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A Constructivist Exploration of the Teacher's Role A CONSTRUCTIVIST EXPLORATION OF THE TEACHER’S ROLE: UNDERSTANDING THE POLICY PRACTICE NAVIGATION BETWEEN: PEDAGOGY, PROFESSIONALISM & VOCATIONALISM MICHAEL F. RYAN (BA, H.Dip, MSc.) Education Doctorate NUI Maynooth Faculty of Social Sciences Education Department Head of Department: Dr Aidan Mulkeen Department of Adult and Community Education Head of Department: Professor Anne Ryan Supervisor: Dr. Ted Fleming May 2010 Acknowledgements I wish to sincerely acknowledge the teaching staff in the Departments of Adult and Community Education & Department of Education at NUI Maynooth, for creating a thoroughly insightful and enjoyable community of learning throughout the three years of the Ed.D. Programme. A particular thanks to Dr. Rose Malone and Dr. Anne B. Ryan who coordinated the programme so successfully and provided scholarly nurturing and encouragement to the group throughout. To my fellow doctoral colleagues: Aideen, Dan, Deborah, Deirdre, Eilis, Gary, Larry, Marie, Mary & Pat – thank you for the wisdom shared, the questions asked and the goodwill throughout. I wish to particularly acknowledge my thesis supervisor, Dr. Ted Fleming – for his: challenging questions, his sharp insights, his ongoing recommendations, sense of humour, but particularly for his belief in the study as it unfolded. Special thanks to Ciaran Lynch and the staff at Tipperary Institute for their valuable support, particularly my colleagues in the Centre For Developing Human Potential (CDHP). To my research participants who engaged so enthusiastically and generously with the study, thank you all for the courage to describe and reflect on your professional lives with honesty. You provided the insights that gave the study its depth and practitioner resonance. I hope, the findings have done justice to your individual and collective experiences. Finally, I wish to thank my own family: Bridget Daniel, Eibhlin, Mollie, Bridin, Eanna and Jack - thanks for the patience, support and the many distractions that kept me in tune with reality. i Abstract This constructivist grounded theory study, explores the role of the second level teacher in contemporary Ireland. It investigates how the officially espoused role of the teacher translates into action in the negotiated environments of practice. The study yielded three significant constructs that penetrate the reality of a teaching life. The three constructs emerged organically from an analysis of research-participant reflections regarding their practice as teachers. These three interwoven constructs provide the scaffolding for the grounded theory findings: i. pedagogy under pressure, ii. teachers navigating a pathway between old and new professionalism iii. vocationalism and pockets of wonderful things While each of the three constructs has its own discourse and associated web of meaning, there is also evidence of an over arching climate that weaves its influence across the playing out of each. This climate is identified as one of intensification. The intensification of teaching and learning significantly impacts on the teacher’s role. The first of the three constructs; pedagogy under pressure emerges as a particularly problematic one. The implicitly instrumentalist vision driving the practice of education (emergent in the first construct) compromises not only progressive pedagogy, but also compromises the enactment of new professionalism as illuminated in the second construct. The intensification of education can also endanger the vocational impetus for teachers and render into ‘pockets’ the ‘wonderful things’ that sustain and nurture the teacher’s ontological identity as profiled in the final construct. The qualitative findings suggest that the teacher’s role is therefore an increasingly complex one that navigates within and across three interwoven domains of what it means to be a teacher. Within this navigation, there is significant evidence of policy practice dissonance, and localised negotiations of policy rhetoric, driven by the imperative of terminal assessment. The study concludes that this climate of intensification militates against the realization of the more nurturing aims of education espoused in the Government White Paper Charting Our Education Future (1995). The study provides educational policy makers, teacher educators and teachers with an insightful road map with which to interrogate many assumptions regarding second level teaching. The study interrogates policy, practice and theoretical perspectives. It raises many challenging questions regarding the teacher’s role and the current instrumentalist vision driving the practice of second level education in Ireland. These questions, findings and associated recommendations now deserve prompt study from teachers, teacher educators, policy makers and other educational stakeholers. ii Table of Contents INTRODUCTION AND RATIONALE Background to the research study....................................................................1 Rationale for the study.....................................................................................4 Perceived originality of the study and gaps in current knowledge ..................5 How the study may contribute to new knowledge...........................................8 Chapter overview.............................................................................................9 CHAPTER 1 SETTING THE RESEARCH CONTEXT Ireland within a global discourse of marketisation in education ....................12 The influence of New Public Management?....................................................13 The policy architecture of the 1990s................................................................14 Competing and flawed visions of education....................................................19 Theocentric and Mercantile paradigms............................................................22 The points system: a conspiracy between humanism and instrumentalism.....23 The teacher’s role within a dualistic visionary mosaic....................................25 A new conspiracy with negative consequences for the teacher’s role.............31 Towards a conclusion ......................................................................................32 CHAPTER 2 STUDY DESIGN AND RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Introduction .....................................................................................................35 The author’s epistemological stance: interpretivist, constructivist & ecological postmodernism ..............................................................................36 Rationale for adopting a constructivist grounded theory approach .................44 From positivist underpinnings to constructivist leanings ................................46 Reliability criteria ............................................................................................49 The research participant sample.......................................................................49 Overview of data collection.............................................................................51 Semi-structured conversational interviews with second level teachers...........53 Written reflection from dialogue with teacher education students ..................57 Document analysis–using public policy documentation..................................58 Data Analysis...................................................................................................60 Stages one and two: open and axial coding .....................................................61 Stage three-theoretical investigation and analytic memos...............................67 Stage four-emerging construct and meaning framework.................................70 Location of literature in discussion of findings chapters……………………..72 Overall data analysis and the triangulation dynamic…………………………72 Ethical framework............................................................................................75 iii CHAPTER 3 PEDAGOGY UNDER PRESSURE: THE FINDINGS The unconventional literature review: a sociological perspective..…………..79 Pedagogy under pressure: introduction..………………………………….......80 Summary findings…………………………………………………………….80 A theoretical overview.....................................................................................82 Themes from the emergent data.......................................................................88 The centrifugal force of instrumentalism.........................................................89 The implications for pedagogy ........................................................................94 The implications for teacher identity: the emergence of localized & competitive accountability systems .................................................................106 Overcrowded curriculum: the busyness treadmill and un-reflective spaces....115 Curriculum reform: external control and some innovation at the margins......120 Concluding thoughts ........................................................................................127 CHAPTER 4 TEACHERS NAVIGATING A PATHWAY BETWEEN OLD AND NEW PROFESSIONALISM:THE FINDINGS Introduction .....................................................................................................131 Summary findings............................................................................................132 Theoretical overview .......................................................................................135 Teachers and parents: an ambivalent partnership of old professionalism .......141
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