April 3rd

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April 3rd 4th, 2007

• Agenda
• Announcements
• Presentations on March 20 21 and 27 28
  there will be questions on the Final Exam!
• Final Exam Chapters 5 9 (PowerPoints) other
  lecture materials and the 3 articles from the
  Coursepack.
• Lecture Rules for Teachers Chapter 9
• Seminar
• Quote Cards from Mar. 13th 14th

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Chapter 9The Sociology of Teaching

• Learning Objectives
• To understand the ways in which schools are
  workplaces.
• To be able to compare and contrast schools with
  other types of occupational settings.
• To use concepts from the sociology of professions
  to understand trends in teaching.

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THE PARADOXES OF TEACHING IN A SCHOOLED SOCIETY

• By definition, schooled societies give high
  priority to education.
• One by-product is a large occupation devoted to
  instruction.
• Teaching now comprises one of the largest
  occupations in Canada
• It represents the single most likely career for
  educated women.
• In 2002, over 340,000 Canadians were full-time
  teachers

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THE PARADOXES OF TEACHING IN A SCHOOLED SOCIETY

• Schooling not always accorded such priority in
  Canada
• Pre-1960s, teaching not a particularly
  high-status job
• In the history of nineteenth-century education
  teachers (particularly females) faced
• meagre pay
• unstable contracts
• hazardous physical conditions
• Many teachers at elementary levels assumed their
  posts with little formal training and few
  credentials

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THE PARADOXES OF TEACHING IN A SCHOOLED SOCIETY

• These conditions reflect the type of system built
  by the original Canadian school promoters
• Administrators desired a universal system to
  democratically uplift the populace
• This created a large demand for teachers
• It was difficult to find well-qualified teachers,
  particularly in rural areas
• School officials typically lowered teaching
  requirements to solve this shortage

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THE PARADOXES OF TEACHING IN A SCHOOLED SOCIETY

• Canadian teachers in the nineteenth century thus
  found it difficult to claim status
• taught rudimentary lessons of rare technical
  skills or theoretical knowledge
• they sought recognition by assuming a more
  moralistic role
• In church-backed schools, teaching was akin to a
  priestly calling
• As schools secularized, (moved away from church
  control), teachers continued to be seen as
  social trustees entrusted with the
  responsibility of socializing children

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THE PARADOXES OF TEACHING IN A SCHOOLED SOCIETY

• The challenge of nineteenth-century public school
  teaching was about guiding and moulding the
  character of the next generation
• A sharp contrast to many European systems
  oriented to cultivating elites
• Until well into the twentieth century, European
  secondary schools largely groomed small numbers
  of affluent youth for entrance into a tiny
  collection of prestigious universities
• The European teachers enjoyed high status
• Elite-driven systems have fewer but higher-status
  clientele
• They demand relatively few teachers
• They also require impressive qualifications to
  teach.

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THE PARADOXES OF TEACHING IN A SCHOOLED SOCIETY

• Over the past half-century, public school systems
  changed both in Europe and in North America
• Since the 1960s - the conditions for Canadian
  teachers improved
• Governments directed millions of dollars to
  modernize schools
• Teaching was upgraded as an occupation
• Governments required new teachers to obtain a
  university degree
• Those who were already teaching without a
  completed degree must complete one

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THE PARADOXES OF TEACHING IN A SCHOOLED SOCIETY

• Teacher training was absorbed by universities
  Faculties of Education
• Educational research became a huge enterprise
• Hundreds of professors were hired to train
  teachers and to do research
• Teachers became more specialized
• Secondary teachers needing credentials in
  specialized course material or in working with
  unique populations of students
• New legal-rational schools increasingly
  downplayed teachers moral role in favour of
  course specialists

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THE PARADOXES OF TEACHING IN A SCHOOLED SOCIETY

• Teachers now managed large classes and
  facilitated subject-based lessons for an array of
  learners
• Through collective bargaining, teacher pay was
  raised
• Transforming it from below average pay to one
  with above average returns
• This change benefited female teachers
• 1920s - women held over 80 of all elementary
  and secondary teaching jobs
• 1960 to 1980s conditions and pay improved male
  proportion of teachers grew to almost 50

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THE PARADOXES OF TEACHING IN A SCHOOLED SOCIETY

• By 2000 - females representation in teaching
  rebounded to 64 per cent of all teachers
• The modern organization of teaching has protected
  women from pressures that spoil womens status in
  other occupations
• The highly rationalized hiring, pay, and security
  structure has permitted females to match their
  male counterparts with similar qualifications
• Collective bargaining and detailed rules have
  allowed them to raise and maintain status
• This social circumstance is rather unique - that
  a female-dominated occupation can actually
  upgrade itself, relative to others.

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THE PARADOXES OF TEACHING IN A SCHOOLED SOCIETY

• Most occupations with a majority of female
  members suffer from lower pay, less public
  recognition, and devalued skills
• The transformation of schooling from a system for
  democratically uplifting the masses through basic
  literacy to a complex organization of
  professionals for socializing the masses has
  operated to upgrade the status of teachers
• The past decade has witnessed many challenges to
  teachers authority

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THE PARADOXES OF TEACHING IN A SCHOOLED SOCIETY

• Accountability reforms
• standardized testing
• curricula
• school rankings
• Implemented despite strong opposition from
  teachers
• Provincial governments have dealt aggressively
  with teachers - sometimes declaring them to be
  unproductive
• Parents are now less deferential towards teachers
  are demanding a greater voice

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THE PARADOXES OF TEACHING IN A SCHOOLED SOCIETY

• Media images of teachers that are rarely
  flattering
• Hollywood will portray a heroic and inspirational
  mentor
• Teachers are seen as dull and rule obsessed
  bunglers
• TV news - teachers shown on strike or protesting
  funding cuts
• It is rare to see a public image of a teacher as
  a consummate professional
• Recent years - journalists, politicians, and
  parents blame teachers for all sorts of societal
  ills
• Illiteracy
• moral decay
• youth unemployment
• Few other occupations stand similarly accused

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THE PARADOXES OF TEACHING IN A SCHOOLED SOCIETY

• Teachers are typically held responsible for
  reports of rising dropout rates or falling
  student test scores
• Even though evidence shows that these are far
  more powerfully predicted by student background
• Today teaching is a great career but a difficult
  job
• Teaching has a surprisingly high rate of
  attrition
• Teachers love working with children but face
  serious workplace strains
• Balancing the competing demands of
  administrators, parents, students, and
  politicians

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THE PARADOXES OF TEACHING IN A SCHOOLED SOCIETY

• Teaching today entails two paradoxes
• First, society has raised the status of teaching
  while at the same time subjecting it to greater
  critical scrutiny
• Teachers today hear louder vocal criticism than
  before, despite being educated and qualified as
  never before
• In 2001 - Canadian teachers described their job
  as more stressful than a decade before
• In the early 1990s only half felt their
  profession was respected in their community

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THE PARADOXES OF TEACHING IN A SCHOOLED SOCIETY

• Ontario surveys suggest that
• most adults are satisfied with teachers job
  performance
• fewer are expressing a great deal of confidence
  in schools
• a minority believe the quality of education is
  rising
• The irony is that as schooling is increasingly
  prioritized in society, teachers collectively
  feel less valued and respected than before.

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THE PARADOXES OF TEACHING IN A SCHOOLED SOCIETY

• Teaching today entails two paradoxes
• As politicians continue to pour monies into
  education, they are more likely to challenge
  teachers authority.
• Thrust of Canadian school reform for provinces
  to seize greater control of education
• This is sometimes at the expense of teachers
  input
• A recent Ontario poll shows more public support
  for provincial rather than teacher control of
  education
• (See Box 9.1 Unionist or Capitalist)

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• Chapter 9 presents a sociological framework to
  address these paradoxes
• Davies Guppys answers have two parts
• Organizing schooling in modern legal-rational
  forms offers teachers several professional traits
  and grants them a semi-monopoly in public
  schools.

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• Chapter 9 presents a sociological framework to
  address these paradoxes
• Davies Guppys answers have two parts
• 2. Governments higher priority for schooling
  today is encouraging them to subject teaching to
  greater control and to challenge teachers
  authority.
• The expectation to retain and accommodate the
  majority of youth in high schools entrenches a
  model of schooling that inhibits teachers from
  developing a specialized, cognitively based style
  of pedagogy and instead reinforces their role as
  motivators and classroom managers.

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Davies Guppys answers have two parts

• Combining these two points, Davies Guppy
  contend that todays mandate to retain all
  students while forcing schools to engage in
  various accountability procedures reinforces
  teachers semi-professional status.

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Teaching and the Sociology of Professions

• Three concepts from the sociological study of
  professions help us to understand the prominent
  conditions that teachers face in their jobs.
• Sociologists have developed a set of concepts to
  analyze how some occupations acquire more
  prestige and exercise more autonomy than others.
• Three concepts of interest when examining
  teachers
• Traits and processes
• Jurisdictions
• Logics of control

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Traits and Processes Upgrading the Profession

• This perspective examines how occupations pursue
  strategies and acquire characteristics that give
  them
• power
• prestige
• control over their work

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Traits and Processes Upgrading the Profession

• The literature typically portrays medicine and
  law as classic professions characterized by
• lengthy periods of training
• knowledge that requires elaborate training to be
  mastered
• high pay
• the autonomy to set professional standards
• the ability to discipline members
• task autonomy
• These traits allow such occupations to achieve
  professional status

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Traits and Processes Upgrading the Profession

• This perspective also examines how occupations
  acquire these traits
• Professionalization is the process by which
  lower-status occupations mimic the classic
  professions in order to raise their collective
  standing
• These processes included
• organizing a professional association
• housing training in universities
• developing a code of ethics (e.g. medicines
  Hippocratic oath
• creating a credential
• getting the state (gov.t) to recognize that
  credential

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Traits and Processes Upgrading the Profession

• Based on these criteria, sociologists have deemed
  teaching to be a semi-profession
• Teachers possess several professional traits
• university training
• required credentials
• some degree of task autonomy
• These have come in part from the union-style
  actions of teachers (occasional labour militancy)

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Traits and Processes Upgrading the Profession

• This professionalism also stems from societys
  growing need for educational standardization
• Pressure to ensure that the credentials students
  obtained represented the same level of cognitive
  and attitudinal development
• Schools increasingly standardized their practice
• adopting common course labels
• grading standards
• teacher qualifications
• On the other hand, teachers are subordinates in a
  vast bureaucratic hierarchy

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Traits and Processes Upgrading the Profession

• Provinces and school boards
• design curricula and standardized tests
• determine the conditions of teaching training
  (relatively short duration compared to other
  professions)
• Some argue that teachers lack a key professional
  trait training that is specialized and widely
  recognized
• One hidden source of de-professionalization is
  the product of administrative decision-making
• Principals will give courses to teachers despite
  their lack of particular qualifications
  (out-of-field assignments)
• Such a practice arguably devalues the trained
  expertise that goes into teaching.

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Traits and Processes Upgrading the Profession

• As Ingersoll (20031667), a former teacher
  turned sociologist, puts it
• This assumes that teachers are interchangeable
  blocks that can be placed in any empty slot.
• Treating teachers like low-skill workers makes
  them useful to administrators as generalists able
  to teach a wide range of subjects, justifying
  less rigorous and costly training, lower
  salaries, and making replacement easy.
• Yet this managerial habit is not defined as
  malpractice, as it would in other professions,
  but instead as an internal management problem.

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Traits and Processes Upgrading the Profession

• Teachers are judged for their commitment,
  sense of duty, diligence, and warmth rather
  than their expertise
• While such characteristics are certainly
  desirable and valued in all professions, few
  professions claim them as the essence of their
  practice

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Jurisdiction Monopoly withoutEsoteric Knowledge

• The study of professional jurisdictionsemphasize
  s three things
• that monopolies are the result of competition
  between occupations
• that an occupations success is enhanced if its
  knowledge base is complex and rare
• that professions suffer when their tasks and
  modes of evaluation are not clearly defined

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Monopoly

• The history shows how physicians successfully
  fended off other health-care workers to claim a
  monopoly over government-recognized health care
  (health insurance claims)
• The classic professions enjoy a strong monopoly
  throughout society
• Teaching is interesting from this vantage point
• In Canada, teachers have a near-monopoly in the
  public system, (hire only certified graduates)
• Teachers enjoy a considerable labour market
  shelter.

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Monopoly

• This monopoly does not extend beyond the public
  system - private schools are not compelled to
  hire certified teachers
• Teachers do not exert any kind of monopoly in
  emerging forms of education
• Home-schooling can be legally practised by
  anyone, regardless of their qualifications or
  educational background
• Private tutoring companies freely hire
  instructors who have no teacher training
• Corporations are increasingly hiring formal
  instructors to train their employees (not
  required to hire certified teachers)
• Universities do not hire certified teachers

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Monopoly

• Justified by a belief that effective teachers
  are born, not trained effective teaching is a
  product of personal charisma rather than the
  execution of trained skills
• Home-schoolers declare parental authority and
  their love for their children as granting them
  the right to teach their children
• Imagine parents claiming authority, as
  caregivers, to perform surgery!
• Public recognition of teaching as necessitating
  elaborate training is highly contested
• Outside of public schools, anyone can teach
• Bolger Calls you to take your teacher
  training seriously even the OTT course
  package!!!

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Knowledge

• Does teaching excellence come from an arduous and
  indispensable training in technical knowledge?
• Or are the abilities teaching requires of a
  different nature, rooted in personal experience
  and people skills rather than theory-based
  training?
• Studies suggest that teachers cite their
  experience and personal qualities as more crucial
  to their performance than their training
• They also emphasize that training is useless for
  a teacher if she or he does not like and cannot
  inspire children

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Knowledge

• Both American and Canadian teachers report that
  the most enjoyable aspect of their job is making
  a difference in childrens lives
• Breakthroughs in the contemporary study of
  learning are emerging in special education
• Facilitated by one-on-one conditions that are
  more like private practice or private tutoring
  than standard classroom schooling
• As long as teaching is associated with a
  warehousing role (large classes), it will be
  difficult to develop a more professional model
  of instruction.

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