Standardizing and technologizing L1 teachers work: Everyday professional experiences of early career English teachers in Australia
Submitted by:
Scott Bulfin
Abstract:
Neoliberal approaches to education over the last decade have impacted government policy and discourse in Australia resulting in a powerful standards-based reform agenda within both schools and teacher education institutions. This has given rise to increasingly standardised curriculum and assessment, high-stakes testing, as well as professional standards for teachers and accreditation systems for teacher education. Within this standards-based reform agenda there is a heavy and disproportionate emphasis on L1 English/literacy achievement as a key national priority. While this recognises the importance of L1 in educational contexts, it has resulted in increased oversight and pressure on L1 teachers in their everyday professional lives. This standards-based reform agenda is exacerbated by its connection to the increasing technologizing of educational practices (Williamson 2017). It has become commonplace for technology companies, international bodies (eg UNESCO, OECD) and national governments to express great enthusiasm for the “transforming impact [of ICT] on national education systems” (UNESCO, 2011). Such transformations are predicated on the ability of teachers and schools to prepare students “for living and working in a digital world” (DEEWR, 2008). The coupling of standardizing and technologizing imperatives has significant implications for L1 teachers’ work.
For example, a common assumption is that digital platforms support teacher productivity and increase opportunities for teacher-student contact, yet, frequently these are used to standardise teachers’ work and shape their interactions through increased accountability and compliance requirements (Selwyn, Nemorin, Bulfin & Johnson, 2018). Thus, digital platforms often function as proxies for standards based reforms (Bulfin, Parr and Bellis, 2016). For early career L1 teachers, this reductive approach to teaching and learning can become reified and restrict other possible approaches and ways of knowing as the current conditions can appear normal due to their lack of experience with other education systems.
This paper reports on a study examining the “everyday practices” (de Certeau, 1984) of early career L1 teachers in public secondary schools in Victoria, Australia, and how their work is mediated by standards-based reforms and digital platforms being used in schools. In particular, we explore the following questions:
• How are standards-based reforms enacted through digital technologies, structures and processes? To what extent are these shaping the everyday work of early career L1 teachers?
• What meanings, understandings and values of L1 education are being conveyed through standards-based reforms and digital platforms used in schools?
• How are early career L1 teachers talking about, understanding and imaging L1 teaching and learning within these conditions?
The study is working with a group of early career L1 teachers across a number of schools through observations, focus groups and interviews, and the generation of various texts. Early data analysis indicates that a variety of school-based digital platforms have become deeply intertwined with participants’ work, and that engagement with these platforms is shaping these early career teachers experience of becoming L1 educators.
References
Bulfin, S., Parr, G., Bellis, N. (2016). Literacy teacher education and new technologies: Standards-based reforms and the technologizing imperative. In C. Kosnik, S. White, C. Beck, B. Marshall, A. L. Goodwin & J. Murray. (Eds.) Building bridges: Rethinking literacy teacher education in a digital era (pp. 119-133). Rotterdam: Sense.
de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life (S. Rendall, Trans.). California, USA: University of California Press.
Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR). (2008). Digital education revolution. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.
Selwyn, N., Nemorin, S., Bulfin, S., & Johnson, N. (2018). Everyday schooling in the digital age: High school, high tech? London: Routledge.
UNESCO. (2011). UNESCO ICT competency framework for teachers. Paris: UNESCO. Retreived from: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002134/213475e.pdf
Williamson, B. (2017). Big data in education: The digital future of learning, policy and practice. London: Sage.