If the quality of the education provided to students is to be maintained or improved in the face of the increasing pressures and demands from a variety of stakeholders, teachers must be assisted in sustaining their enthusiasm for, and identification with their work which demands considerable investment of their cognitive and emotional selves (Friedson (2000a) and Day (2000b); Louis, 1998). Teacher commitment has been found to be a critical predictor of teachers’ work performance, absenteeism, retention, burnout and turnover, as well as having an important influence on students’ motivation, achievement, attitudes towards learning and being at school (Firestone, 1996; Graham, 1996; Louis, 1998; Tsui & Cheng, 1999). As a consequence of the new monitoring, inspection and public accountability systems, in addition to the increased intensification of work through added bureaucratic tasks directly associated with the performativity agenda, reforms have promoted high degrees of uncertainty, instability and vulnerability for teachers (Ball, 2001, p. 7). Kelchtermans (1996) study of the career stories of ten experienced primary school teachers revealed two recurring themes: stability in the job: a need to maintain the status quo, having achieved ambition, led to satisfaction; and vulnerability to the judgements of colleagues, the headteacher and those outside the school gates, e.g. parents, inspectors, media reports which might be based exclusively on measurable student achievements. As vulnerability increased, so they tended towards passivity and conservatism in teaching. Surprisingly, however, the relationship between external reform, teachers’ commitment, identity, the environments in which they work and the quality and effectiveness of their work is absent from the policies of those who believe that it is possible to steer the daily activities in the classroom from the centre. Nor has it been the subject of extensive research.
The implications for those wishing to change how teachers construe, construct and conduct their work are clear. Individuals’ commitment to such change is essential. Changing operational definitions of professionalism require working closely with teachers and their individual emotional and intellectual identities because unless these are addressed reform is unlikely to succeed in the longer term. This suggests rebuilding professionalism through sustained, critical dialogue, mutual trust and respect. In a multidisciplinary review of the theoretical and empirical literature on trust spanning four decades, Tschannen-Moran and Hoy (2000) highlight the need to pay attention to trust, particularly in terms of change. They found that trust is:
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a means of reducing uncertainty in situations of independence;
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necessary for effective cooperation and communication;
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the foundation for cohesive and productive relationships;
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a ‘lubricant’ greasing the way for efficient operations when people have confidence in other people's work and deeds (p. 549);
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a means of reducing the complexities of transactions and exchanges more quickly and economically than other means of managing organisational life.
Conversely, distrust, ‘provokes feelings of anxiety and insecurity…self-protection … minimising (of) vulnerability … withholding information and…pretence or even deception to protect their interests’ (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2000, p. 550).
Identity, so important in the lives of teachers, is not, then, something which is fixed or static. It is an amalgam of personal biography, culture, social influence and institutional values which may change according to role and circumstance. It is often, ‘less stable, less convergent and less coherent than is often implied in the research literature’ (MacLure, 1993, p. 320). Yet sustaining a positive sense of identity to subject, relationships and roles is important to maintaining motivation, self-esteem or self efficacy, job satisfaction, and commitment to teaching; and although research shows consistently that identity is affected, positively and negatively, by classroom experiences, organisational culture and situation specific events which may threaten existing norms and practices (Nias, 1989; Kelchtermans, 1993; Flores, 2002), successive reform implementation strategies have failed to address its key role in effective teaching. Reform which addresses key issues of professional identity, commitment and change is more likely to meet the standards raising recruitment and retention agendas more efficiently and more effectively than current efforts which, though well intentioned, appear from empirical data to be failing to connect with the long term learning and achievement needs of teachers and students.