PD models that promote learning among peers provide more and better opportunities for teachers to develop a common understanding of the work reformers expect them to do, critically appropriating these expectations in ways that make sense to the specificities of their workplace. Learning among peers fosters the exercise of professional judgment and develops a sense of belonging by which personal knowledge and practices can become a shared resource for school improvement (Cuddapah and Clayton, 2011; Hargreaves, 2001).

To pursue educational improvements, networks of educators have become a prominent modality in the United States, Europe and Latin America (Montecinos, 2009; Niesz, 2010). The value of networks as structures for educational reform draws from sociocultural perspectives on professional learning as well as from social capital theory (Muijs et al., 2010). Social capital refers to the interpersonal relations among school professionals that influence the quality of everyday life, and shape their collective capacity to solve problems (Coburn and Russell, 2008; Hargreaves, 2001; Sebring et al., 2006;). These networks are ‘premised on an understanding that teacher learning should take place in collegial communities that encourage active participation, support social interaction, and endure over time’ (Niesz, 2010: 37).

As shown in Table 1, the vocabularies and devices to define teacher professionalism provided by the sociocultural perspective that underpins TTN frames professionalism around concepts of collegiality, reciprocity and collective responsibility for the achievement a school attains. Which of these contrasting frameworks are privileged by TTN members as they define their professionalism? What are the effects or consequences of this definition on the social relations they establish with each other and with teachers who participate in their PD enterprise? To answer these questions, in the current study we used discourse analysis to code transcripts of semi-structured interviews and practical argument interviews conducted with five TTN members who were performing PD work at the time they participated in the study.

Method

Participants

From a TTN directory provided online by MINEDUC we identified members residing in the geographical area in which our university is located, inviting them by email to participate in the study. Additionally, a local university provided contact information of TTN members implementing institutional PD projects. School principals attending a PD program at our university were contacted to find members implementing personal PD projects. Through these procedures three teachers implementing institutional projects and two teachers implementing personal projects were recruited for this study. Participation entailed their informed consent as well as the consent of teachers/schools involved in the PD workshops they were conducting at the time. Table 2 summarizes key aspects of each participant’s trajectory and PD activities².

Table 2.

Professional characteristics of participants.

Teacher	Professional license	Years of teaching experience	Current employment	Key professional development	Experiences as professional developer
Elisa	Elementary teacher, with a specialization in mathematic and natural science education.	19	Generalist teaching grades 1–4 in a male, urban, private subsidized school.	Postgraduate course in Curriculum and Evaluation (2000–2001); MINEDUC grant for a study abroad in Cuba – Math Methods (2003).	LEM Tutor (2004–2005). Training of peer evaluators (2006). Anticipation Schools (2006).
Viviana	Elementary teacher, with a specialization in history and geography.	25	Generalist teaching grades 5–8 in an urban municipal school.	EXPLORA-science education (2001–2002); Postgraduate course in science education (2003).	LEM Tutor (2004–2005). Teacher Leader postgraduate course for elementary science education (2007).
César	Elementary teacher, with a specialization in religion education.	18	Generalist teaching grades 1–4 in an urban, private subsidized school.	Postgraduate studies in educational administration (2007).	LEM Tutor (2004–2005). Anticipation Schools (2006).
Sandy	Elementary teacher, with a specialization in Language arts	21	Generalist teaching grades 1–4, in an urban municipal school.	MINEDUC grant to study abroad in Belgium (2001); Postgraduate course in Development of Innovative Pedagogical Practices in P-900 schools (2001); District workshops in math methods for lower elementary teachers (2001–2002) Masters in Education (2008).	LEM Tutor (2004). Consultant in language arts (2006).
Renata	Elementary teacher	18	Generalist teaching grades 5–8 in a rural municipal school. Holds the position of Chief of the Technical-Pedagogical Unit at her school.	MINEDUC grant to do a study abroad in California –Science Methods (2003).	Microcenter Workshops (2004). Personal Development Plans within the teacher evaluation system (2005).

MINEDUC: Ministry of Education; LEM: Lectura, Escritura y Matemáticas (Reading, Writing and Mathematics).

Viviana

Viviana had been hired by the Priority Schools Program designed by MINEDUC, and implemented by a local university, to improve the skills and knowledge of lower elementary teachers working in persistently low performing schools. Schools’ participation in this program was determined by MINEDUC and their district’s central office. The first component of the program aimed to develop in schools (and teachers) the practice of planning lessons for language arts and mathematic classes. The session she chose to videotape for the practical argument interview took place in the school’s computer room, lasted 105 minutes and included six classroom teachers, a teacher from the school’s management team, plus the principal (who was in and out of the room throughout the session). The theme of the session was lesson planning and activities were organized into three sections: introduction (silent reading), content development (PowerPoint presentation) and closing (informal oral assessment).

Elisa

Elisa was working for the same Priority Schools Program. The workshop Elisa chose to videotape for the practical argument interview took place in the school’s teachers’ lounge, which was concurrently used by other teachers to complete various tasks. The session she chose to videotape for the practical argument interview lasted 100 minutes and included four classroom teachers, the school’s Chief of the Technical Pedagogical Unit and the principal (who came in an hour after the session had started). The theme of the session was lesson planning and teacher’s self-evaluation of their practices. The main activity was an analysis of a classroom observation protocol Elisa was proposing to the group. The last part of the session was spent reviewing the mathematic curriculum.

César

César was working in the Anticipation School Program – an educational proposal of Chilean educator Gabriel Castillo which promotes an inclusive school by ensuring all students learn the basics in the domains of values, habits, knowledge and skills. César had been doing PD work at this school for a couple of years. The session César chose to videotape for the practical argument interview took place in the school’s computer room, lasted 60 minutes and included six classroom teachers, plus the school’s Chief of the Technical Pedagogical Unit. Teachers were first asked to individually read a text and answer questions. Next, they engaged in collective oral reading of the same text and sharing their responses to these questions. The closing activity, led by César, involved a presentation of key theoretical concepts addressed in that text.

Renata

Renata had developed a personal proposal to work with teachers at her school who were preparing the evidence required by MINEDUC’s teacher evaluation portfolio. The session she chose to videotape for the practical argument interview had five participants, took place in the school’s computer room and lasted 40 minutes. In the first part, teachers reviewed Domain B of the Framework for Good Teaching – Creating an Environment Conducive to Learning. Next, teachers talked about students’ motivation for learning. The closing activity involved a revision of what each participant had written as the objectives for the lesson to be included in the portfolio.

Sandy

Sandy had developed a personal proposal to work with teachers at her school so they would become familiarized with the Framework for Good Teaching and with a new language arts didactic approach. The session she chose to videotape for the practical argument interview had four participants, took place in the school’s computer room and lasted 120 minutes. The school principal joined the group halfway through the session. The first activity asked participants to watch a video in which various teachers narrated how they had approached the tasks involved in Domain A – Preparation for Teaching. Next, Sandy presented the tasks involved in this domain (PowerPoint presentation). Both resources had been developed by MINEDUC.

Data sources and procedures

Semi-structured interview (SSI)

The purpose of this first interview was to learn about the participant’s professional trajectory, their understandings of the PD work they conducted with peers and their perspectives on the TTN. Interviews lasting between 60 and 90 minutes were audiotaped and transcribed for analysis.

Practical argument interview (PAI)

Practical arguments scrutinize actions through a procedure designed to make explicit the actor’s post hoc reflection on specific events recorded in the videotape of a teaching session (Fenstermacher and Tochon, 1996). As Fenstermacher explained, through practical arguments a teacher provides his or her perspective on the experiences of teaching, ‘by offering a means to reconsider this experience, and by encouraging the reconstruction of that experience’ (Fenstermacher, 1994: 28). To elicit teachers’ perspectives the researcher selects vignettes in the videotape that represent different types of activities and develops questions to help teachers reconstruct those scenes (Gervais and Correa, 2004). In a second stage, a researcher and the teacher view the vignettes, with the teacher responding to these questions. When teachers offer unsolicited comments the tape is stopped and the researcher asks for further elaboration. In this study, interviews lasted between 90 and 120 minutes and were audiotaped and transcribed for analysis.

Data analysis

Discourse analysis following the perspective developed within social psychology was used to examine the vocabularies participants used to narrate their professionalism and the professionalism of their workshops’ participants (Potter and Wetherell, 1987). From this perspective, discourse is understood as a stage where speakers define themselves and their social relations. Interpretative repertoires are the essential elements speakers use to construct versions of actions, cognitive processes and other phenomena. These repertoires are restricted by the terms used, often expressed as key metaphors and other tropes or discursive figures (Gordo and Linaza, 1996). Interpretations center on the functions or effects of these repertoires (Potter, 1996).

Two researchers independently coded all interview transcripts. After a first round of open coding, a final set of codes was defined and used in a second round of coding, leaving open the possibility of revising them. The outcomes of this second round were compared and disagreements resolved through a joint analysis including all five authors. Based on the codes developed, hypotheses were constructed of the functions served by particular methods participants used to narrate themselves and their social relations. Lastly, these hypotheses were contrasted with regularities in these narrations to provide coherence to contradictions, thus detecting the consequences of these discourses.

Results

Results are organized into two broad sections. In the first section we show how through their use of the vocabularies provided by Chilean policies that pursue the modernization of the teaching force these five TTN members had embraced NPM’s notion of professionalism. As an effect, they reified the stratification of the teaching force that is produced through MINEDUC’s teacher evaluation system. On the one hand were reform-oriented teachers (TTN members represented as peers) and on the other non-reform oriented teachers (those who attended their PD workshops, often represented as lacking professionalism). In the second section we present the discursive moves employed to bridge this distance. First, they reframed traditional notions of professionalism that highlight the social responsibility historically associated with the teaching profession. Second, in their interactions with PD participants, they concealed their TTN status and, equivocally and in an instrumental way, claimed a peer status among them.

Stratifying the teaching force

Professionalism is an aspiration for all that is restricted to a few

Participating teachers defined professionalism through an unquestioned adherence to the tenets of educational reform and the TTN program, claiming a hierarchical distinction between themselves and the regular teaching force. The reform had provided a framework for making their practices and resources a means to advance their professionalization:

[The reform] is like the Bible to us, just like the curriculum framework we must follow. The same, a guide that you have…you have to be a professional in the classroom, everywhere. (Renata, PAI)

The Bible presents religious ideas that for believers are unquestionable, provides answers to deep problems, and represents a higher truth that acts as a moral guide. The reform, thus, constitutes a repertoire for defining professionalism that may be presented to others as truth and for making judgments about what acting professionally is or is not. The trio Bible/Reform/Professional reinforces the idea that to be a professional a teacher must behave in agreement with the reform:

I did not see meaning in why I was teaching that to my students and when I started reading about the Reform, I said ‘look, it’s for this, pay attention, there is where we are headed’. Therefore, it gave me the answer… (Elisa, SSI)

For Elisa, knowing the reform was not simply to acquire its language; the master teacher managed to live this language of renovation:

In fact many teachers, not just here, use a lot of technical vocabulary, they use it, I mean they repeat it like a parrot…but when they have to put it into practice they cannot do it. What does that tell me? That they have memorized the vocabulary but have not made it their own. (Elisa, PAI)

Membership in the network was understood as a sense of obligation to make the network, not just be a part of it. This meant collaborating with other members:

We form a small network, it’s ours and if I need something…let’s say I need some resource…‘Who has this assessment resource?’…A colleague comes forward ‘I have it, I will give it to you.’ (Renata, SSI)

Making the network also meant legitimizing their position to identify others who ‘deserved’ to join as well as those who would be left out. Viviana wondered about the continuation of her work after she left this school:

Perhaps we can ask that teacher to lead the project…because she is the most reflective, but she is from upper elementary, but we have to see if this project continues. I do not know. (Viviana, SSI).

Membership in the network is the epitome of the professionalism the Chilean reform promotes. Those who reach the top of the hierarchy, according to these participants, ‘escape the norm’, ‘are distinguished among peers’ or have an advantage bestowed on them by God. In the following two excerpts, professionalization is represented as an individual choice (we all choose), as an aspiration for all that is restricted to a few:

I believe the Teachers’ Network recognizes teachers who sort of escape the norm…teachers who are eager to continue developing their capacities, eager to share what they know, eh…recognition for sure…it affords you opportunities, bottom line I think that the Teachers’ Network has strengthened me and has helped me toward this professionalization that [they] aspire that we all choose, to always continue professionalization.’ (Sandy, SSI)

Perhaps [I am] a bit better because God gave me luck, maybe greater intelligence, I do not know, I took a different road. (Viviana, SSI)

Non-reform oriented teacher

MINEDUC’s evaluation system had anointed our participants as model professionals and from that position they interpreted the behaviours and dispositions of non-reform oriented teachers. From their perspective, as a group, Chilean teachers exhibited an oppositional stance towards the evaluation system, towards PD and towards TTN members. As teacher leaders, the difficulties and tensions that emerged as they fulfilled the responsibilities of persuading and sustaining the reform with peers were attributed to teachers’ lack of capacity, their low expectations for the children served, their lack of motivation, and insecurities when asked to innovate:

The teacher will always seek for an excuse to not do right thing, instead of seeking for tools to do things well…This is another way of looking at it, asking what do I need to do for them to learn? Despite all the difficulties they experience, what I can give them? [Referring to the non-reform oriented teachers’ attitudes towards their work with students.] (Elisa, SSI)

Whereas the teacher evaluation system was understood as effective for identifying those who ‘escaped the norm’, it was described as less effective when applied to the common teacher. The following excerpt presents the possibility that some non-TTN teachers are too lazy to do the hard work of teaching. Those who sought to participate throughout the four-stage assessment process, on the other hand, were constructed as reflective, hardworking teachers:

When I applied for the Pedagogical Excellence, I know many people who did the same thing: the bottom line was for you to write about what you do well or bad…In fact, I am telling you, people have said it, expressed it, said it aloud to me, ‘No, I prepared this just for the portfolio but you’re nuts if you think that this is what I do. I am not always doing this, it is too exhausting.’ You see? Too much work. This is not hearsay from someone else, I was told this directly…I was so embarrassed. (Elisa, PAI)

The lack of professionalism of the non reform-oriented teachers started, according to César, when they entered college. In his narrative there is a reference to the historical ‘vocation’ rather than financial prosperity as the main referent for teacher identity. Additionally, he reinforces an assumption taken for granted in Chile that serves to further regulate the teaching profession and keep vigilance on its members – those who study education are the ones who were unable to score high enough to get admitted into other (more prestigious) university majors:

I think that about 50% of the students who enter initial teacher preparation do not have a vocation [for the profession]. They get there because of their [low] college entrance examination scores…but with many who are there, you can awaken a love for education…but when you go to other schools [as a opposed to the highly selective school in which he works] you realize that there are teachers who couldn’t care less about what they do. (César, SSI)

Bridging the divide

Teachers as entrepreneurs with social responsibility

Participants had adopted many of the characteristics of professionalism as defined by NPM, maintaining some continuity with the historical version of professionalism constructed by teachers in Chile. During the 1900s, particularly during the expansion of public compulsory education in the 1950s and 1960s, the state began to hire vast numbers of teachers. As state employees, teachers defined themselves as public servants, agents of the state working to develop the kind of citizenry promoted by democratic societies (Avalos, 2004). Teaching was understood as a mission to fulfill a social vocation, and social prestige was accrued from civic service rather than from income (Núñez, 2004). This mission was expressed in participants’ altruistic desire to share their expertise with others.

Congruent with the deficit perspective they had ascribed to non-reform oriented teachers working in persistently low performing schools, they saw their role as transferring knowledge rather than co-creating knowledge or developing innovations with participants:

I admit that I have changed, after feeling very flattered you reach a point where you tower a bit above your colleagues and one recognizes that, one knows, but with humility one says ‘this is all good but for what [purpose] do I want this?’…The only way it serves is if I share it…I continue with the option…to work in the most deprived most deficient [schools], because I think they are the ones who need the most… (Viviana, SSI)

I have learned many things here at school [high performing, private subsidized school where he works as a classroom teacher], or this school has helped me develop a clearer picture of the educational elements…and that motivated me to go into the network of teachers because I could go to municipal schools to propose the vision I think is the ‘right idea’…Obviously one needs to contextualize to the place, but that sense of being able to help other teachers encouraged me to enter the network. (César, SSI)

These master teachers positioned themselves as helping the students of peers. Discursively this functions as a form of instrumentalism of those who attend their workshops as their focus was not their professional growth but their students’ learning:

What is happening with students who are not learning?…Children from municipal schools, from the poorest sectors…you have to try to give those children an opportunity and to the extent that teachers improve, they will have an opportunity to be better. (Elisa, SSI)

…your peers are not directly involved with your students [but] you have to think about how do I help this teacher who later has to work with students? (César, SSI)

The two teachers implementing workshops with teachers at their own schools saw their work as a contribution to their school’s success. As they discussed their motives to work with peers, their notion of TTN teachers as a different kind of professional was reinforced. Renata made explicit the distinction between her TTN status and her role as the school’s Technical-Pedagogical Chief (UTP). It was from this second role that she pointed out the importance of teamwork and developing a learning community:

You are now thinking about the group, not about you. You already took a particular path, but now this instance allows you to…form teams…With my preparation as a UTP, I am always thinking about the group, about the school…That is, if you belong to an institution you have to try to make it move up and, in fact, it has moved up quite a bit, we have had many achievements with the colleagues. (Renata, PAI)

The network opened opportunities to increase their income as additional work became available to them through various initiatives sponsored by MINEDUC. The old identity referents were thus mixed with new ones associated with the worker as an enterprising self:

…we have the option of developing these types of projects…it generates a bit more money too…You start getting emails [from the MINEDUC]…‘Colleague you are in the Network, you need to try to work for the Network because you have all these benefits.’ (Renata, SSI)

And also you have the possibility of presenting PD projects and you take on that. You have been accredited. (Viviana, SSI)

Claiming a peer status and concealing their TTN status

The status differences between the leader and the other teachers may be expressed as hostility on the part of those who resent attempts to be persuaded to adopt policy mandates (Barth, 1999, cited in Harris and Muijs, 2003). To enact their altruism and entrepreneurship participants acknowledged and attempted to erase this distance. Two discursive strategies were deployed to attain this objective. The first was to explicitly convey to workshop participants their peer status. Renata and Elisa sought to provide concrete images of their peer status by rooting their message in their own classroom practices. The repeated use of the word assume conveys the speaker’s belief that they are not really peer educational professionals, but she must act as if that were the case. To do otherwise would make her work harder and hurt her colleagues:

As I have said, you do not have to hurt their feelings, because it’s assumed that they are educational professionals and I am…just like them…It’s assume that we are at the same level, so to have someone else tell you what you have to do is a bit difficult, but if I frame it as an example, if I try to find the strategy to get it across… (Renata, PAI)

I think that the most powerful arm is the fact of knowing that if I tell the teacher something, I say it because I know it can be done because after I am with them I put on my apron and go into my classroom. Therefore, I am not the person coming from the university who knows much but has office knowledge…I think that that is what persuades teachers the most, you have a theoretical basis and what you tell them is what you have done, to be a peer… (Elisa, SSI)

A second discursive move was to conceal their identity as a TTN member – they had not told the teachers at their school (and workshops) that they belonged to the network. Generally, the use of disclaimers in discourse serves the purpose of negating a condition or attribute that the speaker believes is socially discredited. In this case, by making a disclaimer the speaker conveys the idea that she knows she is different as she has overcome some things and is better than others but is not allowed to express this aloud:

Even today I can’t say that I am from the Teachers’ Network. It would be like saying that I, that I overcame certain things and that I am better than others, no. (Sandy, PAI)

In Viviana’s explanation, concealing identity served the purpose of legitimizing and lending credibility to her message:

No, I do not tell them because I think it is not a plus going in…I think that a plus going is to be the same as the teacher. That is my plus, that I work in the same environment as the teachers (Viviana, SSI).

Viviana’s metaphor, is not a plus, reinforces the idea that one’s work identity represents capital. The entrepreneurial selves are required to engage in marketing and being a peer seemed like a good selling point, a plus. A peer identity in this case purchases credibility for the message the master teacher wants to convey to her clients. By ignoring the stigmatization associated with the Priority School status of the school in which her participants taught, she sought to make her experience generalizable, thus a valuable referent to guide other teachers’ practices.

Discussion and conclusions

Findings showed that these five teachers uncritically adopted the version of professionalism promoted by a policy that had distinguished them as exemplary teachers. In doing so they failed to define their workshops’ participants as peers. To the extent that the PD component of TTN is premised on the idea of professional learning among peers, this became a problem to be managed in order to validate themselves as well as the knowledge they wanted to transmit. These findings are in agreement with other studies that have highlighted the problematic nature of counting on state-sanctioned teacher leaders to drive reform into the classrooms (Du, 2007; Katzenmeyer and Moller, 2001; Lieberman and Miller, 2004; Margolis and Deuel, 2009; Tedesco and Tenti, 2002).

Hargreaves’ (2001) capital theory of school effectiveness and improvement provides a useful framework to interpret how TTN members used these competing versions of professionalism to fulfill their role as professional developers. The theory considers the school’s intellectual and social capital as central to improvement. Intellectual capital refers to the cumulative knowledge and experience of the school’s stakeholders that could be used to achieve the school’s goals and social capital refers to the quality of the interpersonal relations among school professionals. Hargreaves posits that the relationship between these two forms of capital is straightforward: ‘Social capital is an important lubricant of knowledge transfer on which the mobilization of an organization’s intellectual capital depends’ (Hargreaves, 2001: 492). If that is the case, then findings from this study suggest a fundamental design flaw in the TTN program which, to the extent that it is an expression of NPM, may also signal its limits as a governance model for teacher quality policies. As a strategy to identify high quality teachers it has the effect of simultaneously enlarging the social capital among TTN members and undermining these same teachers’ social capital with those who should benefit from these members’ PD services. To reach and persuade other teachers to adopt reform-oriented teaching practices, however, TTN members require high levels of social capital.

In agreement with NPM-inspired policies seeking to improve teacher quality, TTN accredits teachers for their intellectual capital as a private resource. TTN affords members the opportunity to use this intellectual capital to become enterprising workers who must actively manage their knowledge, displaying a capacity to offer this product to potential clients. In this context, teachers and schools who hire a PD service from a TTN teacher are offered a new subjectivity as well – clients, not peers. Their relationships, therefore, are subject to consumerist forms of accountability. As consumers, educational providers can choose between competing external PD services. Through their choice or refusal to purchase, consumers hold TTN members accountable for offering quality services.

From this perspective, the problem for participating TTN teachers thus became building this social capital so their knowledge would be purchased by non-reform oriented teachers. Claiming to be ‘distinguished’ went against the profession’s egalitarian ethics. Being a teacher leader was recognized as a discredited identity among the teachers with whom they worked so they did not mention this fact to workshop participants. Using the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ doctrine helped them bridge this social distance as they represented to themselves and to researchers as ‘super teachers’ but appeared to the workshops as Clark Kent. Through this concealment they used their professional identity and the professional identity they had constructed for workshop participants as capital – a ‘form of power, a currency, a resource: it can be utilized, traded, exchanged, drawn upon, invested or cashed in’ (McGonigal et al., 2007: 80).

The research supporting professional learning among peers would orient TTN members to address the distance by seeking a different type of social relationship. They would have sought to develop interpersonal relations based on trust and solidarity by, above all, not concealing their TTN status. They would have sought to create bonds, aligning their values, goals and objectives with those espoused by the teachers/schools participating in their PD workshops (Hofman and Dijkstra, 2010). Moreover, NPM’s rhetoric of decentralization would have argued that decisions and priorities about the content and form of the PD services should have been responsive to local concerns. Following such tenets, however, presents a challenge when reform-oriented teachers deemed and rewarded as experts become ‘intellectual workers’ who receive more money than their non-reform oriented peers, who are, in turn, positioned as followers and technicians (Tedesco and Tenti, 2002). It is also a problem when teacher leaders take their perspectives and knowledge as taken-for-granted truth claims and the decisions about funding TTN’s PD proposals are made at the centralized ministerial level.

In Chile, since 2008, the number of businesses enrolled in the register of External Educational Consultants rose from 100 to 500. It has become a $28m industry as 47% of all providers report having hired one of these firms (Bellei and Cajales, 2010). Additional research may explore whether, and how, teacher quality policies can foster the development of collaborative cultures in the schools when models of professional accountability are based on consumerists versus civic forms of accountability. The problematic nature of relying on experts external to the school to guide and support school improvement is evidenced in the current study. In those situations teacher leaders become less influential and their work with peers may become more about managing conflict than fostering learning and reflection (Orland-Barak, 2005).

In agreement with the use of multiple case study methodology, the interpretations offered for these data are not intended as claims that generalize to other TTN teachers. Considering that professionalism is a co-construction expressed in social relations, a limitation of the current study that needs to be addressed through further research is the absence of the perspectives of the classroom teachers who participate in the PD work provided by TTN members. What were the narrative resources they were using to construct the identity of teacher leaders as well as their own identities? Were they aware of the facilitators of TTN status but yet also opted to cover that fact? If so, what was their rationale?

For teachers who embrace the version of professionalism put forth by MINEDUC’s teacher evaluation system, the TTN program may represent a successful policy. In fact TTN members portrayed their relationships with each other in ways that resembled the characteristics of productive PD among teachers (Hofman and Dijkstra, 2010). This system’s efficacy with teachers who may be quite effective in fostering student learning but who have not endorsed this notion of professionalism is less certain. A study conducted by Bellei and colleagues (1997) found that a large proportion of Chilean teachers rejected the policy. Among the reasons given by them was their belief that educational outcomes depended more on institutional and social factors than on individual teachers’ performance. Additionally, the use of individual incentives was perceived as harmful to the school climate as it could divide teachers and foster competition. They noted that this kind of policy ignored the very nature of teachers’ work, which they defined by its ethical and social commitment. TTN members participating in the current study validated some of these concerns. Our participants noted that the version of professionalization marketed by this policy was available to all and also claimed that only few could achieve it.

Footnotes

Funding

The preparation of this manuscript was partially funded by the Centre for Advanced Research in Education (PIA-CONICYT, Project CIE-05) and a grant from the Chilean National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development (Fondecyt # 1090739).

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors did not receive a fee for preparing this manuscript and are not employed by or have any contractual obligations or financial interest in any company referred to in the article.

Notes

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