The interaction between students and teachers in times of performativity

Scholarly discussions about performativity in education have implied or explicitly suggest that performativity has been imposed upon teachers and educational communities as an external force which ‘alienates who they are’ (Ball, 2003: 215). This chapter presents the findings from a case study of an English secondary school which set out to examine the effects of performativity on the interaction between teachers and students and on the incorporation of democratic, participatory pedagogies which schools have been encouraged to adopt as appropriate for the implementation of the citizenship education curriculum. The findings suggest that the regulatory framework currently monitoring schools’ and teachers’ performance has led to the interaction between students and teachers operating in the shadow of an invisible audience which scripts the objectives and restricts the content of this interaction. This seems to be detrimental for the incorporation of practices and of content which are of high educational value but do not compliment directly the attainment of these objectives. However, I will suggest that the depersonalisation of this interaction which contributes to the alienation of teachers from their role and which is attributed to performativity may be an inherent trait of schooling. Performativity may be what currently occupies the vacuum generated because of this depersonalisation.

http://www.tpress.free-online.co.uk/profess.html