ERIC Number: EJ838895
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2009-Apr
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0311-6999
EISSN: N/A
The Production of Australian Professional Development Policy Texts as a Site of Contest: The Case of the Federal Quality Teacher Programme
Hardy, Ian
Australian Educational Researcher, v36 n1 p73-88 Apr 2009
This paper reveals how the provision of teacher professional development is conceptualised within the Australian Government Quality Teacher Programme (AGQTP) policy text and its predecessors, and uses these texts to infer the nature of the production practices associated with the development of these policies. The paper argues that multiple tensions within these texts gesture towards support for complex and contested approaches to professional development during the policy production process. To make sense of this contestation, the paper draws suggestively upon Bourdieu's field theory, which conceptualises the social world as consisting of social spaces or "fields", and extensions of his theory, which reveal fields as exerting considerable influence upon one another. The paper argues that "Quality Teacher Programme" texts infer support for more progressive, social democratic approaches to the provision of teacher professional development within the educational policy field, as well as more economistic and neoliberal approaches. (Contains 1 table.)
Descriptors: Educational Change, Professional Development, Educational Policy, Content Analysis, Program Development, Policy Formation, Policy Analysis, Educational Philosophy, Educational Principles, Social Theories, Foreign Countries, Elementary Secondary Education, Elementary School Teachers, Public School Teachers, Secondary School Teachers
Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE). P.O. Box 71, Coldstream, Victoria 3770, Australia. Tel: +61-0359-649-031; Fax: +61-0359-649-586; e-mail: aare@aare.edu.au; Web site: http://www.aare.edu.au/aer/contents.htm
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: Teachers
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Australia
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A