Educational Reform and the Struggle for the Soul of the Teacher!

This paper argues that national education systems worldwide are beginning to succumb to a single paradigm policy solution. In various local forms the combination of market disciplines and managerial methods are being used to reform and re-form education. Institutional competition and government target-setting work to reorient and remake the work of teachers towards the needs of international economic competition. However, it is suggested that there is more to reform than improvements in "quality" and greater efficiency. In the processes of change what is means to be a teacher is also changed. The "authentic" teacher, whose practice is based upon the values of "service" and a shared moral language which provides for reflection, dialogue and debate, is being replaced by the "reformed" teacher, whose practice is based upon the achievement of targets and the calculation of "costs" in relation to outputs. Within all this schools will become what ever it seems necessary to become in order to flourish in the market. The heart of the educational project is gouged out and left empty.