Locking ourselves in: National standards for the teaching profession

Teaching & Teacher Education, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 95-108, 1994

0742~151X/94 $6.00 + 0.00 © 1993 Pergamon Press Ltd

Printed in Great Britain

LOCKING

OURSELVES IN: NATIONAL STANDARDS TEACHING PROFESSION

FOR THE

M. B R U C E K I N G University of Wisconsin Madison, U.S.A. Abstract--The National Board for ProfessionalTeachingStandards has begunwork in the U.S.A.to create a nationwide program to recognizeand certifygood teachers and to improvethe status of the profession. Its most pressing goal is the development of standards and assessment procedures for the 1993implementation of a voluntaryprogram of"advanced professionalcertification"for elementary and secondaryschool teachers. This article examines the specificdiscourse of the National Board in the areas of professionalization, standards, assessment, and certification. It also explores the possible general effectsand meaningsof the Board'seffortsand someof the responsesthat can be made to them by educators. In spite of any intensions to the contrary, it is argued that the Board's program will ultimately institute more controls on teachers, further distance "professional" from laypersons, and inhibit collaborative efforts among school people in their local contexts.

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, created in the U.S.A. in 1987, seeks to establish a nationwide program to recognize and certify good teachers and to improve the status of the profession. Through this program, it hopes to improve the quality of teaching and learning in schools. Its most pressing goal is the development of standards and assessment procedures for the 1993 implementation of a voluntary program of advanced professional certification for elementary and secondary school teachers. While its work is confined to the U.S.A., the issues that emerge from the Board's work--conditions of teachers' work, the status and norms of the profession, and the like--parallel problems of educational reform in a number of countries. The attempt to improve teachers and teaching through assessing professional competencies is not new in the U.S.A. The National Society for the Study of Education's 1915 yearbook was entitled Methods of Measuring Teachers' Efficiency (Boyce, 1915). In 1929, a report by Barr specified 20 criteria (e.g., pupils' interest in the subject, physical condition of the room, ability of teacher to "put across") that would distinguish between the good and poor teacher. Somewhat

later, Barr's (1961) summary of studies on teaching--in which teachers endorsed by administrators, those favored by students, and those who taught in classes with gains in student achievement were not, in general, the same teachers--points to the problematic nature of assessing teacher competence. Over 30 years ago, the Commission on Teacher Education (1957) developed an inventory of 148 teacher competencies in six different areas of professional activity to guide the evaluation of teachers. Interestingly, an earlier publication by the American Federation of Teachers (Herrick, 1958) responded to proposals for merit pay for teachers by arguing that it would discourage teamwork and professional cooperation. Although many recent educational reform and policy initiatives have focused on the content of the schools' curriculum or the organizational features of the schools, increased attention is now being given to teachers and the profession of teaching. Teaching, it has been argued in some of the reform literature, is both cause and cure for the ills of schooling and the appalling consequences of these ills on U.S. society and national stature in the world's economic and political 95

96

M. B R U C E K I N G

arenas. The existence of the Board may be due in part, then, to the attention education and the schools in the U.S.A. have been receiving over the past decade, the low status and financial remuneration of the 2.5 million or so elementary and secondary teachers, and the perceived need that more capable individuals must be attracted to the profession, as well as to an established tradition of teacher assessment. What I shall do here is examine the initial efforts of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. I would like to explore possible outcomes of these efforts, to examine possible dangers and the ways in which these efforts might serve to regulate and control teachers. In the next section, I will offer an account of the Board's aims and strategies to meet those aims, as well as highlighting some of the positive aspects of its work. In the remainder of the article, I will offer a critique of the Board's perspectives and initial policies, and show how many of these are likely to undermine the more positive aspects of its mission. In developing this critique, I draw on critical, feminist, and poststructural theoretical frameworks that emphasize the social construction of reality through discourse, the formation of subjects (individuals' identities), and the circulation of power. Perspectives and Strategies of the National Board In 1989, the Board released a summary of its work thus far and its proposed mission for the years ahead. In its report, "Toward High and Rigorous Standards for the Teaching Profession: Initial Policies and Perspectives of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards," the Board asserts that the future of the U.S.A. depends on its schools and currently, the schools are failing. While some important educational reforms are taking place, none of them "promises the potential for permanent and systematic transformation of teaching that is offered by the National Board" (p. iii). The Board suggests a number of anticipated consequences of its work. These include transforming the public's perception of teaching, changing teachers' union school board dynamics, improving teachers' selfesteem, working conditions and compensation, creating more professional and rewarding rela-

tionships between teachers, encouraging more rigorous programs of teacher training, and restoring public confidence in schools (pp. 2 3). National professional certification, the Board asserts, will provide an important step "to provide assurance of high quality practice" (p. 2). The establishment and early efforts of the National Board have received significant support. For example, the American Federation of Teachers (1990), one of the two major teachers' unions in this country, reprinted many sections from the Board's 1989 report in its publication, American Educator, prefacing them with this unqualified endorsement: The National Board's potential is tremendous for upgrading the status of teachers, for expanding and codifying the knowledge base of teaching, for providing a fair way to recognize excellent teachers, and for triggering such needed school reforms as increased collaboration a m o n g teachers, reduced bureaucratic control over the forms of their work, and more productive use of their talents. (p 8)

The efforts of the National Board center on three major aims. First, it seeks to change the quality of education schools offer in the U.S.A. The Board believes it can be a catalyst for creating schools that use innovative materials and methods creatively, that incorporate new advances in technology, that encourage student initiative and creativity, and that hold high expectations for all students. It claims that since teaching is the heart of the educational enterprise, a program that recognizes accomplished teachers will vitalize the entire national school system (p. 6). Second, the Board strives to enhance the professional practice of teachers. Indeed, through its program, it hopes to provide assurance of high-quality practice (p. 2). By codifying the knowledge base for teaching, the professionalism of teachers will supposedly improve. The Board's third major objective is to contribute to the professionalization of teaching. "Making teaching a profession" (p. 5) is considered to be an essential foundation for the revolution in schooling that the Board seeks. A rewarding career, adequate pay, and the promise of professional status and respect are necessary, not only to attract qualified individuals to the field, but to reverse the trend of "declining minority interest in teaching" (p. 8).

National Standards for the Teaching Profession To accomplish these ends, standards will be identified that reflect "what teachers should know and be able to do." Five core propositions are articulated which will serve as the basis for the formulation of standards. These propositions are (pp. 13-14): 1. Teachers are committed to students and their learning. 2. Teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students. 3. Teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning. 4. Teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience. 5. Teachers are members of learning communities. Each of these principles is elaborated upon, as the Board attempts to create standards "that are so well regarded that America's teachers will decide to seek National Board Certification" (p. 13). The identification of national teaching standards will be accompanied by the development of assessment procedures "to ascertain who meets the standards for National Board Certification" (p. 67). The Board anticipates adopting a variety of assessment techniques including traditional multiple choice and essay methodologies as well as interviews, portfolios, simulated performances, and on-site observations. Those teachers who meet the standards for the profession established by the Board will be granted national certification. Certification will be offered in over 20 teaching areas, from generalist certificates in early and middle childhood to subject specialist certificates for middle childhood and adolescence, as well as certificates for those who teach multiple levels (e.g., art and music), special education, and limited English proficient students. Each certificate will reflect four areas of teacher proficiency: common professional knowledge, knowledge specific to the developmental level of students taught, breadth of subject area knowledge, and depth of subject area knowledge (pp. 46-47). Much of what the Board proposes in its initial formulations is constructive and will hopefully contribute to altering the conditions under which most teachers work and to shifting the emphases of conventional curriculum and pedagogy. The Board correctly recognizes that external prescriptions typically fail to consider the know-

97

ledge and expertise teachers possess. The Board recognizes that teaching is an artistic craft requiring serious reflection. There is also important attention paid to students, that teachers capitalize on and enlarge students' repertoires of learning and that they foster higher order thinking in students at any level. Importantly, teachers should reflect certain values (though many are left undefined) such as curiosity and love of learning, fairness and justice, and respect for human diversity, as well as capabilities to question received wisdom, to be creative, and to take risks. The Board is also opposed to the view that teaching is primarily the implementation of policy and curriculum developed by others. "The National Board advocates a more proactive and creative role for teachers: engaging them in the analysis and construction of curriculum, in the coordination of instruction, in the professional development of staff and in many other schoolsite policy decisions" (p. 25). Opportunities and the capacities for teachers to be involved in these arenas certainly should be encouraged. Two aspects of the Board's position are worthy of special emphasis. These are teacher as learner and collaborative school cultures. Both of these are embodied in two of its five core propositions of what teachers should know and be able to do: "Teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience" and "Teachers are members of learning communities" (p. 14). In the report, these propositions are reinforced and clarified: Teachers should be lifelong students of their craft. Teachers can secure the knowledge and expertise of fellow staff members in a variety of ways. School-wide collaboration between teachers across subject area departments and grade levels has potential for improving student learning experiences. There is significant value in having others observe and critique one's own teaching. The Board also rightly notes that teachers can learn from and collaborate with parents as well. Why are these positions particularly notable? Teacher as learner would recognize and value the uncertainty inherent in teaching and learning, and foster dispositions of risk-taking and habits of thoughtfulness that are necessary for teachers to serve as appropriate models of educated persons. The perspective of teacher as learner might help to revive the notion that there is an art

98

M. BRUCE KING

to teaching, that "localized," "bottom-up" knowledges might be emphasized. An emphasis on collaborative school cultures may encourage efforts to bring teachers in a particular site together so that they may work cooperatively on their collective improvement. Although the Board is on target in regard to the above concerns, the overall direction it seems to be taking is somewhat alarming. In spite of intentions to the contrary, the Board's general emphasis on professionalization, national standards, assessment, and certification is likely to undermine its more positive intentions. These may ultimately result in more controls on teachers, further distance professionals from laypersons, and inhibit collaborative efforts among school people in their local contexts. Each of these aspects of the Board's work, and their potential outcomes, are explored further in the next two sections.

The Professionalization of Teaching Teaching, it is claimed by some educational reformers, can be improved by increased professionalization. This strategy entails, in part, controlling the occupation through self-governance, restricting entry into the field, and the monitoring of colleagues through peer evaluation. Effective professionalization might also include both recognition and protection from external interference by a state authority. Professionalization, it is argued, not only can raise the status of teachers in comparison to other work, but can also extend teacher control over issues of curriculum, instruction, and school governance. Recent educational reform proposals in the U.S.A. (e.g., Carnegie Forum, 1986; The Holmes Group, 1986) have highlighted the importance of enhancing teachers' professional status. The National Board also hopes to promote this aim. While, for the most part, speaking in terms of improving the quality of practice through professionalism--"The Board-certified teacher will stand for professionalism in the schools" (p. 13)--the Board clearly hopes to help to professionalize the field as well. National certification should bring greater status, higher salaries, more rewarding work environments, greater mobility and career opportunities to teachers (p. 7).

Improving teaching and schools through professionalization has fundamental problems. In this approach, teaching is typically regarded as an occupation in need of substantial improvement and teachers in need of more effective policing. "Teachers are compared to doctors, lawyers, engineers, airline pilots, business executives, and military officers, and in every case they are found wanting in terms of prestige and its prerequisites--esoteric expertise, autonomy, and so forth" (Casey & Apple, 1989, p. 175). That is, images of deficiency and even deviance are associated with teaching. The Board supports increasing the supply of high quality entrants into the field and asserts, "... the presence of a high-quality teaching force in all fields has never been more urgent" (p. 61). With even more of a sense of national calamity (as well as furthering the belief that schools can solve social problems), the Board argues, "The country is beginning to understand that if America is to have a future with promise, it must have world class schools, and that if America is to have world class schools, it must have a world class teaching force" (p. 1). The implication here is that the cadre of current teachers, except for those that can meet the Board's rigorous standards, are inadequate and most likely cannot achieve the high quality necessary for national success. The Board suggests a medical model when it states that competent teachers are "diagnosticians" of students' abilities, prior knowledge, and interests (p. 17). Physicians, as well as architects and accountants, have also successfully codified knowledge of accomplished practice (p. 6). In the Board's case for multiple areas for national certification, the association between teachers and doctors is made explicit, "Unlike some professions where a single certificate is awarded, teaching more closely resmembles medicine wherein the breadth of subject matter is so formidable that no one practitioner can be expected to command it all" (p. 3). One must be concerned about the parallel to the medical model of professionalization as a strategy for improving the quality of teaching in the schools. This approach to professionalization has clearly enhanced status and earnings for physicians, and it probably will do that for teachers. On the other hand, the cost of this kind of professionalism seems much too high. In medicine, a technocratic approach to clients has

National Standards for the Teaching Profession overwhelmed more holistic orientations; specialization has been overly rewarded; physicians' work has undergone extreme intensification; conformity and isolation have also been encouraged to a large degree (see Means, 1965; Morantz & Zschoche, 1984; Starr, 1982). These do not seem to be conditions that teachers would wish for their profession; in fact, they run counter to many recommendations for organizational change to promote improved teaching and learning, such as increased collaboration and less bureaucratic and technical controls. Moreover, opportunities for physicians to experiment, to risk, to acknowledge and learn from mistakes have been, to a great extent, eliminated. To make this clear, I quote at some length Hilfiker (1985), who writes, Mistakes are an inevitable part of everyone'slife.They happen, they hurt--ourselves and others ... Shown our mistakes and forgiventhem, we can grow,perhaps in some small way become better people. Mistakes, understood this way, are a process, a way we connect with one another and with out deepest selves. But mistakes seem different for doctors ... [M]odern medicine has created for the physician an expectation of perfection. The technology seems so exact that error becomes almost unthinkable. We are not prepared for our mistakes, and we don't know how to cope with them when they occur. Doctors are not alone in harboring expectations of perfection. Patients, too, expect doctors to be perfect ... This perfectionis a grand illusion, of course,a game ofmirrors everyoneplays. Doctors hide their mistakes from patients, from other doctors, even from themselves ... Mistakes become gossip, and are spoken of openly only in court. Unable to admit our mistakes, we physiciansare cut offfrom healing. We cannot ask for forgiveness, and we get none. We are thwarted, stunted, we do not grow. (pp. 76-77) Although the Board advocates certain positive elements of professional practice, for example, teachers should be "models of educated persons" that continually learn and grow (p. 24), increased professionalization which parallels a medical model may serve to stifle that growth. As in medicine, we may hide and deny our mistakes and our lack of knowledge; we may continue to displace our inadequacies and the inadequacies of our technologies--which in a more constructive environment, would be attended t o - - o n t o some failure of the students or their home environment. Will we be able to risk a public appeal for assistance, nurturing, and improve-

99

ment if national certification as an accomplished teacher is at stake? The Board's efforts will, it seems, further discourage this kind of consideration. As we shall see in the discourse of the Board's initial policies, this approach to professionalization relies on technical solutions to the problem of teacher productivity. Although the Board does properly recognize that teaching is an artistic craft (p. 15), it claims that the accomplished teacher has mastery of a codified professional knowledge base and is technically proficient in applying this knowledge in the classroom (pp. 9, 13). Interestingly, it is claimed that, " F o r the first time in teachers' careers it will be in their direct self-interest to have command of the knowledge base" (p. 10), as if educators had no previous concern to reflect on or appraise the significance of their pedagogy for the students in their classrooms. In addition, the nationally recognized teacher's "commitment to learning about new materials includes keeping abreast of technological developments that have implications for teaching" (p. 20). This discourse masks the control over the labor process that is inherent in the technology of the work. The discourses of professionalization and of technical solutions can ironically produce a perception that increased technicization--that is, implementing "proven" strategies in curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment which results in a loss of teacher control over their work--signifies an increase in professionalization (see Apple, 1985; Edwards, 1979). Labaree (1992), in his analysis of the roots of the current movement for teacher professionalization in the U.S.A., of which I believe the National Board to be a part, argued that this movement will reinforce the vision of teaching as a technical activity. "After all, if there is one characteristic a professionalizing occupation seeks to attach to its members in the eyes of the public, it is technical competence" (p. 148). He went on to argue that the technical view of teaching deflects attention from the political nature of teaching. That is, the content of instruction and pedagogy have political significance and this tends to be hidden by the perspective of teaching as a technical activity. A focus on technical competence diverts attention from an examination of, for example, the curriculum that favors the knowledge, history, and ideology of some groups over others, what

100

M. BRUCE K I N G

Apple (1990) and others perceive as part of the selective tradition. Labaree concluded, "One potential danger of professionalization, therefore, is the way in which it pushes technical questions into the foreground and political questions in the background as either unscientific or unproblematic" (p. 148). Teacher professionalization, pursued with this emphasis on expertise and technical competence, can also further distance teachers from students, their parents, and the community. That is, "education will be considered a technical matter that must be left in the hands of certified experts, and that efforts by the laity to set the direction or shape the content of education will not be seen as an appropriate democratic action, but as an unacceptable form of interference" (Labaree, 1992, p. 149). The parallel to the medical model of professionalization is particularly troublesome, because physicians seem to have been quite successful in distancing themselves from the interference of the uninitiated, who are seen for the most part as incapable of making crucial decisions. "The implication is that lay persons should have no more say about how a teacher conducts a class than about how a surgeon conducts an operation" (p. 149). The political nature of teaching makes it clear that this kind of "construction of professional barriers to public influence over classroom instruction [is] nothing less than a threat to an essential component of democracy" (p. 149). Historically, professionalization in the U.S.A. has played a significant, and often contradictory, role in the on-going struggles within the gender politics of patriarchy. In education, for example, professionalization has been an important strategy through which women teachers have attempted to gain equal treatment, pay, and control over their work (Apple, 1986). Typically, however, approaches to professionalization employ characterizations of teaching that tend to reinforce gender stereotypes and unequal status. Male definitions of commitment to one's work are also used to blame women teachers for problems in schools (Casey & Apple, 1989). Since the Board makes no mention of the fact that teaching is predominantly comprised of women, one must be skeptical that its strategy for professionalization will do much to counter the establishment of more, or more efficient, controls on female teachers.

Standards, Assessment, and Certification The Board's strategies center on standards, assessment, and national certification. Though still in their preliminary stage, the Board's recommendations in each area have critical implications for teachers' professional lives and identities, and these will be examined next. Standards

In its work ahead, the Board will develop its "high and rigorous standards" for the teaching profession in the U.S.A. Upon examining the five core propositions--" what teachers should know and be able to do" (pp. 13-29)--which will serve as the basis for the formulation of the standards, the Board's discourse exhibits the characteristics of a slogan system. Slogan systems, to be effective, require three properties (Apple, 1986). First, they must be vague so that multiple and diverse groups can find agreement with some, if not most, of the propositions. All of the Board's core propositions--for example, "Teachers are committed to students and their learning" (p. 13)--say little but can hardly be disputed, thereby cultivating broad-based initial support from various groups. Second, slogan systems must offer something concrete to practitioners, but typically lack any assurances that this will be achieved. The Board's promise of public recognition and improved occupational status will, no doubt, appeal to teachers whose efforts are regularly disparaged. Third, the style of a slogan system must be significantly alluring that it captures public interest and support. The Board appears to meet this criterion by appealing to "America's future" (p. 1), by citing the "ground swell of goodwill" (p. 9) its efforts have already received across the country, and by avoiding educational jargon. As part of its efforts to generate widespread support, the Board also asserts, "The very existence of a National Board suggests common standards that prevail across teaching's many settings" (p. 28). Thus, it implies that standards already exist--or there would not be a National Board--and its task is simply to identify them. The standards are thereby presented as something natural and therefore not open to question. Although it may have intentions to the contrary, the Board's language tends to inhibit debate and

National Standards for the Teaching Profession to mask the fact that the standards will be created/invented to serve certain purposes that may not align with classroom teachers' purposes. Standards produce differentiation and because the standards are "natural," the differentiation that is generated also appears natural. The defining of standards for teaching further removes control of their work from teachers' hands. This will likely result in reducing teacher discretion, discouraging reflectivity, and inhibiting collective efforts on the part of a group of teachers; that is, the exact opposite of what the Board advocates in other sections of its report. Standards can be seen as a form of law. They comprise a code, a set of regulations or norms for behaviors, attitudes, and dispositions. In a political sense, the Board becomes the representative body to formulate the law that is to guide the teaching profession into the next century. In a religious sense, they also become a type of priesthood, responsible for the care of the flock who are supposed to be content to accept and reproduce the doctrine handed down from on high. In sum, teachers appear to be a segment of society who need to be morally regulated, to be better disciplined and more efficiently patrolled. Like the church and the legislature, the Board will function as a normative institution. Speaking in the name of reality, the National Board will be defining " t r u t h " as it constructs the common teaching standards. The ability to define truth is predicated on particular power relations and strategies, and is thereby political in nature (Foucault, 1980; also see Racevskis, 1988). Modern power is productive: It produces behaviors, pleasures, forms of knowledge, and capabilities. The Board, in its five core propositions, relates the "knowledge, skills, dispositions, and commitments" that an accomplished teacher should demonstrate. The standards to be developed from these propositions will produce particular teacher-subjects. That is, the national teaching standards will comprise a structuring practice that constitutes teachers' subjectivity. Teachers will be positioned as subjects who must encounter, and who will be defined by, this law. Advanced national certification, professed to be voluntary, will help to compel teachers to adopt the limits of the law. Standards will be imposed on a largely female teaching force. This is deafly antithetic to the recent work (e.g., Boston Women's Teachers'

101

Group, 1983; Grumet, 1988; Weiler, 1988) that has placed women teachers' understandings of their own experience at the center of the educational research agenda. Some have argued that many of the conditions of teaching have fostered a denial of fundamental attachments to children and feminine ideals of caring and nurturance. Standardized tests, checklists of skills and objectives, time schedules for learning, definitions of progress established by test makers or publishers, all reconstruct the teacher's role from one of educator and comforter to one of recorder and judge. Others have shown how the association of teaching and femininity has reinforced patriarchal relations and gender inequalities. This kind of inquiry--involving fundamental questioning of specific practices and constructing new definitions of teaching and learning--gives voice to, and thereby entails the exercise of power by, women teachers. The national standards, however, may have the effect of reversing this movement from the margins. By stressing teachers' ultimate commitment to hierarchical authorities such as state laws and school board policies (pp. 14, 25), the Board fails to privilege the local knowledge and understanding of curriculcum and pedagogy of the largely female teaching force. It has been argued that gender equity and success for women may depend on altering dominant definitions of success (Markus, 1986). But national standards for teaching could, in fact, serve to reinforce traditional notions of achievement based on socially prescribed norms for success and external recognition. Assessment

The development of a variety of assessment procedures will accompany the identification of national teaching standards. The Board anticipates that teachers will be evaluated through a variety of procedures, from multiple choice exams to portfolios, simulated performances, and observations. These forms of assessment will determine who meets the standards for national certification. In its work ahead, the Board will attempt to "ascertain the extent to which it can incorporate [its] vision of teaching into its assessments" (p. 28). This vision of teaching which will serve as the

102

M. BRUCE K I N G

basis for defining the standards and assessment methods is represented in five core principles (pp. 13-29). While my intent here is not to critique specific aspects of the Board's perspective on teaching but rather to call into question and consider possible consequences of its strategy of constructing national standards and assessments for teaching, important questions about its vision of teaching need to be addressed as the Board continues its work: To what extent will the Board's principles be compromised as they get translated into specific standards? Are particular principles difficult or impossible to assess and consequently omitted from what constitutes the accomplished teacher? Could it be possible that the available assessment procedures will, in the end, come to define the Board's doctrine on teaching? Assessment is, broadly speaking, a form of examination, and, the examination combines surveillance with normalizing judgment. "It is a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to punish" (Foucault, 1979, p. 184). In the medical field, the advent of more rigorous forms of examination helped establish the authority and status of the physician. In education, examination certainly has played a vital role in the surveillance and ranking of students, and it is now becoming increasingly dominant in the lives of teachers. The examination plays a critical role in constituting the subject, for it identifies for the individual what the "true" characteristics of the self should be. Through the procedures of qualifying for national certification, teachers will come to know the beliefs and practices that have been defined by the Board as constituting the "truly excellent educator." At the same time, the examination is an inversion of visibility whereby the subject of the exam becomes objectified and the disciplinary power is rendered invisible. That is, the criteria upon which a teacher is judged are not open to scrutiny, they are made invisible; the individual teacher becomes the focus. The examination helps to constitute the individual as object and effect of knowledge and power. Examination records on patients in hospitals, prisoners in jails, and students in schools have been commonplace for many years. Through National Board assessment of their professional competencies, this form of regulation is now being focused on teachers on a grander scale.

The examination is a form of self-disclosure, a form of confessing. By establishing assessment mechanisms (confessionals) through which each teacher subjects his or her behaviors, dispositions, and expertise to the normative criteria embedded in the standards, the National Board, despite intentions to the contrary, may become the new disciplinary institution for education in the U.S.A.

The Certificate Those teachers who show themselves to meet the "high and rigorous standards" for the profession will be granted national certification by the Board. Certificates will represent a new commodity, a symbolic good, with a particular set of consumers. Commodities have functional value, but importantly, they carry social and cultural value as well. That is, meanings and preferences accompany the economic and practical use values of a product. Why a new cultural product for teachers? One of the cultural tasks of commodities is that they distinguish between groups; they are markers of social distinction. Art is an obvious example. What the new teaching certificate represents, it seems, is the spread of the mechanisms for social distinction to a field that, until recently, has had little differentiation in status or rank. All teachers are of relatively equal position, whether elementary or secondary, regular or special education, home economics or science, with the. only differentiation coming in terms of pay which is based on experience and education, not specific teaching competencies. The national teaching certificate follows both the 1986 Carnegie and Holmes Reports, both of which argue for the professionalization of teaching in part through the creation of a stratified hierarchy. Thus with the certificate, the Board joins merit pay plans, career ladders, and other proposals that will inaugurate more rigorous classification and distinctions among educators. The current system in the U.S.A. of individual state certification of teachers, by grade and/or subject matter, offers credentials that fail to provide cultural distinctions among those who possess them. The national certificate, on the other hand, will establish a publicly acceptable hierarchy for teachers. With a hierarchy, the

National Standards for the Teaching Profession distribution of individuals is made more legitimate and more efficient. Initially, those teachers who obtain a certificate will be distinguished from those who do not and they will, no doubt, receive (be able to exchange it for) increased economic rewards and benefits, as well as status and prestige. As more and more teachers obtain certificates, it may even be true that the 20 or so different certificates will come to reflect unequal amounts of cultural capital. Teachers acquiring the specialist certificate in a subject area (predictably, at this juncture, mathematics or science) may reap more rewards than the generalist. This is likely because "the distinctive power of cultural possessions and practices--an artifact, a qualification, a film culture--tends to decline with the growth in the absolute number of people able to appropriate them" (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 230). New commodities or new ways of using the same commodities will develop to maintain important social differentiation. Commodities, of course, do not force themselves upon consumers; teachers will have to be willing to incur whatever expenses are necessary to pursue national certification. The Board recognizes this when it states that its responsibilities include creating "standards and assessments that are so well regarded that America's accomplished teachers will decide to seek National Board Certification" (p. 13). On the face of it, this almost implies that because the standards and assessments are so well regarded, teachers will pursue certification. This may, in part, be true. But it must also be recognized that the certificate itself, along with its attendant cultural meanings (e.g., increased status, pay, power), will create a disposition to seek it. In other words, the cultural significance of the certificate will induce a demand for it. This suggests that teachers' changing aspirations and goals, under the national certification program, will come to focus more and more on certification and meeting the Board's standards than on matters such as what may be most appropriate for their students and classrooms, or the political nature of content and pedagogy. Because of the cultural significance of certification, the "voluntary" nature of the program appears to be somewhat dubious. Teachers may indeed choose to seek certification. However, this choice is almost obligatory because of the certificate's cultural meanings. Bourdieu (1984) suggests another insight into

103

why we are witnessing the formation of this new commodity. National certification will attest to certain competencies and it is conflicts of competence--"conflicts over the qualifications for legitimate practice of the occupation and the legitimate scope of the practice " (p. 244)--that now characterize relations in occupational fields or between occupations. These conflicts are ways "to transform the established order so as to secure a recognized place within it" (p. 245). That is, the struggle for certification represents a race for certain qualifications that bring cultural assets. What national board certification is about, at least in part, is extending to teachers the symbolic struggle for cultural capital within their occupational field. Drawing on Bourdieu's general account of social practices, it is clear that national certification carries with it the function of making distinctions and the struggle for cultural capital within a field. This is not meant as a critique of this particular aspect of the Board's program; a specific practice (i.e., national teacher certification) cannot be criticized because it corresponds to general social practices. Rather, it is intended to highlight probable outcomes of novel policy initiatives advocated for education and schooling in this country. These need to be highlighted since it seems likely that in the struggle and competition over status differentiation, teachers may be reluctant to collaborate with others or to devote significant energy to developing collegial cultures within schools, two of the more positive intentions of the Board as outlined previously. Although the Board states, "The conventional image of the accomplished teacher as solo performer working independently with students is narrow and out-dated" (p. 26), the struggle for status and the new hierarchy that national certification could bring seems to fortify, not discourage, this image. The National Board is also involved in the competition for positions within the social space of the field of educational policy (cf., Ladwig, 1990). Acquiring and defending a position in the social space is always, whether knowingly or not, at stake. By successfully creating National Board Certification, the Board will become the professional certification organization for education. This may help to explain why the Board has focused its attention on standards and certification rather than on, say, the reorganization of

104

M. BRUCE K I N G

schools. Although the Board does recognize that the "daily circumstances for most teachers do not remotely resemble an adequate professional working environment" and, as part of its reform efforts, hopes to contribute to creating more effective conditions for teaching in schools (p. 60), its initial direction has little to do with altering teachers' working conditions. This may be due in part to the fact that efforts in the field of restructuring schools are well underway in the U.S.A., with many public and private organizations already occupying much of the available space. National recognition as an accomplished teacher will be attained in spite of deleterious work environments, furthering the myth of "super teacher."

Probable Meanings and Resistances Thus far I have examined the discourse of the National Board in the areas of professionalization, standards, assessment, and certification. It may be useful at this point to take a broader view and explore the possible general effects and meanings of these efforts and some of the responses that educators might make to them. Through the creation of standards, assessments, and a program of national certification, the National Board, in effect if not in intention, is instituting its perspective of teaching as the official and legitimate point of view. It is an attempt to universalize a dogma, to conceal the indeterminacy of the exercise of power of one over another, to ultimately deny the impact of specific local conditions. It is noted, however, that "fundamental to the Board's vision of teaching is that it is context specific" (p. 41), but the only contexts with which the Board is concerned are the different grade levels and subjects that teachers teach. Diverse student populations, varying resources, dissimilar community expectations, and different degrees of isolation or collaboration are a few aspects of teachers' professional lives that reveal the significance of context. The Board's regard for context, however, leads only to the identification of multiple areas for certification. It seems that this position--that teaching is context specific --should lead instead to a rejection of universal standards and principles.

The fact that classroom teachers from diverse subject areas and grade levels comprise a majority of the 63-member Board does not necessarily mean that teachers' diverse voices, and contexts, are adequately represented. As in the broader political arena, where many of the poor and people of color do not have sufficient voice, some perspectives will simply not receive consideration. The standards that are developed, even with significant contributions from classroom teachers serving on the Board, will not necessarily be sensitive to varying school contexts. Although the Board states, "The challenge of balancing the need for standardization against the influence of context is an issue the Board must resolve in the development process ahead" (p. 29), it is probable that the construction of professional standards, with the force of national certification behind them, will be another instance of educational policy being mandated "from the top." This will, more than likely, inhibit opportunities to critically examine schools and teaching, and to grapple with policy issues in their distinct and diverse settings. The Board, in effect, may erect new barriers to local public involvement and influence over the aims and character of schooling. If the most significant focus for policital action is local, situated contexts, then the Board's mechanisms may serve to disenfranchise further those already marginalized from their schools. As the standards and certificates for teaching create new hierarchies and social distinction, they also define what is appropriate and correct for all. That is, they construct fixed subject positions for teachers and conceive of teaching as a unitary activity. Thus, difference and diversity are being annihilated: gender, race, and other social differences are obscured by the "universal" standards that define excellence in teaching. As differences are absorbed into a new system of meanings, the Board's mechanisms may continue to exclude/dissociate certain people from control and power. If it is true that the work of the National Board represents a new disciplining institution for teachers, it must also be true that resistance, manipulation, evasion of disciplinary power will emerge. If professisonal standards and certificates work to structure the identities and practices of teachers, they will also give rise to

National Standards for the Teaching Profession tactics, procedures, and ruses that "compose the network of an antidiscipline" (de Certeau, 1984, p. xv). It is in the realm of everyday life, in the tactics of consumption where continual conflict and negotiation take place; where those that are defined and classified can make their own use of the ways in which they are defined. Teachers have devised strategies of non-compliance before, from omitting most of the mandated basal reading program in order to encourage children to read, to repeating during an official observation a lesson previously taught, or to establishing an alternative educational program or school. They have also conformed to institutional requirements in order to evade them later on. As one classroom teacher stated regarding the lesson model which her district mandated, "I can do a 45-minute dog and pony show twice a year .... Then I close my classroom door and do what I know is good for the children" (quoted in Hargreaves & Dawe, 1989, p. 23). If the national teaching standards represent an imposed system, there remain ways of using the system that are outside its control. Like the apartment that a tenant can transform (momentarily) into his or her own, teachers can manipulate the space defined by the professional standards. The Board offers a new commodity, the national teaching certificate, and new products influence tastes in particular ways. Studies in popular culture (e.g., Fiske, 1989; Hall, 1981; Radway, 1987; WiUiamson, 1986) have shown, however, how goods have been appropriated and employed in ways that defy the established order. Thus, the specific uses of a commodity cannot be determined from the structural configuration of its production. The cultural and social meanings of a commodity like the National Teaching Certificate cannot be totally controlled. In order to understand better how diversionary practices might somehow oppose disciplining mechanisms, while at the same time, appear to conform to them, I utilize de Certeau's (1984) metaphor of la perruque, the wig. L a perruque is a worker's own work disguised as work for the employer, using time for her or his ends rather than for the company's. "With the complicity of other workers (who thus defeat the competition the factory tries to instill among them), [the worker] succeeds in 'putting one over' on the established order on its home ground" (p. 26). For teachers, work within the new parameters

105

established by national standards will still allow the space to pursue their own ends. While teachers submit to the technologies of assessment and certification, which, as in medicine, are likely to foster increased specialization, some will strive to respond to students without presuming their needs or identities as defined by that speciality. While teachers acknowledge the "universal" standards for quality teaching, some will seek the participation of their students, and their parents, in defining what quality may mean in their particular contexts. Under the structuring devices and watchful eye of the National Board, dispersed practices and uses, like la perruque, remain. The National Board represents new structuring practices; but the sphere of consumption remains, and this sphere still offers a certain realm for creativity and control. In a somewhat ironic and potentially progressive way, the Board's mechanisms may actually intensify the conflict in specific schools over what constitutes good teaching as consumer practices clash with normative principles. The foregoing analysis may shed some light on some recent theoretical contentions in trying to understand teachers' work. From a neoMarxist perspective, the work of the National Board could be viewed as another moment in the attempt to deskill (and reskill) teachers, a process characteristic of labour in general in capitalist societies. Changes in the labor process, whether in the factory or in the schoolhouse, are attributed to the expanding "proletarianization" of workers (see, e.g., Apple, 1985; Larson, 1980; Lawn & Ozga, 1981). This model, while helpful in illustrating, for instance, the technical control of teaching that is imbedded in the form of certain curricular materials (Apple, 1985), is problematic for understanding the efforts of the National Board. The current shift from an economy of mass production of material commodities to one of service and information suggests that changes in the labour process may be attributable to processes other than the expanding proletarianization of workers. As I have shown above, the National Board, in its attempts to improve teaching and the status of the profession, will institute mechanisms of surveillance and control, and will create social hierarchies based on status distinctions. Those who seek to obtain national certificates may, indeed, require additonal "knowledge" of specific curriculum and peda-

106

M. BRUCE K I N G

gogy to qualify, a prospect not particularly consistent with what the proletarianization of labour might suggest. In contrast to the deskilling of the rather passive educator to somehow better serve the interests of capitalists, perhaps a more appropriate interpretation sees these efforts as part of the struggle for power and autonomy: power to impose certain definitions of the "real" (through the symbolic goods of standards and certificates) and autonomy of the field of education from the encroachments of others (see Bourdieu, 1989; Lash, 1990). What I have argued for here, in an analysis of the current move to institute national standards and certification procedures for teachers, is an approach that understands the context of teachers' work, as Hall (1981) asserts about popular culture, as "the double movement of containment and resistance, which is always inevitable inside it" (p. 228). The Board's work is both a structuring practice and an arena for response. Teachers are clearly not passive, nor are they ideological dupes. Multiple responses and outcomes are conceivable, and these need to be explored in their diverse settings. It is also clear that the uses of the national teaching standards and certificates by teachers will, in part at least, determine the standards' and certificates' politics. Although this approach demonstrates the possibility for what may be progressive responses, we should not become too optimistic: There is significant normalizing strength in the particular mechanisms that the Board has endorsed.

Conclusions The work of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards should be challenged, not because it is another instance of the imposition of power and control into the lives of teachers, though it is indeed that. Rather, there are specific dangers in its particular "regime of truth": Local knowledges will likely be disqualified and alternatives closed off if national standards come to define teaching; parents and students may be further distanced from having a voice in schooling if teachers follow the avowed course to professionalization; the political nature of education could be increasingly obscured if the

technical vision of teaching is sanctioned; the voices and concerns of women teachers, as well as their opportunities for "success," might be increasingly suppressed if external standards and assessment mechanisms based on "scientificallyproven" methods are instituted; and collaborative efforts and risk-taking by teachers will possibly be inhibited if the new hierarchy is established through national certification. As I suggested at the outset, there are positive aspects of the Board's efforts. But these seem to be consistently undermined by the identification of national standards and the program of assessment and certification. If not sabotaged by the Board's program, two of these positive aspects, teacher as learner and collaborative school cultures, might indeed define and structure teachers' work in ways that foster an activism by teachers--together perhaps with their students, parents, and others--in determining what they, in their local contexts, are to be about. This activism may be effective in improving the educational quality provided to all students by leading to new forms of discourse and practice. If politics is, to a significant degree, the exercise of control over the conditions of human life, then this activism is profoundly political in that local actors exercise power to reconfigure the educational environment. What I am suggesting here is not a facile claim to teacher empowerment. This notion has been adequately criticized elsewhere (e.g., Gore, 1989). Nor am I neglecting the hegemony of current structures, curricular materials, ideologies, and other forces at work in schools that can recapture or coopt local resistances and alternative practices back into the status quo. The extent to which any of these alternative reconfigurations are liberatory cannot be specified in advance (cf., Sawicki, 1988). The Board contradicts and undermines these intentions of fostering teacher as learner and collaborative school cultures. Its approach denies the uncertainty of teaching itself; standards deny uncertainty. The prevailing vision of teaching as a problem of technology, efficiency, and scientifically proven methods masks the fact that it is a highly unpredictable practice, interwoven with the responses of students. The increased professionalization and the pressure to measure up to external standards that the Board's proposals entail--combined with certain

National Standards for the Teaching Profession

organizational features of the school--are likely to further encourage teachers to isolate themselves, become defensive of their practice, and be rather unreflective about their work. Certification will also imply mastery, and consequently closure, thereby inhibiting the on-going learning and growth that should be encouraged. The institution of the Board's proposals will also, it seems, stimulate more competition and increase status differentiation among teachers. These outcomes will undermine attempts to build learning communities. Policymakers and those active in schools can address these orientations to teaching by attempting to shift the emphasis from administrative evaluation to educative leadership, from master teachers and other categories of superiority to collaborative teams. Dominant models can be transformed from top-down approaches that suggest that teachers are merely implementors not active learners, and from subject area and age specialization to a conception of teachers as generalists in multiple or extended roles (see, e.g., Gitlin, 1983; Sizer, 1985; Smyth, 1989). Norms of interrelatedness could be generated in place of the model of individual autonomy that the dominant notions of teacher professionalization reflect. This then could represent a search for individual and collective identities apart from attempts to control and "colonize" teachers' work from outside. There are, of course, multiple sources of discourse that structure and define teachers' work and identities in the U.S.A. In this article, I have focused on one, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which seems to be pursuing its tasks with little in the way of critical appraisal. Although it offers a number of positive principles, the Board seems to undermine these with its program of national standards and certification. As the Board continues its efforts, important questions must be addressed: Are teachers willing to play the roles that the Board dictates? Can they grasp the available space left for difference, for the construction of individual and collective identities that deviate from what is defined as standard? Although they will be strongly compelled to be compliant and the possibility of rejecting the Board's mechanisms may be minimal, there will still be opportunities for refusal, opposition, and alternative practices.

107

References American Federation of Teachers (1990, Summer). Creating a profession of teaching: The role of national board certification. American Educator, 14, 8 21, 40 45. Apple, M. (1985). Education andpower. Boston: Routledge, Ark Paperbacks. Apple, M. (1986). Teachers and texts." A political economy of class and gender relations in education. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Apple, M. (1990). Ideology and curriculcum (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Barr, A. S. (1929). Characteristic differences of good and poor teachers. Bloomington, IL: Public School Publishing Co. Barr, A. S. ( 1961). Wisconsin studies of the measurement and prediction of teacher effectiveness: A summary of investigations. Madison, WI: Dembar Publications. Boston Women's Teachers' Group. (1983). Teaching: An imperilled profession. In L. Shulman & G. Sykes (Eds.), Handbook of teaching and policy (pp. 261-299). New York: Longman. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinctions: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1989, Spring). Social space and symbolic power. Sociological Theory, 7, 14-25. Boyce, A. C. (1915). Methods of measuring teachers' efficiency, 14th yearbook, National Society for the Study of Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy. (1986). A nation prepared: Teachers for the 21st century. New York: Carnegie Corporation. Casey, K., & Apple, M. (1989). Gender and the conditions of teachers' work: The development of understanding in America. In S. Acker (Ed.), Teachers gender, and careers (pp. 171-186). New York: Falmer Press. The Commission on Teacher Education. (1957). Teacher competence: Its nature and scope. San Francisco: California Teachers Association. de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Edwards, R. (1979). Contested terrain: The transformation of the workplace in the twentieth century. New York: Basic Books. Fiske, J. (1989). Understanding popular culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and punish : The birth of the prison. New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected interveiws and other writings, 1972 1977. C. Gordon (Ed.)). New York: Pantheon. Gitlin, A. (1983). School structure and teachers' work. In M.W. Apple & L. Weis (Eds.), Ideology & practice in schooling (pp. 193-212). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Gore, J. (1989). Agency, structure and the rhetoric of teacher empowerment. Paper presented at the annual meeting of American Educational Research Association, San Francisco. Grumet, M. (1988). Bitter milk." Women and teaching. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Hall, S. (1981). Notes on deconstructing 'the popular.' In R. Samuel (Ed.), People's history and socialist theory (pp. 227 240). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

108

M. BRUCE KING

Hargreaves, A., & Dawe, R. (1989). Coaching as unreflective practice: Contrived collegiality or collaborative culture? Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco. Herrick, M. (1958). Merit rating: Dangerous mirage or master plan. Chicago: American Federation of Teachers. Hilfiker, D. (1985). Healing the wounds: A physician looks at his work. New York: Pantheon Books. The Holmes Group. (1986). Tomorrow's teachers. East Lansing, MI: The Holmes Group. Labaree, D. (1992). Power, knowledge, and the rationalization of teaching: A genealogy of the movement to professionalize teaching. Harvard Educational Review, 62, 123-154. Ladwig, J. G. (1990). For whom this reform?: Outlining educational policy as a social field. Unpublished manuscript, Madison: University of Wisconsin. Larson, M. (1980). Proletarianization and educated labor. Theory and Society, 9, 131-175. Lash, S. (1990). Sociology ofpostmodernism. New York: Routledge. Lawn, M., & Ozga, J. (1981). The educational worker: A reassessment of teachers. In L. Barton & S. Walker (Eds.), Schools, teachers, and teaching (pp. 45-64). Sussex: Falmer Press. Markus, M. (1986). Women, success, and civil society: Submission to, or subversion of, the achievement principle. PraMs International, 5, 430-442. Means, J. H. (1965). Homo medicus americanus. In K. S. Lynn the Editors of Daedalas (Eds.), The professions in America (pp. 47 69). Boston: Beacon Press. Morantz, R. M., & Zschoche, S. (1984). Professionalism, feminism, and gender roles. In J. W. Leavitt (Ed.), Women and health in America (pp. 406-421). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. (1989). Toward high and rigorous standards for the teaching profession: lnitial policies and perspectives of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Detroit: National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Ozga, J., & Lawn, M. (1988). Schoolwork: Interpreting the labour process of teaching. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 9, 323-336. Racevskis, K. (1988). Michael Foucault, Rameau's nephew, and the question of identity. In J. Bernauer & D. Rasmussen (Eds.), The final Foucault (pp. 21-33). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Radway, J. (1987). Reading the romance. New York: Verso. Sawicki, J. (1988). Feminism and the power of foucaldian discourse. In J. Arac (Ed.), After Foucault: Humanist knowledge, postmodern challenges (pp. 161-178). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univesity Press. Sizer, T. (1985). Horace's compromise." The dilemma of the American high school. Boston2 Houghton Mifflin. Smyth, J. (Ed.). (1989). Critical perspectives on educational leadership. New York: Falmer Press. educational leadership (pp. 00-00). New York: Falmer Press. Starr, P. (1982). The social transformation of American medicine. New York: Basic Books. Weiler, K. (1988). Women teaching for change: Gender, class, andpower. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Williamson, J. (1986). Consuming passions. London: Marion Boyars.

Submitted 24 August 1992 Accepted 16 April 1993