Led by Michelle McCarthy from University of Southern Queensland, the study analysed a series of open-ended interviews with 20 secondary school teachers from Queensland.
Hidden conflicts and contradictions clearly emerged from teachers’ accounts.
“Teachers described themselves as ‘double agents’ in that they deliberately engaged in tactical enactments of compliance, allegiance and survival as part of a strategy to work with and against the grain of policy mandates,” the study found.
Professor Andrew Hickey, also from University of Southern Queensland, was part of the research team and says teachers were very eager to express how they saw larger-scale policy changes had failed to have “any bearing on the classroom context”.
The scene had made teachers’ daily practice “difficult, if not impossible”, he tells EducationHQ.
“What we found was, the interviews that we ran were very therapeutic – they were almost an opportunity for the teachers to relay these frustrations that they'd been living through and experiencing, but that no one had ever bothered to ask them about.
“And so there was this almost cathartic response that the teachers had...”
What might have been a scheduled 40-45 minute interview slot sometimes extended out for hours at a time, Hickey adds, with participants talking at length about the dilemmas they faced in their job.
Indeed, teachers reported they often did not agree with the education reform and policies they were charged with – bureaucracy they saw as being useless and ‘realistically untenable’ to enact.
Driven by a fear of reprisal and a keenness to avoid calling in performance management, the research found teachers used various methods and tactics to give the impression they backed their school leadership’s agenda, while deliberately working to undermine it.
“I just make it look like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing from a policy perspective, but I don’t,” one teacher said.
“We need double agents in the system who say, ‘no, stuff you and your stupid policy, we know what’s right for the kids, and we will get the best results we can for them’.”
Workplace isolation
A gnawing sense of isolation was a strong theme in teachers’ accounts, Hickey notes.
“All of these [teachers] were reporting back that they just felt that they weren't being supported and that they really only had themselves or a small group of immediate peers, immediate colleagues, to talk to,” the academic says.
“And that in itself was really worrying, because a number of folks had reported to us that, look, you know, you couldn't even talk openly within your school, let alone at the system level about these things.”
Teachers felt that reforms only generated more work for the profession and became ‘meaningless data collection exercises’ that were not valued by students or staff because they did nothing to enhance student learning, the study found.
The datafication of teaching was another key theme in teachers’ accounts, with layers of compliance, reporting and data production now a required and time-consuming part of the job.
“The teachers in our study often referred to ‘box ticking’, and providing ‘proof’ and ‘evidence’ of their professionalism.
“The focus on data was at the expense of what teachers considered to be genuine teaching, learning and collaboration…” researchers flag.
One participant noted while there was a huge focus on data in her school, it was not authentic.
“They were very happy to twist it because they wanted really good data. I’d say, ‘We’re going to do this little bit and nothing else’ and just lie because nothing was ever sustained. It was very reactionary,” she disclosed.
A look back in time
When reflecting on their earliest memories of education, the teachers spoke about educators not needing to grapple with marrying up data and practice and instead being trusted professionals who were “genuine, nurturing and innovative”.
By contrast, they suggested teachers of today are “required to mask instinctive welfare responses and operate in a climate of workload intensification, stress, fear and mistrust”.
One explained that teachers are now worried about the repercussions of even doing a fist pump or high five, because “in a moment of kindness, your career’s gone”.
And while in the past teachers could choose to be ‘non-conformists’ within their schools, the participants reported contemporary teachers may face performance management conversations with school executive if they were to act against policies and expectations.
One teacher attributed a loss of innovation to rules that teachers felt obliged to follow, despite not agreeing with them.
She elaborated, “eventually I realised that I’m just a number and I need to follow the rules because I need to provide for my daughter and my home and my cats and my mum who is now in aged care”.
The time poverty issue
The experience of ‘time poverty’ was a common issue raised by teachers.
In particular, they reported that the release time for preparation and marking was ‘grossly inadequate’ to meet the demands of curriculum reform and data requirements.
The study found teachers are required to triage their compliance to policy in various ways. As one male teacher put it:
“It never ends and I have to triage and deal with it but that’s the thing that eats away at you because you never get to the bottom of the list and you never get everything done and you’re thinking, oh god, should I have dealt with that?
“Like I’ve dealt with three really super important urgent things after school today, but should I have dealt with that fourth thing? Is that fourth thing going to come and bite me? Is that the thing that’s going to flare up tomorrow? Psychologically it’s exhausting.”
Teachers reported needing to be ready at all times with documented evidence to prove they were meeting the needs of all students in their classroom, the study found.
Time poverty was felt acutely on this front, too.
“In my Year 8 class for example, I have nine students that have a disability ranging from ADHD, physical disabilities, autism, other learning difficulties including dyslexia, and mental health challenges, including anxiety.
"I’m expected to differentiate for all of those students as well as the usual differentiation for students in my class who just struggle with the literacy demands of English.
"If I was authentically differentiating the curriculum, one student could take up three entire spares for them to then not even engage with the curriculum I have had to separately design for them,” one teacher said.
Parental backlash and abuse
The fear of backlash and abuse from parents was also found to create ‘coercive compliance’ amongst teachers, with complaints seen as a route to unfair criticism and defamation.
One teacher explained that the simple act of returning assignment work can make teachers feel like ‘some sort of moronic underclass’:
“You’re almost scared to hit the send button and give them their assignment work back because you know that within 24 hours you’re going to have four or five parents who are going to dispute the mark and then you’ve got to go back and re-mark it and then you’ve got to email the parents and they want a phone call and that’s the best-case scenario.
"Some just go straight to the principal or the Head of Department and you don’t even know about it. You’re just terrified – what are they going to do or say to you as the car park mafia gathers every afternoon to tell tales about teachers and denigrate teachers? I’m just living in fear.”
‘They’re still turning up’
Researchers concluded that system-level reforms are overwhelmingly impacting teachers in a negative way.
“Based on our conversations with the 20 teachers in this study, it was evident that conforming to system prerogatives and reform agendas appeared to have a detrimental impact on their professional and personal wellbeing, which led to the playing of strategic games of truth and the deployment of various tactics in response to the contradictory demands on their subjective agency,” they flagged.
Yet despite the isolation and exasperation felt by teachers, it’s important to recognise that this hadn’t translated into despair, Hickey flags.
”And that was really important for us to understand, that these guys were saying that they were frustrated by systems that weren’t supporting them, they felt very alone, that they were isolated from the wide network of professionalism and professional practice, but they hadn’t given up.
“And that was crucial.”
Hickey is now calling on policymakers to take note on this front.
“I think, ‘wow, if only education systems could actually appreciate that and realise that you have at your disposal a group of highly talented, highly capable professionals that you’re not looking after, but nonetheless and against the odds, they’re still turning up.
“They’re still enacting their practice at the highest level of professionalism with a big commitment to their kids.
“And that really gets to the core of what these guys were about: they felt they almost obliged to have to resist these policy overlays that they knew, as experienced educators, weren’t going to work in classrooms...
“But they had to push on and back their own professionalism for the sake of the kids…”
