The restructuring of the professional knowledge base of teachers in England 2010-2024

Abstract

This thesis traces the arrival of a new figuration of the ‘good teacher’ in education policy in England through the period 2010-2024. This figuration is defined above all by a new official knowledge base for teachers: one based on cognitive science and knowledge derived from randomised control trials (RCTs). In order to grasp where this new knowledge base comes from and how it wends its way into policy, the origin(s) of four prominent policies – the Early Career Framework (ECF), the Initial Teacher Training Core Content Framework (ITT CCF), the ITT Market Review, and the Initial Teacher Training Early Career Framework (ITTECF) – are examined closely. This is done with recourse to Basil Bernstein’s concept of the pedagogic device (PD), combined the metatheoretical language of critical realism (CR). These conceptual resources enable clear explication of how concepts move through the ‘levels’ of the PD – from the world of ideas through to pedagogic practice. The thesis shows how cognitive science and RCTs are first promoted by a variety of well-networked actors as the solution to a potent problem representation in this period – that teachers are teaching ineffectively, and therefore are not being the agents of social mobility they could otherwise be. That is, these knowledges are positioned as mechanisms through which a meritocratic society will be achieved. These knowledges are then able to be taken up by policy actors and recontextualised into the aforementioned policy documents due to an increasingly politicised and externalised policy making process. Whereas previous education policy making involved forging compromise between a wider variety of actors and their views, increasingly, such policy has been designed by a small number of politically-appointed actors who are able to rapidly drive through paradigmatic changes. Finally, these knowledges are inculcated in everyday teachers and soon-to-be teachers via a variety of novel mechanisms, including intense monitoring of ITE providers. The picture this thesis paints of the rapid transformation of England’s preferred knowledge base for teachers ought to matter greatly for those involved in education. Principally, understanding the process behind this shift helps to reveal the contingent, socially-mediated nature of this vision of teaching presented as simply ‘evidence-based’ by its proponents. On a local level, this is something which should allow individuals like the teachers who ‘go through’ these policy frameworks to more readily assess their possible strengths and shortcomings. Globally, where increasing numbers of countries are looking to these English reforms as a potential model, it should hopefully enable these same critical conversations to occur. Finally, this thesis also makes a novel theoretical contribution: by combining Bernstein with CR, it hopefully offers a powerful, precise way of mapping the transformation of culture.