the activist professional and the reinstatement of trust

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The Activist Professional andthe Reinstatement of TrustSusan Groundwater-Smith & Judyth SachsPublished online: 01 Jul 2010.

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Cambridge Journal of Education, Vol. 32, No. 3, 2002

The Activist Professional and theReinstatement of TrustSUSAN GROUNDWATER-SMITH & JUDYTH SACHSUniversity of Sydney, Australia

ABSTRACT Public sector reform in the � eld of education has been ongoing and relentless.Whether in the UK, Europe, the USA or Australasia, there has been an expectation that theeducation ‘industry’ can be managed in the same way as any other commercial enterprise withan emphasis upon forms of accountability which require less and less professional judgment onthe part of practitioners. In this article we examine the growth of the ‘audit society’ and itsconsequences for professional practice in education. We indicate that there are two responses tobureaucratic surveillance: to act as an entrepreneurial professional or as an activist professional.We argue that the latter is achievable when trust is reinstated through the community ofprofessional practice itself. We illustrate our case using issues surrounding the establishmentof professional standards for teachers and we develop strategies for activist professionalism ineducation.

INTRODUCTION

In recent times there has been an erosion of trust in social institutions every-where. Contemporary public sector reforms and the ensuing policies in the UK,USA and Australia and elsewhere have led to the development of ‘the auditsociety’ and ‘audit cultures’ (Power, 1999; Strathern, 2000). In implementingthese public sector reforms the major concern has been with issues of publicaccountability by making practices and processes more transparent as well asef� cient, effective and economic. In practice this has meant that, in its attemptsto reduce any risk to the national investment in its human capital, the state hassought to control and standardise the provision of such essential services aseducation and health. The audit society uses its resources to achieve pre-deter-mined outcomes which themselves are measurable. Not surprisingly there islittle room for negotiation or professional judgement. The more intense the gazeof the audit, the less the trust invested in the moral competence of thepractitioners to respond to the needs of those they serve. In effect, there is abureaucratic rather than professional domination of expertise and practice(Elliott, 2001). The development of compliance strategies and rituals ofveri� cation are becoming the norm (Power, 1999).

The audit society has different refractions and effects in that it supposes astrongly hierarchical model of human resource management and development.

ISSN 0305-764X print; ISSN 1469-3577 online/02/030341-18 Ó 2002 University of Cambridge Faculty of EducationDOI: 10.1080/0305764022000024195

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342 S. Groundwater-Smith & J. Sachs

Those at the top of the ‘food chain’ are expected to develop the policies of the‘Regulatory State’ (Power, 1999, p. xvi) and are often engaged to do so withinthe terms of their performance contracts. They are essentially reactive togovernment policies, with few spaces in which they can negotiate and modify.They manage the various crises that the regulatory state engenders. Movingdown the chain the boundaries of what might or might not be done becomemore permeable, with the possibility for greater resistance and reinvention.However, at the very bottom of the chain it can be claimed that there is verylittle potential for professional agency, given trends to casualisation. Thus, therecannot be said to be a direct inverse correlation with respect to agency. Instead,at different points in the ‘food chain’ there will be different responses. Tofurther complicate the issue, it is conceivable that there is more than one ‘foodchain’; it could be argued that in professional practice there are parallelhierarchies depending upon whether one intends to ascend to a managementposition or one wishes to be � rmly embedded in the professional practice itself.

Elsewhere we have indicated that there are two responses to the auditsociety: to act as an entrepreneurial professional—that is, as a careerist—or as anactivist professional (Sachs, 2000, 2001a). In this paper we will argue that whilethe former is the prevailing mode, the latter is realisable when trust is reinstatedthrough the community of practice itself. The case will be discussed within thecontext of the provision of education, which has been subject to the stricturesof the audit society in a number of different national settings such as the UK,the USA, Canada and Australia. In order to develop our argument we havestructured the paper in three parts. In part one we develop the idea of trust andhow it operates within an audit society. In the second part of the paper we usethe example of professional teaching standards as a strategy used by the state toerode the ability of teachers to make professional judgments about their practicein classrooms. The � nal part of the paper develops the idea of the importanceof participatory politics in the establishment of an activist teaching profession.

TRUST AS A SOCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL RESOURCE

In seeking to establish what trust is in an audit society and how it operates inthe exercise of professional practice we need to ask ourselves:

· What is trust, both as an individual attribute and as a characteristic ofinterpersonal transactions, and transactions within organisational cul-tures?

· How is it engendered in terms of both presence and magnitude?· What is required for its maintenance and how is it abused?

What is Trust?

Essentially, trust is a quality which demonstrates a con� dence in the behaviourof another person, group or institution. It is an expectation that one can rely on

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The Activist Professional 343

that behaviour to be exercised in honest and honourable ways, whether it is thebehaviour of a friend or associate, or of a teacher, or of, say, politicians or oflarge organisations such as the church or the bank. Trust is an essential humanresource, but often it is taken for granted and accepted as an important elementof individual relationships and institutional culture. When uncertainty prevailsand the professional landscape becomes unstable then the possibility for theerosion of trust is magni� ed.

Trust, at its best, assumes that promises will be kept, that relationships willbe dependable and that neither sanctions nor rewards are necessary for it to beexercised. In effect it is predicated on the belief that the person, group orinstitution is trustworthy. However, and paradoxically, as Bhattacharya, Devin-ney and Pillutla (1997) point out:

… trust cannot exist in an environment of certainty; or if it did so, itwould do so trivially. Therefore trust and distrust are reactions toan uncertain environment (their emphases). Much of the discussionof trust and vulnerability has been, in our opinion, something of atheoretical red herring confusing vulnerability with uncertainty. (p. 12)

It is in the uncertainty of the global economic environment that govern-ments have perceived that they have an obligation to reduce risk and hencetrust. They require educational and related social services which will deliver tothem a populace which can function effectively and ef� ciently in a competitiveworld. Bhattacharya et al. (1997) draw our attention to the fact that trust hasbeen studied from a number of disciplinary perspectives: anthropology, econom-ics, psychology, sociology and political science; as well as through � elds ofenquiry such as business and commerce. In their paper they seek to develop afunctional or ‘rationalist’ model of trust such that it can be measured andaccounted for in organisational arrangements as a multidimensional statisticalconstruct. Their premise is that ‘trust is a re� ection of the expectancy that aparty in a social or economic interaction characterised by uncertainty willengage in behaviour that will have non-negative consequences for the otherparty’ (p. 14). As such it is measurable, even predictable in the face of theseuncertainty factors. Such a view is commensurable with the audit society.

Irrespective of its measurability it is important to locate practices of trustwithin contexts themselves in� uenced by social geography. Harre (1999) con-trasts practices of trust and distrust. He uses as his example the experience ofsubmitting a cheque for payment in two towns, one in the United States, theother in New Zealand. In the former case he was required to supply severalforms of identity, in the latter it was assumed that he was trustworthy and hischeque was accepted with no such requirement.

In the case cited by Harre the exercise of trust was between individuals,himself and the trader. More complex is the matter of trust between individualsand institutions; between institutions and government. Here the trust is moreindirectly manifested. We cannot know all of the individuals of which theinstitution is comprised nor of the relations between institutions in a system. We

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base our trust upon the reputation of the institution which is itself mediatedthrough a number of public forms.

It is dif� cult to summarise the extent to which individuals trust theirschools, colleges and universities and the education they offer. The mass mediahas engendered a crisis in con� dence with regard to education, particularly inthe public sector. Schools are often characterised as ineffectual and unsafeplaces. At the same time there is evidence that while parents and the widercommunity may have a distrust of schools in general they have a higher regardfor the school that their children attend and the teachers who work in theseschools in particular. Within schools themselves there are also regimes of trust:between individuals as educational professionals, between individuals and theschool’s management structures; between individuals and systems; betweenindividuals and other stakeholders. Similarly there are issues of trust associatedwith the relationship between educators in all sectors, as a community ofpractice, and the government which has particular expectations of them. Trustthen is a complex concept, nevertheless, it is important to stress that it ismediated by individuals and that the context in which trust is put to the testin� uences the degree to which it is practised.

The Presence and Magnitude of Trust

Pursuing a little further the notion of trust and distrust as reactions to uncertainenvironments, Scott (1999) discusses the idea of ‘wary trust’. He argues thatwhere the environment has been a volatile, hostile and uncertain one then trustcannot be immediately and uncompromisingly established. Indeed, it might beargued that under such conditions, a healthy mistrust may be the better option.

If scepticism is the antonym of trust, then certain forms of civiccourage that have their origin in a calculated distrust of authority arevaluable democratic resources. (Scott, 1999, p. 276)

But this is where the trajectory of the trust runs from the individual to theinstitution. In the audit society the reverse is the case. It is mistrust of theprofessional and his or her capacity to engage in courageous and moral judge-ment that governs the manner in which the given professional practice iscontrolled.

Whatever its magnitude, trust has reciprocal characteristics. Scott suggestsit is a kind of ‘social glue’ that binds individuals and groups together for thepurposes of action. This says nothing of the worthwhile-ness of these purposes,in that sense trust could be said to be value neutral. Yamagishi and Yamagishi(1994) in their comparative studies of the USA and Japan found that in Japanthe trust in a relationship can be expressed pragmatically and morally, separatelyand together. The truster may have an expectation of the goodwill of the other,that is a moral commitment; and/or the truster may have an expectation of atleast benign behaviour, that is a pragmatic commitment.

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Regardless of its roots there is another aspect to trust in relation to itspresence and magnitude—that is, its durability. While we may argue that trustis closely associated with risk factors, there has to be a kind of con� dence thatthe trustworthiness of the other is reliable and dependable. This is not to takeit for granted, but if it is claimed that it is merely a transitory phenomenon,then it may not exist at all. The importance of this should not be underesti-mated when thinking about people working in professional contexts. Forteachers in particular, where their practice inside and outside schools is underconsistent public and even political scrutiny, trust in people and processes issigni� cant to ensure that their ability to exercise professional judgement ismaintained.

Maintaining and Abusing Trust

How then, once established, is trust maintained? Or if eroded, is it reinstated?One might argue that predictability between actors in the trusting relationshipis essential even though the circumstances themselves are characterised byuncertainty. A dif� culty arises when such predictability is governed by rules,themselves in� exible. It would seem that the greater the governance by rules, theless the practice of trust. These are exactly the conditions of the audit society.

Of course while rules may be in place this is no guarantee that they will beexercised in the same way by individuals within an organisation. It is suggestedby Parker (2000) that organisations are unitary and divided at the same time(p. 94). This is to say that no matter how coherent and purposeful theorganisational culture is, there is inevitably a high level of heterogeneity amongits members. Differences grow from the range of subjectivities which partici-pants in the organisation bring with them to its culture, as a result of their ownhistories and predispositions.

Power, culture, structure and so on are contested relations, not ma-terial things. But this does not mean that they cannot be used to ‘do’things, to achieve various projects. (Parker, 2000, p. 94)

These differences may, in fact, provide the spaces and interstices for the activistprofessional to resist the excesses of the audit society.

Harre (1999) sees rules as ‘surrogates for trust’ (p. 266). He sees them asa weakening of the moral conditions for trust. If the maintenance of trust isdependent upon adherence to rules then trust itself is compromised asCvetkovich and Lofstedt (1999) ask ‘To what extent is distrust bred by the mereeffort to regulate it?’ (p. 166). These views are echoed by Sergiovanni (1998)who claims that ‘social covenants’ are more important than ‘social contracts’ inbuilding a capacity for improvement in educational arrangements. Socialcovenants are maintained by ‘loyalty, � delity, kinship, sense of identity, obli-gation, duty, responsibility and reciprocity’, whilst social contracts are rule-based and maintained by a ‘promise of gain or threat of external force’ (p. 44).Trust must be warranted by the behaviour of those who are entrusted, but it can

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also decay through the development and enforcement of layer upon layer ofrules and regulations. In effect, the audit society can be said to be engaged inan abuse of trust.

At the same time the risks for both state and for activist professionals, in thecontext of the audit society, are both great and very different. The risk for thestate is that its human capital will not be suf� ciently developed for it to remaincompetitive in a globalised economy or that the interests of the state aremaintained. The risk for activist professionals is that they will be seen to beundermining the project of the state and hence a threat to it. Activist profession-als must be able to convince the state and its citizenry that they will develop aconstructive critique of its requirements; and then, both meet them, wheremerited, and resist them, where warranted, in a moral and ethical manner.

Before proceeding to discuss the ways in which such an engagement on thepart of activist professionals might occur, we need to further examine the natureof the audit society and responses to it by those nominated as entrepreneurialprofessionals (Sachs, 2001a).

The Audit Society

In its most innocent form auditing is no more than the sensible checking of factsand actions. It may be a simple matter of verifying that an account rendered wasappropriate for a service provided, such as a telephone bill or one from thedoctor or dentist. It may involve checking and appraising the work of a builderor auto mechanic. It is not burdensome and involves a certain degree of trust.As Power (1999) observes, trust releases us from being overly strenuous in ourchecking of the accountancy and actions of others. Nonetheless it is unlikely thatwe will take the risk of believing, at face value, either the bills presented to usor the services we are provided, without requiring any form of accountability. Ifthis is true for the individual, it also holds for organisations and bureaucracies.

In public sector management it is essential that there are mechanisms formonitoring the effectiveness of the enterprise, given the levels of investment runto billions of dollars. It is expected of those implementing the programs thatthey can account for the ways in which they have managed their resources andproduced their outcomes. But when does reasonable accountability becomeonerous audit?

Power (1999) suggests that within the rhetoric of ‘New Public Manage-ment’ (Hood, 1991) auditing is now:

… a programmatic idea circulating in organisational environments, anidea which promises a certain style of control and organisationaltransparency. From this point of view audit may be less a rationalresponse to the need to reduce transactions costs and more a temporar-ily congealed taste or fashion which escapes conscious design … Theunderlying social theory is more that of routine or institutionalised

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practice rather than rational choice, cognitive congealment rather thanef� cient adaptation. (p. 122)

The audit society requires constant surveillance and inspection. It requiresregulation, enforcement and sanctions. It requires professional practice to beauditable by creating speci� c performance measures. It requires of its profes-sionals self-ordering, not based upon individual moral judgement, but uponmeeting externally applied edicts and commands. It requires ‘regulatory mecha-nisms acting as “political technologies” which seek to bring persons, organisa-tions and objectives into alignment’ (Shore & Wright, 2000, p. 61). In short, theaudit society requires a kind of meta-performativity, where standards are met fortheir own sake, whether they are appropriate and ethical or not. As Strathern(2000) notes, ‘Audit and ethics ricochet off one another’ (p. 291).

All the same, professionalism in the audit society is not homogeneous, noris it a � xed or static state of being. It is shifting, ambiguous and responsive tothe context of multiple social reforms and institutional restructuring as well asclosely related to the career and life histories of those participating in theprofession. For example, Biott, Lunn and Spindler (2001) found that veteranand new headteachers responded very differently to the audit requirements ofthe public management of education in the UK.

Many (experienced headteachers) have shown considerable resilienceto keep schools moving, juggling a ‘mixed bag’ of new demands at thesame time as they have tried to ‘stand up’ for what they personallybelieve to be right for speci� c circumstances. Our interviews withexperienced headteachers convey how personal conviction has enabledthem to distinguish worthwhile change from transient meddling. Yearsof handling competing priorities seems to have strengthened an under-lying sense of personal agency. (p. 10)

While it is important to recognise that professional identity and behaviourare complex and nuanced, it is possible to make a distinction between two formsof response, entrepreneurial and activist. We suggest that current conditionsgive rise to both of these forms of teacher professional identity. The burgeoningof teacher professional standards in particular gives rise to one kind of identityas opposed to another. Before developing this, it is important to brie� y indicatethe role and intent of teacher professional standards before elaborating thefeatures of the new entrepreneurial identity.

TEACHER PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS AND THE AUDIT SOCIETY

The idea of standards for the teaching profession has been circulating ineducation policy discourses and debates for much of the latter part of the 1990s.The development of standards have been part of a two pronged initiative bygovernments and bureaucracies in Australia, the UK, the USA and elsewhere toimprove the educational performance and outcomes of education systems and

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the practices of teachers in classrooms. Debates and initiatives regarding teacherprofessional standards have been concerned with two orientations: the use ofstandards to improve performance or the use of standards as a basis forreforming the teaching profession. In applying these orientations to professionalstandards in some settings, these standards have been imposed by governmentsand used as regulatory frameworks and bureaucratic controls over teachers,particularly as they relate to licensing and certi� cation procedures. In otherinstances they are used as an initiative for teachers to gain professional controlover what constitutes professional work. Darling Hammond (1999) writing froma North American perspective argues, ‘Recently developed professional stan-dards for teaching hold promise for mobilising reforms of the teaching careerand helping to structure the learning opportunities that re� ect the complex,reciprocal nature of teaching work’ (p. 39). In terms of current initiatives thereare two sets of tensions present. First is where the initiative to develop thestandards comes from and how the standards are monitored. One the one handthere are those standards developed and imposed by state mandated regulatorybodies outside of the profession and on the other hand those that are developedand monitored by the profession itself. Either way the issue of standards is notstraightforward nor is it unproblematic to the teaching profession. A second, butno less important tension is a tendency to focus on standardisation of practicerather the development of standards that can have wide applicability acrossvarious contexts and settings or even of improving the level of standardsachieved.

Mahony and Hextall (2000) differentiate between regulatory and develop-mental approaches to standards. Regulatory approaches can be used as amanagerialist tool for measuring the ef� ciency and effectiveness of systems,institutions and individuals. Developmental approaches on the other handprovide opportunities for teachers’ further professional learning, aimed at im-proving the quality of their teaching throughout their careers (p. 31).

While in the UK, Australia and USA both of these approaches to standardsis evident, there is an emerging trend for a drift from developmental toregulatory approaches to standards. In the UK for example, the developmentof the National Professional Standards (NPS) can be seen both as providinga centralised speci� cation of ‘effective teaching’ and as the codi� cation ofrelations between managers and managed (Mahony & Hextall, 2000,p. 32).

In the UK between 1994 and 1998 the Teacher Training Agency (TTA)developed a framework of National Standards for Teaching, which, in theirwords, would ‘de� ne expertise in key roles’ (TTA, 1998, p. 1). Furlong et al.(2000) claim that policies in the late 1990s sought to exploit the new controlsystem to begin specifying the content of professional education in detail. Theyclaim that ‘two strategies were involved: � rst the transformation of competenciesinto more elaborate “standards”; second the development of a national curricu-lum for initial teacher education in English, mathematics, science and infor-mation and communication technology’ (pp. 149–150).

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In the UK the move to standards emerged from the competencies debates.This move was to de� ne the content of training in much more explicit detailthan before. As the circular stated, ‘the standards have been written to bespeci� c, explicit and assessable and are designed to provide a clear basis for thereliable and consistent award of Quali� ed Teachers Status (QTS) (DfEE, 1997,p. 6). Millett (1997) suggests that the standards for the award of Quali� edTeachers Status set out in more detail than ever before the core knowledge,understandings and skills on which effective teaching rests. These standardsreplace more general ‘competencies’ which have been in force previously andapply to all those assessed for QTS no matter what initial training course orroute to teaching they may be on (quoted in Furlong et al., 2000, p. 150).

An uncritical gaze would suggest that, like motherhood, standards are inthe best interests of teachers, students and the teaching profession, and indeedthis may well be the case. The need to be cautious about the limitations ofstandards is expressed by Darling Hammond (1999):

Teaching standards are not a magic bullet. By themselves, they cannotsolve the problems of dysfunctional school organizations, outmodedcurricula, inequitable allocation of resources, or lack of social supportsfor children and youth. Standards, like all reforms, hold their owndangers. Standard setting in all professions must be vigilant against thepossibilities that practice could become constrained by the codi� cationof knowledge that does not signi� cantly acknowledge legitimate diver-sity of approaches or advances in the � eld; that access to practice couldbecome overly restricted on grounds not directly related to com-petence; or that adequate learning opportunities for candidates to meetstandards may not emerge on an equitable basis. (p. 39)

The examination of standards is not a simple or straightforward matter. Itis worth quoting Mahony and Hextall (2000) in full to appreciate the complexityof the task.

In examining standards it is important to examine them for theirclarity, consistency and coherence, as well as the values, principles andassumptions that underpin them. They also need to be examined interms of � tness of purpose—are they capable of doing the work theyare intended to do? And is this consistent with the broader purposes oftheir institutional setting? Procedurally, standards can be investigatedin terms of their establishment and formation, with all the questions ofaccountability and transparency that this entails. They can also bequestioned in terms of the manner in which they are translated intopractice and the consequences, both manifest and latent, which follow.More broadly, there is a set of issues to consider in relation to theculture and ideology of standards as a widespread phenomenon operat-ing across both the private and public sectors in England and else-where.

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In Australia and in the UK because the standards have been set, in themain, by administrative agencies such as Departments of Education and theTeacher Training Agency, they tacitly emphasise bureaucratic rather thanprofessional controls over teaching. These controls are aimed at standardisingprocedures rather than building knowledge that can be applied differentlydepending on the demands of a particular subject, the social context of aparticular community, or the needs of a given child (Darling Hammond, 1999).These types of standards are more likely than not to take control away fromteachers thus reducing their personal autonomy. They become an instrument toachieve the ends of an audit society and to put in place systematic rituals ofveri� cation to ensure the achievement of the goals of the state to have aneffective but possibly compliant teaching profession.

Interestingly, in Australia, there is a growing recognition that the develop-ment of standards should be undertaken in the best interests of teachers, ratherthan the managers within the employing authorities. In its applause of a recentproposed initiative by the Queensland Board of Teacher Registration in Aus-tralia to require teachers from that state to apply, on a regular basis, forre-registration, the Australian Newspaper editorialised:

The performance of principals and teachers needs to be monitoredmore closely, but they should retain the freedom to motivate and fosterinnovation in schools … Yes, we must reward the best of them (teach-ers). But in � nding who they are, we must not scare them or othertalented recruits away through even more red tape and extra pressureto conform or perform on cue. (The Australian, Wednesday, December5, 2001, p. 12)

But how is innovation to be fostered? We argue that there are tworesponses: entrepreneurial and activist.

THE NEW ENTREPRENEURIAL TEACHER PROFESSIONAL

It is clear that the development of the entrepreneurial professional has emergedin response to recent social reforms which have been based on the logic of thenew public sector agenda embodied in the audit society. These reforms havesought to make public sector bureaucracies not only more accountable but alsoto engage in practices derived from the business world; some would even argueas a parody of the business world. Here, management serves two purposes in thereform process, means and end. As Ball (1994) characterises it in the context ofthe provision of education:

… management (as synonym for ef� ciency) is taken to be ‘the one bestway’ to organize and run schools, and to the extent that managementculture embraces enterprise and commercialism it shifts schools awayfrom a ‘culture of welfare’ to a ‘culture of pro� t and production’—that

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is management does profound ideological work in relation to theconception and conduct of schooling. (Ball, 1994, p. 71)

Accordingly, new forms of control have been mandated in policy decisions andpractices.

These circumstances have seen the emergence of a new professional with analigned identity. Menter et al. (1997) describe this as the ‘entrepreneurialprofessional’ who will identify with the ef� cient, responsible and accountableversion of service that is currently being promulgated by the state. Not surpris-ingly, as du Gay (1996) observes, because previously distinct forms of life ormodes of conduct are now classi� ed primarily, if not exclusively, as ‘enterpriseforms’, the conceptions and practices of personhood they give rise to areremarkably consistent. Thus, there is the emergence of what Catherine Casey(1995) refers to as ‘designer employees’ who are responding to a broad crisis inindustrial production, work organisation and culture.

As we have already signalled, under managerialist discourses the marketplays an important part in how practitioners constitute their professional identitycollectively and individually. Competition for reduced resources between unitsin the given enterprise: schools, hospitals, community centres, and so on, fostersthe development of a competitive ethos, rather than a collaborative one. Theef� cient operation of the market is fostered through the combination of legisla-tive controls and internal, institutional mechanisms, notably performance indi-cators and inspections, which ostensibly provide consumers with a basis forselection but more importantly provide managerial imperatives (Menter et al.,1997, p. 64). Under such conditions, the rise of the professional standardsmovement in the UK, USA and Australia can be seen to be more concernedwith standardisation of practice rather than quality, despite a public rhetoric forthe latter (Sachs, 2001a).

Standardised measures of performance enable schools, colleges and univer-sities to be ranked by their customers. Market competition penalises non-con-formity and there emerges ‘a standardised language, a narrative history ofnational destiny, so a normative, monocultural de� nition of community claim-ing the legitimacy of familiar values and an external identity [takes effect]’(Marginson, 1997, p. 190). Standards thus dominate policy and practice.

There is a preferred reading of standards, in such a context, that is one thatdemands obedience and compliance, all are seen to share the same version ofstandards. Mahony and Hextall (2000, p. 79) make the telling point that inorder to ‘meet the Standards’ you have to be the kind of person that thestandards have in mind, capable of accomplishing the activities that the Stan-dards entail, living with and conducting the relationships presumed at differentlevels, and of working within the assumptions which form the Standardsboundaries.

Under managerialist conditions a cult of individualism, strongly embodiedas the careerist professional, has the possibility to re-infect the occupationalculture. The conditions produce the kind of individual who is entrepreneurial

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and self-seeking. Isolation and privacy are preferred to collegiality and cooper-ation. As Andy Hargreaves (1992) observes, ‘individualism is primarily ashortcoming, not a strength, not a possibility; something to be removed ratherthan something to be respected’ (p. 171). In such professional cultures there isa tendency towards the maintenance of conservative, even reactionary practiceand stand in opposition to a generative or change embracing culture, let alonea new type of professionalism. Individualism is in stark contrast to collaborationand collegiality that are the cornerstones of democratic discourses and thedevelopment of an activist professional. The entrepreneurial professional thenmay be characterised as being individualistic, competitive, controlling andregulative, externally de� ned and standards led.

The entrepreneurial professional meets the desires of the audit society forexternally controlled practice, where there is little requirement for trust andmoral professional judgement.

So what of the activist professional?

THE ACTIVIST PROFESSIONAL

An activist professional is emerging in response to and perhaps in reactionagainst managerialism. Such a practitioner draws for inspiration and momentumfrom the work of people in the broad democratically based enterprises whichhold the best interests of the clientele at heart in recognition that needs vary, arecontextualised, and require careful and thoughtful decision making. In thissense the dimensions of an activist professional strongly re� ect Wenger’s (1998)classi� cation of identity as a nexus of multi-membership and as a relationbetween local and global conditions.

It is important to observe, at this point, that this paper takes a positionwhich values and celebrates democratic principles. It is worth noting Dewey’sposition:

In order to have large numbers of values in common, all the membersof the group must have an equitable opportunity to receive and takefrom others. There must be a large variety of shared undertakings andexperiences. Otherwise, the in� uences which educate some into mas-ters educate others into slaves. And the experiences of each party losesin meaning when the free interchange of varying modes of life experi-ences is arrested. (Dewey, 1916, p. 84)

First and foremost an activist professional is concerned to reduce oreliminate exploitation, inequality and oppression. Accordingly the developmentof this identity is deeply rooted in principles of equity and social justice.Deliberative democracy is a foundation upon which an activist identity islocated. Gutmann and Thompson (1996) suggest that deliberation shouldextend throughout the political process. Its forums embrace virtually any settingin which citizens come together on a regular basis to reach collective decisionsabout public issues. Deliberative democracy asks citizens and of� cials to justify

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public policy by giving reasons that can be accepted by those bound by it. Thisdisposition to seek mutually justi� able reasons expresses the core of the processof deliberation. Furthermore, this is central to democratic discourses and thesustaining of an activist identity.

It has been proposed that a revised professional identity requires a newform of professionalism and engagement. Rede� ning the activist professionalinvolves two main elements: the effort to shed the shackles of the past, therebypermitting a transformative attitude towards the future and secondly, overcom-ing the legitimate or the illegitimate domination of some individuals or groupsover others.

Clearly, the formation of the activist professional is not straightforward, noris it something that is easily acquired in a climate where managerialism is strong.Nevertheless, it is an aspiration that works strongly in the interests of thosewhich the public sector serves.

In summary, then, an activist identity is based on democratic principles. Itis negotiated, collaborative, socially critical, future oriented, strategic and tacti-cal.

In what has been developed to this point it is clear that activist professionalidentities are rich and complex because they are produced in a rich and complexset of relations of practice (Wenger, 1998, p. 162). There are two points to bestressed. First and foremost, is that this richness and complexity needs to benurtured and developed in conditions where there is respect, mutuality andcommunication. Activist professionalism is not something that will come nat-urally. It has to be deeply re� ected upon, negotiated, lived and practiced. Thedevelopment of such an identity will be a challenge for many, and will bechallenged by others, but once its elements are learned and communicated itwill make a signi� cant contribution to the reactivation of trust and all thatentails.

In order to illuminate the arguments which have been made with respect tothe activist professional, in contrast to the entrepreneurial professional thispaper now turns to a speci� c community of practice, that is the teachingprofession.

The Teacher as Activist Professional

It has already been proposed that there exist spaces in education for contestationand the teaching profession to act as a trustworthy and engaged citizenry. Freirerefers to such spaces as ‘a space for change’ (Freire & Macedo, 1987, p. 127).His view is a libratory one where education professionals are conscious produc-ers of local knowledge. We would argue that engendering the notion of theteacher as activist professional requires a preparedness and alertness throughoutthe profession, including the pre-service sector.

Initial teacher education has to be more than an instrumental preparationfor enacting government policies in the schools as required by the audit society.Giroux (1994), for example, argues that the teaching profession can and should

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espouse liberal democratic ideals where practice is developed in terms ofmicro-political struggles for social justice and more equitable social outcomes.To prepare new teachers to be activist professionals requires teacher educationprograms to be based upon critical pedagogies which, from the very outset,challenge the solidi� ed beliefs about what constitutes ‘good practice’.

It is not possible to enumerate here the range of teacher educationprograms which argue for a libratory orientation, although they are harder to� nd now in those countries such as England with the close surveillance of theTeacher Training Agency acting on behalf of the audit society. However, we dosuggest that some promise is to be found in the recent trend to include servicelearning as part of initial teacher education in a number of Australian States andTerritories (Butcher et al., 2001). As Howard and Fortune (2000) have ob-served:

Service, service learning, community and democracy are inevitablylinked. They � nd their link through the ethical question of how one isto live. (p. 22)

Service learning, where students participate in community service projectsdesigned to assist and support people in great need, whether by reason ofdisadvantage or disability, provides students with experiences which go outsidethose of their cultural group. But service learning for an activist profession needsto go beyond merely participating in community service projects; it requires thatthe students re� exively consider their experience, their response to it, and theimplications for practice as a teacher. In effect, it requires of the teachereducation program, itself, the courage to be an engaged campus which inBoyer’s (1990) terms is one which addresses social, civic, economic and moralissues in the community.

Of course initial teacher education, important as it is, constitutes only asmall part of the very large profession of education. The teacher, whether she orhe is working in the school, college or university sector, faces great challenges inbeing an activist professional in an enterprise closely governed by the principlesof public sector management.

We would argue that all teachers must insist upon the right to participatein democratically governed workplaces. As suggested earlier, Sachs (2000)developed an argument supporting the idea of activist teacher professionalism.This type of professionalism is rooted in generative politics and the establish-ment of active trust. In this section we develop these ideas further, to indicatehow a participatory democratic model of civic action can sustain an activist andresponsive teaching profession. It is our hope that such a response to curriculumcontrol, especially as it is emerging in relationship to ways of controlling theteaching profession, will provide the teaching profession with a strategy that isin the best interests of a strong and independent profession. This activist formof teacher professionalism will stem the tide of technicist and instrumental formsof teacher professionalism that standards regimes are promoting.

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Citizen participation is imperative for inclusive teacher professionalism.Rimmerman (2001) suggests

… increased citizen participation in community and workplace de-cision making is important if people are to recognize their roles andresponsibilities as citizens within in the larger community … In a trueparticipatory setting, citizens do not merely act as autonomous individ-uals pursuing their own interests, but instead, through a process ofdecision, debate, and compromise, they ultimately link their concernswith the needs of the community. (p. 19)

For an activist teacher professionalism to be successful this is particularlyrelevant. The engagement and participation of various education stakeholders inimportant debates provides for various positions to be discussed and differencesresolved. The process of the debate itself may give rise to ideas and positions notpreviously thought of. One major advantage of this type of activity is that ‘notonly do people develop personal competencies they also develop skills in broadbased community politics and become more informed about the politicalprocess’.

Participatory citizen politics is different from conventional politics in severalways. First and foremost is how this type of political work is undertaken and itsresolution of issues. Whereas conventional politics ‘concentrates more of gettingto solutions quickly, citizens politics concentrates on carefully de� ning, and ifneed be, rede� ning, problems before moving on to solutions’ (Rimmerman,2001, p. 23). Second is the nature of power and how it is recognised andmanaged. ‘Those who support a new kind of participatory citizens politicsemphasise creating new forms of power at all levels of a community, whereasconventional politics proponents advocate using power wisely and empoweringthe powerless’. Third relates to the use and acquisition of resources. ‘Theresources associated with conventional politics are generally more � nancial andlegislative, citizen politics uses public will as its primary political capital’(Rimmerman, 2001, p. 22) Finally there is the domain of language. Thelanguage associated with conventional politics is rooted within advocacy andwinning, whereas the language of citizen politics embraces a language of politicalproblem solving and relationship building (Rimmerman, 2001, p. 22).

In order to engage in strategies to avert or stem the � ow of externalprofessional control there are some simple lessons to be learnt from other areasof civic action. These basics of organising for activist teacher professionalisminclude:

· Identify future sources of support· Talk and listen to them· Identify important issues· Take a problem solving approach· Communicate the fundamental ideas simply and clearly· Develop strategies to recruit new members

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· Conduct meetings and communicate the outcomes of the meetings to thewider constituency

· Set achievable goals· Consider what success would look like· Undertake research and collect information· Use the media to communicate the work of the group.

(Sachs, 2001b)

These basics provide a framework for teacher groups to get organised and totake the lead in developing a new form of teacher professionalism. They requirecollective rather than individual action, but do not necessarily require wholeprofession mobilisation, even though this would be preferred.

CONCLUSION:

We are mindful that the audit society is something of a juggernaut. It is wellresourced both � scally and legislatively and well entrenched. It will take astrong, courageous and morally resourceful profession to resist its inexorableadvance. The teaching profession will require a critical mass of its members toform a community of practice which is willing to mobilise its considerable skillsand strengths in the interests of a just, fair and equitable society. While we donot disagree with the proposition that an accountable and transparent teachingprofession is important, we suggest that there are alternative ways to achievethis. We have suggested in this paper that the reinstatement of trust in theteaching profession can be achieved by rethinking the very idea of teacherprofessionalism and its practice. The version of teacher professionalism pro-posed here is based on democratic and participative principles. It is ourconviction that an activist teaching profession can counteract the tendencytowards a state controlled and regulated teaching profession and can provideopportunities for broader interest groups to engage with education debates andpractices. We see this form of teacher professionalism as being in the bestinterests of the state and in particular the recipients of state education, students.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We wish to acknowledge the critical and helpful comments of our colleagueswho are members of the University of Sydney, and University of Technologyand the Sydney Joint Roundtable who meet monthly to consider issues aroundprofessional practice across a range of disciplines.

Correspondence: Susan Groundwater-Smith, 32 Terry Street, Sydenham, NewSouth Wales 2044, Australia.

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the activist professional and the reinstatement of trust

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