Primary Teachers, Inspection and the Silencing of the Ethic of Care
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Care is understood, experienced and operates in a social milieu. It is not fixed and, importantly, is not understood as a practice or an emotional exchange between one person and another. In this book, Joan Tronto's (1993) argument for a 'political ethic of care' is utilised as a conceptual framework for understanding teachers' experiences. It is an alternative to approaches that individualise a teacher's caring practices as only belonging in the intimate, proximal domains of care giving and care receiving.
Chapter 1: Developing Understanding of Teachers' Everyday Work During a Period of Inspection Chapter 2: The Story Being Told Chapter 3: Care is Political: Situating the 'Ethic of Care' in a Conceptual Framework Chapter 4: Politics First: Ideological Abstraction, Assessing Pupils' Progress and Blame Chapter 5: Personal and Professional Moral Boundaries, Asymmetry and Categorisation Chapter 6: Silencing Care: Achieving Fidelity to Regulatory Demands Chapter 7: Teachers' Experience and Understanding of Care
The author uses the example of a primary school in England during an inspection to understand teachers' experiences of the inspection process and the "notice to improve," how inspectors' reports of a specific school reflect wider national and global policy, and the dilemmas teachers identify when working within a performative framework. He explores how care involves relationships and political aspects and how teachers practices of care are coordinated and mediated through institutional relations that involve policies, guidance, and wider regulatory texts used within a performative agenda for schools. He focuses on teachers' experiences and understanding of care during this period of requiring improvement and discusses the concept of care and how it is understood within a political ethic, the ideological and political abstractions within wider children and families' policy that mediates and directs teachers' work through regulatory texts, the role of personal and professional moral boundaries in terms of teaching as a caring practice that focuses on educating the whole child and caring for the requirements of government and its regulatory agents, conflicts arising in teachers' talk and the organization of practices of care through inspectors’ reports, and teachers’ experience and understanding of care.