The changing work of infant teachers: Some policy issues

Abstract

The first comprises key empirical studies in this country (egs. Hilsum & Cane, 1971; Hilsum & Strong, 1978), which mapped out baseline data on the working days of junior and secondary school teachers. The studies were influential in dispelling the myth of teaching as a 'nine-to-four' job, primarily because they showed that a substantial proportion of working time was spent out of contact with pupils. However, the data are twenty years old, and there has been no systematic follow-up, although recent atheoretical surveys of teacher time spent on work (egs. NAS/UWT, 1990; Campbell & Neill, 1990; Lowe, 1991) provide a limited basis for bringing the empirical picture up to date. A second group of studies, mainly enquiries of a conceptual kind, concerns the politics and sociology of teaching. Some of these (egs. Grace, 1978; Burgess, 1983) have contributed to our understanding of the experience of teaching in the institutional context of secondary schools. There has been international interest in the politics of teachers' work (egs. Connell, 1985; Lawn & Grace, 1987; Reyes, 1990) and a renewed interest in teacher professionalism and teachers' organisations (egs. Ozga & Lawn, 1981; Lawn, 1985; Ozga, 1987; King, 1987; Poppleton & Riseborough, 1990). A perspective on teachers' careers (Sikes et al. 1985) and in particular gender-related opportunities (egs. Purvis, 1981; Delyon & Widdowson Migniuolo, 1989; Skelton, 1987) has also characterised recent work. Insofar as these conceptual studies have placed teaching as work into a central frame of analysis they are useful, but they have four substantive limitations.