Teachers as state workers and the politics of professionalism

Abstract

In the last few years state school teachers in Australia have shown an increased propensity to engage in militant action (eg, the use of the strike) on a range of industrial and educational issues. This study attempts to explain why this is the case, and to detail how teachers are reacting to present circumstances in the educational sphere. The central concerns of the study are to examine the development of a number of empirical tendencies within the public school sector which can be conceptualised as marking the proletarianisation of educational workers, and to investigate the ideological constructions characteristic of the occupation. A major interest with respect to this is to illustrate how elements in the 'ideological matrix' of teachers serve to condition the form of response by teachers to the processes of proletarianisation affecting their labour activity. Discussions in the study include consideration of the historical development of education in New South Wales as this pertains to teachers, a brief summary of the political-economic context of contemporary schooling, an in-depth analysis of the location of teachers in the class and institutional structures of advanced capitalist societies, and a case study of a particular instance of strike activity involving teachers in New South Wales. The study argues that one can make a distinction between 'militancy' and 'radicalism' in reference to the nature of teacher mobilisations. It is shown how teacher ideologies play a major role in determining whether or not political activity on the part of teachers takes the form of an active challenge to existing educational and societal structures of power and domination. Show more