ABSTRACT
In the last decade, educational reform has taken a more indirect route to school improvement by emphasizing the development of teacher professionalism. In an effort to improve teacher competence, restructuring policies focused some attention on improving the present condition of the teacher’s workplace and the organization and management of teachers who are already in schools, as well as the preparation of those who are contemplating a career in teaching. This has not been an easy task. Most efforts at professionalizing teachers are embedded within policies that restructure either time and space, curriculum and pedagogy, or accountability measures. The proliferation of new policies that bombard schools has been putting quite a stress on teachers. As front-line workers, not only are they given the main responsibility for implementing change, they have also become ultimately accountable for the outcome of implementation. Teachers’ resistance to change is well documented (Lightfoot 1983; Elmore 1990; Schlechty 1990). Although there has been evidence that some schools have
been able to embrace change, a majority of teachers do not readily ‘jump on the bandwagon’, so to speak. Having found stability in the ‘old ways of doing things’, teachers’ approach to any kind of change has naturally tended towards scepticism, mistrust, and even fear. Transforming these attitudes into more receptive and positive ones requires not only changes to curriculum or pedagogy but, most importantly, changes in the context in which teachers teach. This study draws on teachers’ experiences of a restructuring policy. It is grounded in data derived from fifty-three teacher interviews during a two-year period. Preliminary analysis unearthed several factors that influence the development of teacher professionalism in the schools, amongst the strongest of which is leadership.
