PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT - Academic Computing Services- Edith Cowan University
Making Sense of Performance Management in Schools: Official Rhetoric and Teachers’ Reality
Barry Down, Carol Hogan and Rod Chadbourne
(Edith Cowan University, Robertson Drive, Bunbury, Western Australia 6230.
Telephone 08 9780 7777; Facsimilie 08 9721 6994; E-mail B.Down@cowan.edu.au)
Paper presented at the Australian Association for Research in Education
Conference, Researching Education in New Times, Brisbane, 30 November -
4 December 1997.
INTRODUCTION
Although I agree with performance management in principle and believe
that we do need some method of assuring standards within the
profession, it is also my greatest fear. I don't think it will be done
properly - there just isn't the time. And that Head of Department is
still out there - and perhaps many more like him. Don't tell me this is
different because we have choice in who assesses us. I don't believe
this will happen - and there will be so much opportunity for the system
to be exploited and abused. And in the end the system is us (teacher’s
comment, 7/97).
In this paper we explore the question of how performance management
impacts on teachers' lives and how they make sense of it. In Western
Australia performance management refers to compulsory annual appraisal
cycles or reviews of teachers' work by a line manager. The Western
Australian Education Department (EDWA) Policy Framework for Performance
Management (1996) states that performance management is: mandatory and
consistent with the Public Sector Standards on Performance Management;
directly linked to the Department's goals; managed by supervisory
staff; includes a process which demonstrates accountability,
opportunities for growth and development; and should provide quality
and timely feedback (EDWA, 1996, p.4). The policy assumes that
rationally designed structures and practices resting on processes of
calculated planning will maximise organisational effectiveness.
Regardless of whether these practices are necessary and efficient, it
is demonstrably the case that managerialism is exerting greater power
and control over teachers' lives (Thompson and McHugh, 1990, p.15).
Following Rees (1995), we want to argue that the current obsession with
managerialism in education cannot be divorced from broader social and
economic policies nor can it be seen as a set of neutral or scientific
practices somehow uncontaminated by power and ideology. Clearly,
performance management is but one part of the broader shift to the
market model of education with its emphasis on effective and efficient
economic management of human and financial resources (Kenway, et.al.,
1994; Marginson, 1993). As economic policies have changed to complement
the competitive attributes of large businesses, so the fascination with
management has gained momentum. Pollitt (cited in Rees, 1995) gets it
pretty well right when he argues that in the current political climate
management is deemed to be inherently good, managers are the heroes,
managers should be given room and autonomy to manage, and other groups
should accept authority.
Within this broader context we want to examine what performance
management looks and feels like for those who are being 'performance
managed'. Of particular interest to us is what appears to be a large
and increasing gulf between the official representation of teachers'
work, namely, that which is to be increasingly 'managed' and the
"reality" as experienced by classroom teachers. This study investigates
the perceptions and experiences of a focus group of nine experienced
classroom teachers in relation to the recently introduced EDWA
performance management policy. As a counter to the official discourse
of managers we wanted to draw on the everyday experiences of teachers.
Drawing on some of Van Manen's (1984) repertoire of strategies, we
chose to use teachers' written accounts, whole and small group
discussions and transcript analysis to gain a sense of the 'indigenous
culture' of teaching (Smyth, 1996). As Hogan notes, accounts of lived
experience can generate alternative 'ways of seeing' through their
capacity to hold multiple and contradictory meanings, their potential
for irony and humour, their acknowledgment of emotion and their
'locatedness' within real times and places (1997, p. 3).
We met with the focus group of nine teachers on two occasions. Prior to
the first meeting we circulated a number of vignettes of teacher
experiences related to performance management. This was an attempt to
provide a focus for discussion which was more open and invitational
than traditional interview questions. This discussion was recorded,
transcribed and circulated in preparation for the second meeting. At
this second meeting we broke the teachers into groups of three to share
written stories and discuss a range of more specific issues that arose
from these. We sought to let the teachers' accounts unfold in a way
that was responsive to individual and collective experiences and
emphasised the meaning making processes in which the teachers engaged.
A further stage in the meaning making process involved placing these
accounts within a broader critique of managerialism. These theorised
accounts of teachers’ experiences have yet to be worked through with
the focus group, though this will be an important next phase of a
project that was conceived as jointly 'owned' and mutually educative.
We find Ball's idea of 'policy as text' and 'policy as discourse' as a
useful way of thinking about the tension between the official
representation of performance management and the lived experiences of
teachers. Ball suggests a view of policy which accounts for its
'localised complexity'. He argues that the ways in which policies are
represented and encoded are highly complex and take place via
struggles, compromises, authoritative public interpretations and
reinterpretations. These are then decoded via actors' interpretations
and meanings in relation to their history, experiences, skills,
resources and context (1993, p.11). The stories provided by the
participants in this study, confirm Ball's view that policy is 'not
necessarily clear or closed or complete' but open to contestation and
change (p.11).
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT IN CONTEXT
Over the last twenty years or so, Australia's political and economic
culture has altered radically as it sought to re-position itself in
response to the wider global restructuring of capitalism (Catley, 1996;
Frankel, 1995). The process of restructuring, as described by Gee, Hull
and Lankshear has seen a transition from "old style" industrial
capitalism characterised by standardisation, mass production, mass
consumption and the tyranny of the production line, to "fast
capitalism", where the defining characteristics are competition,
quality, and markets centred around change, flexibility, and
distinctive niches (1996, p.26). Economic activity has now become
'globalised', with: a high degree of integration and restructuring
within and between transnational corporations and global markets; a
more rapid, and more dramatic, than usual process of structural
reorganisation within and between the economies of all capitalist
countries; and a changing pattern of global relationships between
transnational capital and nation states (Broomhill, 1995, p.27). These
developments, according to Pusey, are a new kind of social and
psychological 'colonisation' in which "Australian civil society,
identity and its cultures are quite explicitly defined as the malleable
and consumable environment of a global economy" (1991, p.18).
The consequence for Australia has been the resurgence of nineteenth
century economic liberalism which gives priority to the market over the
state as the most rational and efficient means for allocating goods and
services in society. The advocates of economic rationalism believe that
the public interest is best served through the free interplay of
individuals competing in the market place (Spoehr, 1995, p.43). Rees
and Rodley argue that the drive for greater efficiency and
accountability has enabled controlling interests 'to engineer social
change on an unprecedented scale'. They claim that, 'managerialism is
the bulldozer of market intent, clearing the ground for the takeover to
rival even previous threats to humanity' (1995, p.233).
Yeatman's (1990) analysis of Australian public sector reform in the
1980s highlights the significant changes taking place in bureaucratic
culture (see also Pusey, 1991). At the heart of these changes, is the
adoption of the discourse of management based on the administrative
requirements of privately orientated, profit-maximising firms (p.13).
Yeatman elaborates the consequences of this managerial culture for the
public sector:
... the purposes of public administration and public service tend to
be reduced to the effective, efficient and economic management of human
and financial resources. This is a technical approach to public
administration and public service couched within a broader framework
dominated by economic consideration (p.14).
As Rees puts it:
Managers are not neutral technocrats. They derive their cues and their
scripts from a set of policies which contend that an economy needs to
be run like a market with as little interference as possible, that
human effort can be counted a commodity, and that in the conduct of
organisations financial accountability is the criterion to measure
performance (1995, p.16)
Corporate managerialism as the dominant style seeks to make government
more efficient by doing more with less, focussing on outcomes and
results and managing change better. One of the major features of
managerialism is its apparent ability to define social, cultural and
political problems into technical problems. As Buchanan suggests:
One of the hallmarks of contemporary managerialist discourse is its
tendency to define social, economic or political issues as management
problems. In the field of labour management (i.e. managing people at
work) the 'problem' no longer involves addressing the complexities of
'personnel' or 'industrial relations' issues. Rather, labour related
issues are seen as a special case of managing resources to achieve
particular outcomes, the only difference being that the resources are
human. Unsurprisingly, this branch of management is commonly referred
to as 'human resource management' (1995, p.55).
The irony, according to Bates, is that while 'techniques of
rationalisation and control may increase the rationality for
organisations and bureaucracies, it decreases the possibility of
rational purposive action on the part of individuals' (1983, p.32). In
modern efficiency, that which is efficient is defined as that which is
measurable as efficient. Consequently, whatever, is not measurable is
not efficient and does not exist. Efficiency is often administered by a
new breed of managers with a fetish for measurement and assessment
(Solondz, 1995, p.214).
Unfortunately, the psychological consequences for workers are dramatic,
as Solondz explains:
Any new dogma needs to prove its value. In order for managerialism to
prove its efficiency, 'inefficiency' must be expelled ......
Inefficiency as opposed to efficiency procedures are typically
'negotiated' by an employer with an employee. These highly unequal
negotiators then jointly oversee the arbitrary efficiency criteria on
which the competence of the employee is judged. The psychological
consequences of such procedures can be quite extreme, particularly
since they are often based on coerced agreement, on arbitrary and
mechanistic criteria, are known by other employees, and place the
employee under considerable stress for protracted periods. They have
the effect of isolating the employee and increasing the likelihood that
he she will make a mistake....... Once the employee begins to produce
mistakes......inefficiency is considered proven ....... This form of
systematic psychological terror can be repeated many times in a
workplace by managers whose own competence in personnel management
could be questioned (p.215).
Solondz claims that the effect of these procedures on teamwork is even
more destructive. In this sort of climate, staff morale is low,
individualism and alternative views are not easily tolerated,
professionalism and quality suffer and job satisfaction is likely to
decrease (p.218). The irony, according to Solondz, is that managerial
policies are ultimately self-defeating:
Managerialism's unwritten personnel policies contravenes accepted
wisdom. They act to reduce staff morale, job security, professionalism
and career development. They undermine mutual trust and the social
contract between employee and employer. They reduce industrial
democracy, destroy working relationships and increase occupational
stress. In the last instance, they serve to undermine the stated aims
of managerialism, especially the claims to accountability, improved
efficiency, quality, cleverness and productivity (p.219).
Gee, Hull and Lankshear in their recent book entitled The New Work
Order (1996) suggest a useful way of conceptualising the tension
between the rhetoric and reality of workplace reform and why it can
create suspicion and even fear among workers. In their view,
organisations have adopted a new set of tools and procedures, designed
to change social relations in the workplace, a form of socio-technical
engineering in the author's language (p.xv). In this new workplace, the
values of trust, co-operation, partnerships and team work are the buzz
words as people become committed to the corporate
vision/culture/mission. The worker is now a 'partner' and the 'boss' is
a leader or 'coach', no longer telling people what to do, but giving
them a vision and coaching them on a job that they control, understand,
and actively seek to improve (Gee & Lankshear, 1996, p.29).
The paradox, according to Gee, Hull and Lankshear, is that humanistic
and democratic reforms are being enacted not because they create more
humanistic, less hierarchical conditions for workers but because they
are a means to creating more and continuing profits. Ultimately,
workers do not have the power or freedom to question the 'vision',
values, ends, and goals of the new work order itself (1996, p.31). As
MacIntyre (in Rees, 1995) concludes, ‘claims about effectiveness and
efficiency are about means of control, the manipulation of human beings
into compliant patterns of behaviour’. In his words, managerial
fundamentalism 'is apparent in its dogma, intolerance of critics and
gratitude for compliant staff' (1995, p.24-25).
The fundamental problem with corporate managerialism, according to
Stilwell, 'is that it treats people like conventional economic theory
treats labour - as a factor of production - as a thing in the service
of profits'. In short, every transaction between individuals is
regarded as a commodity which only has value according to an economic
price of exchange. He believes 'this is ultimately self-defeating
because, by denying their essential humanity, the economic system
treats people in a manner to which they cannot ultimately lend
allegiance' (1995, p.261). Worse, is the way in which 'it legitimates
an economic system characterised by increasing economic insecurity and
economic inequality' (p.263).
So what are teachers saying about performance management? To what
extent is this critique borne out by their experiences and the way
these are framed in discussions about their work?
TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS ABOUT PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
Some of the teachers brought written accounts with them to the second
meeting of the focus group. In the following analysis, quotations from
these accounts are referenced as (teacher’s written comment).
Quotations from the transcripts of the two meetings are referenced as
(teacher’s taped comment).
Fear and suspicion
'Support not punishment' reads the headline in School Matters, the
official journal of EDWA. This particular article was written to allay
fears expressed by some teachers that performance management would
result in job losses. It states:
Performance management is not about that: it is more about providing
the most appropriate environment whereby staff develop clarity about
the role they are employed to undertake, access the support they need
to undertake their required duties, look for ways that they can use
feedback from a range of resources to enhance their performance and
participate in PD activities to help them to find better ways of doing
their job (1997, p.7).
A text like this one positions the reader in a particular way by
drawing on several familiar discourses: there is the directive to
teachers as dutiful employees in phrases like 'the role they are
employed to undertake', and 'required duties'; there is the appeal to
teachers' ethic of care in phrases like 'appropriate environments' and
'support'; and there is the organisational imperative of efficiency,
productivity and accountability. The sum effect is a disarming one:
performance management is rendered unproblematic, representing teachers'
fears and insecurities as unfounded and irrational. Some of the
teachers in our study accepted EDWA's reassurances but were keen to
find out for themselves what the processes really involved. Many
teachers, however, remained suspicious and unconvinced by the rhetoric.
The following comments highlight some of these concerns:
Teachers at our school have been assured there is nothing new in
performance management. There is nothing to be afraid of! (The old
'trust me!' line.) We have been told, 'It’s what you teachers have been
doing all along!' If we have been doing it all along, then why is there
such a huge focus on expected implementation time? If we have been
doing it all along, why the need for yet another change? If we have
been doing it all along, why do teachers feel threatened and under
pressure? (teacher’s written comment, 7/97).
As I listen to the stories of other teachers going through the process
of being performance managed, I feel familiar emotions of bewilderment,
anger, and powerlessness that I have experienced many times in my
career (teacher’s written comment, 7/97).
Performance management evokes so many reactions. Confusion,
trepidation, a feeling that it would never get off the ground, and most
of all, fear (teacher’s written comment, 7/97).
At the heart of teachers' concerns is a suspicion that the processes
put in place to facilitate negotiation and consultation are contrived
and superficial. One teacher explained her feelings in the following
way:
The word negotiation is a most over-used, mis-used word. We are
supposed to negotiate performance management, ... practically
everything that has to do with the managerial side of schools is
supposed to be negotiated with the staff, and if it was perhaps we
wouldn't feel quite so negative about it all, but that's what happens.
I guess some sort of negotiation happens, but its a controlled
negotiation ... I absolutely hate the word now because whenever I hear
it, I'm nervous, it’s a trick (teacher’s taped comment, 6/97).
Little wonder then, that teachers feel a sense of betrayal when they
encounter experiences like the following:
I guess the one [instance] that stands out the most would be last year
when we got a piece of paper in our pigeon hole with a timetable on it
and our name slotted in to a time telling us that was our interview
time and we had to bring all these things with us. And I remember that
there was outrage amongst all the staff members because building up to
this we had a lot of input about how performance management was
supposed to be negotiated. ... As a staff we were supposed to make a
collective decision, and that didn't happen, and we were just told a
date and a time and what was happening (teacher’s taped comment, 7/97).
Stories such as these reveal the serious mis-match between the rhetoric
and reality of performance management practices. Smyth explains this
well when he argues that the process of educational re-structuring is
'one of devolving responsibility, but not power, in respect of the way
education is organised'. In his view, the 'process is one of
'consultation' with teachers and schools (i.e. of seeking advice, but
not necessarily heeding it), rather than 'participation or
collaboration' (i.e. in which the parties affected jointly make a
decision)' (1995, p.194-195).
Buchanan, in a more general critique of managerialism, suggests that
the rhetoric of worker involvement is hardly matched in practice. He
argues that while elements of the rhetoric are seductive, the reality
is that unilateral control on the basis of the management prerogative
is the prevailing norm (1995, p.55). Buchanan claims that 'in many ways
it is simply the reworking of old concepts dressed up in contemporary
jargon' (p.65). As one teacher comments:
This is where we feel cheated and threatened, because they don't match,
there is a mis-match in what's happening, and what we are being told
(teacher’s taped comment, 7/97).
For teachers, the gap between the rhetoric and reality reflects a more
general sense of confusion about the purposes and processes of
performance management. Consider the following comments:
I think at the moment there is confusion. The teachers are saying, what
are we doing, accountability, what is this stuff? It's the terminology
and the jargon (teacher’s taped comment, 6/97).
I guess in our school a lot of the teachers still don't really
understand what it is all about. They know that they go to an interview
with the principal, and they know that sometimes they have to take
things to show him, and they get asked questions, but there is a lot of
confusion in our school about what is the difference between
accountability and performance management (teacher’s taped comment,
7/97).
We call them [interviews] either accountability or performance
management. We don't know what we are supposed to be calling them, and
you call them either/or at any time ... (teacher’s taped comment,
7/97).
Despite numerous efforts by EDWA to sell performance management via
school briefings, articles in the departmental journal School Matters,
in-servicing of selected staff and compulsory professional development
on performance management modules, many teachers are still ambivalent.
Dishonesty and mistrust
A recurrent theme in the teachers’ written and oral narratives
concerned the way in which performance management can promote
misrepresentation, dishonesty and mistrust at all levels. Many examples
were offered where the superficial images of "professionalism",
"effective teaching" and "improvement" were promoted highly, while
authentic instances of these things remained invisible. According to
some teachers, for example, school development plans were written to
impress outsiders and had little impact on what actually happened in
schools and classrooms. Some felt that performance management at the
school level was the same, with arbitrary and subjective judgements
being made about their work by principals and superintendents who had
never seen it. Teachers felt that looking good on paper counted for
more than "just doing your job properly". One teacher was highly
critical of her school’s efforts at corporate image-making:
…we’ve been getting that drummed into us, our school image, and we are
given all these ways to improve our image and to become more
professional. So far we have been told to dress more professionally, we
need to have business cards printed up, when we write letters home to
parents we need to put all our letters after our name, the more letters
, the better. … But until he [the principal] starts to insist on the
things which I think are at the core of being professional, like doing
your job properly,… then I’m not going to play this game of "being
professional" because I think it’s a false thing (teacher’s taped
comment, 7/97).
Teachers were not confident that they could trust their managers, or
the system generally, to provide a fair and honest reflection of their
work with children. Some were sceptical that quality teaching was even
a motive for performance management, seeing it as being much more about
control:
The testing (ie, EDWA’s Monitoring Standards program) is really to
prove that teachers aren’t doing anything, and then we find out how bad
they are with performance management, so we don’t pay them any more,
then we just hand them a teacher-proof curriculum … really is that the
hidden agenda? (teacher’s taped comment, 7/97).
Such concerns are hardly surprising in the current hostile economic and
political environment where teachers are increasingly being blamed,
often without evidence, for Australia's lack of international
competitiveness, high levels of youth unemployment and poor literacy
rates, to name only a few. When teachers, like most other workers, are
being asked to do more with less, work longer hours and accept job
insecurity as a fact of life, management inspired reforms can only
serve to heighten the sense of mistrust that many teachers feel.
Despite the reassurances from EDWA, all the teachers in our study saw
performance management as being a de facto appraisal system. Their
feelings about it were shaped profoundly by past experiences of
appraisal, in which most of them had felt anxious and powerless to some
degree, and many felt that they had been judged falsely or
inadequately.
As a result, teachers 'play the game' to satisfy superiors or others
charged with performance management. Typical of many teachers are
comments like, 'I just write what they want to hear... I don't see any
value coming out of it, it doesn't effect my teaching'. This particular
problem is reflected in numerous teachers' stories:
You make yourself look like a little bit needing in one area where you
are really good anyway and you can suddenly say, here, this is what I
am doing now, you don't tell them about the things you are really good
at (teacher’s taped comment, 6/97).
We tell them and we give them what we know they want to hear, rather
than being honest, and I think if you can be honest, you can go a lot
further (teacher’s taped comment, 7/97).
As a way of coping with performance management, teachers will continue
only to provide the watered down version - the details and information
they feel safe sharing, or the information they feel their managers are
seeking (teacher’s written comment, 7/97).
This sort of resistance reflects a basic lack of trust in performance
management processes. Teachers do not feel that current practices build
a spirit of trust, collegiality or respect. One teacher explained the
pivotal role of trust in the following account:
So for performance management to be successful there must be trust.
Trust in and respect for the person who is are managing me. Trust that
I will be involved in joint negotiations. Trust that what occurs is
relevant to me and my teaching. Trust that all of my peers would be
involved in performance management as well, not just a select few as
time, resources, and funds are limited. Trust in confidentiality of
information. Trust that I will be provided with the necessary resources
and supported to improve my performance once an area of need is
established. Trust that I will not be disadvantaged or unfairly treated
by exposing an area of weakness. And trust that the whole process is
not just some catch phrase that is the hot term for 1997..... Without
trust, performance management will have no value to individual
teachers, to management, to the Department, or for students (teacher’s
written comment, 7/97).
Control and resistance
Central to many of the concerns expressed by teachers so far is the
loss of control over their work. Teachers believe that performance
management has not only been 'imposed by outside agents' but has
actively disempowered them by 'taking control and putting it in the
hands of others' (teacher’s comment, 7/97). Boyett and Conn, in
Workplace 2000 support the view that present day management practices
are 'vulnerable to abuses of power and the elaborate manipulation of
people and values'. They argue that workers 'must cleave to a set of
ends - 'superordinate goals', 'corporate culture', whatever - that
'like the basic postulates of a mathematical system', is posited in
advance'. In their view, it leads to a 'dangerous corporate conformity'
and a kind of 'high touch coercion' (cited in Gee & Lankshear, 1995,
pp.8-9). According to Smyth, educational re-structuring is a form of
re-centralisation of power and intensification of control over the
purposes and direction of teachers' work (1995, p.6).
Nowhere, is the concern about control more apparent than with the role
of the school principal. As Bates argues, 'organisations are systems of
hierarchically ordered positions in which administrators exercise
control through a combination of their formal positional authority and
their personal relations in order to enlarge their authority base'
(1983, p.8). Teacher comments convey a strong sense of apprehension
about the consequences of line management in the performance management
process:
... sometimes young principals or principals who want to move up the
scale quickly, tend to come into a school and want things done quickly
so that they can say, look this was the situation, this was the action,
this is the outcome (teacher’s taped comment, 6/97).
I think there has been a deliberate move as well, to give them
[principals] a lot more money, a different professional association, to
basically separate them off from ordinary teachers so that they are
managers (teacher’s taped comment, 7/97).
Well in some cases I think people who are doing appraisals have gone
through the supervisory system and they are used to being in a position
of authority (teacher’s taped comment, 7/97).
Of course, managerial intentions to create an obedient and compliant
school staff within a bureaucratic authority structure will always
produce oppositional forms of behaviour because teachers are active
human agents in their workplaces (Apple, 1980, p.60). According to
Leonard (cited in Thompson and McHugh, 1990, p.333) individual
responses contain a combination of coping strategies, instrumentally
derived tactics and accommodation to the dominant culture, as well as
different types of resistance.
We have already mentioned how teachers 'play the game' as one form of
resistance to the performance management regime. Teachers also talked
about two other significant coping strategies. One teacher indicated
that passive resistance was a strategy adopted by many teachers in her
school. In this particular school, teachers were refusing to attend
interviews as 'their way of coping' (taped comment, 7/97). A second and
perhaps more common strategy was simply to 'ignore it'. Many teachers
already suffering from information overload tended to 'throw it away or
to the side' until they were forced to deal with it.
Resistance to performance management was usually justified for two key
reasons. Firstly, teachers did not have the time because of what
Huberman describes as the 'classroom press' that exerts daily
influences on teachers This 'classroom press', forces teachers to focus
on day to day effects or short term perspectives; it isolates them from
their colleagues; it exhausts their energy; and it limits their
opportunity for sustained reflective practice (Fullan, 1991, p.33). As
one teacher put it:
... how often do we get the time to sit and reflect on ourselves? You
would never make time to do that. We verbalise it, but I think in terms
of documenting, we don't. Mainly because we are so bogged down with
everything else that we are trying to cope with, let alone our own
personal lives, and that unfinished feeling everyday. You could take
work home every single night, and never get to the end of the tunnel
(teacher’s taped comment, 6/97).
Secondly, some teachers expressed the view that performance management
failed to improve their teaching or benefit the children in their
classrooms. What seemed to be missing was a sense of validity in the
processes. Teachers felt uncomfortable with managerial practices in
their schools. They believed the ethos of the corporate sector was both
inappropriate and ineffective when dealing with children. As one
teacher explained, 'I can't see how you can relate children, children
at the end of schooling, to cars at the end of a production line'
(taped comment, 6/97). The desire for quick measures and evidence of
the wrong sort was of equal concern to many teachers. They believed
principals are looking for 'quick measures and percentage increases' as
evidence of improvement. As a result, many schools were going back to
standardised tests administered and analysed by outside consultants
(taped comment, 7/97).
CONCLUSION
Despite the rhetoric of devolution, collegiality, collaboration and
reflection, the teachers in our study believed that schools were
becoming far more competitive, divisive and stressful workplaces. There
was a common view that increasing efforts to control and manipulate
their work were largely responsible for this situation. It seems that
as long as teachers continue to experience authoritarian, hierarchical
and paternalistic forms of social relations in the workplace, they will
remain suspicious of managerial reforms regardless of the positive
terms in which these are framed. So are we simply looking at a policy
which is being poorly implemented; a case of a new fast corporate
culture being superimposed on an old hierarchical one without the
change being supported by adequate time and resources? Or are the
teachers responding to something deeper? Nias (1993) describes the
teachers in her study as "grieving" for imposed changes that subvert
their deeply held pedagogical values. Certainly this sense of loss, or
potential loss, was evident in the teachers who shared their stories
with us.
It is clear that we need to maintain serious critical scrutiny of
"educational" reforms that are driven by non-educational interests, and
that the question asked by committed teachers themselves - "how will
this improve the experience of school for my kids?" - is the question
we need to keep asking about performance management.
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