Professional Development for School Improvement: Are Changing Balances of Control Leading to the Growth of a New Professionalism?

The main purpose in this chapter is to reflect on the strategies that have been adopted by successive governments in England to encourage, support and provide continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers and headteachers and to consider whether these strategies have led to the emergence of a new teacher professionalism. Policy makers have been increasingly concerned to identify and use mechanisms to influence practice in schools and classrooms in order to raise standards in education. Teacher professional development has been seen as one of the key levers for change and over the years questions have been raised on a regular basis about what are appropriate processes and content for CPD and whether these issues should be decided by the teachers, Local Education Authorities or the Government. The balance of influence between these stakeholders has shifted back and forth from a position where all parties had an input into policy making to one of more central government control, which in turn has implications for teacher professionalism. The discussion is structured in three sections corresponding to three periods in which differences in educational ideology, approaches to educational policy, and strategies of implementation can be discerned. The three sections are labelled: Partnership, New Public Management and Modernisation. These divisions and labels are somewhat arbitrary and one can argue about the boundaries between sections but I have found them a useful organising device. Partnership refers to the period when the main stakeholders all had input into educational decision-making and there was a broad consensus about the direction of policy. Typically this led to systems of structuring and managing schools which enabled teachers to have “a degree of freedom in the exercise of professional practice” (Hoyle, 1986: 170) and to enjoy relative autonomy. The distinction between New Public Management and Modernisation is less clear since both are rooted in a belief in the market and the value of choice and competition as a means of improving provision. The term associated with New Public Management and sometimes used interchangeably with it is managerialism. The defining features of managerialism are a strong central regulatory framework, devolved decision