Postscript to ‘Careers Under Stress: Teacher Adaptations at a Time of Intensive Reform’

The research which provides the basis for this Postscript (Primary Teacher Identity, Commitment and Career in Performative School Cultures — PTICC — ESRC — RES-000-23-0748) builds on our previous projects (e.g. Woods et al., 1997) into primary teachers' responses to educational reforms. We charted the adaptations of ‘creative teachers’ to the National Curriculum and other policy changes during the 1990s (Woods & Jeffrey, 1996), showing teachers both responding to policy prescriptions and playing a creative role in its implementation. Since 1995 three allied projects have focused on teachers developing creative learning (Woods, 1995), school restructuring (Troman, 1997), and the impact of Office for Standards in Education inspections (Jeffrey & Woods, 1998) with a reported growth of constraint, intensification of work, and increasing managerialism; and the social aspects of stress and teachers' careers and identity reconstructions (Troman & Woods, 2001). This current research extends this work by mapping changes in primary teachers' identity, commitment, and perspectives and subjective experiences of occupational career in the context of performative primary school cultures. Cultures of performativity in English primary schools refer to systems and relationships of target-setting, OFSTED inspections, school league tables constructed from pupil test scores, performance management, performance-related pay, threshold assessment, and advanced skills teachers — systems which demand that teachers ‘perform’ and in which individuals are made accountable. These policy measures, introduced to improve levels of achievement and increased international economic competitiveness, have, potentially, profound implications for the meaning and experience of primary teachers' work; their identities; their commitment to teaching; and how they view their careers.