five - The shadow state: governing choice/controlling markets in continuing professional development for teachers

Summary

In this chapter, we focus on arrangements between the state and non-state actors in the delivery of continuing professional development for teachers that extend existing understandings of education privatisation (Verger et al, 2016a), the reform of public services ‘by substitution’ (Ball, 2010) and, particularly, theories of the ‘shadow state’ (Wolch, 1990, 1999). First, we examine post-qualification continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers in England through an analysis of one recent, significant policy intervention in the context of English Conservative political interests in promoting ‘social mobility’. As such, this chapter builds on previous chapters by looking at policy interventions designed to help teachers already in the classroom to ‘keep getting better’, a phrase often used to describe the continuous improvement required of the existing teaching workforce to meet national economic needs (for example, Barber and Mourshed, 2008), sometimes also captured in the phrase, ‘Love the one you’re with’ (Wiliam, 2013). The chapter therefore primarily develops our argument that a highly distinctive situation has emerged in England since 2010 around both pre-service and continuing teacher development that makes England interesting in terms of cultural political economy. Of note are the relations between the state – its responsibilities, resources and values – and non-state actors, relations of a qualitatively different kind to those that have been part of the English education– welfare state assemblage historically.

We then return to the case of Relay Graduate School of Education (GSE) to trace the emergence of a major player in the US education shadow state. We show that the concept of shadow state is still relevant in the context of teacher education in the US as it was when Wolch first coined the term. Further, our analysis of Relay also substantiates our argument that the kind of shadow state, and the political economy underlying it, in England is highly distinctive internationally and a radical departure from historical precedents. Relay GSE is a profoundly different type of organisation, with profoundly different capacities, resources and relations to the state, than the organisations and sole-traders we see being co-created and empowered by the state in England.