- Title
- A history of the present: tracing the emergence and permutations of teacher quality in Australian Parliamentary Reports (1998—2007)
- Creator
- Lindell, Carol Marie
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2019
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Despite a lack of understanding as to what it means to be an effective teacher, the term teacher quality has become prominent in education policy across all Anglophone countries. This study explores key parliamentary reports to trace the discursive origins and historical manifestations of the concept during the period 1998 – 2007. This study adopts Bacchi’s (2009) What’s the problem represented to be? approach to policy analysis. The analytic framework questions how the problem of quality in education policy has been constructed, and the assumptions and presuppositions which underlie it. Based on the findings, the study considers how the problem could have been thought about differently. The results of the present study reveal multiple discourses of ‘quality’ evident in 1998. Influenced by assumptions, conceptual logics, and discursive practices, by 2000 the discursive frame had narrowed substantially to become ‘teacher centred’, circulating around teacher education, teaching practice, and teacher attributes. Limited by the teacher quality construct, by 2007 discourse was found to be almost exclusively framed within regulatory processes and procedures. This study argues that the concept of teacher quality in education policy has limited and constrained possibilities for thought, and in the process detracted from, and neglected other issues which may have greater or equal merit in providing a quality education system. The rendering of teacher quality has altered the trajectory of the discourse from one which viewed quality as equity, to one which is focused on what teachers do, and who teachers are. This study argues in favour of moving beyond the constraints of the teacher quality construct, to (re)imagine quality in more complex ways; one in which the broadest possible debate can (re)consider the meaning of quality in education.
- Subject
- teacher quality; policy analysis; education policy; WPR approach; problematisation; history of the present
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1403704
- Identifier
- uon:35208
- Rights
- Copyright 2019 Carol Marie Lindell
- Language
- eng
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 3 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 884 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |