Teacher professional learning under audit: reconfiguring practice in an age of standards

Abstract

One of the key tenets of the global education reform movement, professional standards for teachers have reshaped different aspects of teachers’ work and learning in many contexts internationally over the past two decades. This paper explores the consequences of neoliberalism for teacher professional learning in contemporary times. The policies and processes built up around teacher professional development and learning as a consequence of contemporary regimes of standards and their dominant conceptualisation of teacher professionalism, constitute particular cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements that frame the practice of teacher professional learning. These in turn give rise to some possibilities of practice while limiting others, effectively creating the space within which what counts as 'authentic professional learning' can be enacted. A case study of the interplay between professional standards and professional learning in the jurisdiction of New South Wales, Australia, is presented, via an analysis of publicly available texts generated by the NSW Education Standards Authority explicitly related to teacher professional learning and development. The paper argues that the practice architectures of professional learning in an age of standards work to support instrumental forms of professional learning while constraining the possibility of more authentic or generative forms of professional learning and consequently, teacher professionalism.