Examining Teach For All: International Perspectives on a Growing Global Network 9780367336486, 9780429331695

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Examining Teach For All

Examining Teach For All brings together research focused on Teach For All and its affiliate programmes to explore the organisation’s impact on education around the world. Teach For All is an expanding global network of programmes in more than 50 countries that aim to radically transform education systems by recruiting talented graduates to teach for two years in under-resourced schools and developing them into lifelong advocates of reform. The volume offers nuanced insights into the interests and contexts shaping Teach For All and the challenges and possibilities inherent in broader efforts to enact education reform on a global scale. This volume is the first of its kind to present empirical research on the emergence and expansion of Teach For All programmes, which replicate and adapt the Teach For America model around the world. The volume traces the network’s expansion from its initial launch in 2007 to its growing international presence, as chapters present new research from national contexts as diverse as Bangladesh, Lebanon, and Spain. Using evidence from a range of perspectives and research methodologies, the chapters collectively highlight the ways in which Teach For All and its affiliate programmes are working to alter educational landscapes worldwide. This book will be of great interest for scholars, educators, post-graduate students, and policymakers in the fields of comparative education, teacher education, education leadership, and education policy. It paves the way for future critical inquiry into this expanding global network as well as further investigations of educational change around the world. Matthew A.M. Thomas is a Senior Lecturer in Comparative Education and Sociology of Education at the University of Sydney, Australia. Emilee Rauschenberger is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Katherine Crawford-Garrett is an Associate Professor of Teacher Education at the University of New Mexico, USA.

Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series editor: David Phillips, University of Oxford

Oxford Studies in Comparative Education explores a range of issues relevant to the field of comparative education. With a focus on innovative research of wide international interest, it brings together the work of established and emerging authors and researchers. The series comprises both edited volumes and singleauthored books that explore the vibrant field of comparative education and will be of wide relevance to academics and students interested in comparative inquiry, its methods and its lessons. Previously published by Symposium Books from 1991 to 2018, this longestablished series has a history of publishing quality titles across a huge range of topics. Books in this series include: North American Scholars of Comparative Education Examining the Work and Influence of Notable 20th Century Comparativists Edited by Erwin Epstein British Scholars of Comparative Education Examining the Work and Influence of Notable 19th and 20th Century Comparativists Edited by David Phillips Examining Teach For All International Perspectives on a Growing Global Network Edited by Matthew A.M. Thomas, Emilee Rauschenberger, and Katherine Crawford-Garrett For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Oxford-Studies-in-Comparative-Education/book-series/OSCE

Examining Teach For All

International Perspectives on a Growing Global Network

Edited by Matthew A.M. Thomas, Emilee Rauschenberger and Katherine Crawford-Garrett

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter Matthew A.M. Thomas, Emilee Rauschenberger and Katherine Crawford-Garrett; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Matthew A.M. Thomas, Emilee Rauschenberger and Katherine Crawford-Garrett to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-33648-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-33169-5 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books

Contents

List of illustrations List of contributors Foreword by Fazal Rizvi List of abbreviations

viii ix xv xviii

PART I

Laying the foundation 1 Examining Teach For All: An introduction

1 3

KATHERINE CRAWFORD-GARRETT, EMILEE RAUSCHENBERGER AND MATTHEW A.M. THOMAS

2 From Teach For America to Teach First: The initial expansion overseas

13

EMILEE RAUSCHENBERGER

3 A growing global network: The development of international research on Teach For All

36

MATTHEW A.M. THOMAS, KATHERINE CRAWFORD-GARRETT AND EMILEE RAUSCHENBERGER

PART II

Diffusion and adaptation 4 The origin and adaptation of Teach First Norway

61 63

KATRINE NESJE

5 The Teach For All ‘brand’: Exploring TFA’s successful transferability through case studies of Teach South Africa and Teach First JENNY ELLIOTT

79

vi Contents

6 Bringing a global model to the Lebanese education context: Adaptation or adoption?

96

MAISSAM NIMER AND NISRINE MAKKOUK

PART III

Politics and policies 7 Teach For Bangladesh as a de facto social enterprise: What is it and where is it going?

115 117

RINO WISEMAN ADHIKARY AND BOB LINGARD

8 Mobilising the philanthropic neoliberalisation of Teach For All in Spain

138

GEO SAURA

9 Teacher educators and the pedagogical and curriculum complexity of Teach For All in Australia

157

JULIANNE MOSS, TREVOR MCCANDLESS, BERNADETTE WALKER-GIBBS, MARY DIXON, DANIELLE HITCH, KATE JOHNSTONE AND JILL LOUGHLIN

10 Teach First Cymru: Whose mission? Teach First and the Welsh Government’s ‘National Mission’ for education

179

ALEX SOUTHERN

PART IV

Teaching and leading

201

11 Imagining and realising ‘good quality education’: Capital mobilisation by elite graduates of prestigious universities teaching in rural Chinese schools

203

YUE MELODY YIN AND KAREN DOOLEY

12 Professional duties and support for Teach For All fellows as reported by school principals: A case study of two European countries

221

SARAH SCHNEIDER AND HERMANN JOSEF ABS

13 Unpacking Teach For All’s conceptualisation of leadership through the ‘Teach For All Talks’ series ROLF STRAUBHAAR

243

Contents

vii

PART V

Conclusion

265

14 Final thoughts on Teach For All: From where and where to?

267

MATTHEW A.M. THOMAS, EMILEE RAUSCHENBERGER AND KATHERINE CRAWFORD-GARRETT

Index

276

Illustrations

Figures 8.1 ExE policy network generated through Gephi software 12.1 Frequency of fellows’ professional duties according to principals in Bulgaria and Austria 12.2 Elements of teacher induction programmes in Bulgaria and Austria 12.3 Mean values of the principals’ assessment of levels of cooperation between fellows and teachers in a range of content areas

145 232 234 236

Tables 3.1 List of established TFAll programmes in chronological order as of 2019 3.2 Regional breakdown of Teach For All programmes in 2019 4.1 Overview of themes in the participants’ narratives 5.1 Gathering of data for case studies into Teach First UK and Teach South Africa 10.1 How trainee teachers on the GTP and Teach First described a ‘good’ teacher 10.2 How trainee teachers on the GTP and Teach First defined ‘professionalism’ 11.1 Demographic characteristics of interviewees 11.2 Good quality education for the rural classroom 12.1 Sample – gender and age 13.1 TFAll Talks participants

42 45 69 84 189 189 207 208 230 248

Contributors

Editors Katherine Crawford-Garrett is an Associate Professor of Teacher Education, Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of New Mexico. She holds a EdD from the University of Pennsylvania as well as degrees from Boston and Colgate universities. Her areas of scholarship include neoliberal contexts of schooling, teacher activism, critical literacy, and feminism. She is the recipient of the 2016 Fulbright US Scholar Award to study TeachFirst NZ, a programme that prepares university graduates in New Zealand to work in low-decile schools. She is also the author of the book Teach For America and the struggle for urban school reform and articles in leading peerreviewed journals such as the American Educational Research Journal and Teaching and Teacher Education. Emilee Rauschenberger is an ESRC-funded White Rose DTP Postdoctoral Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is working on further research that critically examines the spread of ‘Teach For/First’ programmes in Europe and the Teach For All network. Originally from the US, Emilee earned her BA in Political Science and Journalism from New York University and her MA in Teaching from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where she also completed the Teach For America programme. She then went on to work briefly for Teach First in the UK before completing her PhD at the University of Edinburgh. Her main areas of interest are the processes of education privatisation, the global governance of education, and policy transfer, with a particular interest in the role of policy entrepreneurs in policymaking. Matthew A.M. Thomas is a Senior Lecturer in Comparative Education and Sociology of Education at the University of Sydney. He holds a PhD in comparative and international development education from the University of Minnesota and an MA from Columbia University, Teachers College. Matthew has worked as a public school teacher, teacher educator, researcher, and consultant across diverse contexts, including in Australia,

x List of contributors

Mali, Nigeria, Indonesia, Tanzania, the United States, and Zambia. His research examines educational policies, pedagogical practices, teachers’ lives, and the changing roles of teacher education institutions.

Contributors Hermann J. Abs is a Full Professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen and head of the working group Educational Research and Schooling. He holds a PhD in Education from the University of Freiburg and is also a licensed grammar school teacher. Further, he worked as researcher and project leader at the German Institute for International Educational Research (DIPF) and as Professor at the University of Giessen. Abs is specialised in quantitative research methodology and international comparison in teacher education research. Together with his team he conceptualised and implemented the evaluation of the European policy experiment ‘A New Way for New Talents in Teaching’ (NEWTT, 2016–2019). The Project compared processes and results of alternative routes into teaching with the established routes in five European countries. Rino Wiseman Adhikary has recently completed his PhD from the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. He also holds an MA (Education) in Lifelong Learning from the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark; a European MA in Lifelong Learning Policy and Management from the University of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain; and an MA in English from Khulna University, Bangladesh. Currently on an extended study leave to finish his post-PhD publications, he holds a Lecturer-II position at the Institute of Educational Development at BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. His research foci are global policy governance in education and sociology of education policy. As a part of his doctoral thesis, Rino has researched Teach For Bangladesh (as a policy) and produced articles that have appeared in journals such as Comparative Education, Journal of Education Policy, and London Review of Education. Mary Dixon is well known locally and internationally for her expertise in pedagogy and teacher education. She has carried out research in these areas in Singapore, Nepal, Thailand and Australia. She has been Chief Investigator on several Australian Research Council research grants projects, including the Study of the Effectiveness of Teacher Education, the largest longitudinal Australian study of teacher education. She is co-founder of the Public Pedagogies Institute (www.publicpedagogies.org). She is Chief Investigator on ‘The Knowledge Project’ a longitudinal study researching and mapping knowledge and place.

List of contributors xi

Karen Dooley is a Professor in the Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Karen is a sociologist who is interested in education in conditions of economic disparity and cultural and linguistic difference. Her research studies have addressed pedagogy for young people of refugee background; and digital and print literacies in a high poverty, high diversity primary school. Karen is currently studying private literacy tutoring. Before becoming a researcher, Karen worked as a teacher in early childhood and primary school settings in Australia and a middle school in China. Jenny Elliott is an Assistant Professor in the School of Education at the University of Nottingham, where she is the Course Leader for the BA in Education and Regional Coordinator for the University’s PGCE International in Africa. Her early career was in teaching languages at secondary level, leading to a languages teacher educator role at the University, including four years educating teachers on the Teach First UK programme. Her research interests are in teacher education, Global South/North collaborative education projects and creativity in education. Danielle Hitch is Senior Lecturer in Occupational Therapy at Deakin University, and a member of INCLUDE (the International Collaboratory for Universally Designed Education). She has conducted research in the field of inclusive education in higher education, with a specific focus on the application of the Principles of Universal Design for Learning. Dr Hitch also has a long standing interest in work integrated learning for health professionals, and have published several studies on capacity building in the allied health workforce for evidence based practice and knowledge translation. Kate Johnstone is a Lecturer at Deakin University in Curriculum, Pedagogy and Professional Learning. Her research interests focus on student experiences of transitions, rural education, initial teacher education, and online learning in higher education. Dr Johnstone previously held the role of Professional Experience Coordinator for the B.Ed Primary course at Charles Sturt University (Wagga Wagga, NSW), and the Master of Teaching Cloud Coordinator at Deakin University. Bob Lingard is a Professorial Fellow in the Institute for Learning Sciences & Teacher Education, Australian Catholic University and Emeritus Professor at The University of Queensland. He researches in the fields of sociology of education and policy sociology in education. His most recent books include, the co-authored Globalizing Educational Accountabilities (Routledge, 2016), the co-edited The Handbook of Global Education Policy (John-Wiley, 2016) and the authored Politics, Policies and Pedagogies in Education (Routledge, 2014). Jill Loughlin is Senior Lecturer at Deakin University in Curriculum, Pedagogy and Professional Learning. She has been a researcher, teacher and contributor in

xii List of contributors

preservice teacher education and inservice professional learning in the areas of school redesign, innovative learning environments, team teaching, alternative teacher education pathways and mentoring. She was a key team member for three years in delivering teacher education to Teach For Australia associates and inservice support for associates and their school-based mentors, as both the leader of the School Academic Mentor team and the Academic Director of the TFA Mentor Professional Learning Programme and is currently the programme Course Director for the Master of Teaching suite at Deakin. Nisrine Makkouk is an independent researcher and education development professional with a focus on adolescents and youth. Her work includes education for active citizenship, critical pedagogy, and student voice. Nisrine holds a Master’s degree in Sociology from the American University of Beirut. Trevor McCandless is a Research Fellow with REDI (Research for Educational Impact) at Deakin University. His research interests include the social semiotics of school marketing materials, intercultural understanding, the future of work, and curriculum and policy issues impacting education generally and preservice teachers in particular. Julianne Moss leads REDI (Research for Educational Impact) Deakin’s strategic research centre in Education. In 2019 she received the award of Alfred Professor Deakin University, the highest honour awarded to professors of the university. As a Chief Investigator, she has been awarded competitive Australian Research Council research grants and university teaching development and completed a wide range of tendered research and consultancy projects for governments in Australia, Singapore and Indonesia. Recent projects include the AllPlay Learn professional learning project for the Department of Education and Training Victoria and the Teach For All initial teacher education design. This project built on the understanding that grew over time as an investigator on the Commonwealth-funded Longitudinal Teacher Education Workforce (LTEWS) study, the first longitudinal study of this kind to be completed in Australia. She has a longstanding interests that leverage the design and implementation of Teacher Education through mixed methods research, visual research, equity and social justice and inclusive schooling. Katrine Nesje is an Associate Professor at the Department of Teacher Education and School Research at the University of Oslo, Norway. In addition to education policy, her research interests include topics related to teacher education, teachers’ career motivation and professional identity development. Nesje has previously worked as researcher in the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for Education.

List of contributors xiii

Maissam Nimer is a postdoctoral researcher currently working on projects that deal with the experiences of Syrian refugee youth in Turkey in terms of access to education and language learning. She obtained a PhD in sociology at Paris Saclay University in July 2016. Maissam holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and a BS from the American University of Beirut. She has publications in journals such as Gender and Education, Third World Quarterly and International Studies in Sociology of Education. Geo Saura is a Lecturer in Education Policy (2018–2023) at the University of Granada. He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona (2015–2018) and a Pre-doctoral Researcher (2012–2015) developing his international PhD on neoliberal and privatisation policies at the University of Granada and the University of Roehampton. He received the PhD Extraordinary Award in Social Sciences. He carried out various research periods and internationally funded research projects (Latin America and Europe). His publications endeavour to capture structures, actors, networks and practices in contemporary neoliberalisation of education policy. Sarah Schneider is a research assistant in the Faculty of Education, working group Educational Research and Schooling, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. After studying educational science, she became interested and researched the subject of alternative educated teachers. She participated in the ERASMUS+ project ‘A New Way for New Talents in Teaching’ (NEWTT), which is funded by the European Commission. NEWTT is defined as a ‘policy experiment’ comparing alternative routes with the traditional routes into the teaching profession in several European countries with the aim of promoting policy reforms. Alex Southern is a researcher in Yr Athrofa/Institute of Education, University of Wales Trinity Saint David. She originally trained as a film archivist, and worked in the Commercial Access Department of the Imperial War Museum Film Archive, before retraining as a Lecturer in Further and Higher Education, and taking up post as Head of Learning at the Yorkshire Film Archive. Her current research focuses on the arts and creativity in education; professional learning; and curriculum development. Her monograph, The Ministry of Education Film Experiment, is published by Palgrave Macmillan. Rolf Straubhaar is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and School Improvement at Texas State University. He is an education policy scholar trained in anthropology who has written extensively on several Teach For All affiliates, particularly Teach For America and the Brazilian affiliate Ensina!. This work has been published in the Journal of Teacher Education, Education Policy Analysis Archives, Education and Urban Society, and Educational Studies. Prior to his work in academia, Rolf taught in K-12 settings in the United States, and in adult education settings in Brazil and Mozambique.

xiv List of contributors

Bernadette Walker-Gibbs is a Professor and Associate Head of School (Learning and Teaching) at Latrobe University, and is recognized as an outstanding educator with an international reputation in research for her leadership of large-scale, longitudinal studies in teacher education and for international comparative studies in rural education. Her research focuses on place-based pedagogy specifically alongside teacher identity and Initial Teacher Education more broadly. Bernadette draws on post-structural and qualitative methods to enhance the capacity of graduate teachers for the diverse contexts in which they will teach. Yue Melody Yin obtained her PhD in the Faculty of Education at Queensland University of Technology and now works at Jiangnan University. She specialises in the sociology of education. Her research topic is about the alternative teacher recruitment programmes which channel prestigious university graduates to the teaching profession in disadvantaged schools.

Foreword

The field of education is littered with ideas designed to bring about fundamental reforms in education. Some of these reforms seek to address long-standing problems with the funding and governance of educational systems, while other initiatives aim to improve the quality of teaching and learning, especially in low income, low performing schools. Others still are designed to make teaching careers more attractive to a broader range of graduates. Teach For All (TFAll) is a programme that focuses on each of these aspirations. Its aims are as broad ranging as they are ambitious. Indeed, the programme is often portrayed as a panacea for improving educational outcomes among marginalised populations. Established in 2007, TFAll rests on a theory of educational reform that has now proliferated around the world. Built on earlier programmes such as Teach For America and Teach First in the UK, TFAll is now constituted as a global network encompassing more than fifty countries, each aiming to recruit some of the brightest young people into the profession of education. Funded by a mixture of government, private and philanthropic sources, it has become a large global organisation that encourages and supports systems of education around the world to replicate its distinctive model of teacher recruitment and teacher education. Over the years, literally tens of thousands of graduates have participated in TFAll through its predecessor and closely aligned programmes. A vast amount of commentary now exists in professional magazines, popular media, blogs, edited collections and the like, in which TFAll alumni reflect on their teaching experiences. These reflections point to strongly and passionately held views, both positive and negative, with perceptions of the programme ranging from great satisfaction to extreme disillusionment. Some of the programme’s alumni insist that their lives have been transformed by their TFAll experiences, giving them a sense of moral purpose. They maintain that it has provided them with valuable life experiences, helped them to acquire various leadership qualities, and developed a platform and positive attitude toward higher levels of achievement. The perceptions of others, however, are not so sanguine. They report feelings of disappointment, even exploitation. They advise new graduates not to be tempted

xvi Foreword

by the programme’s seductive rhetoric, its noble and inspiring images of teaching and of ‘making a difference’. They warn of the corporate structure of TFAll that fails to provide them with an adequate level of preparation and support to teach students in some of the most difficult of social conditions. They reject the assumption that just because a graduate is academically able, they would necessarily make a good teacher, especially with only a few weeks of training. Many object to the patronising tone of the programme’s philosophy and the assumptions it makes about the nature of ‘disadvantaged’ communities. Others still believe that the programme sets teachers up for failure. Beyond these personal perceptions, however, there are some even more serious problems with the fast-track model of teacher preparation that TFAll promulgates. While some individuals may indeed derive considerable personal benefits from their participation, the programme cannot be regarded as a solution to the more fundamental problems that most systems of education face. At best, the programme represents a piecemeal attempt at recruiting teachers to work in the poorer communities, diverting attention from the more serious issues resulting from the failure to sufficiently fund public schools, and provide the resources they need to adequately support teachers and administrators. If the goals of social equity are to be taken seriously then poorer schools should not be treated as places for short-term and inexperienced teachers from (often) well-off families, who are motivated either by misplaced idealism or, somewhat cynically, by an interest in building up their resume. Not surprisingly, many of these teachers do not remain in the classroom after completion of the TFAll affiliate programme, and some even leave before the end of their two-year contracts. Furthermore, in the United States, the number of applicants to Teach For America has plummeted in recent years. Few make it their long-term career, and many do not continue work in poorer, marginalised urban communities. There is little conclusive evidence, moreover, that TFAll teachers perform any better in producing improved student outcomes. Indeed, TFAll’s emphasis on hyper-accountability ignores the broader problems in education. The programme’s assumption that teachers who have strong academic backgrounds can close the achievement gap overlooks decades of educational research that shows that no matter how good the teachers, out of school factors also help explain much of the variance in school achievement. More fundamentally, the American programme on which the TFAll model is primarily based – Teach For America – sends its teachers to school districts where teacher lay-offs and hiring freezes have been common. What this indicates is that TFA, and perhaps by implication TFAll, is not really committed to public education but to a neoliberal reform agenda that assists in ridding school districts of veteran teachers, privatising public schools, and forcing a data-driven culture upon low-income communities that face serious and often unique challenges. Leaders of TFAll remain largely defensive about their organisation’s complicity with the neoliberal ideology of education. It has a corporate system designed to sideline any serious dissent, while it continues to export its ideas to the rest of the world.

Foreword

xvii

Little is known, however, as to how these ideas travel, and are translated through local cultural, political, and educational traditions. Most welcome, therefore, is this collection of chapters, which employs tools of comparative education to provide accounts of how ideas associated with TFAll acquire local meaning, and the impact they have in a variety of national and regional settings. More importantly, it is heartening to see a book of this nature that examines the various theoretical claims surrounding TFAll and explores its global significance, both as an expression of neoliberal reform in education as well as one of its outcomes. Fazal Rizvi Professor of Global Studies in Education The University of Melbourne Australia

List of abbreviations

ACU AEA AITSL ALI AUB CATE CGI CM DPE EACEA eFSM ExE GTP HEFCW HEIs HMI ICSEA IDACI ITE ITT KIPP LAU LEE NETDS NEWTT NGO NSVF

Australian Catholic University Achieving Excellence Areas (UK) Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership African Leadership Initiative American University of Beirut (Lebanon) Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (UK) Clinton Global Initiative corps member (participant in Teach For America) Directorate of Primary Education (Bangladesh) Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (for the European Union) eligible for free school meals (UK) Empieza por Educar (TFAll programme in Spain) Graduate Teacher Programme (UK) Higher Education Funding Council for Wales higher education institutions Her Majesty’s Inspectorate (UK) Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (Australia) Income Deprivation Affecting Child Index (UK) initial teacher education initial teacher training Knowledge is Power Program Lebanese American University Leadership for Educational Equity (US) The National Exceptional Teachers for Disadvantaged Schools Program (Australia) New Way for New Talents In Teaching non-governmental organisation New Schools Venture Fund

List of abbreviations xix OECD PESoB PDG PGCE PISA QTS QUT SE SES SDG STEM TALIS TFAll TFA TFAustria TFAustralia TFB TFBulgaria TFNZ TNTP TOC TTA UK UN US USAID USD UWTSD WG WISE

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development primary education system of Bangladesh pupil deprivation grant (UK) Post-Graduate Certificate in Education (UK) Programme for International Student Assessment Qualified Teacher Status (UK) Queensland University of Technology (Australia) social enterprise socio-economic status Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations) science, technology, engineering and mathematics The Teaching and Learning International Survey Teach For All Teach For America Teach For Austria Teach For Australia Teach For Bangladesh Teach For Bulgaria Teach First New Zealand The New Teacher Project (US) theory of change Teacher Training Agency (UK) United Kingdom United Nations United States United States Agency for International Development United States dollars University of Wales Trinity Saint David Welsh Government World Innovation Summit in Education

Part I

Laying the foundation

Chapter 1

Examining Teach For All An introduction Katherine Crawford-Garrett, Emilee Rauschenberger and Matthew A.M. Thomas

Introduction The story of Teach For All begins with the story of Teach For America. In 1989, recent Princeton graduate Wendy Kopp issued a call to high-achieving graduating seniors across the 100 top-ranking US universities and colleges to forestall their career plans for two years to teach in America’s neediest and most impoverished schools. Premised on the Peace Corps and similar public service programmes, Kopp envisioned a programme where ‘the very brightest minds’ would ‘take a break from their fast-paced lives to serve the nation’ (Kopp, 1989, p. 45) as they worked toward the now-(in)famous mantra that one day, all children will receive an excellent education (Kopp, 2003). Kopp’s vision for her programme – Teach For America (TFA) – resonated with individuals, many of whom were compelled by the opportunity to both ‘do good and do well’ (Labaree, 2010; Maier, 2012). Specifically, TFA corps members, unlike ‘traditional’ pre-service teacher education students, were well-positioned to pursue robust career opportunities in the public and private sector after completing their two-year commitment in under-resourced schools. Launched in 1990 with nearly 500 recruits known as corps members1 (CMs), these TFA CMs have entered both urban and rural schools to work as full-time teachers since TFA’s inception, and the organisation has grown immensely in the last three decades. As an organisation, it has evolved and become a high-profile supporter of neoliberal educational reforms, including but not limited to high-stakes accountability, charter school proliferation, and alternative pathways into teaching, which are now commonplace across the US (cf. Lefebvre & Thomas, 2019). With a network of 60,000 alumni that includes at least 200 elected leaders in public office and hundreds of charter school founders, principals, and school officials (Teach For America, 2019; Reddy, 2016), TFA has been instrumental to the school reform movement and the reimagination of American education according to market logic (Horn, 2016). The mission of TFA – to end inequities in education in the short and long term through the training of future leaders both in the classroom and beyond – reflects a brand of neoliberalism that reinforces notions of individual efficacy and

4 Crawford-Garrett, Rauschenberger, & Thomas

perpetuates the paradox that teachers are both the problem and the solution to longstanding educational disparities (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2006; Brewer, 2014). Predicated on a two-part theory of change, TFA first aggressively recruits2 elite graduates who complete an abbreviated preparation programme and are placed as teachers in schools serving historically marginalised populations. TFA then offers robust leadership training and entrepreneurial support with the expectation that corps members will eventually segue into leadership positions in a variety of sectors and utilise their experience within low-income schools to work for systemic change (Reddy, 2016). Although part of the programme’s theory of change focuses on fostering change outside of classroom spaces, TFA both explicitly and implicitly suggests that socioeconomic and racial achievement gaps can be closed by removing ineffective educators and replacing them with young, ambitious, hard-working TFA recruits. This notion has altered the discourse and expectations regarding how teaching is understood and defined – particularly in underserved contexts – as corps members are tasked not only with teaching content but with interrupting the cycle of intergenerational poverty and ensuring equitable academic outcomes in the most challenging of circumstances. As poorer students grapple with an array of harsh social realities including racial discrimination, food insecurity, under-funded public schools, a lack of adequate housing, and high unemployment rates, TFA insists that sending its highly motivated, idealistic and smart recruits – that is, the ‘best and brightest’ (Blumenreich & Rogers, 2016) – can help such pupils find academic success in their classrooms and thus change the trajectory of students’ lives. TFA’s theory of change and model of teacher recruitment and training has garnered intense scrutiny in the US, in part due to its alignment with advocates of market-oriented reforms in education. Critical research into TFA has highlighted that the organisation relies on neoliberal tropes that emphasise the role of grit and resilience (Crawford-Garrett, 2018), promotes a data-obsessed approach to teaching in the ‘relentless pursuit of results’ (Thomas & Lefebvre, 2018; Veltri, 2010), privileges a ‘no-excuses’ approach to academic achievement (Golann, 2015), and endorses the use of highly scripted, corporate curriculum and basic skills instruction (Crawford-Garrett, 2013; Matsui, 2015). As a result, critics of TFA argue that it has become complicit in perpetuating educational inequities, including the very problems it purports to solve (Darling-Hammond, 1994; Pitzer, 2014; Sondel, Kretchmar, & Hadley Dunn, 2019; White 2016). Other critics point to the high costs of the programme and the low retention of its teachers in low-income schools (Boyd, Grossman, Lankford, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2008; Darling-Hammond, Holtzman, Gatlin, & Heilig, 2005; Heilig & Jez, 2010). In spite of these critiques, and while studies of effectiveness of TFA teachers are contradictory and hence up for debate, TFA has won bipartisan support from US politicians and monetary investments from high-profile philanthropists, corporations, and government bodies (Reckhow, 2012; Kretchmar, Sondel & Ferrare, 2014). TFA is able to cultivate such support, in part, by promoting the popular narrative, established in

Introduction 5

the early 1980s, that public systems are irreparably broken and in need of the disruption and innovation which TFA offers (Ravitch, 2014). This neoliberal ethos exists alongside a social justice framing that utilises the rhetoric of the civil rights movement to appeal to idealistic college graduates of all backgrounds and political affiliations (Ahmann, 2015; Muñoz, Heilig, & Real, 2019; White, 2016). Declaring that education is the current generation’s ‘civil rights issue’ and calling for the ‘closing of the achievement gap’, TFA fuses ‘the spirit and assumptions of the progressive and social justice tradition … with business-infused managerial strategies’ (Lahann & Reagan, 2011, p. 13) to present itself as a social justice-oriented organisation that is building a ‘movement’ for change that will lead to a more egalitarian society (White, 2016). These dual, and arguably competing values, which are fundamental to TFA’s philosophy and mission, are now part of a global phenomenon. Wendy Kopp and Brett Wigdortz (founder of Teach First in the UK) launched Teach For All as part of the 2007 Clinton Global Initiative with the hopes of replicating ‘successful’ aspects of their respective reform initiatives and transferring their visions to vastly divergent contexts across the globe. Teach For All affiliates, typically established and led by local ‘social entrepreneurs’ (Adhikary & Lingard, 2017), purport to address educational inequities by re-enacting TFA’s model of recruiting high-performing graduates to become full-time teachers in under-resourced schools for two years. TFAll represents a unique private/public partnership model of fast-track alternative teacher education as it seeks to support the establishment and growth of affiliates worldwide – with funding from foundations, corporations (especially social responsibility branches), and government entities – who share ‘best practices’ across contexts to maximise the impact of both these individual entities and the network itself. While TFAll programmes were initially inspired by TFA and Teach First UK, each affiliate avers it is shaped by the culture and needs of its own context. Nevertheless, the programmes are united in their mission to raise academic achievement among low-income communities in the short term while developing teachers who can become leaders capable of fomenting systemic change in the long term. TFAll affiliates are also linked by the network’s ‘unifying principles’, which require its members to ensure that their programmes focus on: (1) recruiting and selecting leaders, (2) training and developing participants, (3) placing participants as teachers, (4) accelerating the leadership of alumni, and (5) driving measurable impact (Teach For All, 2019a). With these principles underpinning their efforts, TFAll has scaled up exponentially over the previous decade, and now has affiliates in more than 50 countries, with continued plans for expansion (see Crawford-Garrett & Thomas, 2018).

Research Access This volume is a response to the rapid proliferation of TFAll programmes and to the dearth of research that currently exists on these programmes even as new affiliates are launched on an ongoing basis. Grounded in a diversity of theories

6 Crawford-Garrett, Rauschenberger, & Thomas

including policy mobilities, globalisation, and sociological perspectives, among others, the book features ten chapters representing a range of geographic contexts including Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Oceania. These incisive, empirical accounts highlight a multitude of phenomena related to the TFAll constellation of programmes by recounting how participants are recruited, selected, and trained, as well as the ways in which the organisation’s broader mission is enacted and realised across a range of political, policy, and programmatic levels. Creating this book was a daunting task as it involved finding researchers who had conducted rigorous, theoretically informed empirical work on TFAll or one of its affiliates. Conducting such research is difficult for several reasons. First, many of these programmes are relatively new, initiated in only the past few years, and still in the process of being implemented to scale (see Chapter 3 for more details about the year each programme was launched). Hence there has been little time and scarce public data available on these emergent programmes. Second, research into TFAll and its affiliates is limited due, at least in part, to the considerable difficulty of gaining research access, as the organisations are independent and autonomous, private non-profits that are not required to be open to the scrutiny of outsiders. In addition, as private ‘social’ enterprises with public reputations to maintain and protect in a highly politicised sector (i.e. education), the organisational staffs of TFA, TFAll and a number of its national affiliate programmes have sought to pre-empt or redirect outside research on multiple occasions.3 Organisational resistance of TFA and its TFAll affiliates to outside critique has taken many forms such as rebuffing requests for research access, restricting researchers’ attendance to official trainings and events, declining interviews, ignoring data requests, and working to pre-empt new studies and publicly discredit any negative evidence or critical insights into its work. The closed and tightly controlled organisational culture has been documented elsewhere (cf. Joseph, 2014, on TFA) and remains a hindrance to deepening the body of research on related programmes worldwide. If for no other reason alone, this volume makes a significant contribution to the evidence base of empirical research on TFAll and its affiliate programmes. That said, it must also be noted that some TFAll affiliate programmes have cooperated with researchers, providing access and support that has resulted in a greater understanding of the nature and impact of such programmes. As researchers are invited to collaborate with TFAll affiliates, there will be unique opportunities to generate meaningful and multi-perspectival inquiries into teaching and learning in underserved communities across the globe. Given these advances, it is hoped that the research contributions of the authors featured herein will both inspire and enable other researchers to pursue research projects on TFAll and its affiliates in the future. As such, the present volume aims to make a key contribution to the extant literature as well as lead others to document the wider impact of the network on educational reform worldwide, including the communities such programmes aim to be serving.

Introduction 7

Organisation This volume is organised into four key sections in an effort to trace the multifaceted impact of Teach For All across geographic contexts. Part I, which includes this chapter, introduces the volume and lays the foundational history for the evolution of TFAll. Following this introductory chapter, Chapter 2 traces the histories of Teach For America and its first affiliate, Teach First UK. These two programmes collectively reflect the genesis of what would later evolve into a growing global network. The third and final chapter of this introductory section, then, discusses the birth of Teach For All and the growth of affiliate programmes around the world. It also offers an overview of research literature related to TFAll programmes in their respective settings. Part II emphasises the diffusion and adaptation of the Teach For All model through three chapters that address the ways in which TFAll affiliate programmes operate in contrastive national settings. First, Nesje and Elliot provide insight into the diffusion and design of the TFAll-inspired programmes in Norway, South Africa, and the UK. Their chapters document substantive differences but also clear similarities in how programmes are imagined and enacted across contexts. Nimer and Makkouk, then, examine how Teach For Lebanon attracts recruits to the programme by drawing upon human capital and development paradigms as well as the hegemonic language of globalisation and new notions of leadership. Part III draws on case studies from three countries to consider how TFAll has interacted with educational policies and politics on both global and local scales. In the first chapter, Adhikary and Lingard examine Teach For Bangladesh’s emphasis on social entrepreneurship by analysing an interview with the organisation’s founder as they consider how entrepreneurial discourses shape the local policy context. In the next chapter, Saura reframes neoliberalism as a dynamic process wherein Teach For Spain mobilises policies across diverse sectors in the interest of extending its organisational power. In the final chapter of this section, a team of Australian scholars considers how the growth of the Teach For All enterprise in Australia is reflective of broader neoliberal efforts to privatise education and to support entrepreneurial efforts within teacher education. Part IV focuses on the intersecting themes of teaching and leading with four chapters that explore the ways in which TFAll and its programmes are reshaping discourses related to teaching and leadership, but also public sentiments about education. First, Southern offers a comparative analysis of definitions of ‘professionalism’ in education – as articulated by Teach First teachers and other employment-based beginner teachers studying at the same Welsh university – and then examines the wider effect Teach First appears to be having on the teaching profession in Wales. Next, Yin and Dooley draw upon Bourdieusian frameworks to focus on the teachers themselves as they consider the ways in which the elite graduates who join alternative teacher education programmes attain various forms of capital from participation in the programme, even as

8 Crawford-Garrett, Rauschenberger, & Thomas

they are tasked with rectifying inequality. In the third chapter in this section, Schneider and Hermann examine how teachers across two TFAll programmes in Europe are supported to ‘succeed’ in the classroom and how principals who partner with the programmes differ in their expectations of fast-track recruits. Finally, Straubhaar considers how the concept of leadership is framed within the organisation through an analysis of the Teach For All Talks series, and explores the implications of these conceptions on a broader scale. The volume concludes, then, with a call for further research on Teach For All programmes and the ways in which these programmes are affecting change in multi-scalar ways around the world.

Concluding questions Taken collectively, the contributing authors in this volume raise critical questions about Teach For All, its unprecedented growth, and its potential to impact how we conceptualise, discuss, and address issues of educational inequality worldwide. Not only does this text highlight the scope of Teach For All’s impact, it also illustrates the strong similarities that exist between iterations even as the organisation repeatedly claims its interventions are uniquely responsive to local contexts (Teach For All, 2019b). As such, we assert that more research on the organisation is sorely needed so that the following questions might be addressed moving forward:     

How has TFAll’s mission and model been implemented across contexts? How do policies and discourses related to teaching, teacher training, and teacher quality move across space and time, and how are they taken up in divergent contexts? What role does TFAll play in global education reform efforts as neoliberal ideologies are increasingly disseminated worldwide? How do TFAll affiliates impact local communities? How do students and families within these communities articulate the educational challenges they face, and how do they understand the role of TFAll programmes in rectifying these?

Nearly thirty years ago, Wendy Kopp galvanised a generation of young people, urging them to grapple with the stark disparities endemic in American society. Her vision led the rise of TFA which, as a political force, has left an indelible mark on American schooling. No-Excuses charter school networks such as the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) – conceptualised originally by TFA alumni – are now pervasive across countless American cities (Maloney, 2015; Horn, 2016). TFA’s practice-based model of teacher training helped set the scene for the emergence of outside actors who are working to ‘disrupt’ university-based teacher education programmes, such as the Relay Graduate School of Education, which now prepares a significant number of TFA corps

Introduction 9

members throughout the US. Such institutions enable prospective teachers to avoid in-depth academic study of education and offers TFA a way to skirt cumbersome partnerships with universities, where philosophical alignment is often a challenge (Crawford-Garrett, 2013; McNew-Birren, Hildebrand, & Belknap, 2018; Meyers, Fisher, Alicea, & Bloxson, 2014; Mungal, 2016; Thomas & Lefebvre, 2020). In this way, TFA has contributed to the further marginalisation of schools of education and made it increasingly difficult for TFA recruits to glean alternative perspectives on the field of education (Thomas & Mockler, 2018). Finally, TFA’s obsession with measuring teaching quality, or effectiveness, through quantitative test data has helped promote curriculum standardisation in education and the testing industry, even as student achievement in the U.S. remains stagnant. With TFA wielding such influence in the public education sector, the internationalisation of its model – via TFAll – necessitates attention. As the reach of TFAll extends across the globe to contexts and communities imbued with legacies of colonialism, racism, gender discrimination, and deep economic inequality, it is likely that the aforementioned neoliberal ‘innovations’ will follow. These reforms, concomitant to the Global Education Reform Movement, have the power and possibility to further confound the deep, complex, multi-dimensional work essential to creating opportunities, access, and a sense of justice for historically marginalised communities.

Notes 1 To maintain consistency, the titles of participants/teachers in various TFAll affiliate programmes see (e.g. corps members, fellows, associates) are written in lowercase throughout the volume. 2 An entire book and several online articles have been devoted to helping candidates apply to TFA (see Thomas, 2016). 3 For a discussion of the challenges and approaches of gaining access to research Teach For America, see, for example, Sondel, Kretchmar, and Hadley Dunn (2019) and Hildebrand (2018), who learned from the local TFA Board of Directors that only studies likely to ‘frame TFA in a positive light’ (p. 55) were generally approved. This response is somewhat similar to Friedrich's (2014) experience of having research access revoked after sharing a draft conference paper with one of the founders of Enseñá por Argentina. Moreover, as editors of a special issue focused on TFA, Scott, Trujillo, and Rivera (2016) shared insights into the ways in which TFA has sought to receive advanced copies of research that may be in some fashion critical of the organisation or its corps members. And finally, after Brewer and DeMarrais (2015) published their book of counternarratives from TFA alumni, the organisation posted a considerable response aiming to minimise its contribution, noting that ‘corps members and alumni have 50,000 individual stories about Teach For America. This book contains 20 of them’ (Teach For America, 2016). At the time of this writing, it is unknown whether Teach For All will do likewise following a new volume of counternarratives (Brewer, Demarrais, & Mcfaden, 2020) or the very book that this chapter introduces.

10 Crawford-Garrett, Rauschenberger, & Thomas

References Adhikary, R.W., & Lingard, B. (2017). A critical policy analysis of ‘Teach for Bangladesh’: A travelling policy touches down. Comparative Education, 54(2), 181–202. Ahmann, C. (2015). Teach For all: Storytelling ‘shared solutions’ and scaling global reform. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(45), 1–27. Blumenreich, M., & Rogers, B.L. (2016). TFA and the magical thinking of the ‘best and the brightest’. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24(13), 1–35. Boyd, D., Grossman, P., Lankford, H., Loeb, S., & Wyckoff, J. (2008). Who leaves? Teacher attrition and student achievement. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. Brewer, T.J. (2014). Accelerated burnout: How Teach for America’s academic impact model and theoretical culture of accountability can foster disillusionment among its corps members. Educational Studies, 50(3), 246–263. Brewer, T.J., & deMarrais, K.B. (Eds.). (2015). Teach For America counter-narratives: Alumni speak up and speak out. New York: Peter Lang. Brewer, T.J., deMarrais, K., & Mcfaden, K. (2020). Teach For All counter-narratives: International perspectives on a global reform movement. New York: Peter Lang. Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S.L. (2006). Troubling images of teaching under NCLB. Harvard Educational Review, 73(4), 668–697. Crawford-Garrett, K. (2013). Teach for America and the struggle for urban school reform. New York: Peter Lang. Crawford-Garrett, K. (2018). Lacking resilience or mounting resistance? Interpreting the actions of indigenous and immigrant youth within TeachFirst New Zealand. American Educational Research Journal, 55(5), 1051–1075. Crawford-Garrett, K., & Thomas, M.A.M. (2018). Teacher education and the global impact of Teach For All. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Retrieved from https://oxfordre.com/education/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.0001/a crefore-9780190264093-e-417 Darling-Hammond, L. (1994). Who will speak for the children? How ‘Teach for America’ hurts urban schools and students. Phi Delta Kappan, 76(1), 21–34. Darling-Hammond, L., Holtzman, D., Gatlin, S., & Heilig, J. (2005). Does teacher preparation matter? Evidence about teacher certification, Teach For America, and teacher effectiveness. Retrieved from www.ncate.org/documents/EdNews/Stanford TeacherCertificationReport.pdf. Friedrich, D.S. (2014). Global microlending in education reform: Enseñá por Argentina and the neoliberalization of the grassroots. Comparative Education Review, 58(2), 296–321. Golann, J.W. (2015). The paradox of success at a no-excuses school. Sociology of Education, 88(2), 103–119. Heilig, J.V., & Jez, S.J. (2010). Teach For America: A review of the evidence. Retrieved from http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/teach-for-america. Hildebrand, J.N. (2018). The relationship between teacher retention and original career goals, teacher efficacy and empathy: A study of Teach For America alumni. Doctoral dissertation, Marquette University. Horn, J. (2016). Work hard, Be hard: Journeys through ‘no excuses’ teaching. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Joseph, G. (2014, 29 October). This is what happens when you criticize Teach for America. The Nation.

Introduction 11 Kopp, W. (1989). An argument and plan for the creation of the teacher corps. Unpublished honours thesis, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. Kopp, W. (2003). One day, all children … The unlikely triumph of Teach for America and what I learned along the way. New York: Public Affairs. Kretchmar, K., Sondel, B., & Ferrare, J. (2014). Mapping the terrain: Teach for America, charter school reform, and corporate sponsorship. Journal of Education Policy, 29(6), 742–759. Labaree, D. (2010). Teach For America and teacher ed: Heads they win, tails we lose. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1–2),48–55. Lahann, R., & Reagan, E. (2011). Teach For America and the politics of progressive neoliberalism. Teacher Education Quarterly, 38(1), 7–27. Lefebvre, E.E., & Thomas, M.A.M. (2019). Alternative routes to teaching. In M.A. Peters (Ed.), Encyclopedia of teacher education. Singapore: Springer. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/978-981-13-1179-6_49-1 Maier, A. (2012). Doing good and doing well: Credentialism and Teach For America. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(1), 10–22. Maloney, T. (2015). The impact of the Teach For America experience on emerging leaders. Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Matsui, S. (2015). Learning from counternarratives in Teach For America: Moving from idealism towards hope. New York: Peter Lang. McNew-Birren, J., Hildebrand, T., & Belknap, G. (2018). Strange bedfellows in science teacher preparation: Conflicting perspectives on social justice presented in a Teach For America–university partnership. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 13(2), 1–26. Meyers, B., Fisher, T.R., Alicea, M., & Bloxson, K.M. (2014). Unfinishedness: Striving for a viable partnership between TFA and its university partner. Teachers College Record, 116(10), 1–32. Mungal, A.S. (2016). Teach For America, Relay Graduate School, and the charter school networks: The making of a parallel education structure. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24(17), 1–26. Muñoz, S.M., Heilig, J.V., & Real, M.D. (2019). Property functions of whiteness: Counter-narrative analysis of Teach For America and their partnership with black and Latinx fraternities and sororities. New Directions for Student Services, 2019(165), 61–71. Pitzer, H. (2014). The authority of experience, deficit discourse and Teach for America: The risks for urban education. In V. Ellis & J. Orchard (Eds.), Learning teaching from experience: Multiple perspectives and international contexts (pp. 127–142). London: Bloomsbury. Ravitch, D. (2014). Reign of error: The hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to America’s public schools. New York: Vintage. Reckhow, S. (2012). Follow the money: How foundation dollars change public school politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reddy, V. (2016). From the schoolhouse to the statehouse: The role of Teach For America and its alumni in education policy. Doctoral dissertation Columbia University, New York. Scott, J., Trujillo, T., & Rivera, M.D. (2016). Reframing Teach For America: A conceptual framework for the next generation of scholarship. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24(12), 1–33. Sondel, B., Kretchmar, K., & Hadley Dunn, A. (2019). ‘Who do these people want teaching their children?’ White saviorism, colorblind racism, and anti-Blackness in ‘no excuses’ charter schools. Urban Education. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085919842618

12 Crawford-Garrett, Rauschenberger, & Thomas Teach For All. (2019a). Network partners. Retrieved on May 20, 2019 from https://tea chforall.org/network-partners. Teach For All. (2019b). What we do. Retrieved on June 24, 2019 from https://tea chforall.org/what-we-do. Teach For America. (2016). A note about the book Teach For America Counter-Narratives. Retrieved on March 2, 2016 from www.teachforamerica.org/about-us/ on-the-record/note-about-book-teach-america-counter-narratives. Teach For America. (2019). Our impact. Retrieved on June 24, 2019 from www.tea chforamerica.org/what-we-do/impact. Thomas, M.A.M. (2016). Book Review: Destination: Teach for America: Building leadership, mastering the application, acing the interviews, by Whitman, J. Education and Urban Society, 48(5), 527–529. Thomas, M.A.M., & Lefebvre, E.E. (2020). Teaching synchronous-service teachers: Traditional teacher education at a crossroads. Teachers College Record, 122(7). Thomas, M.A.M., & Lefebvre, E.L. (2018). The dangers of relentless pursuit: Teaching, personal health, and the symbolic/real violence of Teach for America. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 39(6), 856–867. Thomas, M.A.M., & Mockler, N. (2018). Alternative routes and pathways to teacher professional identity: Exploring the conflated sub-identities of Teach For America corps members. Educational Policy Analysis Archives, 26(6), 1–25. Veltri, B. (2010). Learning on other people’s kids: Becoming a Teach for America teacher. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. White, T. (2016). Teach For America’s paradoxical diversity initiative: Race, policy, and black teacher displacement in urban public schools. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24(16), 1–42.

Chapter 2

From Teach For America to Teach First The initial expansion overseas Emilee Rauschenberger

Introduction Many observers assume that Teach For All (TFAll) represents the exportation and adaptation of Teach For America (TFA); thus, little attention is paid to TFA’s British counterpart, Teach First UK, and the ways in which it contributed to both the creation and expansion of TFAll. Understanding how the two programmes differed but ultimately converged into what now constitutes the ‘TFAll model’ is paramount to foregrounding this volume. As explained in Chapter 1, TFAll was originally launched by Wendy Kopp and Brett Wigdortz, the founding CEOs of TFA and Teach First UK, respectively, to help social entrepreneurs worldwide successfully launch, develop, and sustain their own TFAll affiliate programmes. This background is particularly important because TFAll is predicated on the experiences of TFA and Teach First UK. From the start, TFAll utilised the lessons gleaned from both programmes to conceptually develop the more generic ‘TFAll model’, a term used here to refer specifically to the programmatic features, organisational design, and ‘theory of change’ that TFAll requires all its affiliates to follow to become and remain part of the TFAll network. In addition, since TFAll launched in 2007, TFA and Teach First UK have often provided the human capital, knowledge base, and networks through which TFAll has been able to rapidly develop. For example, the majority of TFAll’s staff have been former leaders and alumni of both TFA and Teach First, and a handful of alumni from both schemes have founded TFAll affiliate programmes around the world (e.g. Armenia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, New Zealand). Moreover, through TFAll network annual conferences, personnel exchanges, and cross-national workshops, TFA and Teach First have shared strategies and templates for recruiting, training, and supporting participants during the two-year programme and afterward. Both organisations have also tapped into their own resource-rich networks of philanthropic funders, political supporters, and corporate advocates to support TFAll affiliates.

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Thus, the purpose of this chapter is to explore the origins of TFAll through a comparative analysis of the emergence and evolution of TFA and Teach First UK. As Olmedo, Baily, and Ball (2013) recommend, ‘rather than considering the [TFAll] model as a monolithic juggernaut of neoliberal reform and practice, careful attention needs to be paid to the wider social and deeper historical contexts within which it engages, and from which it has emerged’ (p. 509). The chapter therefore begins with an examination of TFA’s evolution over three decades, highlighting its historical roots as well as its controversial role in promoting neoliberal education reform. This section also provides a brief overview of the empirical research on TFA. The second section examines the launch and evolution of Teach First UK, followed by a discussion of the empirical research to date on the British scheme. The third and final section summarises the differences between the two models as well as the flexibility, resources, consistency, and legitimacy that they, together, have provided TFAll and its network of affiliates.

Teach For America: establishment and evolution Wendy Kopp’s vision for TFA The founding of TFA is an often-told and now iconic story of American social entrepreneurship (Dempsey & Sanders, 2010) that starts in 1989 with Wendy Kopp, a senior at Princeton University, who proposed the programme in her undergraduate thesis (Kopp, 1989). Kopp was originally from the Park Cities, a conservative, wealthy suburb of Dallas, Texas known as ‘the Bubble’ where there was little racial diversity and the public schools were well-funded and rated among the best in the country (Cradle, 2007). Kopp (2001) noted her public school experience prepared her to do well at Princeton, unlike the public schooling of her African-American roommate from the Bronx who struggled. Hence, while an undergraduate, Kopp became aware of the stark inequities among children’s schooling experiences in the US. Subsequently, she became interested in a potential teaching career but encountered barriers to entering the profession since she had not completed an undergraduate teacher education programme. These experiences led Kopp to propose TFA as a means to recruit idealist, driven, elite graduates to teach in the neediest of schools for two-year stints. Her idea was inspired by President Kennedy’s Peace Corps and President Johnson’s National Teacher Corps: The former recruited graduates for overseas volunteer work while the latter sought elite graduates to work in schools in poor, minority communities during the 1960s and 1970s (Rogers, 2009). The National Teacher Corps, in particular, helped set the stage for the emergence of alternative teacher training programmes from the 1980s onward, and cultivated the commonplace assumption that a specific skill set was needed to teach children of the poor and that schools of education were failing to adequately prepare teachers for this work (Eckert, 2011; Rogers, 2009). Like these two

The initial expansion overseas 15

earlier programmes, Kopp’s plan for TFA rested on its ability to cultivate exclusivity by attracting only ‘best and brightest’ to its mission (Blumenreich & Rogers, 2016; Kavanagh & Dunn, 2013). After graduating, and with her idea shunned by the Congressional representatives she contacted, Kopp turned to the corporate and philanthropic sectors to fund her start up. While at Princeton, Kopp had worked for the university’s business-focused student magazine in a position that regularly had her interviewing and soliciting donations from America’s elite corporate executives. Using the skills and contacts she gained as a result, Kopp courted wealthy executives from high-profile companies and utilised the resources and networks offered by Princeton. As public education had become a major preoccupation among the business leaders since the release of the 1983 government report A Nation at Risk, Kopp targeted reform-minded corporate leaders to support her new initiative. Within a year, the 21-year-old Kopp launched TFA having raised $2.5 million from business executives, philanthropists, and foundations. The organisation launched with a staff of 22 recent graduates from elite universities and a Board of Advisers and Directors recruited from leaders in business, education, and government. By the fall of 1990, its first year, TFA had recruited, trained, and placed 489 graduates from elite universities in low-income schools in five regions: New York City, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and rural North Carolina and Georgia (Kopp, 2001). TFA’s recruits, known as corps members (CMs), were employed as full-time teachers in primary and secondary schools while they continued to work toward certification in their respective states (Rogers & Blumenreich, 2013). Prior to entering the classroom, corps members completed a then eight-week Summer Institute, later shortened to five weeks, during which they received a crash course in how to teach while also gaining some teaching experience in summer school programmes. Over the next three decades, TFA expanded and evolved from a relatively small and financially-strapped start-up to the largest single source of new teachers in the US and a political force in its own right (Scott, Trujillo, & Rivera, 2016). Its journey, which has been well-documented (e.g. Mead, Chuong, & Goodson, 2015; Schneider, 2011), can be categorised into three stages, each explored below and marked by turning points that prompted TFA leaders to re-evaluate its priorities and strategies amidst shifting political and educational contexts. TFA’s initial growing pains (1990–1999) Soon after its launch, TFA entered what Kopp (2001) refers to as the ‘Dark Years’ during which TFA struggled to secure ongoing funding and lurched from one idea to another as it tried to train and support the teachers it placed. TFA initially worked with the University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty to deliver the first Summer Institute in Los Angeles in 1990. However, Kopp cut ties with the school of education afterward and opted instead to internally develop TFA’s Summer Institute, although TFA continued to utilise practices

16 Emilee Rauschenberger

and materials from university-based teacher education programmes (Schneider, 2014). Emboldened by TFA’s initial success, Kopp called on states to deregulate teacher certification and allow school districts to bypass schools of education to directly hire and train their own teachers (Kopp, 1992, 1994). This led to greater scrutiny and criticism of TFA from eminent education scholars (e.g. Darling-Hammond, 1994; Popkewitz, 1998), leading Kopp to firmly position TFA against university teacher education to gain more advocates and funders (Schneider, 2014). Despite chronic funding shortages and other organisational woes (e.g. Kopp’s managerial inexperience), TFA garnered considerable positive attention from national media and recruited an annual cohort of approximately 500–700 ‘elite’ graduates, thus establishing its reputation as an exclusive organisation. In 1994, TFA succeeded in gaining federal funding through designation as an AmeriCorps programme despite its recruits not being volunteers but paid professionals. However, Kopp still struggled to secure long-term financial support for TFA because, she reasoned, there were no ‘venture capitalist firms’ like in the for-profit world to support organisations beyond the start-up phase (Kopp, 2001, p. 77) and foundations wanted to see evidence of TFA’s ‘systemic’, long-term change (p. 78). This led Kopp to reconsider the marketing of TFA’s mission. While TFA was conceptualised early on as a vehicle through which elite graduates could experience and then (presumably) understand how to fix public schooling, TFA had initially promoted itself primarily as a solution to teacher shortages in low-income school districts. TFA then began to place a greater emphasis on how its alumni would become active leaders for education reform and took concrete steps to support them in launching new education initiatives. For example, TFA alumni Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin started the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), which has evolved into a national network of charter schools, based largely on their TFA experiences, in 1994–1995, (Horn, 2016; Mathews, 2009). In addition, Kopp developed The New Teacher Project (TNTP), launched in 1997 and led by TFA alumna and future Washington, DC schools’ superintendent, Michelle Rhee. TNTP became an influential nonprofit that works with school districts to set up alternative training routes and design teacher evaluation systems. In 1998, a founding TFA staff member, Kim Smith, established the New Schools Venture Fund (NSVF), a non-profit that directs philanthropic investments into new enterprises aiming to transform public schools nationwide (Zeichner & Peña-Sandoval, 2015). These and other early entrepreneurial initiatives would grow alongside TFA and form part of the influential networks of philanthropists, social enterprises, and policy entrepreneurs that shape education reforms. These new initiatives, along with increased funding and a revised internal management structure, helped transition TFA out of the ‘dark years’. In the late 1990s, TFA found itself on stronger financial footing with long-term support from its growing list of sponsors, donors, and expanding alumni network. Kopp

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also utilised the lessons from the early years to create a corporate-like organisation predicated on business strategies and data to drive its work. TFA began recruiting 700–1000 graduates annually, expanding slowly while it worked at the state and district levels to build new partnerships and support laws that enabled its operations. At the same time, TFA also began working more systematically to build a coherent curriculum for its Summer Institute that reflected its own particular ethos. TFA’s rapid expansion (2000–2013) After struggling in its first decade, TFA quickly established itself as a power player within the American educational landscape in the 2000s. The political winds had changed as more policymakers endorsed bipartisan neoliberal reforms like charter schools, standardised testing, and private sector involvement in public schooling. TFA took advantage of this context and embarked on an ambitious growth plan to significantly increase the number of corps members and placement regions. TFA successfully grew its cohort size to nearly 4,500 CMs across 40 regions by 2010. In the same time, TFA’s annual operating budget expanded from $30 million to $193 million, an increase of more than 600 per cent. This financial feat was achieved by having TFA staff strategically recruit advocates and funders within its established, as well as prospective, regions. Diversifying the funding base through regional fundraising and relationship building also enabled the organisation to advance its political agenda (Mead et al., 2015). TFA reached its peak cohort size of nearly 6,000, placed in 48 regions, in 2013. The organisation also began aggressively recruiting minority graduates to increase the diversity of its corps, an effort that gained scholarly attention as it accompanied TFA’s displacement of minority veteran teachers (Muñoz, Heilig, & Real, 2019; White, 2016). To accommodate its larger cohorts, TFA also increasingly placed its recruits in special education and bilingual classrooms, prompting researchers to examine TFA teachers’ experiences and needs in coping as novice professionals in these complex teaching areas (Heineke & Cameron, 2013; Hopkins & Heineke, 2013; Thomas, 2018a). TFA also developed its own presence and practices to influence education policy and establish itself as an authority in the field. First, TFA became an active advocate for its interests on Capitol Hill (Russo, 2012), ensuring the protection of its federal funding as well as TFA-friendly policies. Second, TFA introduced its own quantitative value-added approach to measuring teacher effectiveness, albeit in a rudimentary form, by introducing its ‘significant gains’ measurement system in 2002. This system required CMs to set, track, and report to TFA on its nationwide goal of having their pupils achieve 1.5 years of academic growth (or 80 per cent mastery of rigorous content standards) each year based on their own classroom assessments (Mead et al., 2015, p. 21). Subsequently, TFA cited this national student achievement data to bolster its claims that TFA teachers were effective, largely overlooking concerns about data validity. Third, at its Summer

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Institutes in 2002 TFA introduced the ‘Teaching As Leadership’ framework (Farr, 2010), which has been called the ‘TFA-endorsed metanarrative’ (Matsui, 2015, p. 59), ‘TFA manifesto’ (Thomas & Lefebvre, 2018, p. 861), and ‘central philosophy’ (Stoneburner, 2018, p. 4). This framework, based on the organisation’s internal study of its most successful teachers, articulated TFA’s view of what ‘transformational’ teachers in high-needs schools should know and be able to do. It also signalled TFA’s presumed expertise and measurable impact to external audiences. By the mid-2000s, TFA largely disengaged from debates of its teachers’ effectiveness – declaring CMs equally effective, or more, than other teachers – and shifted focus to ‘building the movement’ (Kopp, 2008) to reform education nationally. To this end, TFA launched initiatives aimed at funnelling its alumni into social entrepreneurship, school and district leadership, and policy advocacy. For example, in 2008, TFA created the spin-off organisation Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE), a Washington, DC-based 501(c)4 non-profit organisation that exclusively helps launch TFA teachers and alumni into careers with, for, and as policymakers at all levels of government (Miner, 2010; Reddy, 2016). LEE has helped alumni assume influential positions, forming a ‘bench’ of political reformers as well as school and district leaders (Cersonsky, 2012) with a common TFA-inspired ‘mindset’ for how to transform schools (Trujillo, Scott, & Rivera, 2017). These developments have contributed to TFA’s permanent and powerful position in American education reform. However, TFA’s explosive growth, significant political influence, and close ties with the corporate education reform networks had also generated criticism, disillusionment, and animosity toward the organisation. TFA’s recalibration (2013–2020) After more than a decade of aggressive expansion, TFA faced growing criticism both externally from the public as well as internally from alumni and staff. As part of the corporate-backed education reform movement, TFA found itself under scrutiny in an increasingly polarised political environment. Most previous criticism of TFA had focused on its brief training, questionable in-service support for CMs, and the low rates of retention of CMs in the classroom long-term. New critiques of TFA demonstrated how its positioning, practices, and celebrity alumni consistently championed neoliberal reforms despite TFA’s claims of political neutrality. For these reasons, academics, journalists, and TFA alumni became increasingly critical of its management, motives, and impact (e.g. Anderson, 2013; Cersonsky, 2013; Joseph, 2014; Schonfeld, 2013). In many regions, TFA has been accused of disempowering communities, displacing local teachers, and creating parallel school systems. Its practices were especially controversial in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, where TFA played a large role in redesigning and staffing schools to the detriment of local

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teachers and communities (Buras, 2011; Dixson, Buras, & Jeffers, 2015; Sondel, 2017; Sondel, Kretchmar, & Hadley Dunn, 2019). In Kansas City and Chicago during the 2008 recession, the number of TFA recruits placed in schools increased while the district laid off hundreds of veteran teachers, angering many (Toppo, 2009). Relatedly, research into TFA’s contracts with school districts raised concerns of power abuse through its securing of preferential hiring for TFA recruits in urban districts not experiencing teacher shortages. The contracts also absolved TFA of responsibility for the quality of their recruits while charging districts a non-refundable $3,000–5,000 ‘finder’s fee’ per recruit, draining money from already cash-strapped school districts (Brewer, Kretchmar, Sondel, Ishmael, & Manfra, 2016). Finally, TFA’s influence as a political force worried many who watched TFA influence local school board elections with out-of-state money (Reckhow, Henig, Jacobsen, & Alter Litt, 2017). Consequently, TFA found itself waging a public relations campaign to counter criticism in some school districts, state capitols, and on university campuses, where recruiting became more challenging. As applications began to decline, TFA was forced to reduce its cohort size to 4,100 in 2015 (Rich, 2015). Yet, TFA’s annual funding base continued to increase, surpassing $300 million the same year. High-profile supporters included the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Foundation, and the venture capitalist and billionaire John Doerr, among others, many of whom championed other market-based reforms (Waldman, 2019). Amidst these developments, Kopp stepped down as TFA’s CEO to lead TFAll but remained chair of TFA’s Board of Directors (see Chapter 3). TFA alumna and long-time staff member Elisa Villanueva Beard and former McKinsey consultant Matt Kramer then served as co-CEOs until 2015 when Kramer left and Villanueva Beard assumed full leadership of TFA. The backlash against TFA led its leaders to focus on improving and repairing the work and image of the organisation. TFA addressed criticisms of its inadequate training by developing an initiative that recruited some university students earlier in their studies to provide them additional teacher preparation prior to attending the Summer Institute. To address concerns with poor retention rates of CMs in the classroom, TFA launched fellowships to support alumni who wished to remain teachers. Finally, TFA secured a federal grant to redesign the content and method of delivery of its Summer Institute training to reflect the ‘core practices approach’ (Philip et al., 2019) first developed by teacher educators at Michigan State University (Forzani, 2014; McDonald, Kazemi, & Kavanagh, 2013). TFA trialled the redesigned approach in its Tulsa regional Summer Institute in 2016, and, despite a study showing little effect on trainees, implemented the new training across all its Summer Institute sites from 2017 (Rappaport, Somers, & Granito, 2019). Despite these changes, recent research suggests TFA’s Summer Institute still needs additional refinement to better support CMs (Stoneburner, 2018).

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As TFA continues to work toward its stated mission of ensuring a quality education for all, the size of its cohorts remains steady around 3,500 as does its annual operating budget of roughly $300 million, though it maintains total assets of more than $420 million as of 2018. The organisation, like its training, continues to reflect an ‘entrepreneurial, corporate ethos – emphasising leadership, goal-setting, and management strategy’ (Schneider, 2011, p. 437). Many uncertainties linger regarding the future direction TFA will take in a constantly changing political and economic context. However, with the rapid advance of neoliberal reforms in the US education sector in recent decades, TFA is no longer a radical idea/organisation but is instead a seemingly permanent part of the educational landscape that wields formidable influence on education policy.

Research on TFA Empirical research on TFA has evolved and expanded in scope as TFA has developed. In its first decade, TFA was critiqued by leading teacher education scholars (Darling-Hammond, 1994; Popkewitz, 1998). As TFA expanded in early 2000s, scholarly attention turned to whether the programme produced effective teachers, particularly in comparison to uncertified and certified teachers who completed university-based schools of education programmes. The results of such studies were often contradictory. A handful of studies (Clark, Isenberg, Liu, Makowsky, & Zukiewicz, 2015; Decker, Mayer, & Glazerman, 2004; Raymond, Fletcher, & Luque, 2001; Xu, Hannaway, & Taylor, 2011) concluded TFA teachers were equally or, in a particular subject, more effective than traditionally certified teachers. Meanwhile, other studies (e.g. DarlingHammond, Holtzman, Gatlin, & Heilig, 2005; Laczko-Kerr & Berliner, 2002) refuted such a notion, arguing TFA teachers were less effective than new and veteran teachers holding full certification. These studies are somewhat limited in their generalisability since nearly all of them collected data on teachers in only one region, with the exception of Decker et al. (2004) who examined TFA teachers in six of TFA’s 15 regions. In addition, most studies assessed TFA teachers in the elementary or middle school level and measured student achievement through pupil test scores in only maths and reading (exceptions include Backes & Hansen, 2017; Xu et al., 2011). In reality, TFA teachers are placed in a wide range of grade levels and subject areas. Further limitations of the studies include their almost exclusive focus on urban schools, largely ignoring TFA teachers who work in rural communities (e.g. Native American reservations), and the wide variance in research design and methodology. In sum, although scholars continue to research and re-examine the topic (e.g. Penner, 2019; What Works Clearinghouse, 2016), the results of these quantitative ‘teacher-effectiveness’ studies have not settled the debate about TFA’s ability to consistently produce effective educators. As a result, scholars have continued

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to argue that TFA fails to adequately prepare its recruits for teaching and does little to retain its teachers in their classrooms long-term (DarlingHammond, 2011; Ravitch 2013). Critical research from social science perspectives also grew as the organisation expanded its size and role in policy. A number of studies focus on TFA and examine its practices and impact, including the training and socialisation of its recruits (Brewer, 2014; Rappaport et al., 2019; Schneider, 2014; Stoneburner, 2018; Veltri, 2008, 2010, 2016) and the retention and careers of its alumni (Blumenreich & Rhodes, 2007; Boyd, Hamilton Lankford, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2005; Donaldson, 2012; Donaldson & Johnson, 2010; Higgins et al., 2011). In addition, researchers have examined TFA’s impact on the teaching profession (Gutmann, 2013; Trujillo et al., 2017) and teacher education (Labaree, 2010; Maier, 2012). There is also growing evidence that tensions between TFA and schools of education occur, in part, due to differing conceptions of ‘social justice’, teacher professionalism, and the purpose of education (McNew-Birren, Hildebrand, & Belknap, 2018; Meyers, Fisher, Alicea, & Bloxson, 2014; Thomas & Lefebvre, 2020). Another avenue of research examines various aspects of CMs’ journeys through and after TFA, including: why individuals join TFA (Gillis, 2019; Straubhaar, 2020; Straubhaar & Gottfried, 2014), where CMs are placed (Curran, 2017; Donaldson & Johnson, 2010; Zahner et al., 2019), what CMs experience during the TFA programme (Ahmann, 2016; Blumenreich & Rhodes, 2007; Thomas & Mockler, 2018; Veltri, 2010), and the views of TFA alumni (Brewer, 2014; McAdam & Brandt, 2009). Other studies illuminate how CMs grapple with mandated reforms (Fisher-Ari, Kavanagh, & Martin, 2017; Heineke & Cameron, 2013) and the complications that inevitably come with representing a controversial programme (Thomas, 2018b). Meanwhile, a growing number of ‘counter-narrative’ publications bring to the forefront the voices of TFA CMs and alumni who are reflective and critical of the organisation’s mission and practices (e.g. Brewer & deMarrais, 2015; Matsui, 2015). Finally, recent scholarship examines TFA as a political force within the US. Scott et al. (2016) argue that TFA’s greatest impact is not in classrooms but in policy arenas where TFA networks, alumni, and corporate models of managerial leadership have come to dominate. Other studies investigate TFA’s close network and relationship with charter schools (Horn, 2016; Kretchmar, 2014; Kretchmar, Sondel, & Ferrare, 2014; Lefebvre & Thomas, 2017; Sondel, 2015; Waldman, 2019), with advocates of deregulation within teacher education (Kretchmar, Sondel, & Ferrare, 2018), and its close links with new privatised and practiced-based forms of teacher training (Mungal, 2016, 2019; Stitzlein & West, 2014). As TFA alumni move into various leadership roles in the US and beyond, it seems the global impact of TFA and its network is just beginning to be felt, and to be researched empirically (see Chapter 3).

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The internationalisation of TFA: Teach First UK Teach First’s founding (2001–2003) The first international adaptation of TFA was launched in England in mid-2002 after two influential London-based business coalitions – London First and Business in the Community (BITC) – proposed the idea to improve London’s secondary schools. London First is an influential coalition of London stakeholders established in 1992 ‘to make London the best city in the world in which to do business’ (London First, 2019). BITC is a high-profile national coalition of hundreds of large businesses across the UK established in the early 1980s and well-known in executive boardrooms, government corridors, and local communities for leading corporate social responsibility initiatives (Grayson, 2007). In the early 2000s, both organisations were extremely well-connected, resource-rich coalitions that were experienced in organising corporate sector involvement in policy issues and social causes, including education. The idea for Teach First came from a study, commissioned by London First and BITC and prepared by McKinsey & Company, which concluded teacher quality and school leadership were the main factors determining school performance. A 28-year-old New Jersey native and junior consultant on the McKinsey team, Brett Wigdortz, was convinced the TFA model could improve schools despite little prior knowledge of TFA. Wigdortz believed in the TFA model because its focus on recruiting the ‘best and brightest’ mirrored McKinsey’s own thinking behind the ‘War for Talent’, a term the consulting firm used to describe how companies competed to attract and retain highly-effective managerial talent (Michaels, Handfield-Jones, & Axelrod, 2001). Following the ‘War for Talent’ philosophy, McKinsey consultants coached companies on how to aggressively seek out new talent pools, lure top hires to their organisation, and retain them through feedback, coaching, and leadership opportunities – an approach that Teach First would later emulate. The education director for London First, Rona Kiley, teamed up with Wigdortz to lead efforts to establish a TFA-type programme in early 2002. Kiley, an American and wife of Tony Blair’s newly appointed Transport Commissioner, was already familiar with TFA and sought its help in lobbying for a ‘Teach For London’. She found Kopp unsupportive of the idea and unwilling to become involved, however (Rauschenberger, 2016). Nevertheless, with Kiley’s persuasive manner and influential network connections through London First and BITC, the idea for ‘Teach For London’ quickly gained the support of London’s business community and eventually the government. Teach First eventually launched in July 2002, with Kopp in attendance to show her newfound support for the programme. To build a coalition of support, Kiley and Wigdortz utilised TFA’s statistics on its elite recruitment and alumni retention to illustrate the model’s merits. While several leaders in the UK government and education sector were already

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aware of TFA’s successes, the idea for a ‘Teach For London’ was seen by some as unnecessary in England at a time when the government tightly controlled initial teacher education (also known as initial ‘teacher training’) and new teacher recruitment numbers were particularly high. The proposed scheme was only reluctantly accepted by England’s Teacher Training Agency (TTA), which regulated the sector, on the condition that the programme followed current regulations, including partnering with a university training provider. These stipulations forced Teach First to develop its own version of TFA that was more aligned with England’s educational landscape (Wales and Scotland have devolved jurisdiction over their own education systems). Thus, unlike TFA, Teach First became an experiment working within, not separate from, the university teacher training sector. Subsequently, Teach First emerged in ways that were less connected to TFA and more representative of its founder’s experience, responsive to local contexts, and reflective of the political compromises it had to make to exist (Rauschenberger, 2016; Wigdortz, 2012). Although both TFA and Teach First had close personal and financial ties to the corporate sector, Teach First utilised their corporate supporters’ expertise to design its branding, recruitment strategy, and candidate selection processes from its first year of operation. Teach First also featured managerial training and internships with its sponsors as part of its programme, which distinguished it from TFA. Overall, Teach First emulated and was firmly tied to the corporate sector. This, along with Teach First’s partnership with universities to deliver the summer training, marked it as somewhat different from TFA. Still, the two programmes were very similar in obvious ways. Teach First’s mission – ‘To address educational disadvantage by transforming exceptional graduates into effective, inspirational teachers and leaders in all fields’ (Blandford, 2008, p. 95) – echoed TFA’s vision and employed TFA’s ‘theory of change’ to enact it. Both recruited and supported elite university graduates to teach for two years in struggling schools and then become leaders for change in a variety of fields. Both TFA and Teach First’s recruitment messages aimed to ‘appeal to idealism and altruism’ of graduates, called on them to become change agents, and portrayed schools and pupils as in need (Hutchings et al., 2006, p. 13). The expansion of Teach First (2004–2016) Teach First’s initial 2003 cohort consisted of 186 graduates from the UK’s elite, research-intensive Russell Group universities (e.g. Oxford, Cambridge). These recruits, most commonly referred to as ‘participants’, were trained in a six-week Summer Institute run by Teach First and Canterbury Christ Church University College and placed in 43 qualifying secondary schools around London. The recruitment of such a cohort helped Teach First gain more high-profile funders among the UK’s leading companies and foundations. Teach First recruited

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cohorts of approximately 200 for London secondaries until, with the government’s support, it eventually quadrupled the size of its cohort to 750 within five years by expanding to Manchester in 2006, the Midlands in 2007, Liverpool in 2008, and Yorkshire and the Humber regions in 2009. In 2010, the new Coalition-led Government backed Teach First’s further expansion with an extra £4 million, despite massive spending cuts of nearly £3.5 billion to the education budget. With this support, Teach First began officially placing recruits in primary schools across its regions in 2011, and then in early years education, working with children ages three to five, from 2013 while also expanding to new regions across England. In addition, in 2013, Teach First expanded into Wales, placing 159 participants in 51 Welsh schools over four years. The organisation has attempted to expand into Scotland but has met resistance from schools of education and professional bodies that work more collaboratively with the Scottish government than their English counterparts (Crawford-Garrett & Thomas, 2018; Denholm & McEnaney, 2017). In 2015, Teach First became the UK’s largest graduate recruiter with a cohort of 1,685 trainees. According to Teach First, its 2015 cohort came from 128 different universities and nearly a quarter were ‘experienced professionals’, indicating Teach First had widened its recruitment beyond recent graduates from ‘top’ universities. During this period, Teach First continued to develop its Summer Institute and in-year support with its university partners in each region (Blandford, 2014), redesigning its training in 2009 to provide participants with a masters-level Post Graduate Certificate of Education, thus qualifying them to teach outside of England. During these years of expansion, Teach First gained greater policy influence in education, launching an initiative ‘Policy First’ that provided a forum for alumni to develop views and recommendations, connect with policymakers, and access support in pursuing careers in policy (Ball & Junemann, 2012). While Policy First had a mission similar to that of TFA’s LEE, it was not an independent organisation but remained an initiative within the Teach First organisation. Policy First issued a number of policy reports written by Teach First alumni that gained recognition from policymakers, including the biannual Lessons from the Front (Teach First, 2007, 2009), funded by Credit Suisse and Deloitte, and Policy First: Ethos and culture in schools in challenging circumstances (Teach First, 2010), sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Teach First also became well-known to wider audiences through the 2014 BBC documentary series, Tough New Teachers, which profiled six Teach First teachers. As Teach First celebrated its first decade, Wigdortz also released his memoir detailing how he launched and developed the organisation (Wigdortz, 2012), much like Kopp (2001). Still, debates on and criticism of Teach First persisted. In 2009, the organisation was criticised when researchers found that approximately 20 per cent of its placement secondary schools served pupils performing at or above the local and/ or national averages (Maddern, 2009). Some have criticised Teach First’s minimal training, cost, low long-term participant retention rate in classrooms (Whittaker,

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2018), elite branding and outsized influence (Elliott, 2018; Southern, 2018), and positioning of teaching as temporary service (Stanfield & Cremin, 2013). Teach First reconfigured (2017–2020) Since 2017, Teach First has undergone significant change due to new leadership within the organisation and the need to adapt to a changed educational landscape. In the decade prior, educational reforms in England introduced numerous new routes into teaching; normalised school-led, employment-based teacher training (most visibly through the School Direct Programme since 2013); and popularised the idea of new teachers’ rapid promotion to leadership positions (Spicksley, 2018). In this context, Wigdortz stepped down as Teach First’s CEO in September 2017 and was replaced by Russell Hobby, former head of the National Association of Head Teachers union. Under Hobby’s leadership, Teach First dissolved many off-shoot initiatives it had started over the years, which included an alumni-led programme promoting access to higher education for disadvantaged pupils and an initiative in support of social entrepreneurship among Teach First alumni. While refocusing on its original mission of recruiting and training teachers for disadvantaged schools, Teach First also became a hub for staff recruitment more generally by adding to its brand a number of different fast-track routes for teaching assistants, career-changers, and those who want to return to teaching after having left (Hazel, 2018). In addition, Teach First formally began offering leadership development courses leading to professional qualifications for middle and senior school leaders in its partner schools with the rationale that new teachers thrive when training in schools with effective leadership. Finally, Teach First underwent a £136,000 rebranding effort, changing its vision and logo to highlight its new direction (Smulian, 2019). Teach First now promotes itself as a trainer of both new teachers and school leaders within ‘disadvantaged’ schools, with a new organisational motto of ‘building a fair education for all’ (Teach First, 2019b). Under these changes, anyone completing any one of the various fast-track or school leadership programmes are now deemed ‘ambassadors’, or alumni, of Teach First. These changes represent a massive shift in the design of Teach First and may call into question its status as a TFAll programme in the future. Yet, the core two-year Teach First programme made headlines in mid-2019 by recruiting a record-breaking 1,735 trainees. This significant jump in numbers – up from 1,259 a year before – came with evidence and speculations that Teach First was lowering its standards and becoming less selective than in its early years (Whittaker, 2019), though Teach First disputes this. As of 2019–2020, Teach First continues to place its cohort of teachers in ten regions across England (Wales is not currently featured as a placement site on its website). Like TFA, the organisation also highlights its impact in education through the careers of its alumni, which include 51 social entrepreneurs, 65 headteachers, and 200 policymakers and researchers (Teach First, 2019a).

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Research on Teach First UK Outside of government-funded evaluations of Teach First (Hutchings et al., 2006; Ofsted, 2008), research on Teach First is limited and primarily focuses on the programme’s impact in schools. One study commissioned by Teach First examined alumni careers and reported that Teach First teachers tended to leave the classroom in greater numbers after teaching a third year but were more likely to progress to school leadership roles with increased salaries than other teachers (Allen, Parameshwaran, & Nye, 2016). Another commissioned study examined Teach First teachers’ pedagogy and impact, finding they often effectively assumed informal leadership roles, usually with support of administration (Muijs, Chapman, & Armstrong, 2012, 2013). More recently, a study by Allen and Allnutt (2017) suggests that Teach First teachers had likely helped schools produce gains in GCSE test results. In contrast to impact studies, Hramiak (2014, 2015) examined Teach First participants’ use of culturally-responsive teaching and found them developing strategies for overcoming cultural gaps, which they perceived as existing more between curriculum and pupils than between teachers and pupils. A growing body of literature also examines Teach First from critical sociological and political perspectives. Smart et al. (2009) draw upon Bourdieu’s theories to argue that Teach First reproduces class hierarchies by enabling participants to accumulate additional social, cultural, and symbolic capital while re-enforcing middle-class values and working-class tropes. Elswhere, Bailey (2015) utilises a Foucauldian perspective to highlight how Teach First shapes what counts as knowledge, assets, and capabilities in education. Using critical discourse analysis, Elliott (2018) argues that Teach First is dominated by the vested interests of elite stakeholders and is ultimately creating ‘a Trojan army of mini neoliberalists’ set to lead social change through ‘a heroic, individualistic, meritocratic approach’ (p. 272). Relatedly, Leaton, Gray, and Whitty (2010) reflect on Teach First’s influence on the teaching profession and suggest the organisation has created a ‘branded’ professionalism based upon a ‘largely self-interested model of teacher behaviour’ (pp. 12–13). Other researchers focus on Teach First’s impact on policy. Stephen Ball and colleagues illuminated Teach First’s ties and influence in multi-layered networks of non-profit organisations, philanthropies, edu-businesses, and policy entrepreneurs (Ball, 2007, 2012; Ball & Junemann, 2012). Ball’s work has illustrated the complexity and opaqueness of these network modes of policymaking and stressed how such networks blur the lines between ‘private’ and ‘public’, ultimately making them less democratic and accountable to the public. Relatedly, Ellis, Steadman, and Trippestad (2018) highlight Teach First’s promotion of policy entrepreneurship among its alumni and examine its links to the development of a stand-alone graduate school of education modelled on the TFA-inspired Relay Graduate School in the US.

The initial expansion overseas 27

Conclusion As the stories of TFA and Teach First UK suggest, while the global appearance of TFAll is relatively new, the idea behind it is not. For Kopp and Wigdortz, the experiences of founding and expanding their respective programmes led them to launch TFAll with the conviction that their hardlearned lessons and ultimate successes were applicable and achievable in other national contexts. Indeed, in TFAll they offered an exportable model of fast-track teacher training that doubled as a leadership ‘pipeline’. As illustrated in this chapter, avoiding direct confrontation with unions and other opponents within the education establishment while building the power and influence of TFA was a key lesson Kopp learned during the ‘Dark Years’ of TFA. This lesson was understood by Wigdortz and Kiley but somewhat misapplied initially as they found a leading educationalist and the headteachers unions willing to back the Teach First idea. Another factor that affected the differing nature of TFA and Teach First UK was the background and perspectives of each founder. Kopp and Wigdortz both had similar visions for their respective programmes, but their personalities, networks, and life experiences led them to implement their programmes and respond to their contexts in ways that built on their personal strengths, knowledge, and connections. This was most clear in the early stages of founding their programmes as Kopp utilised her Princeton University networks to reach out to Ivy League alumni, businesses, and educationalists, while Wigdortz tapped into resources and connections offered through the corporate networks of London First and BITC. Likewise, Kopp initially drew on her familiarity of the Peace Corps and National Teachers Corps to build TFA while Wigdortz utilised his knowledge and experience of McKinsey’s ‘War for Talent’ to shape Teach First and attract both supporters and participants. In sum, both TFA and Teach First UK were and continue to be guiding models of best practice for TFAll and its affiliates. TFAll and most of its national affiliates share versions of the ‘Teach For’ or ‘Teach First’ name. All share a common narrative and ‘theory of change’ as well as key organisational and programmatic features that were first developed and tested by these two organisations. The historical overviews of TFA and Teach First UK in this chapter have also highlighted how, despite efforts to remain politically neutral, both programmes remain controversial and are part of the ongoing debates regarding how to recruit, develop, and retain effective teachers. For this reason, the growing empirical research into TFA and Teach First UK provides crucial background information and a critical lens with which to understand these programmes and their replication worldwide. With a firm grasp on the history, peculiarities, and context of TFA and Teach First UK, researchers are better prepared to assess the TFAll programmes in other countries and the continuities and commonalities as well as adaptations and innovations that are shared among them.

28 Emilee Rauschenberger

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Chapter 3

A growing global network The development of international research on Teach For All Matthew A.M. Thomas, Katherine Crawford-Garrett and Emilee Rauschenberger Introduction With Teach For America (TFA) and Teach First UK firmly rooted in their respective education systems, a global network was poised to grow. Teach For All (TFAll) was founded on the conviction that the hard-learned lessons and ultimate successes of TFA and Teach First UK were applicable and achievable to others starting such programmes in various national contexts. The model had been ‘proven’ (at least according to organisational documentation and publicity) and philanthropists and policymakers around the world were eager to learn how it could be spread and scaled. Thus, through consolidating their perspectives, Kopp and Wigdortz offered in TFAll an exportable model of fast-track teacher training that doubled as a leadership ‘pipeline’ and avenue for potential social change. This chapter examines the significant and remarkable growth of TFAll and aims to document the burgeoning literature on TFAll and its affiliates in an effort to frame the forthcoming content of this volume. We begin by recounting the initial launch of the organisation and the ways in which TFAll utilised its powerful connections to capitalise on an emerging international interest in philanthropic altruism and social engineering. We then explore the means through which the organisation has expanded, and consider the underpinning assumption that, as the TFAll website stated, ‘the solutions are shareable’ (Teach For All, 2015a). The final section examines the nascent but growing body of research on TFAll affiliate programmes around the world and highlights research hot spots as well geographic and thematic areas where additional research would be beneficial.

The Clinton Global Initiative: a powerful platform to launch TFAll In September 2007, the founders of TFA and Teach First (Wendy Kopp and Brett Wigdortz, respectively) posed for pictures beside Bill Clinton and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) conference in New York as they announced the launch of a new organisation, Teach For

A growing global network 37

All. The opportunity to launch TFAll at the CGI reflected the high-profile and influential connections of its founders and supporters, as TFAll was immediately positioned on the global stage in front of corporate CEOs, philanthropists, socially-minded celebrities, and heads of state. The CGI conference was intentionally planned to coincide with the annual opening of the United Nations General Assembly to take advantage of the numerous foreign heads of state in town. Its official aim was to bring together ‘a community of global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges’ (Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, 2008). It was also a place where, through ‘furious networking’ in ‘hallways, at cocktail parties, and around conference tables’, the ‘people with causes gained access to people with seriously deep pockets’ (Dugger, 2007). The conference required its 1,300 participants to pay $20,000 to get in the door, and to promise to invest in one of its many initiatives. These initiatives, including TFAll, were celebrated, supported, and thereafter linked with the ‘global philanthropic empire’ built by former US President Bill Clinton, who launched CGI in 2005 (Fahrenthold, Hamburger, & Helderman, 2015). Some have observed that in many ways the CGI actually overshadows the United Nations as the place where the rich and powerful broker ‘partnerships and commitments’ for social engineering (Giridharadas, 2019, p. 204). Moreover, Ball (2007) has suggested that the CGI ‘provides an infrastructure for and brokering of new solutions to educational problems … and initiates new policy networks through which ideology, ideas and discourse flow’ (p. 72). In effect, it ‘constructs and animates new epistemic policy communities focused on the application of market-based solutions to social problems’ (Ball, 2007, p. 72). In this environment, TFAll represented strong philosophical synergy with CGI’s approach to solving global inequities: it was a social mission-oriented, market-based “win-win approach” to solving educational disparities that benefited both the “victims” (i.e. marginalised pupils) and the “heroes” (i.e. TFAll teachers). Moreover, TFAll aligned with CGI assumptions that society’s problems are best solved not by government or community-based political action, but through entrepreneurialism, philanthropy, and private initiative within civil society (Giridharadas, 2019). Kopp and Wigdortz therefore hoped to leverage their presence and publicity at the CGI to raise an additional $25 million from private foundations (beyond their $4.5 million already in hand) to fund the first three years of TFAll’s operations. According to Kopp and Widgdortz, the idea for TFAll emerged as they fielded requests from individuals determined to set up the model in their own country. ‘What was interesting to me was how so few of them succeeded’, Wigdortz said in an interview (Levick, Elias, & Drenttel, 2011b), recalling that individuals from France, Spain, and other countries came to Teach First’s offices in London to learn more about the programme but had trouble establishing the model in their respective countries. One of the earliest attempts to replicate the Teach For/First model was in 2006 when an advocate, Tal Cohen, failed

38 Thomas, Crawford-Garrett, & Rauschenberger

to secure approval for his organisation from the Israeli Ministry of Education. During this time, Kopp had been in extensive conversations with individuals from India and Chile about replicating the TFA model there as well, and as a result, Kopp enlisted the help of McKinsey & Company to assess the feasibility of TFAll before officially launching the global organisation (Gupta & Mistri, 2014, p. 81). Thus, when TFAll was founded in 2007, it was already in the process of supporting the creation of a Teach For/First programme in India, South Africa, Estonia, Israel, and Germany.

Teach For All: rapid franchising of the Teach For/First model (2007–2020) After TFAll’s launch at the CGI, the new organisation was officially incorporated in February 2008 as a start-up incubated within TFA. The two organisations shared offices, resources, and staff for the initial years as TFAll staff learned how to operate a multi-national organisation. TFAll meanwhile began formally supporting entrepreneurs overseas in adapting the Teach For/First model to their own countries while continuing to build its global brand and raise financial capital. Franchising the theory of change Arguably, the expansion of the network could be conceptualised as an effort to franchise the remediation of educational disparities as the TFA theory of change was scaled internationally. For businesses looking to expand into new regions or foreign markets, franchising brings with it key advantages and disadvantages. For TFAll – the franchisor in this case – the creation of a network of affiliates enables the organisation to implant the TFA model in a variety of national contexts quickly, with local expertise, and without having to directly fund its development or bear the risks if the new programme fails to launch or be sustainable. Instead, the onus is largely on the local TFAll affiliate, the franchisee, to recruit a network of support from the country’s private sector, philanthropic community, and government. This arrangement has enabled TFAll to build a global presence quickly and at low cost and risk, while simultaneously claiming locally-rooted ownership. However, one of the main challenges of franchising, according to the business management literature (Combs, Michael, & Castrogiovanni, 2004; Hussler & Ronde, 2015), is quality control. TFAll relies on its global recognition – backed by the successes of TFA and Teach First UK – and has worked hard to build a strong international reputation for its brand of programmes. Protecting that brand and its presumed quality is therefore of paramount importance if the organisation wants to continue its expansive trajectory. To achieve these ends, TFAll works to ensure prospective affiliate programmes are committed and able to successfully implement programmatic elements of TFAll’s theory of change as well as its required organisational principles based upon specific TFAll core values.

A growing global network 39

According to a Yale School of Management case study developed in collaboration with TFAll (Levick, Elias, & Drenttel, 2011a), following a discovery process prospective affiliate programmes and the social entrepreneurs leading them must sign a partnership agreement detailing the commitments and mutual responsibilities of TFAll and affiliates. Partner organisations agree to uphold TFAll’s unifying principles, be locally autonomous and financially responsible, participate in the TFAll global data system, adhere to brand compliance stipulations, and participate in network events and meetings, in accordance with a version of TFAll’s ‘Local Enterprise Partnership Agreement’ (Teach For All, 2009). TFAll agrees to provide benefits in return in the form of ‘technical assistance and access to programmatic and organisational best practice, professional development and support for affiliate CEOs, support in garnering access to new funding and talent, use of TFAll’s global brand, and global opportunities for staff participants, and alumni’ (Teach For All, 2011). Central to becoming a partner or affiliate organisation is a commitment to TFAll’s ‘theory of change’: recruiting the ‘best’, most talented graduates, training and supporting them in the classroom for two years, and then developing them into leaders afterward. This formula is a cornerstone of TFA’s philosophy and has become TFAll’s recipe for working to foster equitable access to opportunities within marginalised communities worldwide. Despite all the changes since the launching of TFA in 1990, Kopp has contended TFA’s model of teacher recruitment, training, and leadership development is universally adaptable to any national context through TFAll. She noted, We’ve discovered the same problem in virtually every country: socioeconomic backgrounds determine educational outcomes. And we’ve learned that not only is the problem universal in its existence, but it is also universal in its nature. This means that the solutions will be sharable. Given the universal nature of the problem, a global network can significantly increase the pace of change. (Boston Consulting Group, 2012) This logic follows from the organisation’s view that all countries face essentially the same problem of unequal access and outcomes in education between students from low-income families and communities versus those from wealthier ones. Across national and regional contexts, poorer communities experience lower-quality schooling and less educational opportunities than their wealthier counterparts – a reality that every TFAll programme highlights on their website and recruitment materials. The declared diagnosis of the universality of the problem leads to its logic that the TFAll model can solve this persistent disparity despite distinct differences across national contexts (cf. Friedrich, Walter, & Colmenares, 2015). Key supports for consistent growth Once a social entrepreneur signs on to the ‘theory of change’ and agrees to follow the values and tenets of TFAll, the global organisation provides an

40 Thomas, Crawford-Garrett, & Rauschenberger

extensive list of supportive services. TFAll facilitates rapid expansion by helping programme leaders write a business plan, lobby for government and community support, develop internal organisational structures, and design approaches to recruitment and selection. Moreover, TFAll offers ongoing assistance to network partners by maximising the impact of its affiliate programmes through direct organisational support, facilitating dialogue and connections across the network, and fostering the leadership development of staff, teachers, and alumni (Teach For All, 2014b, p. 10). For example, annually there is a TFAll Global Conference that brings together representatives from its affiliates. TFAll also creates tools and resources to support the implementation of programmes and advises partners in adapting these approaches to their individual contexts. Finally, TFAll reports that it generates and shares ‘global funding, technology, public affairs opportunities, and staffing leads’ with its affiliates across the network (Teach For All, 2014b, p. 10), and staff from various affiliate programmes frequently visit one another for further insights. As its growth continues unabated, TFAll is increasingly becoming an influential actor within global education policy due to its ability to form strong networks and alliances with powerful bodies at the supranational level. Along with CEOs of multinational corporations, OECD Education Director Andreas Schleicher serves on TFAll’s Board of Directors and was invited to speak to participants and alumni at the TFAll Global Conference in 2015 held in Auckland, New Zealand, where he said the following: So again it comes back to you [participants and alumni of TFAll programmes] and it’s yet another reason why Teach For All is so important. You’re the thought leaders, the innovators, the game changers in education systems that have often become somewhat sclerotic. So I hope you’re not just focused on your work in classrooms and schools but also improving the quality of our education systems and our education policies as a whole. (Teach For All, 2015b) By positioning participants and alumni as innovators and game changers capable of fundamentally altering social conditions across the world, Schleicher echoes the neoliberal rhetoric endemic to TFAll, sentiments reinforiced by World Bank Education Global Practice Leader and Peruvian Education Minister, Jaime Saavedra, who also addressed TFAll recruits and alumni gathered at the 2017 TFAll Global Conference held in Bogota, Colombia. In a similar exhortation, Saavedra notes (Teach For All, 2017): We have been working with Wendy [Kopp, CEO of TFAll] and her team to … make sure that we increase the width of that pipeline that moves people that are Teach For All alumni to work in public sectors, to work in those bureaucracies in order to improve that implementation capacity and

A growing global network 41

make sure we have that critical mass in our education systems that we will be able to implement systemic change. Clearly, TFAll is seen by global and national policy leaders as a tool through which to bring about desired change within educational bureaucracies labelled as reform-resistant; a goal that also aligns with neoliberal efforts to privatise education and apply market-logic to intractable problems like student underachievement. As but one example, Teach For India rapidly expanded from working in two cities to seven between 2009 and 2016 and, according to Subramanian (2018), in the process built a ‘network of urban not-for-profit organisations seeking to infuse new logics of reform in municipal school administrative bodies’ (p. 21). In sum, since its 2007 launch, TFAll has refined its vision, expanded its operations, and succeeded in helping launch replicas of its fast-track teacher training model in 53 countries (at the time of press; see Table 3.1). Headquartered in New York City and with an annual operating budget of $29 million and approximately $17 million in net assets (Teach For All, 2018a), TFAll has grown rapidly, helping launch on average five new national affiliates each year (Kwauk, Perlman Robinson, & Spilka, 2016). According to TFAll job adverts in 2019, the organisation has approximately 130 employees based in 27 countries as of 2020, with its core staff working from five regional hub offices in New York, Washington DC, London, Doha, and Hong Kong, all global cities which are central nodes in the global economic network. Its staff work with and through corporate, philanthropic, and political networks to help establish, stabilise, fund, and scale the model. TFAll staff appear in global forums such as the World Innovation Summit for Education and select academic conferences (e.g. Comparative and International Education Society) to represent its brand and advance their ‘theory of change’ to solve the world’s educational problems. The organisation and its affiliates are currently supported by multi-national corporations, supra-national bodies such as the World Bank and OECD, and governments in the countries in which they operate. These countries range from Uganda to Ukraine to Uruguay, so in the next section we provide an overview of recent research on TFAll affiliate programmes around the world, highlighting specific geographic hotpots as well as consistent themes throughout the literature.

Research on TFAll and its affiliate programmes There is a limited but growing body of research on TFAll and its affiliate programmes around the world. As scholars are increasingly turning their attention to the TFAll phenomenon, many are asking critical questions similar to those asked of TFA in the US. For example, Ahmann (2015) has questioned the degree to which TFAll produces ‘generic reformers’ who function as tangible representations of its impact and the ‘promise that such leadership can be

Teach For America Teach First Teach For All Noored Kooli (Youth to School) Renkuosi Mokuti! (Let’s Teach!) Iespe-jama- Misija (Mission Possible) Teach For China Teach For Lebanon Enseña Chile (Teach Chile) Teach First Deutschland Teach For India Teach South Africa Teach For Australia Teach First Israel Enseña Perú (Teach Peru) Teach First Norway Enseñá por Argentina (Teach For Argentina) Teach For Bulgaria Empieza por Educar (Begin to Educate) Teach For Austria

1. US 2. UK Global 3. Estonia 4. Lithuania 5. Latvia 6. China 7. Lebanon 8. Chile 9. Germany 10. India 11. South Africa** 12. Australia 13. Israel 14. Peru 15. Norway** 16. Argentina

17. Bulgaria 18. Spain 19. Austria

Name of programme (translation)

Country context

2011 2011 2012

1990 2003 2007 2008 2008 2008 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2010 2010 2010 2010 2011

Year first cohort placed

8 8 7

29 16 NA 11 10 11 9 9 10 10 10 9 9 9 8

No. of cohorts

Table 3.1 List of established TFAll programmes in chronological order as of 2019

111 75 97

6,797 2,456 NA 45 36 20 438 46 230 146 1024 246 360 147 138

No. of current teachers in programme

262 195 160

52,700 8,270* NA 144 104 137 87 504 446 2,541 389 556 281 150

No. of alumni

10 3 3

51 11 NA 8 11 5 7 4 8 5 7 5 9 11 6

No. of placement regions

42 Thomas, Crawford-Garrett, & Rauschenberger

38. Uruguay

36. Armenia 37. Haiti

Malaysia Japan Mexico Nepal New Zealand Philippines Sweden Bangladesh Belgium Ecuador Qatar Romania Slovakia Thailand Panama

Enseña por Colombia (Teach For Colombia) Teach For Malaysia Teach For Japan Enseña por México Teach For Nepal Teach First NZ Teach For the Philippines Teach For Sweden Teach For Bangladesh Teach For Belgium Enseña Ecuador Teach For Qatar Teach For Romania Teach For Slovakia Teach For Thailand Enseña por Panamá (Teach For Panama) Teach For Armenia Anseye Pou Ayiti (Teach For Haiti) Enseña Uruguay

20. Colombia

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

Name of programme (translation)

Country context

2015

2015 2015

2012 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2014 2014 2014 2014 2014 2014 2014 2015

2012

Year first cohort placed

4

4 4

7 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 3

7

No. of cohorts

33

103 85

103 19 155 111 62 95 124 90 82 81 75 77 39 74 30

131

No. of current teachers in programme

14

42 48

251 48 345 141 69 164 100 50 75 55 47 66 25 115 8

168

No. of alumni

(Continued)

1

5 2

4 7 11 6 7 20 4 1 2 2 3 5 4 3 4

18

No. of placement regions

A growing global network 43

Le Choix de l’école*** (The Choice of School) Teach For Ghana (now Lead For Ghana) Teach First Danmark (Teach First Denmark) Teach For Cambodia Teach For Nigeria Teach For Uganda Teach For Afghanistan Ensina Brasil!**** (Teach Brazil) Teach For Ukraine Teach For Vietnam Teach For Pakistan**** Teach For Paraguay Teach For Morocco Teach For Portugal Teach For Tanzania Teach For Liberia Teach For Italy

39. France

Cambodia Nigeria Uganda Afghanistan Brazil Ukraine Vietnam Pakistan Paraguay Morocco Portugal Tanzania Liberia Italy

2017 2017 2017 2017 2017 2017 2017 2018 2018 2019 2019 2019 2019 2019

2016 2016

2016

Year first cohort placed

1 1 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 -

3 4

3

No. of cohorts

260 16 270 126 21 36 18 8 -

66 91

68

No. of current teachers in programme

1 -

26 52

24

No. of alumni

*Teach First UK’s alumni data has been updated and is taken from Teach First’s annual end-of-year report for 2018. **The programmes in South Africa and Norway are currently not official members of the network. ***The French TFAll programme, Le Choix de l’école (The Choice of School) was originally launched under the name ‘Teach For France’. ****Teach For Pakistan and Ensina Brasil were both originally founded in 2011 but then relaunched at these later dates.

Source: Teach For All (2019) - This table is based on website data, though aspects of TFAll programmes may have changed since its creation.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

40. Ghana 41. Denmark

Name of programme (translation)

Country context

Table 3.1 (Cont.)

3 2 2 4 3 1 1 2 4 2 -

1 1

3

No. of placement regions

44 Thomas, Crawford-Garrett, & Rauschenberger

8 6

3 2 53/ (55)

Haiti, Mexico, US

Australia, New Zealand

4 100%

9

17

24

*A programme that is not officially part of the TFAll network but has had close ties or affiliation with the network in the past and/or present (the total of programmes, including such unofficial programmes is in parenthesis).

Middle East & North Africa North America & Caribbean Oceania Total:

Sub-Saharan Africa

South & Central America

Asia

32

17 / (18) Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Italy, Norway*, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, UK Afghanistan, Armenia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, 13 India, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, 9 Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay 5 / (6) Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, South Africa*, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya (launching soon), Senegal (launching soon), Zimbabwe (launching soon) Morocco, Israel, Lebanon, Qatar 4

Region % of TFAll programmes (n/53)

Europe

No. of TFAll programmes (+unofficial)

Countries with TFAll programmes

Region

Table 3.2 Regional breakdown of Teach For All programmes in 2019

A growing global network 45

46 Thomas, Crawford-Garrett, & Rauschenberger

replicated – identified, imitated, and excerpted – despite the vast differences in educational need and infractructure’ that exist across contexts (p. 14). Elsewhere Friedrich, Walter, and Colmenares (2015) examined the organisation’s utilisation of data to further advance its public image, querying the premise that each country’s best and brightest can be successful in educational reform if armed with appropriate data and a ‘proven’ model in TFAll. At the center of TFAll, then, is a focus on subjectivities, which are formed and refined within the vast web of international capital to which participants are granted access (Olmedo, Bailey & Ball, 2013). Gautreaux and Delgado (2016) supplement this analysis by examining depictions of TFAll teachers across 12 country contexts, noting the way TFAll teachers are constructed, in opposition to traditionally-certified teachers, as more adequately positioned to address issues of longstanding inequities. Within the TFAll network, then, participants are constructed as exceptional individuals central to student success, while educational inequity, writ large, can be operataionalised as a problem solved best by increasing teacher quality (La Londe, Brewer, & Lubienski, 2015) and advancing particular notions of leadership and educational reform (Straubhaar & Friedrich, 2015). TFAll’s ability to unite the global education reform community around these common ‘problems’ has, in part, accounted for its rapid expansion (Ellis et al., 2016). Moreover, rhetoric from TFAll and its representatives emphasises the unique, highly-localised dimensions of each of its affiliates, yet simultaneously suggests that similar problems exist across contexts and thus can be rectified through similar interventions (Friedrich, Walter & Colmenares, 2015; La Londe, Brewer, & Lubienski, 2015). This local/global paradox is unpacked further in this volume as authors consider how TFAll’s theory of change has been taken up and applied across contrastive geographic settings. In this section we shift the emphasis to research concerned with TFAll affiliate programmes beyond the US and UK, focusing primarily on research published in English while also recognising that additional research may be published in other languages. Our goal in this chapter is not to conduct a systematic review of affiliate programmes and their effectiveness; rather, we seek to provide an abridged but updated account of literature to date in each geographic region. This is particularly important because TFAll has more than doubled its number of affiliate programmes since one of the earliest published reviews (McConney, Price, & Woods-McConney, 2012), and another more recent review maintains a concerted emphasis on the interplay between TFAll and teacher education (Crawford-Garrett & Thomas, 2018). Thus, in this section we aim to highlight recent research on TFAll programmes as a means to lay the globalised foundation for the remainder of the chapters in the volume and to consider the ‘hot-spots’ of the literature. Sub-Saharan Africa Scant empirical research has been conducted and published on the iterations of TFAll in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is due at least in part to their relative newness

A growing global network 47

amongst the 50+ TFAll programmes, with the first current affiliate programme in Africa placing teachers in 2016 (i.e. Teach For Ghana), followed by two others in 2017 (Teach For Nigeria, Teach For Uganda). Popular outlets have highlighted their respective work, including but not limited to the US Embassy in Uganda (US Mission in Uganda, 2017), the partner university in Ghana (Ashesi University External Relations Office, 2018), and the podcast Pod Save the People (Mckesson, 2020). The life and work of Teach For Uganda’s CEO, James Kassaga Arinaitwe – who initiated the Ugandan affiliate programme after learning about TFA from a friend – has been particularly popular, garnering attention from international development organisation DEVEX (Tyson, 2016) and a behavioural health academic (Strecher, 2016), among others. He has also contributed op-ed pieces featuring Teach For Uganda to NPR (Arinaitwe, 2016) and Huffpost (Arinaitwe, 2017). With the hiring of a Director of Growth, Strategy, and Development for Africa, the recent launch of Teach For Liberia and Teach For Tanzania in 2019, and a planned expansion to other countries such as Kenya, Senegal, and Zimbabwe (at press time), TFAll seems eager to enhance its footprint on the African continent. This expansion has not been without false starts, however. Teach South Africa was at one point a member of the TFAll global network, but ‘its status as a member of the network has changed repeatedly over the years’ (Rauschenberger, 2016, p. 10). Billed as ‘Teach For All’s first African partner’, Teach South Africa’s fifth anniversary was announced and celebrated on the Teach For All website in 2014 (Teach For All, 2014a); however, as Elliott (2017, 2020) notes, once the relationship dissipated references to Teach South Africa conspicuously seemed to disappear. She picks up on this incidence in Chapter 5 of this volume, too. Nonetheless, to date Teach South Africa has continued operating independent of TFAll, a reminder that its growing network is not impervious to organisational challenges. Asia Teach For India emerged in 2009 along with a cohort of affiliate programmes outside of Europe, a first for TFAll. Since then, the founder has reminisced about the rise of the affiliate programme (Gupta & Mistri, 2014) and a newer text highlights the stories of Teach For India’s ‘unlikely leaders’ who are ‘battling the injustices of poverty’ in the Indian education system (Rai, 2019, back cover). Yet concerns remain about the extent to which Teach For India has been tailored to fit this system, as several researchers have noted the similitude between the structures, advocacy networks, and institutional discourses of this organisation and those of TFA, which necessarily operates in a distinctly different sociocultural and geopolitical context (Blumenreich, & Gupta, 2015; Vellanki, 2014; Veltri & Singh, 2011). Adding to this research, Vidya Subramanian (2019) noted the strong connections between Teach For India and non-state actors, including venture philanthropy, as well as the ways in which

48 Thomas, Crawford-Garrett, & Rauschenberger

the organisation has ‘operated completely outside the purview of formal teacher education’ and contributed to ‘class-based tensions between fellows and government teachers’ and ‘exacerbated material inequities’ (p. 16). Whilst tensions between TFAll teachers and their non-TFAll peers has been documented elsewhere (e.g. Thomas, 2018), these findings in the Indian context shed further insight into the complex interactions between TFAll affiliate programmes and the cultures and organisational systems in which they function. The TFAll programme affiliate in China first emerged under the name China Education Initiative and was later rebranded as Teach For China once it attained status as an official TFAll network partner (Crowley, 2016). Unlike many other TFAll programmes, Teach For China initially recruited fellows from both China and the US. In Sara Lam’s (2020) comprehensive study of the organisation, she writes, In the early years, almost half of the fellows were “foreign fellows” recruited from the U.S. Proficiency in Chinese was not a requirement for participating in the program, and some foreign fellows had no knowledge of Chinese before joining. These fellows were given language instruction during the Summer Institute. (p. 36) Other research has examined the motivations of elite Chinese graduates/students for joining programmes inspired by TFA, and the means through which they aim to enact varied notions of pedagogical practice (Yin, 2018; Yin, Dooley, & Mu, 2018; Yin, Dooley, & Mu, 2019). Yin and Dooley (Chapter 11, this volume) build on related questions of pedagogical and cultural ‘fit’ and broadly relate to Lam’s (2017) assertion that ‘Teach For China addresses educational inequity by transplanting outsiders into economically impoverished and culturally marginalised communities rather than investing in the development of local educators or directly supporting the capacity building of local schools’ (p. 161). Teach For Bangladesh (TFB) is comparatively younger than those in India and China, but research on this organisation has blossomed in recent years. Several internship projects have been conducted by students at the BRAC University Business School and focus on recruitment of TFB fellows (Imam, 2014) and its leadership development team (Mahmud, 2015). The latter study, conducted by a fellow of the programme, noted some particular challenges, including mixed recruitment messages and a high drop-out rate. Mahmud (2015) notes, ‘sometimes in order to fulfil the ambitious goals of the [leadership development] department, recruitment officials deviate from the actual details of the Fellowship’ (p. 33), which can lead to disenfranchisement among fellows. TFB was first registered as a non-governmental organisation in the US before becoming what Adhikary and Lingard (2019, p. 252) call a ‘a non-governmental organisation (NGO)-cum-social enterprise (SE)’. Building on Adhikary’s (2019) doctoral research, their investigations of TFB have provided significant empirical, theoretical, and methodological insights, particularly into the unique ways in which this a global programme and reform agenda has ‘touched

A growing global network 49

down’ and been localised (Adhikary & Lingard, 2018). One specific example can be found in analysis of TFB’s ‘mediatisation of its policy’ through Facebook and other social media platforms in a manner akin to ‘programmatic policy proposals put to the relevant ministry’, yet largely sitting outside the formal systems and structures within which the government functions (Adhikary, Lingard, & Hardy, 2018, p. 655). Their work on TFB is extended in Chapter 7 of this volume. Outside of these three countries, relatively little research has been published (in English) about TFAll affiliate programmes in Asia. There are a range of programmatic reports and some news articles as well as miscellaneous pieces about different affiliate programmes, for example, in Nepal (Bruce, 2018) and Malaysia (Wong & Ezzat, 2017). There is also a journal article penned by the founder and managing director of Teach For Malaysia who describes the impetus and context behind the programme (Dzulkifli, 2015). Yet overall there is a remarkable lack of empirical research, which presents a novel opportunity for conducting future research, especially by in-country doctoral students ‘in an effort to build a research base that includes and foregrounds local perspectives’ (Crawford-Garrett & Thomas, 2018, p. 17). Europe The majority of TFAll schemes are in Europe, with a growing body of research documenting various components of the progammes. In Norway, for example, research has examined the motivations of ‘candidates’ (i.e. translation of ‘kandidat’) for joining Teach First Norway (Nesje, 2016) and the development of these candidates’ teacher professional identity (Nesje, Canrinus, & Strype, 2018). The role of Equinor (formerly Statoil), the national energy company based in Norway that co-funds the organisation, has also been examined (Ovell, 2014), and Nesje further expounds on this unique relationship in Chapter 4 of this volume. Research exists about a few current affiliate programmes, though it is uneven geographically. The Spanish affiliate programme, Empieza por Educar, has garnered recent attention from Gutiérrez and Costa (2014), and notably, Saura (2016, 2018) who utilises network ethnography to explore the complex interactions between the Spanish TFAll affiliate and other philanthropic and social entrepreneurial organisations. Recent research has also been conducted on the means for enhancing education for sustainable development, including within Teach For Austria (Fälbl, Wicki, Vrolijk, & Gonzalez, 2019). In addition, an impressive five-country study known as the ‘New Way for New Talents in Teaching’ (NEWTT) project examined several alternative routes to teaching, including Empieza por Educar, Iespe-jama- misija (trans. Mission Possible; i.e. TFAll in Latvia), Teach For Austria, and Teach For Bulgaria. The evaluation programme utilised a quasi-experimental design to examine the experiences of TFAll fellows across these countries as well as the perceptions of the principals in whose schools they taught (Abs, Anderson-Park, & Morgenroth, 2019). The report suggests these TFAll programmes recruited fellows ‘who are at least as suitable for teaching as traditionally-educated teachers’ (p. 208), but also noted that ‘it

50 Thomas, Crawford-Garrett, & Rauschenberger

is easier for a small NGO to provide such [programme] coherence than it is for the complex, multi-level systems which are generally responsible for teacher education’ (p. 215). Indeed, one of the final questions from the study concerns the sheer magnitude of teachers that are needed in Europe at present (and worse, in the notso-distant future) and how or if TFAll could scale to that extent. Abs, Eckert, and Anderson-Park (2016) have also been involved in evaluating the experiences of Teach First Deutschland (Germany) fellows. These studies, in addition to those conducted on Teach First UK (see Chapter 2), relate to only a third of the TFAll affiliate programmes currently in Europe – an indication that more research may be sorely needed in some parts of Europe, too. Central and South America Affiliates in this region currently operate in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. Given this pervasive presence, the lack of empirical research on these programmes is surprising, with only limited indications of how they are (re)shaping the Latin American landscape. One of the earlier TFAll iterations, Teach For Chile (i.e. Enseña Chile), was the first affiliate programme launched in South America, and continues to be a hotbed for TFAll activity due to the existing policy conditions that encourage private sector involvement in education (Freidreich, 2016). Elsewhere, in an early article examining Enseñá por Argentina, Friedrich (2014) applies the frameworks of microlending and policy transfer to consider how dominant modes of education reform move across space and time and are applied in contrastive settings. Specifically, he theorises the ways in which the concept of the ‘social entrepreneur’ is applied in Argentina and its production of a certain kind of neoliberal subject. In a somewhat different account, Cumsille and Fiszbein (2015) argue that TFAll’s selective recruitment of candidates and focus on ‘quality’ training could positively shift learning outcomes in Latin America. Research on Enseña Perú has likewise focused on recruitment into the programme (Alfonso & Santiago, 2012). Straubhaar (2020) also conducted an ethnographic study of teachers in both TFA and the first version of Ensina Brazil to examine why graduates joined these programmes and how their experiences and views of the model evolved over time. His data suggest that Ensina alumni were drawn to the programme because of its idealist mission and the fact that they believed the programme represented ‘a business-savvy, numbers-driven “proven” teacher education formula that was ready to be franchised outside the United States’ (p. 7). These findings highlight how TFAll’s missionary message resonates with graduates in other countries and how TFAll affiliates can effectively utilise TFA’s ‘record of success’ to legitimise their programmes. Other recent research has emphasised how the linkages between TFA and neoliberalism have taken shape in Brazil (Moura, Najjar, & Carneiro, 2019). Finally, TFAll programmes existing in the broader region include those in Haiti and Mexico, though little if any empirical research on these programmes seems to be available at this time.

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Middle East and North Africa Teach For Lebanon was the first affiliate to launch in the Middle East and North Africa region with its founding in 2008. Since that time, TFAll has expanded in the region with partners now in Israel, Morocco, and Qatar. In 2018, TFAll and Teach For Lebanon announced a new partnership with USAID’s Bureau for the Middle East aimed at growing the Teach For Lebanon programme and supporting the development of new network partners in the region (Teach For All, 2018b), with Teach For Morocco growing out of this initiative and launched in 2019. In spite of this high-profile investment on the part of USAID, there is a dearth of empirical research on programmes in the Middle East and North Africa. Nimer (2016) offers a critical examination of the equity goals of Teach For Lebanon and considers the ways in which the programme perpetuates inequality and serves a broader, global neoliberal agenda, ideas that are expanded upon in Chapter 6. Given the politics of the region and legacy of conflict, more research is needed to understand and theorise the role of TFAll and how it is affecting notions of equity and education, though there may be additional existing research published in Arabic or other languages. Oceania (Australia/New Zealand) TFAll expanded to Oceania in 2010 and 2011 with the establishment of Teach For Australia (TFAustralia) and Ako Ma-ta-tupu: Teach First New Zealand (TFNZ),1 respectively. In an early analysis of TFAustralia, Skourdoumbis (2012) used discursive methodological approaches and critical theory to critique programmatic rhetoric and question the organisation’s assertion that TFAustralia could overcome educational disadvantage and equalise student outcomes. Rice, Volkoff, and Dulfer (2015) surveyed 76 TFAustralia teachers (i.e. associates) about their experiences in schools, finding that ‘the quality of teachers was seen by participants as the most important contributor to the poor outcomes of disadvantaged students’ (p. 504). This conclusion was due at least in part to the perceived elite nature of the programme, which Windsor (2014) also noted in her in-depth study of TFAustralia associates’ experiences. In addition to highlighting the connections between Teach For America and TFAustralia – the latter being launched in Australia by an American – Windsor (2014) found the ‘promotional material contributed to reinforcing the difference between the people participating in the programme and other teachers in the schools in which they were placed’ (p. 147). Elsewhere Windsor (2017) has traced the programme’s close relationship and alignment with Australian policy and Walker-Gibbs (2018) has examined its congruence with the education system as well as responded to Testing Teachers, a three-part public TV mini-series about TFAustralia associates.

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A comprehensive evaluation of TFAustralia was also conducted in the programme’s first three years (cf. Weldon et al., 2013). It identified programmatic strengths and weaknesses, relying heavily on input from programme participants, and outlined the organisation’s ability to recruit participants but also illustrated that the lack of opportunity to teach in actual classrooms during the Summer Intensive hindered participants’ feelings of readiness for classroom teaching. TFAustralia has also faced challenges from other, similar programmes, namely the National Exceptional Teachers for Disadvantaged Schools, which also recruits ‘high-performing’ students to teach in disadvantaged schools but does so through a teacher education programme housed within a university (Lampert & Burnett, 2015). This programme was scaled up nationally and by 2017 was operating in more Australian states than TFAustralia. Moreover, TFAustralia has recently changed university partnerships – its third university partner in ten years (EvangelinouYiannakis, 2019) – and has been phased out of the Australian Capital Territory (McGowan, 2018), where it operated previously, due to the Territory’s desire to invest in initial teacher education as well as lingering concerns related to the cost and retention rates of TFAustralia (see Chapter 14). TFNZ was founded in 2011 and aims to address the educational disparities that exist between New Zealand European and Ma-ori and Pasifika youth. Initially, TFNZ partnered with the University of Auckland but in the intervening years has shifted to two separate tertiary institutions. Research on TFNZ is still in its infancy and more scholarship is needed to understand the impact of the programme on the complex, socio-political context of New Zealand, particularly as the organisation continues to expand. Research to date has examined several phenomena relevant to the organisation, including: (1) its complicated messages participants receive from the organisation privileging the role of the individual in addressing systemic obstacles like endemic poverty, inadequate housing, racism and legacies of colonialism (Crawford-Garrett, 2017); (2) participants’ past experiences with poverty and conceptualisations of the challenges facing students and families (Oldham & Crawford-Garrett, 2019); (3) reliance on tropes like grit and resilience to conceptualise student behaviour (Crawford-Garrett, 2018); and (4) the complex motivations and incentives that influence participants’ decisions to join TFNZ and the ways in which these motivations are underscored by neoliberal logic (Crawford-Garrett, 2020). In addition, and similar to the Australian context, an evaluation report conducted by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (Whatman, MacDonald & Stevens, 2017), assessed whether TFNZ was implementing its programme according to its stated goals: (a) rigorous selection of future teachers, (b) programme responsiveness, (c) support and mentoring, and (d) immersion in the classroom (p. vii). The report noted that support and mentoring was a particular area of weakness (p. viii). TFNZ remains contentious in New Zealand but continues to receive substantial support from the Ministry of Education and seems intent on expanding to foster a truly national presence.

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Conclusion Even as TFAll continues to proliferate by introducing new network affiliates at an unprecedented rate while garnering investments and endorsements from philanthropists, corporations, and government entities alike, empirical research remains shockingly slim. This lacuna has not impeded TFAll’s ability to galvanise policymakers, investors, and participants around the issue of educational inequality, reflecting the unique circumstances surrounding the organisation’s meteoric rise. In the past three decades, the advent of semi-private policy reform has coincided with intensification of globalisation more broadly, the increase in wealth and wage gaps within societies, and the rise of philanthro-capitalism, all of which have created fertile ground for TFAll’s global growth. Paradoxically, macro-level societal changes that have occurred over the past 30 years have both exacerbated the problems TFAll aims to solve while creating a more supportive environment for TFAll and its affiliates to operate. Given the reach and scope of TFAll and its ongoing impact on education policy and practice worldwide, it is imperative that scholars and researchers prioritise empirical work on TFAll and its affiliates, even when access can prove challenging (see Chapter 1). As TFAll and its affiliates continue to co-opt the language of educational equity to market and expand its particular brand of education reform, key questions surface regarding the efficacy of these approaches. Moreover, scholars, teacher educators, and researchers must imagine divergent futures in education. Lampert and Burnett (2015), for example, utilised existing teacher education structures in Australia to provide robust preparation for teacher candidates to enter high-poverty schools. Similarly, the work of Zygmunt et al. (2018) and Kretchmar and Zeichner (2016) emphasises how community-engaged teacher education helps situate practical experiences in ways that simultaneously disrupt deficit thinking and honour the voices and input of communities. Amidst processes like globalisation, neoliberalisation, and rapidly shifting sociopolitical contexts, it is also imperative to question ‘the what-went-right’ approach (Steiner-Khamsi, 2013) and problematise reform efforts that are predicated on the transferability and universality of best practice. At the same time, research into programmes inspired by TFAll but not currently part of the TFAll network (e.g. Teach For Canada, Teach For Hong Kong, Teach South Africa) may provide a glimpse into different ways of conceptualising the model as well as lessons in how national organisations may be resisting global pressures to conform. Most urgently, more research must be conducted on how TFAll and its affiliates are (re)shaping notions of teaching and teacher education on micro, meso and macro scales (cf. Crawford-Garrett & Thomas, 2018). This text represents one effort to address some of the research gaps even as we acknowledge that much more ongoing, deliberate, scholarly inquiry is necessary. Without it, TFAll may continue to expand despite the fact that little is understood about the impact of its programmes on the very students, families, and communities it (cl)aims to serve.

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Note 1 The organisation now prefers to be called Ako Ma-ta-tupu rather than Teach First New Zealand. However, at the time of the research and reports cited here, the programme was commonly referred to as TFNZ so we use that abbreviation throughout.

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A growing global network 57 McGowan, M. (2018, 28 November). ACT pulls out of ‘costly’ Teach For Australia program over retention rates. Retrieved on 12 November 2019 from www.theguardia n.com/australia-news/2018/nov/28/act-pulls-out-of-costly-teach-for-australia-program -over-retention-rates. Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. (2008, 26 February). Teach For America launches Teach For All to support development of its model in other countries. Retrieved 17 October 2019, from www.msdf.org/press-releases/teach-for-america-launches-tea ch-for-all-to-support-development-of-its-model-in-other-countries/. Moura, E., Najjar, J., & Carneiro, W. (2019). Neoliberalização e reforma educacional: A chegada da organização Teach For America no Brasil. Revista Brasileira de Política e Administração da Educação-Periódico científico editado pela ANPAE, 35(2), 447–468. Nesje, K. (2016). Teach First Norway: Who joins and what are their initial motivations for teaching? Acta Didactica Norge, 10(2), 150–178. Nesje, K., Canrinus, E.T., & Strype, J. (2018). ‘Trying on teaching for fit’ – Development of professional identity among professionals with multiple career opportunities. Teaching and Teacher Education, 69, 131–141. Nimer, M. (2016). La construction des inégalités sociales dans le système éducatif au Liban: Étude de cas d’un groupe de boursiers dans une université d’élite. Doctoral dissertation, L’Universite Parais-Saclay. Oldham, S., & Crawford-Garrett, K. (2019). ‘We’re trying to engage people in a problem that they don’t even know exists’: Inequality, poverty, and invisible discourses in Teach First New Zealand. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 27(128), 1–24. Olmedo, A., Bailey, P.L.J., & Ball, S.J. (2013). To infinity and beyond: Heterarchial governance, the Teach For All network in Europe and the making of profits and minds. European Educational Research Journal, 12(4), 492–512. Ovell, I. (2014). Teach First… Statoil later? En empirisk studie av Teach First Norway med fokus på Statoil. Master’s thesis, University of Oslo. Rai, S. (2019). Grey sunshine: Stories from Teach For India. New Delhi: Aleph Book Company. Rauschenberger, E. (2016). Reconstructing the emergence of Teach First: Examining the role of policy entrepreneurs and networks in the process of policy transfer. Doctoral dissertation, University of Edinburgh. Rice, S., Volkoff, V., & Dulfer, N. (2015). Teach For/Teach First candidates: What conclusions do they draw from their time in teaching? Teachers and Teaching, 21(5), 497–513. Saura, G. (2016). Neoliberalización filantrópica y nuevas formas de privatización educativa: La red global Teach For All en España. RASE, Revista de la Asociación de Sociología de la Educación, 9(2), 248–264. Saura, G. (2018). Saving the world through neoliberalism: Philanthropic policy networks in the context of Spanish education. Critical Studies in Education, 59(3), 279–296. Skourdoumbis, A. (2012). Teach For Australia (TFA): Can it overcome educational disadvantage? Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 32(3), 305–315. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2013). What is wrong with the ‘what-went-right’ approach in educational policy? European Educational Research Journal, 12(1), 20–33. Straubhaar, R. (2020) Teaching for America across two hemispheres: Comparing the ideological appeal of the Teach for All teacher education model in the United States and Brazil. Journal of Teacher Education, 71(3), 307–318.

58 Thomas, Crawford-Garrett, & Rauschenberger Straubhaar, R., & Friedrich, D. (2015). Theorizing and documenting the spread of Teach For All and its impact on global education reform. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(44), 1–8. Strecher, V.J. (2016). Life on purpose: How living for what matters most changes everything. New York: HarperCollins. Subramanian, V. (2018). From government to governance: Teach For India and new networks of reform in school education. Contemporary Education Dialogue, 15(1), 21–50. Subramanian, V. (2019). Parallel partnerships: Teach For India and new institutional regimes in municipal schools in New Delhi. International Studies in Sociology of Education. Online first. doi:10.1080/09620214.2019.1668288. Teach For All. (2009). Teach For All: Local social enterprise partnership agreement [contract document]. Yale School of Management Case Study #11–013. Retrieved from https://vol10.cases.som.yale.edu/sites/default/files/cases/teach_for_all/Templa te Partnership Agreement.Aug2009.pdf. Teach For All. (2011, June). Teach For All overview: Our theory of change, history, and impact [PowerPoint presentation]. Yale School of Management Case Study #11–013. Retrieved from https://vol10.cases.som.yale.edu/sites/default/files/cases/ teach_for_all/toc.pdf. Teach For All. (2014a, 19 March). TEACH South Africa celebrates fifth anniversary. Retrieved on 7 November 2019 from https://teachforall.org/news/teach-south-africa -celebrates-fifth-anniversary. Teach For All. (2014b). Financial statements together with report of independent certified public accountants. Retrieved from https://teachforall.org/sites/default/files/ AUDITED%20FY14%20TFALL%20FINANCIAL%20STATEMENTS_0.PDF. Teach For All. (2015a). A global approach to accelerating impact. Retrieved on 16 March 2015 from www.teachforall.org/en/our-approach/global-approach-accelera ting-impact. Teach For All. (2015b, 15 October). Global conference 2015: Andreas Schleicher. Presented at the Further Together: Teach For All Global Conference 2015, Auckland, New Zealand. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/143612203. Teach For All. (2017, 24 October). Welcome dinner address – Jaime Saavedra. Presented at the Collective Leadership: The Teach For All Global Conference, Bogota, Colombia. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/241211218. Teach For All. (2018a). Return of organization exempt from income tax [Form 990 for period ending September 2018]. Retrieved from https://projects.propublica.org/nonp rofits/display_990/262122566/05_2019_prefixes_26-27%2F262122566_201809_990_ 2019051616306779. Teach For All. (2018b, 22 November). USAID and Teach For All partner to accelerate progress in the Middle East. Retrieved from https://teachforall.org/news/usaid-a nd-teach-all-partner-accelerate-progress-middle-east. Teach For All. (2019). We are a global network [interactive map]. Retrieved from http s://teachforall.org/. Thomas, M.A.M. (2018). ‘Policy embodiment’: Alternative certification and Teach For America teachers in traditional public schools. Teaching and Teacher Education, 70, 186–195. Tyson, J. (2016, 18 February). Meet the young CEO launching Teach For Ghana. Retrieved on 7 November 2019 from www.devex.com/news/meet-the-youngceo-launching-teach-for-ghana-87730.

A growing global network 59 US Mission in Uganda. (2017). US Mission Uganda support Teach For Uganda. Retrieved on 7 November, 2019 from https://ug.usembassy.gov/u-s-mission-uganda -supports-teach-uganda/. Vellanki, V. (2014). Teach For India and education reform: Some preliminary reflections. Contemporary Education Dialogue, 11(1), 137–147. Veltri, B., & Singh, N. (2011). A tale of two countries: Teach For America/Teach For India as globalized educational reform for the ‘public good’? Revisiting Education Culture, 8, 61–84. Walker-Gibbs, B. (2018). Contextualising teacher education in Australia. In B. Meier (Ed.), Unser bildungsverständnis im wandel (pp. 479–504). Berlin: trafo-Verlag der Wissenschaften. Weldon, P., McKenzie, P., Kleinhenz, E., & Reid, K. (2013). Teach For Australia pathway: Evaluation report phase 3 of 3. Camberwell, Victoria: Australian Council for Educational Research. Whatman, J., MacDonald, J., & Stevens, E. (2017). Final evaluation report for the Teach First NZ programme pilot: Delivered in partnership with the University of Auckland. Wellington, New Zealand: New Zealand Council for Educational Research. Windsor, S. (2014). Citizenship and inequality: The Teach For Australia program and the people who enter it. Doctoral dissertation, University of Melbourne. Windsor, S. (2017). Teach For Australia: What, who, why, and how well?. In International Handbook of Teacher Quality and Policy (pp. 492–504). New York: Routledge. Wong, Y.R., & Ezzat, N. (2017). How does Teach For Malaysia’s student learning vision of empowerment translate into classroom practice? In Proceedings from The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (pp. 141–147). Kedah, Malaysia: School of Education and Modern Languages, Universiti Utara Malaysia. Yin, Y.M., Dooley, K., & Mu, G.M. (2018). Educational practice in a field of mediation: Elite university graduates’ participation experience of an alternative program of schoolteacher recruitment for rural China. In G. Mu, K. Dooley, & A. Luke (Eds.), Bourdieu and Chinese education: Inequality, competition, and change (pp. 81–96). New York: Routledge. Yin, Y.M. (2018). From university graduates to teachers in disadvantaged schools: A sociological study of participation in an alternative teacher recruitment program. Doctoral dissertation, Queensland University of Technology. Yin, Y.M., Dooley, K., & Mu, G.M. (2019). Why do graduates from prestigious universities choose to teach in disadvantaged schools? Lessons from an alternative teacher preparation program in China. Teaching and Teacher Education, 77, 378–387. Zygmunt, E., Cipollone, K., Tancock, S., Clausen, J., Clark, P., & Mucherah, W. (2018). Loving out loud: Community mentors, teacher candidates, and transformational learning through a pedagogy of care and connection. Journal of Teacher Education, 69(2), 127–139.

Part II

Diffusion and adaptation

Chapter 4

The origin and adaptation of Teach First Norway Katrine Nesje

Introduction Higher education systems in Europe and internationally have recently faced intense reform pressures (Maassen & Stensaker, 2011). Universities’ external environments are increasingly complex, and higher education institutions have expanded in size and complexity due to massification, research specialisation and globalisation (Dobbins & Knill, 2017). Simultaneously, researchers argue that European higher education has become increasingly homogenised through the Bologna process and innovations such as the Teach For All (TFAll) network, which lead national systems to adopt common international models (Olmedo, Bailey, & Ball, 2013). In this chapter, I explore the overarching idea of a common global teacher education model – the TFAll model – irrupting into a Norwegian context that is more social and less competitive than others where TFAll has been implemented. Much has been written about new models of governance, financing and delivery arrangements in higher education (Enders, de Boer, & Leisyte, 2008; Dobbins & Knill, 2017; Slaughter & Cantwell, 2012), and research has shown how the relationship between the state and institutions in governing of higher education differ in various countries. Researchers note that many ongoing reforms in Europe, in particular, have been advanced under the banner of marketisation, in which the state partially retreats as a financier and there is a sharper focus on the economic utility of teaching and research (Dobbins, Knill, & Vögtle, 2011; Schulze-Cleven & Olson, 2017). Researchers contend that welfare states have strengthened market principles in university governance across diverse national higher education systems, although competition is shaped in various ways. In this context, this chapter explores the initiation and establishment of Teach First in Norway, a well-developed welfare state with a higher education system characterised by public financing and socially inclusive outcomes (Schulze-Cleven & Olson, 2017). While adjusting its higher education system to increased enrolment and globalisation, Norway has sustained a ‘Nordic university template’ (Christensen,

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Gornitzka, & Maassen, 2014). In 2019, the system included 10 universities, five specialised university institutions and six university colleges, with little hierarchical distinction between institutions (Hovdhaugen, 2013, p. 7). Substantial structural changes in the sector have followed the so-called Quality Reform of 2003. This put Norway’s higher education system on a liberalisation trajectory (Schulze-Cleven & Olson, 2017) by, for instance, lowering guaranteed monetary amounts per student in the universities’ funding formula and introducing performance-based funding for research. Nevertheless, the system has sustained egalitarian outcomes. Most institutions engage in both teaching and research, and employers are more concerned with educational outcomes than markers of prestige, such as the institutional affiliations of their graduates (Hovdhaugen, 2013). This contrasts with other countries where Teach For All operates, such as the US and England, where one’s university’s status is an important element of an applicant’s background (cf. Scott, Trujillo, & Rivera, 2016). Research on TFAll programmes has typically used network approaches (Olmedo, 2017; Olmedo et al., 2013) or global educational policy perspectives (Scott et al. 2016) or has investigated and compared TFAll websites (Ellis et al., 2016). Few studies have empirically investigated country-specific programmes from other governance perspectives. In this study, I use a framework for the governance of higher education that comprises three distinct governance rationales or perspectives (Dobbins et al., 2011; Olsen, 2007): a state-centred model in which universities function as utilitarian institutions to meet national priorities, an academic self-rule model characterised by strong academic self-regulation by academic professionals, and a marketised model in which institutions essentially operate as economic enterprises within and for markets. The marketised model has been a trend for years, of which a distinct feature is the direct influence of business on higher education policymaking (Dobbins & Knill, 2017; Olsen, 2007). Despite the growing consensus that governance processes at the European and international levels influence national governance arrangements, it is generally accepted that a higher education system is part of a nation’s specific coordinating arrangements, reflecting national-historical, institutional and cultural characteristics (Dobbins & Knill, 2017). In egalitarian systems such as Norway’s, with strong student rights and free, universal higher education, the social dimension of education is important (Hovdhaugen, 2013; Schulze-Cleven & Olson, 2017). In the Norwegian state-centred governance model (Olsen, 2007), room was made for entrepreneurship, providing a public-school administration with the opportunity to introduce Teach First in Norway (TFN). It is thus of theoretical and empirical interest to investigate why TFN, an elite programme, has been introduced to Norway and how it has been adapted to the country’s higher education system.

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Higher education in Norway Norway is a small country with a population slightly exceeding five million. It has become one of the world’s richest due to its natural resources, particularly oil and gas. The education system is mainly public, with 96% of children and youth attending public primary and lower-secondary schools and the remaining 4% in private schools (Statistics Norway, 2019). Equity is a key principle of the system. Education, including higher education, is free and available to all. The system offers 10 years of compulsory primary and lower secondary education (pupils aged 6–15 years) and an additional three years of optional upper secondary education (pupils aged 16–18 years). In compulsory education (grades 1–10), the same curriculum is used in all schools. The system provides several routes to becoming a teacher. Higher education institutions offer a five-year integrated teacher education programme specifically designed to qualify candidates for teaching careers in grades 1–7, 5–10, or 8–13. Universities and colleges also provide a one-year Post-Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) after the study of subjects or disciplines. There is no differentiated PGCE; the same programme qualifies one to teach in all grades from 5 to 13. Low retention rates among beginning teachers is a common challenge in Norway and internationally (Ministry of Education, 2016; Tiplic, Brandmo, & Elstad, 2015). Moreover, many Norwegian teachers are aged 50 or older (Vibe, Aamodt, & Calsten, 2009), and, since 2001, Norway has earned below-average results on the PISA large-scale assessment, leading to much debate regarding the so-called science-subject crisis (www.dagbladet.no; www.utdanningsnytt.no), the low quality of schools and the lack of qualified teachers, particularly in mathematics and science. This period was also characterised by criticism of Norwegian teacher education, as, for instance, communicated by the Director of Education in Oslo municipality (Elstad, 2009, pp. 143–144). In this climate, the opportunity was given to an entrepreneur to introduce TFN and receive necessary financial support from Equinor, a Norwegian energy company with operations in over 30 countries. Such entrepreneurship is anomalous in Norwegian higher education governance, making TFN an interesting research opportunity. TFN came into being in 2010 through a collaboration involving the municipality of Oslo’s educational authorities, the University of Oslo, and Equinor, which produces oil and gas and is described as the world’s largest offshore operator. Equinor characterises its support for TFN as corporate social responsibility contributing to the development of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education in Norway. Equinor’s interest in TFN also reflects its aim of recruiting high-skilled workers. Like other TFAll programmes, TFN is framed within the concept of a mission, which in Norway involves improving science education by turning skilled science graduates into effective teachers and leaders. TFN recruits high-achieving graduates from STEM programmes, a focus that distinguishes it from other TFAll

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programmes. It collaborates with Teach First in England and sends its graduates to a five-week Summer Institute in the UK. TFN is a small programme that to date has graduated about 120 candidates with diverse motivations for participating (Nesje, 2017). Candidates in TFN are selected through a process comprising motivational interviews, tests (including personality and IQ tests) and assignments (ethical and cooperative). Superior academic performance is a prerequisite. The candidates begin teaching with full responsibilities at the start of the school year. While teaching, they attend formal, university-based teacher education (part time), courses organised by the educational authorities and leadership training from Equinor. With the involvement of private industry partners, Teach First represents a new way of organising teacher education in Norway. Thus, it is crucial to investigate from a governance perspective how this programme developed.

Theoretical perspectives From a governance perspective, the relations between universities, public authorities and society are characterised by a variety of interactions, interventions and controls (Olsen, 2007, p. 13). Olsen (2007) defines three ideal types of higher education governance: the state-centred, academic self-governing and marketised models. 1 The first conceives universities as state-operated institutions (Olsen, 2007) for which the state coordinates most or all aspects of higher education, such as admission requirements, curricula and exams. According to Olsen (2007), the constitutive rationale of the state-centred model is the pursuit of pre-determined national goals. Universities are understood as rational instruments for meeting national priorities, and education and research are viewed as national production factors contributing to industrial and technological competitiveness, implying that ties between universities and industry should be mediated through national governments. The academic self-governing model conceives the university as a self-governing community of scholars implying weak university management, strong selfregulation and collegial control by the professoriate, specifically regarding study and research profiles (Olsen, 2007). The market-oriented model argues that universities operate more effectively as economic enterprises within and for regional or global markets. ‘Research and higher education are commodities, bundles of goods to be sold in a free market’ (Olsen, 2007, p. 12). Entrepreneurial tactics are regarded as legitimate organisational principles, and key processes include competition, achieving profit and other individual gains (Olsen, 2007). Different countries variously divide responsibility between market competition, professional groups’ self-governance and public hierarchical administration in running their higher education systems (Dobbins et al., 2011; Olsen, 2007; Schultze-Cleven & Olson, 2017). For instance, the US emphasises a marketoriented model, countries such as Germany accommodate a status-based academic

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self-governance model, and Scandinavia’s social democratic countries, including Norway, reserve a strong role for the state (the state-centred model) (Schultze-Cleven & Olson, 2017). Schulze-Cleven and Olson (2017) argue that higher education in the above-mentioned democracies has undergone state-sanctioned processes of institutional liberalisation, defined as the strengthening of market principles (self-reliance, competition and decentralised decision-making) in university governance, a development described by some researchers as academic capitalism (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997). To analyse university governance, Dobbins et al. (2011) suggest diverse empirically observable dimensions, including ones related to the institutional balance of power, financial governance and substantive autonomy. These are based on the above-mentioned ideal governance models (cf. Olsen, 2007). An institutional balance of power rests on the allocation of procedural autonomy, functions of control and relations to the state and society (Dobbins et al., 2011). This raises questions: Who are the dominant decision-makers of the higher education institution? What is the primary mission of the institution? Who decides the orientation and utility of teaching and research? Funding, seen as a crucial component of planning and control, directly affects quality and access. In state-managed systems, the state maintains control over funds and distributes earmarked funding, giving institutions little freedom to use funds at their discretion. Marketisation, by contrast, implies more competition over funding and also a fragmentation of the funding base in which the government’s share of funding is reduced and funding sources are diversified (de Boer & Goedegebuure, 2003). Systems of self-rule are generally state funded and largely input based (by student numbers) but allow institutions broader discretion in allocating funds. In state-centred governing systems, such as Norway’s, central governments have increasingly become the promoters and supporters of performance-based funding arrangements (Dobbins et al., 2011). Accordingly, it is vital to investigate who pays and how funds are made available (tuition, grants, third-party funds). Dobbins et al. (2011) suggest that marked-based financial governance entails a shift towards financial autonomy at the managerial level, including by means of multi-year negotiated contracts in state-centred systems. According to Dobbins et al. (2011), substantive autonomy embraces what should be taught and researched and the institution’s size, specialisations and admission requirements. Thus, the important question is whether teaching and research should focus on the priorities of the academic faculty, the state, what the students wants to learn or what the market requires. In academic self-governance models, the state establishes the institutional framework (size, institutional requirements) while academic decisions are left to the faculty, with little intervention by university management or the state. In market-based models, the institutions decide admission requirements, academic specialisations and institutional parameters without state intervention. In state-centred systems, the state sets the admission requirements, the size of institutions and the core specialisations; academic content is generally the result of administrative arrangements between the state and academics.

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Using concepts from the framework of Dobbins et al. (2011), such as financing, autonomy and the balance of power, this study investigates the initiation and establishment of TFN. As Dobbins et al. (2011) emphasise, higher education systems mix elements of hierarchical state control, market competition and academic self-rule. The empirically observable dimensions Dobbins et al. (2011) propose provide ways to discuss the stakes when interventions in higher education seek to align traditional models with those of private enterprises. In Norway, the introduction of TFN challenges traditional educational and financial models, where the public sector and higher education institutions have traditionally ruled. Below, these perspectives inform my exploration of the research questions that guide my analysis: 1 2

How do the leaderships of the three collaborating TFN partners explain their participation in the programme? What reasons are given for the initiation and establishment of TFN?

Methods Participants and data To learn more about the motives for the initiation and establishment of TFN, I ‘zoomed in’ (Nicolini, 2009) on its three participants. As informants, I invited management representatives from the educational authority of Oslo (which is the project owner), the University of Oslo (which provides the teacher education element) and Equinor, thus employing a purposive sampling strategy (Maxwell, 2012) in which the researcher strategically selects where, when and from whom data will be collected based on study objectives (Maxwell, 2012). Purposive selection requires using all available information to decide which settings and participants will best meet a researcher’s purposes. Following this strategy, I contacted and interviewed five people in management positions, all of whom agreed to participate. Two informants represented the educational authorities, two the university and one Equinor. They were chosen for their insights into the establishment and early years of TFN. One interview comprised written answers to open-ended questions because the informant was abroad. During the interviews, I followed the principles of dialogue, explicitness, reciprocity and self-reflexivity, and thus I used an open-ended interview protocol. I conducted the interviews in person with a protocol adapted to each informant. Each interview lasted 60–75 minutes. The interviews were recorded and later transcribed verbatim. Analysis In line with the above theoretical framework, the analysis aimed to provide insight into the participants’ reasoning regarding their organisation’s role in

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establishing TFN. I conducted a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006), starting with a thorough reading of each interview transcript and then writing a summary of each interview. The next analytical step generated initial codes based on an inductive approach. I then searched for themes among the participants that reflected similarities related to the research question. In the analysis, I chose to focus chiefly on steps 4 and 5 of thematic analysis, namely, (4) reviewing and (5) defining and naming themes (Braun & Clarke, 2006). This process produced three broad categories reflecting the three dimensions identified by Dobbins et al. (2011): (a) institutional balance of power, (b) financing and (c) substantive autonomy (Table 4.1). With these identified, I went back and forth between the literature and the data to determine whether the themes worked in relation to the coded extracts. In this process, I discovered that the dimensions of governance suggested by Dobbins et al. (2011) contributed to understanding the governing of TFN. Table 4.1 provides an overview of the themes and summarises the findings emerging from the interviews. In the following section, I present the finding from the analysis of the interviews.

Findings This section examines the concerns of the informants. Generally, the interviews revolved around three shared themes concerning the initiation and establishing of TFN (see Table 4.1): (1) the institutional balance of power, (2) issues related to financing and (3) substantive autonomy. Together, these provide a context for understanding the initiation and establishment of TFN. Table 4.1 Overview of themes in the participants’ narratives Themes/main categories

Descriptive codes The educational authorities

Equinor

The university

Institutional balance of power

TFN project ownership Management

Profit seeking Teacher education

Financing

Salaries Financing of teaching exemptions Recruitment of science-subject teachers Curriculum design

Initiator and funding source Graduate recruiter Recruitment process Summer Institute Setting admission requirements Stays out of the classroom

Substantive autonomy

Profit seeking Costly mentoring of candidates Role distributions – Equinor as a supplier of terms Teacher development Lack of collaboration

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Institutional balance of power At the general level, the findings show how the three actors discuss and negotiate their roles and positions in TFN. The municipality of Oslo’s educational authority owns the project. Thus, it decides the curriculum offered to its candidates attending the programme, albeit with important exceptions. In the Norwegian educational system, teacher education is legally required for certification as a teacher. According to one of the informants from the university, legal regulations stopped the educational authority’s attempt to transfer the responsibility for educating TFN candidates to its own provision of courses. A university informant noted, ‘The educational authorities tried to get the teacher education department to give up many of the credits and put them instead into TFN’. The findings show that the initiation and establishment of TFN arose from very similar motivations among the actors. Norway’s science-subject crisis was a major concern for Equinor, the educational authorities, and the university providing teacher education, albeit from slightly different perspectives. In the years before the establishment of TFN, a public debate focused sharply on the status of science subjects and teaching in Norway. The country had difficulty recruiting science teachers, and PISA tests returned below-average scores for Norwegians in maths and science. Both Equinor and the educational authorities described this as a concern. The educational authorities had trouble recruiting teachers, especially in parts of Oslo with low socioeconomic status. The recruitment of capable candidates for employment is important to business, inspiring concern about the field of science education, and Equinor perceives the recruitment of capable students in science subjects as a social responsibility. Its representative voiced concerns about the company’s corporate social responsibility and mentioned three reasons that the company engages in science education: Firstly, there is a societal perspective in this – we take social responsibility. Secondly, the company is in need of competence in the future. And, finally, we are concerned about the gender balance; we wish to recruit a diversity of people into the company. The educational authorities were also concerned about the recruitment of science teachers and presented that as the primary reason for engaging in TFN’s establishment. The key reason for the university’s collaborating in TFN was the prospect of strengthening the department’s finances. A university interviewee stated that ‘the primary idea behind this [TFN] was to make money. TFN was intended to generate income for the department’. During the establishment phase and the first months of working in the programme, however, the university developed a more academic interest in TFN and wanted to investigate whether elements of the programme could improve the quality of traditional teacher

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education, which was then under pressure. The university thus went from an initially economic to an academic rationale for participating. Teacher education faced massive criticism in Norway at the time of TFN’s establishment, much of which concerned the coherence between theory and practice, and the TFAll model characteristically strengthens practice at theory’s expense. This was seen by the university’s representatives as an interesting alternative model, among several others, for organising teacher education. Those representatives also emphasised the importance of Equinor’s participation, stressing as a benefit that Equinor imposed admission requirements on candidates, who had to have excellent academic results and a master’s degree or PhD for admission. This produced a highly competent group of student teachers. In addition, the candidates were carefully selected through assessment instruments administered by Equinor. Said one university interviewee: As a teacher education institution, we were interested in finding out how our teacher education could be improved. TFN was such an opportunity. There was something about TFN that differed from other TF programmes because Equinor had set a requirement that there should be only master’s or PhD candidates in the programme [as] the candidates would potentially be employed by Equinor. They wanted the best. Equinor had a number of requirements that left us with the best of young STEM candidates. The educational authority’s interviewees emphasised the dearth of science-subject teachers – particularly in Oslo’s eastern parts – as the main reason for participating. According to the informants, the first proposals for establishing TFN came from people working in or affiliated with the educational authorities. An educational authority interviewee framed TFN as a school-development programme: We engage in TFN primarily because we want to get more qualified science teachers in schools, but we also see the TFN programme as a part of school development that strengthens the competence not only of the candidates but also of the mentors and school management. In TFN, they gain competence in how to strengthen new teachers. Financing As noted, a key issue running through the interviews was an overall concern about funding and finances. As a partial financer of TFN, Equinor contributes to recruitment by making available its assessment centre, where candidates are assessed through tests and interviews. In addition, Equinor funds the candidates’ stay at the Summer Institute. The company emphasises that it funds only parts of the TFN programme, stressing that it does not fund the teacher education component or the candidates’ wages as teachers. Equinor’s representative stated:

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Equinor is not paying for teacher education or teachers’ wages; it would be a bad mix of roles. It will be long before we are in such a situation in Norway. What the educational authorities did very well was emphasise that TFN candidates are employed in the Oslo schools and that the courses and training programmes run by the educational authorities in Oslo are paid for by the educational authorities. The Ministry of Education pays for the study seats at the university, so TFN was not a sponsored scheme. Equinor’s representative underlined that attempts to establish TFN in other parts of the country have stalled because of school leaders’ expectations that Equinor would provide more funding, which it was reluctant to do. Equinor also offers the candidates management training in its Equinor Academy, a leadership training course offered to the company’s new employees. Equinor’s representative stated: In some schools, either you are a winner or you are not included. But those pupils who get skilled teachers can perform extremely well at school. What we can contribute to the programme is recruitment, because we are so attractive. The interviews with university representatives indicated that TFN was a means of providing income for the department, which faced financial challenges when TFN was established, but the original plans involving financial compensation for the department were not realised. The economic interest in the TFN collaboration was replaced by a more academic interest in the programme as an alternative teacher education model. A university interviewee explained: ‘The primary idea at the time of the establishing of the programme was to make money. The department was in a difficult economic situation, and much was done to provide income.’ According to the informant, the department had negotiated a gold-lined agreement with the educational authorities, but the agreement was abrogated. The interviews showed that, without the prospect of making money, the university most likely would not have collaborated in TFN. One university representative stated: If the department had not believed that this [TFN] was a good deal that gave income, we could not have gone into this, because the finances of the department demanded that we could not go into something that did not yield a profit. But we made no money on TFN. There was an increasing deficit because we had to compensate for the candidates’ ending up in schools where they needed extra follow-up and attention. As public higher education institutions in Norway are supposed to be non-profit organisations, this is a remarkable statement, but the management was concerned about earning income for the department to cover previous years’ deficits.

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Substantive autonomy Another theme reflecting the concerns expressed earlier embraces substantive autonomy and institutional roles. The findings show that curriculum design and admission requirements were among the matters negotiated by the actors. The educational authorities own and manage TFN, and they have developed a study plan that addresses matters they believe to be important areas of knowledge for working teachers. These include topics such as classroom management and behavioural regulation. The educational authorities take responsibility for training the candidates in these courses, both in the Summer Institute and during the two-year programme in Norway. However, this is in addition to the candidates’ formal teacher education. The interviewee from the educational authority explained: We have in one way copied the TF in England’s model … Previously, we attended their Summer Institute, but feedback suggested that the seminars and lectures did not match the Norwegian school system. We have put together our own Summer Institute now. We are in England, anyway, to get the candidates to spend time together and make them feel like a cohort. In England, they are taught by former TF candidates, by faculty from the teacher education in Norway and by professors from the University of Manchester. So, we have our own programme there. However, as already mentioned, the admission requirements were set in collaboration with Equinor. A university interviewee noted: The candidates should potentially be employed by Equinor, and they wanted the best. Equinor has a very clear business plan, like every other business company. They saw an opportunity to recruit future employees through TFN, and this implied that the candidates had to be highly competent. As a financial contributor to TFN, Equinor thus partly governs the programme, albeit from a distance, for instance by setting requirements for admission. Equinor’s interviewee said that the company is scrupulous about not interfering in matters pertaining to schools or teacher education as that is a public, governmental responsibility and thus a highly sensitive issue in the Norwegian school discourse. The Equinor interviewee stated: What is very important in all our projects, not just TFN, is the awareness that the school owner runs the project, not us. We contribute funds to initiate projects, but it is the school owner who owns the educational system, and this role perception is important in Norway. What we can contribute is our attractiveness. There are so many highly competent science graduates who would like to work for us – that’s our contribution.

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Concerning the collaboration between the actors, the university interviewees stressed that they were interested in TFN’s alternative educational model and in sharing knowledge with the other actors, but such collaboration was perceived as difficult. The educational authorities and Equinor were perceived as acting on their authority as project owner and financer without inviting the university into extensive cooperation. The university experienced little communication between itself and the educational authorities and Equinor. A university interviewee said: Probably, the transfer of knowledge or learning is not the goal of the programme. If so, you could make connections crisscross. However, there were no lines across the three collaborators; everything went through the educational authorities. The university interviewee was positive about Equinor’s providing a clear science-subjects profile for the programme’s candidates. Summing up, the findings suggest divergent interests and experiences related to the initiation and establishment of TFN. In the next section, I discuss these findings in detail.

Discussion and conclusion This chapter investigated TFN, an educational innovation introduced into a historically social-democratic and egalitarian educational system that is becoming more market oriented in line with global trends (Dobbins et al., 2011; Olson & Slaughter, 2014; Schultze-Cleven & Olson, 2017). In exploring TFN’s establishment, I examined the diverse dimensions of governance operating in empirical situations (Olsen, 2007) and studied TFN as an illustration of the marketisation of higher education in Norway. Three clear themes emerged: the balance of power between the cooperating institutions, funding and financing, and the substantial autonomy of the institutions. The state has traditionally been powerful in the governance of higher education in Norway, but other governance rationales have also become relevant (Olsen, 2007). Several structural changes have occurred in the higher education system since 2003, including the Quality reform, which has pushed higher education in a more market-liberalised direction (Schulze-Cleven & Olson, 2017). These have provided room for innovations in education, such as TFN. In that case, the university was drawn towards the market because of the constant struggle for funding (Dobbins et al., 2011). Norway’s higher education system has been described as successfully combining economic growth with social protection, inclusion and equality (Christensen et al., 2014). Thus, it is interesting to consider how the general altruistic mission of TFAll – to make a difference – is redefined in the Norwegian context. In Norway, TFN is framed as a remedy to the science-subject crisis and thus as

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enhancing the recruitment of capable science-subject and mathematic teachers as well as engineers for industry. The science-subject perspective on TFN emerged for several reasons, including, importantly, Equinor’s concerns about the future recruitment of skilled employees. The findings reveal several tensions and contradictions between the actors and systems involved in TFN. These are related to the financing of the programme, the actors’ educational policies, the recruitment of teachers and a lack of communication. The findings illustrate how diverse models of governance interact (Dobbins et al., 2011; Olsen, 2007) and raise an interesting question regarding the balance points between various models of governance, that is, between bureaucracy, professionalism and market orientation. Will Norwegian teacher education shift in the direction of market-oriented solutions, or will the country embrace stronger administrative control? (Elstad, 2019). As mentioned earlier, arguments for market-based solutions are rare in the Norwegian debate on higher education. The proportioning and governance of teacher education is still seen as a national responsibility (Elstad, 2019). The findings show that marketisation is not necessarily synonymous with the state’s retreat. Countries (or institutions) may be confronted with more market and government influence simultaneously (Dobbins et al., 2011). When the educational authorities suggested establishing TFN as a product purely of their organisation, the state bureaucracy thwarted them (Olsen, 2007). As a consequence, the project owner (the educational authorities) had to partner with a teacher education institution when establishing the programme. Furthermore, admission requirements, traditionally regulated by the state in Norway, were in TFN greatly influenced by Equinor. The principle of equal rights to education at all levels is deeply rooted in Norway’s higher education tradition. Higher education is free and universal, regardless of socio-economic status or previous achievements. Equinor’s determining the admission requirements, so that only candidates with excellent academic results have the opportunity to apply, transgresses an important principle in Norwegian higher education. Equinor demands that candidates have master’s or PhD degrees in addition to assessing them through its own assessment centre, thus securing the Equinor ‘standard’. The candidates are carefully selected in the Equinor assessment centre at its headquarters outside Oslo. Although Equinor stresses the company’s corporate social responsibility by engaging in TFN, the findings suggest that, most importantly, Equinor considered the possibilities for recruitment of future employees when they entered into collaboration on TFN, thus illustrating one aspect of a marketised governance logic (Dobbins & Knill, 2017; Olsen, 2007). The results show that Equinor is committed to managing its role in TFN in a politically correct manner. Private sponsorship of public schools is unusual and little accepted in Norway, which means that Equinor does not finance the operation of schools, teacher education or teachers’ salaries in TFN (or any other programmes or schemes). Nevertheless, TFN candidates attend the

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Equinor-financed Summer Institute even though it is part of their overall teacher education, and, as the interviews revealed, it is a credit course. This illustrates how state-centred and market-oriented modes of governance of higher education may be expressed (Dobbins et al., 2011; Olsen, 2007). However, the introduction of a private enterprise and the municipality’s entrepreneurial role in the TFN collaboration represent an anomaly in the governing of Norwegian higher education. The study shows that several aspects of governing TFN constitute a ‘complex assemblage of diverse forces’ (Olmedo et al., 2013, p. 507). The actors all had divergent interests. The educational authorities, a driving force behind TFN, have framed it as a way to recruit and retain science and mathematics teachers, while management recruitment and career planning are somewhat dimmed in TFN. The university seems to have obtained a somewhat declining role in the collaboration while Equinor’s presence in TFN is framed as part of the company’s corporate social responsibility. Because TFN is a tiny programme with few openings (between 13 and 20 students each year), one might understand it as part of the marketing of a competent and progressive educational authority and the marketing of a large energy company taking social responsibility. Røvik (2011) employs viruses as a metaphor for understand organisations’ handling of ideas and how organisational ideas mutate, transform and develop new forms depending on the conditions where they settle. In this study, I have highlighted the establishment of the programme in a Norwegian context, where the programme most likely serves a different purpose than in other national contexts.

Note 1 Olsen (2007) also suggests a fourth model in which universities operate as representative democracies based on principles of direct democracy and large-scale student participation, through which universities strive to enhance democracy in society generally. However, as noted by Dobbins and Knill (2017), elements of student participation and democracy can also be found variously in the other three models.

References Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. Christensen, T., Gornitzka, Å., & Maassen, P. (2014). Gobal pressures and national cultures. In P. Mattei (Ed.) University adaptation in difficult economic times (pp. 30–51). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dobbins, M., & Knill, C. (2017). Higher education governance in France, Germany, and Italy: Change and variation in the impact of transnational soft governance. Policy and Society, 36(1), 67–88. Dobbins, M., Knill, C., & Vögtle, E.M. (2011). An analytical framework for the crosscountry comparison of higher education governance. Higher Education, 62(5), 665–683.

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Ellis, V., Maguire, M., Trippestad, T.A., Liu, Y., Yang, X., & Zeichner, K. (2016). Teaching other people’s children, elsewhere, for a while: The rhetoric of a travelling educational reform. Journal of Education Policy, 31(1), 60–80. Elstad, E. (2009). Styring, ansvarliggjøring og ansvarsfraskrivelse [Governance, accountability and disclaimers]. In E.L. Dale (Ed.), Læreplan i et forskningsperspektiv [The curriculum in a research perspective] (pp. 116–153). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Elstad, E. (2019). Framtidens lærerutdanning: Trender og mulige scenarier [Future teacher education: Trends and possible scenarios]. In E. Elstad (Ed.), Lærerutdanninger i nordiske land [Teacher education in the Nordic countries] (pp. 317–341). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Enders, J., de Boer, H., & Leisyte, L. (2008). On striking the right notes: Shifts in governance and the organisational transformation of universities. In A. Amaral et al. (Eds.), From Governance to Identity (pp. 113–129). Dordrecht: Springer. Hovdhaugen, E. (2013). Widening participation in Norwegian higher education. Report submitted to HEFCE and OFFA. Leicester: CFE. Maassen, P., & Stensaker, B. (2011). The knowledge triangle, European higher education policy logics and policy implications. Higher Education, 61(6), 757–769. Maxwell, J.A. (2012). A realist approach for qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Ministry of Education. (2016). Rapport: GNIST Indikatorrapport. Retrieved on 9 April 2019 from www.regjeringen.no/contentassets/6b3b8534bb6749558747a51ab77d23a e/gnistindikatorrapport-2016_.pdf. Nesje, K. (2017). Motivation and professional identity in a context of multiple career choices. Doctoral dissertation, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Oslo. Nicolini, D. (2009). Zooming in and out: Studying practices by switching theoretical lenses and trailing connections. Organization Studies, 30(12), 1391–1418. Olmedo, A. (2017). Something old, not much new, and a lot borrowed: Philanthropy, business, and the changing roles of government in global education policy networks. Oxford Review of Education, 43(1), 69–87. Olmedo, A., Bailey, P.L., & Ball, S.J. (2013). To infinity and beyond …: Heterarchical governance, the Teach For All network in Europe and the making of profits and minds. European Educational Research Journal, 12(4), 492–512. Olsen, J.P. (2007). The institutional dynamics of the European university. In P. Maassen & J.P. Olsen (Eds.), University dynamics and European integration (pp. 25–54). Dordrecht: Springer. Olson, J., & Slaughter, S. (2014). Forms of capitalism and creating world-class universities. In A. Maldonado-Maldonado & R.M. Bassett (Eds.), The forefront of international higher education (pp. 267–279). Dordrecht: Springer. Røvik, K.A. (2011). From fashion to virus: An alternative theory of organizations’ handling of management ideas. Organization Studies, 32(5), 631–653. Schulze-Cleven, T., & Olson, J.R. (2017). Worlds of higher education transformed: Toward varieties of academic capitalism. Higher Education, 73(6), 813–831. Scott, J., Trujillo, T., & Rivera, M.D. (2016). Reframing Teach For America: A conceptual framework for the next generation of scholarship. Education Policy Analysis Archives/Archivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas, 24, 1–33. Slaughter, S., & Cantwell, B. (2012). Transatlantic moves to the market: The United States and the European Union. Higher Education, 63(5), 583–606. Slaughter, S., & Leslie, L.L. (1997). Academic capitalism: Politics, policies, and the entrepreneurial university. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

78 Katrine Nesje Statistics Norway. (2019). Utdanning - statistikk - SSB. [Education - statistics - SSB]. Retrieved from https://www.ssb.no/utdanning/statistikker/utgrs/aar/2019-12-19. Tiplic, D., Brandmo, C., & Elstad, E. (2015). Antecedents of Norwegian beginning teachers’ turnover intentions. Cambridge Journal of Education, 45(4), 451–474. Vibe, N., Aamodt, P.O., & Carlsten, T.C. (2009). Å være ungdomsskolelærer i Norge: Resultater fra OECDs internasjonale studie av undervisning og læring (TALIS) [Being a secondary school teacher in Norway: Results from TALIS]. Oslo: NIFU STEP.

Chapter 5

The Teach For All ‘brand’ Exploring TFA’s successful transferability through case studies of Teach South Africa and Teach First Jenny Elliott Introduction ‘The revolution has truly gone global!’ exclaimed Brett Wigdortz, the inaugural CEO of Teach First UK in his book Success against the Odds (Wigdortz, 2012, p. 240). He has a point. Teach For All has, in 2020, managed to establish a global network of 53 different partners on six continents. As if to explain how this has been possible, Teach For All outlines the ‘unifying principles’ and states that ‘while each network partner is independent and locally led, all partners commit to … programmatic principles’. At the time of this research, the programmatic principles included recruiting and selecting leaders; training and developing participants; placing participants as teachers; accelerating the leadership of alumni; and driving measurable impact. However, the detail of these is not given. Instead, underneath the programmatic principles are listed the ‘four common organisational design features’, apparently in common with all network partners:    

Operating a non-profit enterprise Maintaining independence Forging public and private sector partnerships Ensuring representation and inclusiveness.

These principles, the website boasts, are ‘critical to the success of our approach and mission’ (Teach For All, 2018). In the 30 years since Wendy Kopp’s undergraduate thesis was developed into Teach For America in 1990, the organisation has become a global phenomenon, with network partners united by common principles and features appearing in culturally, historically, politically, and economically diverse parts of the world. Each partner organisation is established within the same approximate framework, yet with a slightly different name, depending on the country within which it is situated. This chapter, through an exploration of case studies of two of the network partners, Teach South Africa and Teach First UK, located in seemingly very different economic, historical, and political contexts, seeks to expose the ways in which the organisation has indeed managed to go global. What, above and

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beyond the ‘unifying principles’, has allowed such global success? Teach First in the UK and Teach South Africa were chosen for this study, as their contexts are so very different: one is from the global North, one from the global South; one is in Europe, one in Africa; one a former coloniser, one formerly colonised, one an economically ‘developed’ country, one ‘developing’ (with an acknowledgement that these terms are highly contested and problematic – see Andreotti, 2006); and both with distinct political trajectories, social contexts, histories, and approaches to teacher education. The case studies involved interviewing one of the Board members of Teach For All, a regional manager from Teach First UK and from Teach South Africa and five Teach First UK beginner teachers. One Teach South Africa beginner teacher was interviewed and information from five further Teach South Africa beginner teachers was captured with questionnaires. Moreover, Teach First UK, Teach South Africa, and Teach For All websites were explored in order to gather further data for the case studies. The data provide insights into subtle forces beyond the ‘common design features’ and ‘programmatic principles’, which illuminate the ways in which Teach For All has set itself up to be ‘country-proof’, able to inveigle itself into almost any nation state across the world. Drawing on a comparative structure for analysing Teach For All network partners developed by Blumenreich and Gupta (2015), this chapter begins by exploring the different teacher educational contexts within South Africa and the UK to establish the diversity of the initial teacher education landscapes. I then explain the case study data collection and analysis processes. The neoliberal organisational structures and institutional discourse, which emerge from the data, are then discussed, as these provide key insights into, and explanations for, Teach For All’s global ‘revolution’ (Wigdortz, 2012, p. 240).

Initial teacher education histories in South Africa and the UK From the earliest stages of teacher education up until the rise of a democratic government and the end of the apartheid era in 1994, the system for training teachers in South Africa was deeply fragmented, and framed by issues of race (Modiba, 1997; Shafer & Wilmot, 2012; Wolhuter, 2006). For whites, the first formal schooling started as early as 1658, with the arrival of Dutch colonisers, and the early teacher training colleges were established towards the end of the nineteenth century. For some ‘non-whites’, formal education came through the churches and was run by missionaries from Europe. The National Party’s rise to power in 1948 brought with it apartheid, a fierce racial segregation programme, which included the creation of ten separate ‘homelands’ for different ethnic groups, each with their own government, schools, universities, and teacher education systems. In the black homelands, teacher education was often the only way for a young person to gain further education and, consequently, the teacher education colleges flourished. These trained more teachers than were needed and black teacher unemployment was high. The homeland

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colleges were not as academically rigorous or prestigious as the white-dominated universities and were critiqued for their unreflective pedagogies, which promoted rote learning and submission to authority. Wolhuter (2006) suggested that they were deliberately set up in this way, to disempower and oppress the black population and maintain the dominance of the whites. Post-apartheid education policy from 1994 was underpinned by social reconstructionist values aiming to ‘unite all people as equals in a democratic and prosperous South Africa’ (Shafer & Wilmot, 2012, p. 44). The introduction of the first National Curriculum in 2005 brought with it a shift from teacher- to child-centred pedagogies and a need to provide in-service training to existing teachers, as well as radically overhaul the extant racially divided teacher training provision. The dramatic shift in curriculum and pedagogy created fertile ground for what Popkewitz (2000) terms the ‘indigenous foreigner’, with predominantly Western curricula models being ‘imported ... and hybridised for South Africa’s specific needs’ (Shafer & Wilmot, 2012, p. 44). Teacher recruitment remains, in 2020, an ongoing challenge in South Africa, with a dramatic reduction in teacher graduates – 70,000 as apartheid ended in 1994 and only 5,942 in 2009 and many schools employing unqualified or underqualified teachers. Subjects that particularly struggle to recruit teachers are Maths, Science, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) (Savides, 2017). The Integrated Strategic Planning Framework for Teacher Education and Development in South Africa 2011–2025 reports of ‘an absolute shortage of teachers and a relative shortage of teachers qualified and competent enough to teach specific subjects or learning areas (primarily mathematics, the sciences, technology, and languages)’ (DBE, 2011, p. 15, emphasis added). It is evident how Teach South Africa, founded in 2009 by members of the African Leadership Initiative (ALI), and training its predominantly black ambassadors to teach the shortage subjects of Maths, Science, ICT, and English, fits within the South African initial teacher education landscape. The ALI website states: In 2009, when the country was faced with an urgent need for quality education, and the government was struggling to cope with the shortage of quality teachers for gateway subjects such as Maths and Science, a few of the ALI Fellows put their heads together and sought to find a solution … Teach SA is an induction programme that recruits the most talented graduates fresh out of tertiary, and trains them to become great ambassadors in the field of teaching. (ALI, 2019) Surprisingly, despite its commitment to recruiting predominantly black graduates into the shortage areas, Teach South Africa is not mentioned in the governmentissued information, publicity, and marketing for teacher recruitment in South Africa. It was celebrated for its five-year membership on the Teach For All website

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in 2014, yet mysteriously, Teach South Africa has disappeared from the network and is no longer listed as one of the 53 official partners. At some point between 2015 and 2017, when the data gathering for this research project took place, its relationship with Teach For All had eroded. Nonetheless, the case study of this former, small network partner still provides a useful insight into common Teach For All organisational structures and discourses. Understandably, initial teacher education in the UK has had a very different trajectory compared with South Africa’s. Education policy has not been overtly, deliberately, or aggressively informed by racially divisive ideologies in the way that it has in South Africa. The UK instead has a colonial past and a status as economically ‘developed’. It has been prey to different policy decisions and ideological mores. The UK’s ‘turbulent and contested’ history of initial teacher education has been compared to a pendulum, swinging between the binaries of university-led and school-led provision (Robinson, 2006, p. 19). A professional debate about the balance between practice and theory began properly between World Wars I and II (1918–1939) as fears were expressed that teacher training had become too theoretical and university-based (Robinson, 2006). This debate has continued until the present day of writing this chapter in 2019. A variety of stake-holders including university teacher educators, teaching unions and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate (HMI) were able to take a lead on shaping teacher education during the 1970s, a period described as one of ‘ideological confusion’. During this same period, the relationship between schools and universities was being redefined and the language of ‘partnership’ began to emerge along with a variety of different routes into teacher accreditation (Furlong et al., 2000, p. 20). During the 1980s, the conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher oversaw a number of policies, which started to introduce neoliberal ideologies (Landman and Ozga, 1995; Menter, Brisard, & Smith, 2006), which paved the way for different stakeholders to enter the initial teacher education arena. The New Labour government (1997–2010) further perpetuated neoliberal educational policies, with increased government control over initial teacher education, deliberately diversified teacher education provision and a market-based approach to schools, universities, and teacher training providers (Beauchamp et al., 2015; Furlong, 2013). The House of Commons (2017) and Nuffield Foundation (Allen, Belfield, Greaves, Sharp & Walker, 2014) reports into teacher recruitment issues in England highlight teacher shortages in Maths, Science, English and Modern Languages, and the challenges schools in particular geographical areas have in recruiting and retaining qualified teachers. Teach First UK, established in 2002, combining school- and university-based teacher education (one foot comfortably and securely in each of the two practice/theory camps) and recruiting graduates for shortage subjects in hard to staff regions of the country, has found itself a place within this landscape. This very brief exploration of the different teacher education histories and landscapes in South Africa and the UK serves to illustrate that within very

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different countries with complex and diverse educational contexts, histories, and policies, a Teach For All partner has nonetheless managed to establish itself and settle. Like ivy, able to adapt and change to the soil and weather conditions, the network partner appears to fit within its environment to a greater or lesser extent. The ‘unifying principles’ mentioned on the Teach For All website, then, are evidently not so rigidly unifying that the model will only fit within certain teacher training landscapes. There is sufficient flexibility within the model. Nonetheless, it is apparent that not all partners go on to flourish within their respective contexts, as is evidenced by the elapse of Teach South Africa’s Teach For All membership. Following the ivy analogy, this fragile tendril appears, despite its initial budding strength, to have subsequently withered.

The case studies There were a number of abortive attempts at gathering data for this study. Initially aiming to establish a teacher/school/class linking project between Teach First UK and Teach South Africa, the researcher established a Facebook group for a small group of beginner teachers in Teach South Africa and Teach First UK to discuss their experiences in their schools and on their respective programmes, and to explore what it might mean to be a teacher within the Teach For All network. It was difficult to find teachers in both organisations who were willing to engage with the project, however. Of those that did, only two posted to the Facebook group conversation on a regular basis until this eventually petered out. Proposals to organise a collaborative professional link between beginner teachers in the two organisations received a lukewarm response from managers at Teach First UK and key personnel at Teach For All, as well as from the beginner teachers themselves. After the researcher had fundraised for a collaborative link, eventually eight UK teachers went to visit Teach South Africa and spend time with the Teach South African teachers in their schools. The Teach South Africa teachers were unable to pay a reciprocal visit to the UK and as time went by, any plans for an ongoing, sustainable link faded, as the teachers moved away from their respective organisations or took on leadership responsibilities within their schools, which left them with no time for extra-curricular activities and projects. This raised questions about how genuinely unifying, global, and interconnected the Teach For All network partners and their teachers really are, although this is beyond the scope of this particular chapter. Nonetheless, there were enough participants within the link project for the capturing of some meaningful data. The original research question was ‘What does it mean to be a Teach For All teacher?’ Initially, the Teach South Africa director was open to having teachers within his organisation interviewed, but when the researcher visited Johannesburg with eight Teach First UK teachers in July 2015, Teach South Africa’s relationship with Teach For All had unravelled and Teach South Africa was no longer one of the official network

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partners (the cause of which remains opaque). The director, who was no longer open to having the beginner teachers interviewed as the research question was no longer relevant, eventually acquiesced to the teachers completing questionnaires and this fit within the ethical framework that had been agreed and approved. This was not ideal but allowed for some useful input from the Teach South Africa teachers and meant that the researchers’ commitment to including ‘Southern voices’ (Spivak, 1988; Tuhiwai-Smith, 1999) within the research was possible. The main pages from the Teach For All, Teach First UK, and Teach South Africa websites were explored, in order to capture key messages and language, jargon, and images presented. The researchers’ data-gathering approaches are depicted in Table 5.1. The researcher transcribed the interviews with the Teach First UK beginner teachers, Teach First UK and Teach South Africa middle managers, and the Teach For All board member, an American, former Goldman Sachs employee, who was also the founder and CEO of Teach First UK. The researcher then collated the answers from the Teach South Africa beginner teacher questionnaires, and explored key language and messages from the websites, examining the data for recurring themes, with the following eleven categories emerging: 1 2 3 4

teacher identity; philanthropy; emotions about teaching; money;

Table 5.1 Gathering of data for case studies into Teach First UK and Teach South Africa Teach For All

UK

South Africa

B interview

N interview

L interview

Board member

TF regional Director

TSA Director

5 Teach First UK teacher interviews

Teach South Africa teacher interview

4 TF year 1 participants

Year 3 participant

1 TF year 2 ambassador

4 Teach South Africa teacher questionnaires

Teach First UK website

Teach South Africa website

Y1 participants Teach For All website

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5 6 7 8

context and government; teacher professional and personal development; views about teaching; messages from their network organisation (Teach First UK or Teach South Africa); 9 values of and for education; 10 networks; and 11 teaching as a global profession. The researcher used critical discourse analysis as a lens for exploring the data gathered. It is an analytical tool, which is of particular interest to scholars who are concerned with challenging the status quo, exposing power relations and inequities, and demystifying ideologies (Fairclough & Fairclough, 2012; Wodak & Meyer, 2009). Discourse analysis involves examining the vocabulary and language that is used, and the context within which the language is situated. It suggests a dialectical and dynamic relationship between language and actions: actions can change and reinforce vocabulary and language and the reverse is also true: the type and use of language within certain contexts can prompt practical and active changes within its immediate and wider environs. An example of this is the way in which ‘performative’ (Ball, 2003) language from the world of business has crept into education, health, and welfare. ‘Targets’, ‘measurable impact’, ‘accountability’, ‘performance’, ‘marketing’, and ‘impact’, among other key words and phrases, are now almost everyday discourse within what are traditionally more caring, philanthropic professions (Ball & Junemann, 2012, p. 68). With this new language comes also a change in practice and procedures within their respective workplaces. The bosses at educational institutions, hospitals, and social services in the UK, for example, may now challenge and replace employees and systems whose working standards do not meet externally imposed targets and expectations. Critics have suggested that the spread of neoliberal employment practices has been facilitated by such changes in discourses (Ball & Junemann, 2012; Crouch, 2011; Harvey, 2005). Wodak and Meyer’s notion of an ‘institutional discourse’, defined as ‘an institutionalised way of talking that regulates and reinforces action and thereby exerts power’ (Wodak & Meyer, 2009, p. 3), is of particular interest to this study, as this chapter now goes on to explore two key findings from the data – firstly, the neoliberal organisational structures of both Teach First UK and Teach South Africa, and secondly, the ‘institutional discourse’ that emerges from the data.

Neoliberal organisational structures Harvey (2005) has written about the role of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and transnational corporations such as Shell and Starbucks in spreading a neoliberal ideology around the world, resulting in neoliberal

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principles and practices as normal and commonplace. Critics see Teach For All as an inevitable embodiment of such a pervasive ideology and have written about the neoliberal nature of the organisation and its network partners (Ahmann, 2015; Ball, 2012; Friedrich, Walter, & Colmenares, 2015; Lefebvre & Thomas, 2017). La Londe et al. (2015) claim that Teach For All actually plays a deliberate, active, and dynamic role in perpetuating and spreading neoliberal ideologies and global education policy, and refer to Teach For All as a ‘massive global intermediary organisational network’ through which global neoliberalism takes root (p. 11). The ivy tendrils analogy is again relevant with this notion – a hardy organism that seeds itself and then gradually secures and spreads itself firmly and tenaciously into its environment, potentially changing the very nature of its environs as it does so (Southern, 2018). The organisational principles and design features on the Teach For All website of maintaining independence and forging public and private sector partnerships embody particular key principles of neoliberalism as explored by Harvey (2005) and Crouch (2011) and were evident from the website and interview data. In terms of maintaining independence, Teach South Africa has kept itself independent from the South African Department of Education. It does not have the Department’s endorsement on its website, nor, as already stated, is it mentioned on the Department’s website in relation to available routes into teacher training and yet the CEO of Teach South Africa explained: We worked with the Minister of Education when she was still the regional minister. In the five years, TEACH has grown very strong and we owe that to the Gauteng Department of Education. We support what the government is doing, we don’t work against it. Teach First UK, on the other hand, has government funding and is endorsed as a route into teaching on the Department for Education website. As well as this, it receives money from a number of different sources, listed as ‘platinum’, ‘gold’, ‘silver’, and ‘bronze’, depending on the amount of financial support given, allowing the organisation a level of fiscal robustness and independence if the governmental, or other funding streams, dry up. Similarly, in terms of forging public and private sector partnerships, Teach South Africa lists the following supporters on its website: Samsung; Ed.org.za; Zenex Foundation; Youthzone; BCG; Gauteng Education Department; Deloitte; ABSA; Argo; Kaya fm; Emzingo Group; The Saje Foundation; Protec; Barloworld; Born to Be; The Kommunity Desk Company; African Rainbow Minerals; GK; Stanlib; Developed and maintained by Flow Communications. The middle manager, when asked about the inception of Teach South Africa explained: They said we need somebody who is in education, we need somebody who has worked in NGOs, we need somebody who comes from the business side and then they collaborated and worked on this.

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Such strategic partnership development is evident as more mature and further embedded within Teach First UK as the middle manager stated: We need the, the innovative social enterprises, we need school leadership, we need policy decision makers, we need philanthropists, wealthy individuals, we need kind of corporate social responsibility. We need this constellation effect to actually make the change. Teach First UK also gains financial and pro bono support from philanthropy, trusts and foundations, corporate partners, and third sector partnerships. There are evidently too many of these to name individually on the Teach First UK home page, in the way that the Teach South Africa supporters are listed. The data indicates that Teach For All’s ‘common organisational design principles’ are embedded within the organisational models of both Teach South Africa and Teach First UK. This supports critics’ claim that the organisation is underpinned predominantly with neoliberal ways of being. As with the flexibility within the ‘unifying principles’ which allow Teach South Africa and Teach First UK to fit adeptly within their respective initial teacher education contexts, there is also a flexibility within the neoliberal parameters given. These appear to be ‘unifying’ enough to create a common neoliberal framework for the network partners, yet at the same time, liberal enough to allow each partner to respond sensitively to local support opportunities.

Institutional discourse Messages about elite teacher/leaders and philanthropy recur within the data and help to create an institutional discourse specific to Teach For All and its partner organisations. The calibre of the graduates recruited to both Teach First and Teach South Africa, and the rigorous selection processes undertaken, are recurring themes from within the data. These serve to frame the teachers as elite, special, and ‘other’: Outstanding, dynamic, and committed graduates from leading South African universities. (Teach South Africa website) Teach South Africa has a vigorous application and interview process to ensure selection of the highest quality of candidates. (Teach South Africa website) [in the recruitment process, they have to show that] they have a commitment to social justice, humility, and empathy. (Teach First UK director interview)

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Both organisations have different terminology for their trainee teachers (Teach First UK – ‘participants’; Teach South Africa – ‘ambassadors’), yet in common is the fact that the beginner teachers are rarely referred to as ‘teachers’. Whenever the word ‘teacher’ is used, it is rarely on its own but instead is either preceded with adjectives such as ‘great’, ‘dedicated’, ‘brilliant’, or succeeded with the word ‘leader’. The teachers refer to themselves as: High calibre with a certain personality … of a certain value system, quality, lucky, ambitious, good leader, resilient. (Teach First UK beginner teachers) Adaptable, strong, confident in their own skin, a person up for a challenge, assertive, loves children, cool, intelligent, down-to-earth, motivated, idealistic-in-a-good-way, resilient, innovative, having a certain maturity, respectful, accountable, technology-friendly, disciplined, being able to learn and be a good leader, being able to create positive, and loving energy around your learners. (Teach South Africa beginner teachers) And the managers within the respective organisations stated proudly: Ambassadors have left good impressions on the school and some sort of legacy. When it comes to their commitment and work ethics, the principals want them. (Teach South Africa) Most of them could do anything they want (and have turned down) glamorous places such as Westminster, opting instead for an £18K starting salary. (Teach First UK) The language used to describe the beginner teachers serves to set them apart from, as well as superior to, teachers who are recruited into the profession through other more traditional teacher training routes. This has been commented upon by critics such as Barnes et al. (2016), Blumenreich and Gupta (2015), Labaree (2006), La Londe et al. (2015), McConney et al. (2012) and Rice et al. (2015). Further setting the participants/ambassadors apart from ‘teachers’ is that they are fasttracked into ‘leadership’ and are frequently referred to, and self-refer, as ‘leaders’ or ‘teacher leaders’, rather than simply ‘teachers’ in both Teach South Africa and Teach First UK data sets. A philanthropic institutional discourse operating on three different levels also emerged from the data. The three levels are: micro – the casting of the work of the individual teacher as a charitable/heroic venture; meso – the nature of the overall organisational ‘mission’ of challenging educational inequality; and macro – the corporate social responsibility of the benefactors networked within the organisation.

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McConney et al. (2012) and Rice et al. (2015) suggest that Teach For All has a very successful marketing campaign that appeals to a make-a-difference sense of social justice and altruism. It has a saviour, moral approach (Blumenreich & Rogers, 2016; Ahmann, 2015) which is framed in Teach For Australia marketing strategies as ‘ambition meets conscience’ (Rice et al., 2015). This rhetoric is evident within both Teach South Africa and Teach First UK data sets: a podcast on the Teach South Africa website referred to teachers as ‘The heroes of 2015 … who volunteer not just their time but their lives’. The middle manager from Teach South Africa suggested that teaching was ‘Beyond a job – it is a service’. One Teach South Africa ambassador claimed that she was ‘Working with children that wouldn’t necessarily have teachers that cared about them that much’. The Teach First UK website proposed: It’s never too late to do something life-changing … Apply now to transform the lives of young people who need it most … Everyone can remember one incredible teacher who made a difference to their life. On the meso level, the words ‘mission’ and ‘vision’ are common within the institutional discourse. Teach First UK and Teach South Africa beginner teachers and middle managers repeatedly used the words in their interviews/ questionnaires and they appeared on each organisation’s website. Tackling ‘educational inequality’ (Teach For All, 2019) is the mission common to all network partners according to the Teach For All website: we believe that educational inequity is a global issue that not only affects local communities but also impacts our collective welfare by dividing societies and weakening economies … [with each network partner] working towards educational equity and excellence for all of their nation’s children. ‘Educational inequality’ as a universal problem, with Teach For All the answer, is signalled: There are similarities in the root causes of educational inequity around the world and we’ve found that solutions are shareable across borders. … We believe our approach to leadership development is integral to addressing both educational inequity and its root causes Through repetition of undefined words and phrases such as ‘hero’, ‘brilliant’, ‘life-changing’, ‘educational inequity’, a charitable, salvation discourse is created, which then serves to frame and define the organisation and its work. Like a magnet, this then works on the macro level, by attracting multinationals, businesses, and philanthropic individuals, who want their name to be associated with such a worthy and meaningful global cause. Who could possibly argue

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with working to make children’s lives better? Or wanting education to be improved? Or wanting poverty to end? Sasse and Trahan (2007) and Smith (1994) have written about the ways in which corporate social responsibility may be used to raise status and give organisations a powerful and strategic edge within markets. Similarly, ‘new’ philanthropy is big business (Henley, 2012), as it publicises its name next to the worthy cause it supports and also expects a certain amount of control over, and voice/influence within the organisation it is funding (Ball, 2008). Philanthropy, playing out at micro, meso and macro levels within Teach For All and its network partners, brings with it a robust and recongnisable institutional discourse, which has fundamentally changed the framing of teaching and teachers’ work, and created the construct of a global problem of educational inequality, combatted by a ‘shared problems, shared solution’ approach (Ahmann, 2015, p. 3).

Discussion Ball and Junemann (2012) write about a ‘generic set of concepts, language and practices that is recognisable in various forms’ in their discussion about the ways in which educational policy takes root at a global level (p. 115). This is helpful for making sense of the ways in which Teach For All, with its ‘unifying principles’, has managed to spread so successfully and to such seemingly different parts of the world. The ‘unifying principles’ appear to be clear enough to create an organisation with a strong neoliberal framing and very distinctive institutional discourse and yet generically vague enough to allow flexibility with the ways in which it is interpreted at the local level. Despite the very different initial teacher education histories of South Africa and the UK, there is enough Teach For All organisational flexibility for the individual network partners to respond to local teacher training needs and the agenda and interests of its sponsors and allies in the private sector and in government. In South Africa, a national shortage of black graduates training to teach Maths, Science, ICT, and English, is addressed through the endeavours of Teach South Africa: the recruits were overwhelmingly black and the subjects they were training to teach in were the national shortage subjects. In the UK, Teach First is also set up to train teachers for the UK shortage subjects. It places them in geographical areas that otherwise struggle to recruit. It is positioned strategically, with a foot in each of the two camps of university-based and school-based teacher training, ready to adapt and respond to potential changes in educational policy, which may yet favour one over the other. The neoliberal and philanthropic framing allows space for both Teach First UK and Teach South Africa to seek out, or be approached by, the most beneficial partners and stakeholders from within their local and national contexts, setting them up to maintain a degree of autonomy and resilience, by not relying solely on just one source of support or income – the risk is spread.

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The institutional discourse creates a universal sense of identity, through use of purposefully vague terms such as ‘vision’, ‘mission’, ‘educational inequity’, and ‘leadership’. This Teach For All jargon creates a sense of unity and common purpose, while at the same time, leaves itself open to different interpretations so that each network partner can enact the discourse in ways appropriate to their own specific context. Teach For All’s unifying principles and institutional discourse create the warp and weft of a fabric onto which any network partner’s motif could be printed. It has managed to set itself up as a brand with features as distinctive as the giant yellow M for ‘McDonalds’ with its own identity, transferable to any context where there are teachers who need to be trained and a landscape accustomed to neoliberal ways of working and being.

Conclusion It would be possible to finish the chapter now, having analysed and reflected upon the ways in which Teach For All has managed to transfer so successfully to different locations around the world. Yet in doing so, the author would be missing a chance to discuss at a deeper and more critical level, the implications of Teach For All’s global success. Why has it done this, and what are its ramifications? Gramsci’s understanding of philanthropic endeavours is that they serve to divert attention away from an awareness that wealth is distributed unequally and mainly finds itself in the hands of the few (Gramsci, 1995). This is a view that is supported by Bourdieu (1986) and Morvaridi (2012) who argue that philanthropic activity is underpinned and enabled by unequal economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital. Critics suggest that the network partners actively serve to privilege already privileged elite graduates, by supporting a seamless transition from the two-year classroom commitment into graduate programmes with high-level professional pathways offered by their financial benefactors (Ball, 2012). Barnes et al. (2016), Blumenreich and Rogers (2016) and Scott et al. (2016) argue that the focus on the individual as the hero who can solve the problem of educational inequality stops a broader discussion about how the inequality might have arisen in the first place, and what governments might do to allay it. The systemic, societal causes of, for example, poverty, racism, and violence, are ignored within this model of philanthropy. In other words, the individuals within the organisation, as well as the organisation itself and its wider network of supporters, actually serve to profit from, and perpetuate, the very inequality they purport to challenge. The interconnected web of Teach For All network partners provides a forum for sharing ideas, approaches and understandings of education, teaching and learning as well as ways to maximise their organisational and brand influence both locally and globally (although the author noted earlier that a spotlight on the thwarted attempt to establish a Teach First UK/Teach South Africa linking project suggests otherwise). Such borrowing of ideas, policy,

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pedagogy and practice has, as Rizvi and Lingard (2010) suggest, led to a ‘concatenation of neoliberal ideas’ and the spread of global education policy (p. 72). Ball (2018) comments on an ‘educational space’, which is reimagined by businesses and philanthropies as a market, resulting in a ‘multiple and murky blurring between the state, the third sector and the economy, between public and private, between educational opportunity and profit’ (p. 587). Teach For All and its network partners sit comfortably within such an educational space. While on the micro level of individual teachers forging ongoing educational links with colleagues and their pupils around the world, nothing meaningful happens, on the meso and macro level of businesses, philanthropists and NGOs seizing opportunities which support their own interests within the Teach For All network, the ‘educational space’ is fertile with possibilities. Bourdieu has argued that neoliberalism is a conscious and deliberate way in which a United States-centric ideology is imposed upon the rest of the world, a view that is supported by Blumenreich and Gupta (2015), Ahmann (2015) and La Londe et al. (2015). These critics suggest that Teach For All spreads a Western hegemony which privileges agents and ideas from the West, while disempowering those in ‘developing’ countries and is a form of neo-colonialism. At the time when the research for this project was originally written up as a doctoral thesis, eight of the nine Teach For All board members were white and all of them had been educated in the West. In July 2018, Teach For All announced excitedly that Gbenga Oyebode, chairman of Aluko & Oyebode, (Barristers, Solicitors & Trademark Agents in Nigeria) and Dzingai Mutumbuka, chairman of Zimbabwe National Commission of UNESCO and former Education Minister of Zimbabwe, were to join the board. Teach South Africa’s disappearance from the Teach For All network map is perhaps indicative of tensions inherent in imposing an overwhelmingly Western model onto a non-Western context, despite the apparent ‘country-proof’ structures and discourses discussed in this chapter. Since the research for this study, and the removal of Teach South Africa from the network however, five further partners have popped up in sub-Saharan Africa, as outlined in Chapter 3. How ‘country proof’ the Teach For All brand really is, and how well these African partners thrive under Teach For All, will be worth watching. No doubt the two new African Teach For All board recruits are there to serve this particular purpose – strategically placed to spread and embed the mission and brand.

References Ahmann, C. (2015). Teach For All: Storytelling ‘shared solutions’ and scaling global reform. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(45), 1–27. ALI. (2019). TEACH South Africa. Retrieved on 22 October 2019 from www.africalea dership.net/projects/teach-south-africa. Allen, R., Belfield, C., Greaves, E., Sharp, C., & Walker, M. (2014). The costs and benefits of different initial teacher training routes. London: Institute of Fiscal Studies.

Transferring the Teach For All ‘brand’ 93 Andreotti, V. (2006). Theory without practice is idle, practice without theory is blind: The potential contributions of postcolonial theory to development education. Development Education Journal, 12, 7–10. Ball, S.J. (2003). The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal in Educational Policy, 18, 215–228. Ball, S.J. (2008). New philanthropy, new networks and new governance in education. Political Studies, 56, 747–765. Ball, S.J. (2012). Global Education Inc.: New policy networks and the neo-liberal imaginary. London: Routledge. Ball, S.J. (2018). Commercialising education: Profiting from reform! Journal of Education Policy, 33(5), 587–589. Ball, S.J., & Junemann, C. (2012). Networks, new governance and education. Bristol: The Policy Press. Barnes, M., Germain, E., & Valenzuela, A. (2016). Teach For America’s long arc: A critical race theory textual analysis of Wendy Kopp’s works. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24(14), 1–40. Beauchamp, G., Clarke, L., Hulme, M., & Murray, J. (2015). Teacher education in the United Kingdom post devolution: Convergences and divergences. Oxford Review of Education, 41(2), 154–170. Blumenreich, M., & Gupta, A. (2015). The globalization of Teach For America: An analysis of the institutional discourses of Teach For America and Teach For India within local contexts. Teaching and Teacher Education, 48, 87–96. Blumenreich, M., & Rogers, B. (2016). Teach For America and the magical thinking of the ‘best and the brightest’. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24(13), 1–35. Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241–258). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Crouch, C. (2011). The strange non-death of neoliberalism. Cambridge: Polity Press. DBE. (2011). Information guide on initial teacher education. Pretoria: Department of Basic Education Republic of South Africa. Elliott, J.M. (2017). Globalising education: How far is the ‘TEACH’ model of initial teacher education transferable across North and South contexts? Doctoral dissertation, University of Nottingham. Fairclough, I., & Fairclough, N. (2012). Political discourse analysis: A method for advanced students. London: Routledge. Friedrich, D., Walter, M., & Colmenares, E. (2015). Making all children count: Teach For All and the universalizing appeal of data. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(48), 1–21. Furlong, J. (2013). Globalisation, neoliberalism and the reform of teacher education in England. The Educational Forum, 77(1), 28–50. Furlong, J., Barton, L., Miles, S., Whiting, C., & Whitty, G. (2000). Teacher education in transition. Buckingham: Open University Press. Gramsci, A. (1995). Further selections from the prison notebooks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Henley, J. (2012, 7 March). The new philanthropists. The Guardian. House of Commons. (2017). Recruitment and retention of teachers fifth report of session 2016–2017. London: House of Commons Committee. Labaree, D. (2006). Education, markets and the public good: The selected works of David F. Labaree. New York: World Library of Educationalists.

94 Jenny Elliott La Londe, P., Brewer, T.J., & Lubienski, C. (2015). Teach For America and Teach For All: Creating an intermediary organisation network for global education reform. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(47), 1–28. Landman, M., & Ozga, J. (1995). Teacher education policy in England. In M. Ginsburg & B. Lindsay (Eds.), The political dimension in teacher education: Comparative perspectives on policy formation, socialization and society (pp. 29–39). London: Falmer Press. Lefebvre, E., & Thomas, M.A.M. (2017). ‘Shit shows’ or ‘like-minded schools’: Charter schools and the neoliberal logic of Teach For America. Journal in Educational Policy, 32(3), 357–371. McConney, A., Price, A., & Woods-McConney, A. (2012). Fast track teacher education: A review of the research literature on Teach For All schemes. Perth: Murdoch University. Menter, I., Brisard, E., & Smith, I. (2006). Making teachers in Britain: Professional knowledge for initial teacher education in England and Scotland. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 38(3), 269–286. Modiba, M. (1997). Distance teacher education in South Africa: A critical analysis of pedagogical assumptions. Teaching and Teacher Education, 13(7), 727–739. Morvaridi, B. (2012). Capitalist philanthropy and hegemonic partnerships. Third World Quarterly, 33(7), 1191–1210. Popkewitz, T. (Ed.) (2000). Educational knowledge. New York: State University of New York. Rice, S., Volkoff, V., & Dulfer, N. (2015). Teach For/Teach First candidates: What conclusions do they draw from their time in teaching? Teachers and Teaching, 21(5), 497–513. Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing education policy. Oxon: Routledge. Robinson, W. (2006). Teacher training in England and Wales: Past, present and future perspectives. Education Research and Perspectives, 33(2), 19–35. Sasse, C., & Trahan, R. (2007). Rethinking the new corporate philanthropy. Business Horizons, 50, 29–38. Savides, M. (2017, 19 December). South African schools have 5139 teachers who are unqualified or underqualified. Times Live. Retrieved from www.timeslive.co.za/ news/south-africa/2017-06-06-south-african-schools-have-5139-teachers-who-areunqualified-or-under-qualified. Schafer, M., & Wilmot, D. (2012). Teacher education in post-apartheid South Africa: Navigating a way through competing state and global imperatives for change. Prospects, 42, 41–54. Scott, J., Trujillo, T., & Rivera, M.D. (2016). Reframing Teach For America: A conceptual framework for the next generation of scholarship. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24(12), 1–33. Smith, C. (1994). The new corporate philanthropy. Harvard Business Review, 72, 105–116. Southern, A. (2018). Disrupting the habitus? Media representation and participant experience of Teach First: An exploratory case study in Wales. Teachers and Teaching, 24(5), 584–597. Spivak, G. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson & I. Grossberg (Eds), Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271–315). Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Teach For All. (2018). Network partners. Retrieved from https://teachforall.org/net work-partners. Teach For All. (2019). FAQs. Retrieved 15 October 2019 from https://teachforall. org/faqs.

Transferring the Teach For All ‘brand’ 95 Tuhiwai-Smith, L. (1999). Decolonising methodologies. London: Zed Books. Wigdortz, B. (2012). Success against the odds. Croydon: Short Books. Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (Eds.). (2009). Methods of critical discourse analysis. London: Sage. Wolhuter, C. (2006). Teacher training in South Africa: Past, present and future. Education Research and Perspectives, 33(2), 124–139.

Chapter 6

Bringing a global model to the Lebanese education context Adaptation or adoption? Maissam Nimer and Nisrine Makkouk

Introduction Beginning in 1980, a dramatic shift in education policy began to take place in the US and UK that would soon influence the international arena. Rhetoric including equating transformation and change with the opening of markets, expansion of the private sector and minimised role for the state affected not only the economy, but also the national budgets and direction of education programmes (Klees, 2008). The World Bank, in particular, has been a major player in global education policy, leaning on governments to enact policies that are mostly about serving the needs and interests of neoliberalism behind the guise of social goals (Colas, 2005; Dumenil & Levy, 2005). Today, the neoliberal project in education has become a truly hegemonic ideology that infuses mainstream educational discourses (Tickell & Peck, 2003). Klees (2008) argues that neoliberal dogma has caused governments to reduce their role in education. This generated instead measures for supporting the privatisation of educational activities. He also points out that this reduces education to measurable outputs. This has had a dramatic negative impact on both teachers and students, especially those already disadvantaged by the system. In this light, neoliberalism also had the added effect of disseminating a rhetoric that argues that strengthening the ‘knowledge economy’ by promoting ‘entrepreneurship’ is necessary to equality (Olssen & Peters, 2005). Neoliberal economic policies in education, such as the increase of public-private partnerships, have led to an increase in specialist education NGOs. Their creation has been fuelled by the argument that ‘ineffectual’ government operations are better replaced by private enterprises that are more client centred and therefore profitable (Kitaev, 1999; Olssen & Peters, 2005). The proliferation of NGOs in many parts of the world was among the particularly striking aspects of the decade that followed the 1990 Jomtien Conference (Bray, 2001). This brought qualitative shifts in the types of actors involved in the education sectors of less developed countries, primarily due to the changing pattern and the growth in the number of NGOs and the scope of their activities. Mainstream players viewed NGOs favourably as playing a role that is more efficient in-service delivery than the state,

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and at the same time serving as a moral check on the market forces. By the mid-1990s, a range of critics demonstrated that these policies actually eroded public safety nets and widened inequalities (Bergeron, 2008). This led to an intentional move from strict economistic market fundamentalism towards a new, softer discourse that supposedly would put health and education alongside economic growth (Klees, 2008; Williamson, 2003). Instead, education had become yet another field to disseminate economic policy and socialisation, particularly with the help of international aid agencies and foreign governments. Even so, the beliefs and actions of those within the system are important ways to see how encompassing and hegemonic education has truly become. While literature has widely documented the spread of neoliberalism in the education sector around the globe with programmes such as Teach For Lebanon (TFL) that claim to address and reduce inequities, this chapter aims to analyse the way in which a global programme has been implemented in the particular case of Lebanon, and its mechanisms of action in light of the spread of neoliberalism in the education sector. Specifically, it focuses on the experiences of actors in TFL, a local NGO adopting a global programme which recruits, trains, and deploys young graduates from elite universities to teach in remote regions of Lebanon with the goal of eliminating education inequalities. It is affiliated to the international organisation Teach For All, which helps reproduce the original Teach For America model around the globe. In order to do so, we provide a snapshot of the Lebanese education landscape highlighting the mechanisms of social and geographical inequalities within it to understand how the programme fits within this landscape. After introducing our methodology, we examine the birth of this initiative which applies a global model to serve the country, by adopting a solution-based approach according to the ‘deficit’ model and aiming to reverse the brain drain. We argue that though TFL claims to reverse brain drain, the opposite occurs whereby fellows end up gaining skills and values that enhance their employability and mobility in the global market. They end up emigrating to other countries easier than other professionals. By illustrating the mechanisms of action of this initiative, we argue that it reproduces privilege by recruiting and selecting fellows already exposed to values common among individuals from a particular type of institution (predominantly elite, American-influenced). It attracts fellows by individualising a social mission and rather than addressing inequalities through systemic change, it shifts the responsibility to individuals training them on how to ‘fix the problem’. Following, we unpack the place and meaning given to participation in TFL by the young recruits, or fellows, to reveal contrasting perspectives in terms of the place and meaning given to participation. Finally, we observe contradictory tendencies in the way notions and language used in the programme were applied that raises the question of whether bringing this global model to the Lebanese context involved adaptation or adoption.

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Predominance of private sector and inequalities in the Lebanese education system In this section, we situate the broader national context by the types of inequalities in access to education and we argue that the Lebanese education context represents fertile ground for this global programme which recruits, trains, and deploys young graduates from elite universities to teach in remote regions of Lebanon with the goal of eliminating education inequalities. In a system that is already weak, there is ample room for this initiative to intervene through new management strategies in which civil society organisations step in to solve problems linked with weak welfare state. The state which adopts a laissez-faire attitude – instead of ensuring its citizens the right to equality in access to social services (including education) – focuses on ensuring equality of communities in the political and social order (Corm, 2012). The Lebanese education system is thus a system in which confessional, socio-economic, and geographical inequalities intersect. First and foremost, the financial aspect is determinant in the type and quality of education received. This is the most immediate factor in perpetuating inequalities. The Lebanese educational context from primary to higher education is highly dominated by the private sector. In comparison to the modern and pluralist private sector (in the 1800s), the public school system was created later. Despite efforts to centralise the system since the Lebanese independence in 1943, which led to a real increase in the number of public schools, and despite attempts at reforms and international funds received by this sector, it was never able to catch up, particularly given the incoherence of practices of the ministry of education (Nimer, 2013) and the hegemony of the private confessional institutions. The proportion of students enrolled in the public sector decreases year after year, from 39% in 2000–2001 to 30.8% 2016–2017 (CRDP, 2017). In addition, by 2017, only one of the 50 legally registered universities are public. The figures show that students are mostly enrolled in the private sector (62%) versus 38% in the Lebanese University, the only public university in the country. At a higher education level, the landscape is largely comparable, and includes a variety of missionary universities, mostly following the American model and a few following the French model. These universities are marked by high tuition fees and a lack of a centralised and structured financial aid system (each university decides on financial aid). The only public university, the Lebanese University, which has many branches across the country, was founded in 1951. Despite its potential to offer good quality free education in a heavily privatised landscape, it is subject to political mismanagement and has not succeeded in guaranteeing optimal pedagogical and material conditions (Abourjeili, 2009). As a result, the tuition fees, which vary greatly among institutions, constitute an essential factor and contribute to inequalities based on social origin at all levels of education.

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Financial disadvantage intersects with religious affiliation. Freedom of choice of school and freedom of establishing educational institutions as per article 10 of the constitution take precedence over the principle of equality (Nimer, 2013). This leads to an extremely heterogeneous and polarised educational landscape where education is for the most part in the hands of religious communities (Frayha, 2003). Each confessional group has evolved differently throughout history, with regards to access to education which led to large social, confessional gaps in terms of access to education. In addition, political and confessional parties offer subsidies for education to students that are affiliated with them. Further, the confessional belonging of the population across Lebanon also corresponds to regional distribution and thus leads to inequalities. The capital, Beirut, and its surrounding region, Mount Lebanon, have the highest concentration and diversity of public institutions, Christian and Muslim confessional and secular private. The pluralist offer decreases towards the periphery. Teachers are subjected to the same socio-economic and regional determinisms that students face as most stay in the same region and thus contribute to the reproduction of inequalities. The unequal distribution of institutions and the unequal offerings by NGOs and resources from the community across the country contributes to the unequal quality of education according to institutions. Within this overarching context, the Lebanese education system itself participate in the selection of students, determining options of study at a higher education level and transforming social, regional, and gender inequalities into academic inequalities through its selection mechanisms.

Beyond the state laissez-faire: reinforcing neoliberal tendencies through global movements Through a Foucauldian lens, this study aims to examine how this global programme in question – the ‘Teach For’ model promoted by Teach For All – functions as a ‘total institution’. It is adapted to a Lebanese context characterised by strong neoliberal tendencies and contributes to further reinforcing them. According to Foucault, individuals are placed under the surveillance of the authority in daily interactions and during ritualised moments (Foucault, 1993). By studying its mechanisms of action, we look at how this global organisation is actively remodelling the education system according to the principles of a market economy in the specific case of Lebanon. According to Foucault, neoliberalism should not therefore be identified with laissez-faire, but rather with permanent vigilance, activity, and intervention (Foucault, 2010). TFL aims to create a profile that serves the objectives of the organisation, diffusing Anglo-Saxon values and norms (initiative, leadership, flexibility, meritocracy, personal development) which then become assets in the global world of business. Such organisations contribute to propagating the hegemonic language of globalisation, the ‘gospel of neoliberalism’, according to Bourdieu’s expression. They promote market economy, diffuse free exchange, and act on

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imposing of politics of implementation of neoliberalism and financial deregulation. More particularly, the participants in these programmes, whether fellows or organisation representatives, will be driven to propagate these norms and neoliberal values in diverse communities. Can (2007) argues that the collapse of the welfare state in the neoliberal era does not mean that political intervention is coming to an end, but rather that it has led to the production of new management strategies where civil society organisations and volunteers’ step in as actors to solve problems linked with the weakening of the welfare state, according to a Foucauldian perspective. These actors, instead of addressing inequalities through systemic change, shift the responsibility to individuals.

Methodology This research uses a number of qualitative research techniques to provide an in-depth understanding of the TFL programme and the TFL fellows’ views over two different time periods, drawing on a combination of secondary literature and first-hand experience in the field, participant observation, as well as in-depth interviews with fellows and administrators. Phase 1 occurred one year after the founding of the organisation in 2009 and included in-depth analysis of documents from official sources including written documents and videos posted by the organisation (promotional material including websites/brochures and training materials including handouts) which informed the organisational and conceptual description of the organisation and its inception. The documents that were collected in this research included TFL brochures, the organisation’s mission statement, its policies for recruitment and selection, descriptions of the fellows’ role and duties, fellows’ job descriptions, etc. The collected documents were analysed and examined, using an open coding technique to identify general themes contained. Common themes running through the documents were compared with the aim of developing shared categories. This was complemented with in-depth semi-structured individual interviews with the TFL fellows to inform the fellows’ perceptions and experiences. The semi-structured interviews lasted 60–150 minutes with each of the ten fellows. The main aims of the interviews were to investigate their perceptions on their role as teachers exploring: (1) their self-narratives: their motivations for joining the programme and their perceptions of their own roles as teachers and agents of change; and (2) their narratives around the communities they are a part of, the local schools, the other teachers, the students, and their parents. Questions addressed the fellows’ backgrounds, motivations for joining TFL, and their understandings of their roles as fellows and as teachers. Phase 2 of the project was carried out over four years between 2010 and 2015, and focused on 15 applicants to TFL (some of whom were shortlisted and/or selected). These were part of a cohort of elite university students who had received a scholarship through a programme funded by an international

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development agency. Indeed, out of the 65 scholarship students, the 15 who applied to TFL were those whose values seemed in line with those cultivated by the scholarship programme. Special attention was paid to the mechanisms of action of the scholarship programme and its compatibility with the TFL mechanisms of action. We conducted in-depth repeated interviews with 34 out of 65 scholarship students. Interviews covered biographies and experiences at the university of the scholarship-funded students along with systematic observations of the students from their recruitment to the scholarship programme to their access to employment after university (including the process of application to TFL). In addition, we analysed a variety of data from application forms to evaluation sheets. We also interviewed instructors and student life representatives at the private university that is offering the scholarship programme. These interviews covered topics such as the goal of the programme, as well as experiences of students to the programme. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and translated to conduct a macro-level critical discourse analysis, exploring the broad, societal currents, and educational discourses that they are drawing from. Each interview was reviewed and coded several times. The first coding was to identify general categories and themes of information contained in the responses. The second was to compare the common themes running through the transcripts with the aim of developing shared categories.

Birth of a mission-oriented initiative serving the country As in Foucault’s words, neoliberalism cannot be identified only with laissezfaire economic structures, but rather with permanent vigilance, activity, and intervention. As such, it requires agents which actively model the education system according to the principles of a market economy. The official goal of TFL is to address the problem of inequality of access to education by offering a better quality of education to students in peripheral regions. To attain its goal: TFL recruits young graduates from prestigious universities (generally in Beirut), which it calls ‘fellows’, trains them to become ‘exceptional teachers’ and places them in disadvantaged schools in rural regions throughout the country to teach for two years. Part of the global Teach For All initiative, TFL believes in teachers and education that transforms lives. As an educational model, it is framed and marketed within a discourse of equity and social justice; TFL, like every other national programme, has a consultative partnership agreement with Teach For All. Interviews with TFL administrators (24 May 2010) suggest that TFL was founded because students from remote areas are unable to access the same quality of teaching as students living in the cities. TFL’s promotional material quote studies that claim that across Lebanon only around half of students successfully complete secondary education. The problem is said to be significantly worse in rural areas, according to a 2009–2010 TFL promotional brochure.

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Founding of TFL: Between a local and a global initiative There exist different narratives about the founding of TFL. According to a TFL board member (personal communication, 2011), the initiative began spreading through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and international stakeholders who started ‘feeling’ for other countries as possible sites for reproduction; although in a seminar presenting the programme at American University of Beirut (AUB), Kopp expressed that the programme was requested by a private Lebanese citizen. The seed money for the project (US$200,000) was provided by Act for Lebanon, an NGO established in New York by Lebanese businessmen who wanted to ‘give back’ to their country. Other inkind support came from Teach For All who organised the ‘initiation’, and Booz and Company, a global strategy consulting company, who designed the business plan. Saatchi and Saatchi, a global communications and advertising agency, was in charge of the branding for the enterprise. The company created a logo that echoes the Lebanese flag in the shape of an apple, a ‘symbol for education in the old times, as parents would send an apple with their children to school’. It also evokes the nostalgic image of education ‘under a tree’ demonstrating the willingness of students to learn in the face of adversity and lack of resources. In a press release published in the Daily Star newspaper after the 2010 Summer Institute training for the fellows, the TFL communications director comments on the future role of the fellows: ‘They are going to become leaders of their own classes and suggest a change in these communities.’ The first year of operation was in five non-governmental free schools. In addition to these five schools, TFL expanded into the public schools in its second year of operation. In the first year, the 12 fellows were sent to a total of 5 five non-governmental free schools. These schools range from small family run elementary schools with informal administrative structures to larger ones providing education services to 500+ students, to sectarian schools that are part of larger networks like the network of Maronite schools in the North, and the Irfan schools network in Lebanon. The schools were chosen to ensure geographical and confessional representation: one in the South – in a predominantly Muslim Shiite village (Ansar), one in the Bekaa (the Druze Irfan schools’ network in Rashayya), two in the North (network of Maronite schools in Halba and Tripoli) and one in Saida, predominantly Muslim Sunni. After having operated during the first year only in collaboration with private schools, TFL sought permission from the Ministry of Education, as focal point, to operate within public schools. In addition to these five schools, TFL expanded into the public schools in its second year of operation. In 2017–2018 academic year, 49 fellows were placed in a total of 28 unique schools including 36% public schools, 39% semi-free schools, 11% NGOs, 14% orphanages/institutions/delinquency centres (according to the TFL 2017–2018 annual report). While TFL pays the entire salaries of fellows in the private schools (US$800 per month in the first two years and US$1000 in the third year), a part of

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the salaries of the teachers sent to public schools were paid by the ministry of education based on the payment scale of regular starting level teachers of US$426, almost half of the amount paid to TFL fellows with the same education level and level of experience. TFL would then cover the difference in salaries between that rate and the rate offered to TFL fellows to make sure that all fellows are paid the same amount regardless of the type of school they are sent to. A solution to the deficit model In the rhetoric of TFL, the problem of educational inequality that exists in Lebanon is directly attributed to individual teachers, students and their parents. One of the main reasons children in rural areas do not have the same opportunities as children in Beirut and Mount Lebanon, is that ambitious and competent teachers do not stay in remote areas. By moving to the capital, they can earn higher salaries and have a better standard of living. If education is poor quality, parents do not see education as a good investment. Once students start to fail, they become demotivated, and opt not to invest in school. If parents do not see the school as able to help, they can decide that work is a better option, even if it is unskilled or low-paid. Also, schools sometimes find it suits them to lose their least successful students, according to a 2009–2010 TFL promotional brochure. The framing echoes the official narrative of the World Bank/Ministry of Education National Education Strategy Framework Education Sector Development Plan for 2010–2015. In this narrative, too many teachers lack the qualifications necessary for excellent teaching; and those that are good, lack the commitment to stay in weak schools as they move on, looking for better positions. According to Teach For Lebanon’s theory of change (TOC), students in disadvantaged areas lack the skills and incentive necessary for learning; they also lack opportunities to engage in productive real-world activities; and they lack vision – they cannot imagine successful and rewarding lives for themselves. In addition, their parents lack foresight of what their children can achieve, and therefore set low expectations for them. The fellows are constructed as the antidote to this deficit. They are ‘highly qualified and ambitious’, able to ‘widen students’ vision and exposure to opportunities’, and ‘encourage parents to believe in their children’s potential’. This framing was re-articulated by one of the fellows in an interview: The concept of TFL is, you can say, educating a nation. When you start the Summer Institute, they talk a lot about the mission, they focus on it, they make you chew on it, they make you think about it, they make you see it. They give you all those views and images; they tell you what’s the problem in the schools. They give you facts; they give you numbers. They tell you, basically, this is the problem: do you want to be part of the solution or not? I think any person with the right mind would be: ‘Yes, I want to be part of the solution’.

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This ‘problem’ or ‘deficit model’ is a common frame and pretext to many public-private partnerships in education (Davies & Hentschke, 2006), of which there are numerous examples in Lebanon: INJAZ, AMIDEAST, and other local and international civil society organisations. In fact, it is this frame that directly facilitates the intervention of programmes like TFL. Inherent in the model are two frames of focus: a focus on individuals, and a focus on what these individuals lack. This organisation is actively remodelling the discourse turning the focus from structural issues in education system to an individual focus. In this sense, TFL explains that communities are poor because students in these communities lack good learning experiences and work ethics in order to succeed: TFL provides fellows who fill this need. When solutions such as a redistribution of existing public funds to education, smaller classes, and a concerted effort towards the professionalisation of teaching in order to develop and retain a high-quality teacher force are off the table – programmes like TFL look like the best option for attacking the problems at hand. The fellows seem to have adopted this belief as they have internalised and reiterate this discourse. While fellows believe that ‘other’ teachers lack a vision, they are convinced that TFL provides one. Differences that come in the narratives are those between the professional, modern, and entrepreneurial (the fellows) versus the traditional (teachers). In this sense, the word ‘traditional’ is used in a negative light to refer to an untrained (and therefore unskilled) or uninterested teacher. I think there is definitely a difference [between a fellow and regular teacher]. Definitely! It’s the way you act, non-traditional teacher. You have to talk on a personal level with the kids, that’s how you get to know them and unlock each kid, which you need to teach them properly, teaching in a fun way. This difference is again attributed to a difference in ‘mindset’ or ‘spirit’, with little acknowledgment to the structural factors: the recognition, the professional, institutional, financial, and social support that separate the fellows from the teachers. The reason you are there as a fellow is not the same reason a teacher is there. And that is a huge thing because if I am doing something because I have to I might not do it as well as if I am doing it because I want to. We are there to do something extra. That’s why we are called fellows, not teachers. But teachers should also be fellows. What I mean is every teacher should have the same spirit that he is there to change the student’s life, not only doing a job. This is sad. Most teachers are there only as a job, they don’t have the spirit. As Apple (2006) contends, one of the main criticisms of the neoliberal discourse is its profound tendency to de-class, de-race, de-gender, and de-territorialise people until we’re all ‘individuals’; individuals whose personal, social, and

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professional histories are erased. Fellows also use their own social and cultural toolboxes to understand the challenges and reach out for solutions. For example, one of the fellows felt that his students who come from a rural agrarian background are not ‘invested’ in his French language class, as they should be, because they lack the ‘right’ environment. The fellow said: [Students] don’t make the link. That is why I started to walk into class with a newspaper, L’Orient Le Jour [Lebanese daily in French]. I would make it a point, I buy the newspaper every morning and hold it as I walk into class, meaning I read a newspaper in French! See where I use what I have learnt? In this case, we see how the most accessible explanation of the problem mirrors the TFL formulation of the bigger problem. In other words, the fellow was more inclined to think that the problem resides in the students lacking the ability to make the link, rather than the possibility of the material being not culturally relevant.

Place and meaning given to participation in TFL: Contrasting perspectives In this section, we illustrate the mechanisms of action of this initiative, revealing at points with contrasting intentions or purposes of organisations with those of the applicants themselves in terms of the place and meaning given to participation. We examine how this choice fits in the employment perspectives of graduates within the Lebanese context. Inequalities through recruitment The recruitment process mirrored the way in which inequalities in the Lebanese context (as outlined above) generally reflect on the transition from higher education to the job market. Generally, the diploma obtained at a private elite university facilitates access to employment through the constitution of a network or social capital. However, in a non-egalitarian society, higher education studies are increasingly sought after and have an increasing importance in the strategies of families. Enrolment rates at university increase, but not all diplomas have the same worth; their value depends on the university and on the field of study. In addition, the opportunities for qualified employment are few; only 16% of jobs for men and 38% of jobs for women on the job market require a university degree (Abourjeili, 2009). The private prestigious foreign universities in which education is in either English or French give access to liberal professions and high positions in government administration. In contrast, a trajectory through the Lebanese university, public university, or the new private universities lead to employment in education and executive positions in the public

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sector. Anglophone universities are generally more expensive and are perceived as superior. The Saint Joseph University, francophone, is renowned for its academic excellence, but it focuses on the acquisition of knowledge, and is surpassed by American universities for extra-curricular activities (Nauffal, 2004). This translates into the job market, by higher chances of the latter graduates to access to higher positions with higher salaries. In order to address the problem of education inequality in Lebanon and move closer to the vision of a more just and equitable society, TFL’s theory of change, starts by recruiting the country’s ‘highest-quality talent’ to lead towards the achievement of this mission. According to participant observations carried out during the TFL’s 2011 Summer Institute, fellows were frequently described, referred to, or addressed as ‘special’, the ‘best’ and the ‘brightest’, the country’s ‘most promising’ future leaders, and that their presence within the programme was an attestation that they represented ‘the cream of the cream of the cream’. The TFL recruitment process targets university students with highest-quality talent who demonstrate core competencies to drive impact on student achievement and become long-term leaders able to effect systemic change. TFL aims to attract competent and service-oriented young graduates to join its ranks. It markets its programme to prospective fellows by conjuring this duality to their role in which they will be simultaneously engaged in ‘doing good’ and ‘doing well’ (Labaree, 2010; Maier, 2012). The fellows will be ‘doing good’ by being missionaries for a noble and just cause – to eliminate educational inequality in Lebanon (cf. Popkewitz, 1998). They will be ‘doing well’ by stocking up on the other incentives the programme makes available, which include graduate scholarships and help from sponsors to provide job opportunities provided by TFL sponsors. The selectivity, the choice of noneducation majors, and the targeting of prominent universities for recruitment all contribute to the prestigious nature of the programme. When discussing their capacity in TFL, most fellows moved between emphasising their role as ‘agents of change’ on a social ‘mission’ or as energetic, career-driven individuals acquiring social capital from their two-year commitment in the programme. The single most cited personal benefit of the programme, and the one that is in fact part of the programme’s design and marketing plan, is the academic and professional benefits package. It promises graduate scholarships to TFL fellows. In a country where the average monthly income is around US$681 and the tuition costs for graduate study can range between US$10,000 and US$60,000, the salary of US$800 for the duration of the fellowship (in the first two years) and a promise of a scholarship upon completion of the fellowship are both very valuable. The salary was set by the CEO, who took as a basis the starting salary at a bank (as mentioned above). Though their salaries exceeded the salaries of the other teachers in the community, the fellows were referred to as ‘volunteers’. In that sense, the applicants’ intentions or purposes vary. From the perspective of the candidates themselves, TFL offers them a possibility to pursue a project of

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teaching. This is particularly the case among those who had studied science subjects (e.g. biology, mathematics, physics) and were already thinking of becoming teachers. TFL allows them the opportunity to pursue this project in a more interesting way, on the one hand, they would be better remunerated in financial terms, and on the other hand, this opportunity allows them to work with other young individuals towards a mission of ‘eliminating inequalities of access to education’. Some other fellows would have never considered teaching in different circumstances. However, given the difficult conditions in the labour market, some may end up applying because this opportunity offers them a job with a decent package and further opportunities upon graduation. As a fellow said: I never imagined that I was going to be a teacher. Yet, after graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree from a top university and remaining unemployed for a full year, TFL appeared as a good alternative – providing both a two-year job contract and other added benefits after the initial fellowship is over. Selecting the ‘right’ fellows As for selection, the webpage of Teach For All outlines the following in terms of recruiting and placing participants: it states that partners ‘call on a generation of future leaders with diverse academic, professional, and personal backgrounds to commit their talent and energy to expanding opportunity for children’ to be placed as teachers for at least two years within schools in disadvantaged communities. But mainly it highlights that partners ‘strive to recruit and develop local leaders who have themselves experienced the inequities they’re addressing’ to make them relatable to the children. In reality, we demonstrate that those who are being recruited are rarely themselves the ones ‘who would have experienced inequities they are addressing’ but instead they are the ones who had already been exposed to the norms and values that are circulated. This experience, we argue, places them on the global market. For many, this constitutes a step in their careers, as they pursue graduate studies in prestigious elite universities. The selection process that took place favoured privileged students in elite universities, who were familiar with the norms circulated by this programme, particularly elite universities which are adopting the American model. In the planning phase of TFL’s launch, universities were visited and consulted. Unsurprisingly, the most receptive were the American University of Beirut (AUB) and the Lebanese American University (LAU), who were the primary targets among other English-speaking universities in general, as the main language of ‘business’ is English (personal communication, 2010). As per observation of the first two cohorts, the students who were most likely to apply and to be selected were the ones who had been in the prestigious universities American-style universities, which encourage engagement in extracurricular activities such as American University of Beirut, Lebanese American University, Balamand University and others.

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Within the first year, TFL attracted 212 applicants, including 19 who were studying abroad. Applications were filtered in a two-stage process. The internal review, which included assessment based on GPA, personal information, leadership skills, determination for change, and ‘TFL fit’ reduced the number of eligible candidates by 66%, bringing the total down to 71. These candidates then passed through the second stage of assessment, which included a personal interview, a mock lesson, participation in a group activity, and a self-evaluation. Only 31 candidates passed through the second stage of assessment and were invited to attend the Summer Institute for training. The selected applicants, 42% male and 58% female, had an average GPA of 3.25. The fellows were selected based on their application, their social engagement and their ‘compatibility’ with the norms of the organisation. The selection also considers their capacity to ‘influence and motivate others’ and to ‘work relentlessly’ to attain their goals. The ones who are more likely to be selected are generally the ones who are the most active in student life. The recruitment manager reported that the candidates who had generally distinguished themselves during the selection phase, are those who were able to demonstrate, based on their experiences, that they corresponded to the sought-after profile. Others who had solely focused on their studies were not selected despite their high grades. A biology student from a public high school in Beirut had obtained a very high grade of 16 over 20 on her Baccalaureate exam. She joined the scholarship programme and continued to succeed very well, figuring consistently on the president’s list, securing an average of above 90 over 100. During her university experience, she shared a room and socialised with another student who was equally hard working and who succeeded very well. Both of them had invested in music during their school years and thus joined the music club at university. Besides that, both spent the majority of their time studying, the biology student engaged minimally in the leadership activity that they were required to participate in. While she is described by her teachers as ‘excellent’, ‘prompt’, ‘hard working’, and ‘serious’, many comment on the fact that she does not participate enough in class: ‘Though academically she is in the top 5% of this course/class, she rarely asks questions or actually participates in class’. In addition, her leadership coach commented: ‘Despite her clear intelligence, and good relationship with the team, [the student] has insisted on playing a negative role in the team’. When she applied to TFL, she was not able to demonstrate the required competencies, especially in the mock lesson that she had to prepare. As such, despite her high grades, she was not selected. In contrast, a medical laboratory sciences student who had invested completely in her leadership project was inspired by the training to the point that she decided to complete an internship at the organisation that delivered the leadership training. She applied to TFL and was recruited. She worked very zealously as a fellow, organised several extracurricular events, some reproducing the activities she had learned during her scholarship. As the recruited fellows mostly tended to be from privileged social backgrounds, a perceived cultural and class difference set

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them apart from the local communities in which they went to teach. The narratives often resonate with an emphasis around what is lacking or what is wrong within these communities as fellows rely on unexamined middle-class values. One fellow, who worked in the northern region of Akkar, describes how parents lack the knowledge to raise their children ‘properly’, commented: I am not here just to teach you math and grammar; I am here to teach you how to live also. I had one day a debate – we were talking with people from outside, from Teach For America, and I told them that if my student didn’t sit properly in class, I don’t allow that. I want them to sit properly. And she said, ‘Why? Why don’t you give him freedom to do whatever he wants?’ I told her because the area I teach in is underprivileged, the parents don’t pay attention to their kids, parents don’t know how to raise their kids. If I don’t teach him how to sit, then tomorrow when he grows up and enters into society, and he is in a work setting, in a meeting or something, and sits in an inappropriate way and not know it’s wrong, he will be fired the next day. Training fellows to ‘fix the problem’ The selected individuals receive pedagogical training before starting to teach. Once recruited, the programme continued to work on the fellows as TFL provided participants (fellows) with training called Summer Institute with the goal of impacting student achievement. This training is usually around 4 weeks long and takes place in affiliation with a higher education institution. The first training in the summer of 2010 was administered by the Education Department at a private American University in Beirut. However, the agreement was discontinued as interviews with programme coordinators indicate that they believed that the training offered did not focus enough on the ideological aspects of change and transformation and instead was exclusively dedicated to instruction in education and pedagogy. TFL evolved in the later years as a programme that includes hands-on practice with classes of students in a summer school within the schools in which fellows are teaching. TFL implemented the training themselves in one of the partner schools, bringing in two teaching mentors from Teach For America, one trainer from Teach For All. This training acts as an all-encompassing, total institution. It was not only used to train fellows, but also to assess them. The assessment was accomplished through faculty surveys and weekly exit slips by the fellows in addition to mid-point and final evaluations. Fellows are encouraged to instil in their students that ‘A university education is possible’ and ‘Any future career they choose is possible’ if they try hard enough. TFL instils in its fellows the idea that they are presenting an alternative view to their students, one that is different from the ‘traditional’ views of the existing educational structure and wider community, which lacks qualifications, commitment, and vision. Embedded in

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this rhetoric is the belief that there is a problem that needs to be ‘fixed’ within education and the community, which serves as the preamble for TFL intervention and the role that it will play. Through the way TFL defines the problem, offers a solution, recruits, selects, and trains the fellows, we see that it works as an agent to actively model the education system by bringing in the ‘crème de la crème’ to fix a traditional problem through an ideology of change and transformation. As such, fellows are trained to become individual agents who are focused on solving the problem themselves, instead of leading to collective action and systemic changes.

Application of the model to the Lebanese system: Adaptation or adoption? By examining the way in which the model was imported and applied in Lebanon, we observe contradicting tendencies. In some cases, the notions and language used by the programme was adopted and used by actors involved. In other cases, some individuals questioned the adaptability of the programme to the local context. Throughout the process in which a group of students express interest in and apply to be a fellow at TFL, we observe that actors (whether TFL fellows or the administration members) adopt the language of development, namely by recurring notions of leadership and meritocracy, which correspond to the hegemonic language of globalisation and neoliberalism. These actors would ultimately transform into agents of globalisation in their respective communities, contributing in their turn to the propagation of these values and principles considered ‘just’ and ‘good’. As for fellows, their perception of their role as agents of change resonates strongly with their role as teachers. For them ‘changing the life-paths of students’ will directly result from getting better grades on tests, staying in school, and making it to university. Only a few of the fellows question this myth of meritocracy. Bourdieu, among other scholars has written extensively to challenge this myth in schools. He describes how schools function inequitably, and effectively work to (re)produce an unequal society (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1970). According to Bourdieu, schools are geared to sort and sift students using processes and narratives of abilities and development: the rationale of schooling is meritocracy. The official rhetoric is very present in the personal narratives, as seen in the discourse of a teacher from Halba, a village in North Lebanon: And it was my vision from the very beginning, joining TFL, was for this reason – to make the world, Lebanon, this village a better place. I, with a special character and a special plan and vision I am going to make a life changing impact – see how big this word is – how heavy – it is very much long term, very much sustainable, you would leave the students very much independent. In two years, you have to do work, that after you leave, the students are independent.

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Creating change agents who are ‘leaders’ in the community is another one of the programme’s intents. For many fellows, this was understood as a ‘follow the leader’ kind of process. Here is how some of the fellows understand this within their role, as expressed by one fellow in particular: They [the students] look at what I am doing and want to do the same. I learned how to be a leader. Actually, a teacher should learn to be a leader, to manage a class, and lead them to success, to the good way, to the good path. A leader is a person who affects others, so others want to do what he is doing, they listen to him, he is a wise man – he feels with others, they trust him – they do what they want, but of course, what he wants – to reach to this level they would have to trust him and like him – he should have showed them that he is a leader – he is working for their good. Many of the fellows’ narratives reflected this somewhat top-down understanding of their role as agents of transformation. Other fellows, rather than blindly accepting that they are agents of change, recognise that the TFL training and programme might be lacking in some respects. Tension emerges as adaptation does not take place fully, so they try to make sense of it otherwise. One fellow, who was raised in a small Christian village in Mount Lebanon and went through twelve years of school without having met a single Muslim friend, feels like some of the most important objectives of the TFL programme within the Lebanese context are overlooked. He describes how he is expected by the programme to work with students in order to ‘widen their vision and their expectations of themselves and of life’. According to the TFL official discourse, this translates to ‘working harder’ and ‘believing that a university education is possible’. However, reflecting on his own history and the current reality of the school in which he teaches, he feels that this emphasis is somewhat culturally irrelevant. He explains: Some topics are sensitive, that in my opinion are important for kids to know, talk about and get familiar with that are somehow, not forbidden, but frowned upon – such as religion. Our school is mixed; in this country you don’t have a lot of this mixed environment. In this school, we have this mixed environment, we have it, but we don’t talk about it, we keep it hidden. Because the school is supposed to be secular but being non-religious does not mean not talking about it. We can’t talk about it, can’t celebrate it, and this is part of the vision. It is important for me that the new generation grows up not being afraid of one another. In our culture this is very important. As a young kid, I did not have any Muslim friends up until University. The first time I had a real friend from another religion was when I travelled abroad. Imagine? Yet, in this country it is so diverse and very small, yet, we don’t meet. And I take this very personally, and I always like to talk about this and bring it up, but I can’t. It’s not allowed. This will put me in grave troubles.

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This is an important reflection, showing that some teachers are thinking beyond their mandate – a mandate that stems from another country. Rather than being adapted to a Lebanese context, as it was claimed to have been, it is just contributing in reinforcing the strongly liberal orientation of the country, and its education system without contributing to reducing inequalities nor solving the emigration problem. Instead of addressing inequalities through systemic change, it shifts the responsibility to individuals and circulates language and notions that are not adapted to the Lebanese context.

Conclusion The success of the model in attracting fellows seems to reside, to a large extent, in its capacity to individualise a social mission, thereby creating ‘private’ incentive to market a ‘public’ cause. This again positively aims at creating an individual capable of promoting change, yet it does not address a growing structural demand for adjusting the larger educational system, which is itself intertwined with social, economic, and political challenges. There is some evidence of reflexivity in a few fellows who begin to question the (1) validity of the conceptual frame of meritocracy and the (2) limitations of such a narrow conception of their role, as it prevents them from working towards more ‘social’ goals such as education for social cohesion. In reality, when examining the mechanisms of action of this programme, we observe that the programme which functions under the umbrella of eliminating social inequality, in reality, serves the purpose of promoting neoliberal values and acts as a justification of the nature of a particular society by reproducing privilege. While literature has widely documented the spread of neoliberalism in the education sector around the globe, we demonstrate that while this initiative aims to rectify inequities, it is in fact reproducing privilege by recruiting fellows already exposed to these values (in private American affiliated institutions). The programme promotes a set of values that are mainly shared with graduates from a particular type of institutions, namely elite, and following an American model of education. As such, we conclude that the model, rather than being adapted, as it was claimed to have been, to the local context, instead just contributes in reinforcing the strongly liberal orientation of the country, and its private elite American-model education system. Lastly, we argue that though it claims to reverse brain drain, the opposite occurs whereby fellows end up gaining global skills that put them on a global market.

References Abourjeili, S.A.R. (2009). Le Liban. In Enseignement supérieur et marché du travail dans le monde arabe. Beyrouth: Presses de l’Ifpo.

Adaptation or adoption in Lebanon? 113 Apple, M.W. (2006). Educating the ‘right’ way: Markets, standards, god, and education (2nd ed.) New York: Routledge. Bergeron, S. (2008). Shape-shifting neoliberalism and World Bank education policy: A response to Steven Klees. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 6(4), 349–353. Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J.-C. (1970). La reproduction éléments pour une théorie du système d’enseignement. Paris: Éd. de Minuit. Bray, M. (2001). Community partnerships in education: Dimensions, variations and implications. Background Document prepared for the World Education Forum, Dakar, Senegal, 26–28 April 2000. Paris: UNESCO Publishing. Can, Y.I. (2007). Türkiye’de Sivil Toplumu Yeniden Düs¸ünmek: Neo-Liberal Dönüs¸ümler ve Gönüllülük. Toplum ve Bilim, 108, 88–128. Colas, A. (2005). Neoliberalism, globalisation and international relations. In A. SaadFilho & D. Johnston (Eds.), Neoliberalism: A critical reader (pp. 70-80). London: Pluto Press. Corm, G. (2012). Le Liban contemporain: Histoire et société. Paris: Découverte. CRDP. (2012). Répartition des élèves par secteur et par niveau pour l’année 2012–2013. Beirut: CRDP. Davies, B., & Hentschke, G. (2006). Public–private partnerships in education: Insights from the field. School Leadership & Management, 26(3), 205–226. Dumenil, G., & Levy, D. (2005). The neoliberal (counter-)revolution. In A. SaadFilho & D. Johnston (Eds.), Neoliberalism: A critical reader (pp. 9–19). London: Pluto Press. Foucault, M. (1993). Les corps dociles. In Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison (pp. 137–171). [Paris]: Gallimard. (Original work published 1975) Foucault, M. (2010). The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979 (1st ed). New York: Picador. Frayha, N. (2003). Education et cohésion sociale au Liban. Perspective Revue trimestrielle d’éducation comparée, 33(125). Kitaev, I. (1999). Private education in sub-Saharan Africa: A re-examination of theories and concepts related to its development and finance. Paris: International Institute for Educational Planning. Klees, S.J. (2008). A quarter century of neoliberal thinking in education: Misleading analyses and failed policies. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 6(4), 311–348. Labaree, D. (2010). Teach for America and teacher ed: Heads they win, tails we lose. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1–2), 48–55. Maier, A. (2012). Doing good and doing well: Credentialism and Teach For America. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(1), 10–22. Nauffal, D.I. (2004). Higher education in Lebanon: Management cultures and their impact on performance outcomes. Birmingham: University of Birmingham. Nimer, M. (2013, 4 March). Liban: «misère» de l’école publique. Retrieved 19 December 2014 from http://ifpo.hypotheses.org/4871. Olssen, M., & Peters, M.A. (2005). Neoliberalism, higher education and the knowledge economy: From the free market to knowledge capitalism. Journal of Education Policy, 20 (3), 313–345. Popkewitz, T.S. (1998). Struggling for the soul: The politics of schooling and the construction of the teacher. New York: Teachers College Press.

114 Maissam Nimer & Nisrine Makkouk Tickell, A., & Peck, J. (2003). Making global rules globalization or neoliberalization? In J. Peck & H.W.-C. Yeung (Eds.), Remaking the global economy: Economic-geographical perspectives (pp. 163–181). London: SAGE Publications. Williamson, J. (2003). Summing up. In P.-P. Kuczynski Godard & J. Williamson (Eds.), After the Washington consensus: restarting growth and reform in Latin America (pp. 305322). Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics.

Part III

Politics and policies

Chapter 7

Teach For Bangladesh as a de facto social enterprise What is it and where is it going? Rino Wiseman Adhikary and Bob Lingard

… my understanding of social enterprise is that, it is around investors who want … [social impact]. So traditionally what do you have? Investors investing in for-profit business, the way they measure the return of their investment is ‘are you making money?’ Right? And so, if you are investing with social capital in mind, then you might also be wanting to see money. Maybe if it is [a] for-profit venture, or if it is a non-profit venture, you don’t care about the money. But in addition to that what you want to see is that there is social impact. That’s a part of the dividend, that’s a part of the revenue. – Founder, Teach For Bangladesh

Introduction The above extract from a research interview1 with the founder of Teach For Bangladesh (TFB) captures her view on ‘social enterprises’ – an idea that has spawned various global reform movements, including Teach For All (TFAll) in the field of education. Visibly, the key tropes here are social investment, social investors, social capital, non/for profit ventures, social impact and dividend/revenue. The basic idea is, social enterprises make programmatic use of social investments made by impact investors. A social enterprise (SE), then, is to be understood as a social-good-venture trading a social service or an industrial product (or a combination), where the profits are both financial as well as social. Social entrepreneurs are individuals who initiate, lead and often globally manage SEs and can be understood as comprising three overlapping categories (see Alvord, Brown, & Letts, 2004). The ‘entrepreneurialist’ is a profitoriented business entrepreneur who combines commercial interests with social impact (Emerson & Twersky, 1996). The ‘innovatist’ entrepreneur innovates for problem solving by designing new social arrangements and mobilising resources targeting a specific social problem (Dees, 1998). The ‘transformativist’ catalyses long-term social transformation linking a present problem to a long-term future (Ashoka Innovators for the Public, 2000). Social entrepreneurs are also privileged ‘investees of new philanthropists’ such as Bill Gates (Mair, 2010, p. 15). Owners of global mega-businesses, these

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philanthropists establish private foundations (e.g. Porticus Global) that fund local SEs with preference for young and female entrepreneurs in the main. While global events such as the World Economic Forum in Davos and the Clinton Global Initiatives are often mentioned as political forces underpinning a global social entrepreneurial drive (Mair, 2010), the funding for such SE programmes comes as various forms of new-philanthropic investments (Thompson, 2002), such as ‘impact investment’ (Allman & Nogales, 2015) – which is also known as ‘social investment’ (Hemerijck, 2017) – and often ‘gifts’ (Yates & Marra, 2017). Impact investment includes debts/equities (share/stake) and has varied geographical reach and situatedness. Assuming the local legislations permit, these investments globalise innovative services that marry profit returns to measurable social impact, when the most dominant thread of social impact funding goes to the formation of social enterprises, and mostly to the developing world (Allman & Nogales, 2015). The broader ideological reinventions underpinning social enterprises and impact investment are often captured in the term ‘philanthrocapitalism’ (Bishop & Green, 2016; Edwards, 2008), the ‘nth’ generation of capitalism (Olmedo, 2016). Here, philanthropy is plugged in to capitalism: charitable giving with managed profit making. Adding to the existing mechanisms of neoliberal capitalism and globalisation, philanthropy has been reinvented and given a role in [educational] governance (see Tompkins-Stange, 2016). Philanthrocapitalism argues that most of the charitable giving over the last century (old philanthropy) has been ineffective and inefficient. New philanthropists can do better and more by applying the secrets of their financial success through philanthropic enterprising/es they support (Bishop & Green, 2016). Philanthrocapitalism believes that business methods and thinking will save the world while making some a fortune (Edwards, 2008). Philanthropic funds in this new paradigm are understood and channelled as impact investments and are managed by various social enterprises. TFB and its social entrepreneurial link to Teach For All are to be appraised in this context of global philanthrocapitalism (Adhikary, 2019). Launched in 2012, and officially, TFB acts as an NGO approved by the NGO Affairs Bureau of Bangladesh. Due to its focus on the primary education system of Bangladesh (PESoB), the organisation also secured permission from the country’s Directorate of Primary Education (DPE). Localising the TFAll model in Bangladesh, TFB recruits, trains, and places fresh graduates as full-time teachers in select primary schools, mostly government schools located in poor communities. TFB is generally viewed as a local NGO intended to provide quality teaching for disadvantaged pupils in such communities. Yet, added to this equity drive, are the social entrepreneurial mandates, values and practices underpinning aspirations of a system-wide change, a broader dimension linked to policy and governance of education and NGOs. Certainly, the adoption of a social entrepreneurship model is fundamental to TFB and other TFAll partners. Alongside the founder’s self-portrayal as a social

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entrepreneur (Ahmad, 2018), TFB’s graduate-recruits are trained (Adhikary & Lingard, 2017) and viewed as socially enterprising potential leaders/agents of an envisioned systemic change. TFB’s efforts to establish itself as an imperative exemplar of addressing educational inequity coincides with a social entrepreneurial vision that the organisation assimilated from the Teach For All model, namely, ‘problem › idea › test › establish › sustain › scale up’ (see TFAll, 2017a, 2017b). In this regard, the TFB founder’s view of social enterprises can explain why her social entrepreneurial subjectivity added value to the organisation’s success as an NGO. It also explains how TFB links this value to the systemic change it envisions. Although such questions do not address classroom teaching, they promise insights on social entrepreneurial ideas that now seek to transform the governance of education systems globally. In this chapter we interrogate such basics, arguing that TFB is a de facto social enterprise including an account of how TFB developed and where it might be going in terms of the impacts of globalising policy developments in Bangladesh that underpin the emergent transformation of NGOs as social enterprises. Fairly limited in operations within the country (see Adhikary & Lingard, 2017 for details), TFB’s expansive vision of a system-wide change augments the organisation’s allegiance to Teach For All’s global movement. Beyond its teacher education focus, TFB also localised TFAll’s global social entrepreneurial movement in ways that are intended to generate and instrumentalise a crossfield effect (cross-sectoral, overlapping the fields of education and NGOs) (see Lingard & Rawolle, 2004). That is, similar to the TFAll network, TFB has constructed and sought to address two problems. The first one relates to the management of teaching-learning in schools in poor communities. The solution is TFAll’s alternative teacher education model: recruiting, training, and placing ‘high achieving and brilliant’ (TFB founder) graduates within such schools. The second one constructs deficiency in systemic leadership and management as ‘policy problems’. These are modular expressions of the problem construction aspect of all policies (see Bacchi, 2009). TFB seeks to address the second problem through the social entrepreneurial training of the recruited graduates potentiating these alumni as drivers/agents of an intended systemic change. TFB’s efforts amount to a movement only when this long-term social entrepreneurial impact is taken into consideration. Our foci are on this desired future impact and the associated social entrepreneurial making of TFB (organisational identity) and its founder (subjectivity). When it comes to ‘impact’, TFB’s emphasis is evidently more on the education system itself than on students, teachers, and schools. Since TFAll’s global movement and associated affordances prerequisite an SE identity, TFB’s local contextual take on social entrepreneurialism bears undeniable significance. In this regard, while we study the founder’s biographical reflections to trace TFB’s organisational DNA (Tompkins-Stange, 2016), the significance of researching fellow teachers and alumni is paramount (see Thomas, 2018; Thomas & Lefebvre, 2018; Yin, Dooley, & Mu, 2019). Our

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earlier research on TFB (see Adhikary & Lingard, 2017; Adhikary, Lingard, & Hardy, 2018), demonstrated TFB as an embedded programmatic proxy of TFAll’s policy model, and how this localised movement is ideationally and resourcefully rooted in ‘new philanthropy’ (Ball & Junemann, 2012) and ‘social/impact investment’ (Then, Schober, Rauscher, & Kehl, 2017) that drive a global social entrepreneurial policy field. In this chapter, we elucidate how such rootedness manifests through the construction and professionalisation of social entrepreneurial subjectivities and organisational formations. This chapter is a partial outcome of the first author’s completed doctoral research (Adhikary, 2019). Methodologically combining network ethnography (Howard, 2002) and global ethnography (Burawoy, 1991), this broader research examined: (a) the nature of TFB as the localisation of a globalised reform (de Sousa Santos, 2002); (b) the emerging policy conditions facilitating such localisations (Peck & Theodore, 2015); and (c) the cultural and topological spatial formulation (Allen, 1999; Appadurai, 1996; Lury, Parisi, & Terranova, 2012; Massey, 1994) of policy influences (Tompkins-Stange, 2016), which animate such global-local policy dynamics. Data were collected from multiple sources, including official websites, social media pages, posted videos and photos, online news articles, TV talk-shows and interviews, inaugural speeches, panel discussions, government documents, programme proposals, and policy dialogue events, all complementing in-depth semi-structured interviews. Continuous theoretical and empirical reflections informed the qualitative methods of analyses that also had some quantitative aspects. Ethical processes such as informed consent and gatekeeper’s permission were obtained as both the broader research and this chapter instrumentalised TFB to analyse key debates and dynamics that characterise Bangladesh’s move from NGOs towards an SE future. The chapter does not seek to theorise social enterprises; rather, it engages with TFB’s social entrepreneurial DNA as explained by the founder herself. Her stories and stances act as a gateway to the developments and debates that signal a social entrepreneurial imagination (Anderson, 1983; Appadurai, 1996) of policy and governance of primary education in Bangladesh. As such, we seek to examine how (or if at all) TFB and its founder ‘embody’2 a social entrepreneurial identity and future. We consider how the properties of such embodiment speak to the global social entrepreneurial discourses and practices that vitally influence educational policy and governance today. In the conclusion, we consider some policy developments in Bangladesh that characterise the local manifestations of such global social entrepreneurial policyscapes.

TFB as a de facto social enterprise: The founder’s framework Analysing interview data collected from the TFB founder, in this section we reflect on the formation and impact of social entrepreneurial thinking on the founder’s subjectivity that biographically shaped the aspiration of a systemic transformation in education in Bangladesh. Drawing upon this psycho-

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biographical analysis, we argue that despite the absence of social enterprise as a legally compatible organisational practice in Bangladesh, TFB as an NGO embodies a de facto embryo of a social enterprise. Arranged in four key areas this discussion reflects the founder’s perspectives on social enterprises in relation to herself, the organisation she created, other sectors, and the future of PESoB. Biography and the theme of disparity: Enter the social We begin this ethnographic detailing with episodes from the TFB founder’s biography (Ball, Junemann, & Santori, 2017) relevant to the organisation’s genesis and the underlying social entrepreneurial orientation. The founder of TFB is a Bangladeshi American who was born, brought up and educated mostly in the US. She was also a Teach For America (TFA) corps member. As a result, TFB can legitimately be viewed as a biographic and experiential outcome of its founder’s life in the US as part of the Bangladeshi diaspora. Her personal motivation, cultural orientation, organisational knowledge, life’s vision and entrepreneurial values underpinning TFB were primarily shaped by incidents, experiences and relationships in the US. During a research interview, she stated: I am a Bangladeshi American. I was born in the United States. I grew up back and forth between Bangladesh and US. I think, growing up, I was very much aware of the fact that I was fortunate to receive a pretty good education there [in the US]. In Bangladesh, [for some time] I attended a private English medium school. But I was very aware that that [schooling] was [given] as a lot of luck, and [had] less to do with what I deserved and what I had earned. I’ve been born into a family that could afford those privileges. And it was not necessarily, anything else. And so, I think this idea of disparity and inequity was something that was a theme in my life just growing up. These childhood memories and schooling experiences of the founder demonstrate the shaping influences that diasporic US-nationality played in her actualisation of impulses for establishing TFB as a means for addressing educational inequality. Clearly, diaspora and an associated sense of elitism, combined with a feeling of privileged upbringing, characterised the founder’s personal thinking on her identity and subjectivity. She acknowledged her parents’ Bangladeshi origins, while identifying herself as American. This hybrid subjectivity evidently oscillated between its two-pronged rootedness in both the US and Bangladesh contexts. In terms of the founder’s identification of the social problems that TFB now seeks to address, a perceived sense of commonality between the US and Bangladesh can be noted. For example, in explaining her altruistic motivation supporting TFB, the founder spoke equally of her personal anguish derived from her ‘car’s rear view of street children’ in Bangladesh and being

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‘haunted by’ the lack of high ambition in one of her ‘poor but gifted’ TFA students in the US, namely ‘Nequan’ (Machranga Television, 2013; May, 2013). Said to have links in the founder’s early childhood in Bangladesh, this theme of social disparity took on an American re-contextualisation mostly during her high school and TFA years in the US. The childhood flash backs of her car’s rear view of Bangladeshi street children were then rethought in terms of the disparities that the founder saw in her adolescence in a neighbouring school in the US, and more so during her two-year TFA fellowship. As she exclaimed during the interview, this TFA experience transformed her notions of disparity into a desire to apply the TFA/All model to address social inequity in education in Bangladesh. The following extract from the interview explains further the process of reflexive (Elster, 2017) interpellation involved here: And I became a [TFA] teacher in Southeast Washington DC. So, I taught mathematics to ninth graders for two years in DC. That also was pretty transformative experience for me. I went to high school 20 minutes away from where I taught high school [as a TFA corps member]. And where I studied was a very white relatively affluent community. But I went to a public school. And where I taught was of predominantly black, a low-end public school. But [what] the two public schools offered [were different]. And they were only 20 minutes away from each other. It was a life and death, day and night difference. So, I think that experience helped me understand better, and not just from an academic point, what inequity means for real people. And as a Bangladeshi-American I think I always thought, you know, are there applications to this in Bangladesh? Perceptibly, the founder’s own identity, socio-cultural vocabulary and world view supporting TFB were deeply entwined with her diasporic background, her self-identification with the White well-off community (schooling habitus), and their gradual consolidation through her becoming a TFA corps member. Along with her life’s temporal variations and territorial mobilities came a shift in her social imaginary (Taylor, 2004) and problem imagination (Bacchi, 2009). It is indicative here that in the founder’s view the poor represented an imagined (Appadurai, 1996) and globally universal community-category, while their geographical and national positionings might vary (see Popkewitz, 1998). This also demonstrates how a subjectivity rooted in a developing world socio-political and cultural context becomes deconstructed and reconstructed as it longitudinally goes through specific experiences, affordances and influences of a first world global city life. The founder’s concern for poor children took a specific motivational and operational trajectory as a result of her TFAll experiences. Such experiences also sparked in her a global governmentality (Foucault, 1991b) that potentiated what Appadurai (1996, p. 31) calls a ‘play of pastiche’, while connecting two completely different national, socio-political and

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jurisdictional settings in one imagining mind through problem thinking. Consequentially, the founder identified TFA’s recruitment efforts as her entry point to the imagined TFB path: So, let’s just fast forward [from childhood]. So, when I was graduating from my University [in the US], I was approached by a recruiter from Teach For America which is when I first learned about this model. And although I didn’t have plans to become a teacher, or plans to become an educator, the appeal of Teach For America to me was the opportunity to actually work [entrepreneurially] towards this disparity that I had seen. What is important here is the initial uncertainty in the way the founder imagined her future, and then the opportunities, affordances and ideational framework that TFA niched, through which she came to terms with that doubtfulness. Through TFA, the founder consolidated her life’s mission. TFA in this case not only served as an occupational undertaking; rather, in the form of a packaged and scripted model (TFA) (see Matsui, 2015), it also provided a discursive framework, a value system and a set of programmatic tools and incentives to guide her imagination regarding possible futures. The assimilated aspirations and sentiments of TFA became the performative logic for the founder’s life. Nevertheless, it was not primarily about the universalised poor community, but psycho-socially about herself. Clearly, it was not teaching, but rather the social entrepreneurial side that attracted the founder to TFA. In other words, teaching became a means to an end; the end being her aspired career path as a social entrepreneur in service of a laudable (and broad) social mission, namely addressing inequity. Through TFA experiences and associated entrepreneurial learning, a looming governmentality developed within an otherwise unsure mind that aspired to make a difference. As events and contingencies clicked for the founder, the TFA model gradually became the only possible way of helping poor children, in this case through education and in Bangladesh: So, I think when I was graduating from the university, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure of what I wanted to do with my life. But what I did know was I wanted to do something that was meaningful [to me]. I wanted to do something that would ‘impact’ people. I wanted to do something different than what other people were doing. And I think that’s why Teach For America was exciting to me. It’s because it allowed me to get into the actual work. Get kind of my hands dirty! This wish to have an ‘impact’ upon people activated the philanthrocapitalist (Bishop & Green, 2016; Edwards, 2008) social entrepreneurial subjectivity and was professionalised through TFA. It was the root of her entrepreneurial spirit and associated problem imagination. The meaning of life and work to the founder involved affecting other peoples’ lives (governmentality), although in

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this case not in America but in Bangladesh. This experiential internalisation (also assimilation) of an entrepreneurial governmentality and the associated socio-cognitive vocabulary gave rise in the founder to a specific kind of problem imagination. She was imagining the situation of disparity in education in Bangladesh in terms of her specific experiences in the US. In other words, the founder imagined educational problems in Bangladesh through a TFAll lens vis-à-vis TFA. The latent content of this imagination originated and matured in the US context, while the manifest content was reimagined in the context of Bangladesh. While so doing, the founder aligned her own self and actualised her occupational thinking in terms of the aspirations, emotions and logics internalised from the TFA experience. She deemed such experiences as an entrepreneurial learning opportunity (see Mair, 2010) to govern lives in Bangladesh (as in ‘actual work’ and ‘getting hands dirty’). It was this entrepreneurial imagination in American terms that led her to establish TFB in the US first3, prior to starting TFB in Bangladesh for reasons explained later. What we see here is the extension and expansion of imagination as a result of a very particular diasporic experience (Appadurai, 1996). TFB started in the individual imagination first, matured through aspirations and experiences, and then became manifest through efforts and actions first in the US and subsequently in Bangladesh. Imagination and action were mutually inclusive in this process of reflexive transformation (Rhodes, 1997), on which the founder further elucidated: I moved to Bangladesh after finishing teaching in 2011. I decided at the end of that year that I was going to start Teach For Bangladesh. And I registered the company in February 2012 [in US]. And I worked independently. We registered in the United States as an LLC. It’s a limited liabilities company. And then acquired a non-profit status in the United States. And then we also registered in Bangladesh as a nonprofitable trust. There is a very standard procedure to set up a company [in the US]. Right? You fill out some forms. LLC is registered with the Virginia Commonwealth, and non-profit status is given by the IRS. It’s the Internal Revenue Service. It is the tax authority within the US. So, we got a tax-exempt status. But anyway, we started Teach For Bangladesh back in 2012 and we joined the Teach For All network in October or November of that year. The above excerpt directs attention to how the entrepreneurial imagination of one individual achieved, step-by-step, an organisational shape. The definitive use of the first person (I) further confirmed the fact that the foundation of TFB was a planned and accreted manifestation of imaginations and aspirations of an entrepreneurial mind. She took gradual steps in forming TFB. The founder registered TFB in the US, while she was back in Bangladesh. The US version

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of TFB followed the Virginia State jurisdiction, as a company for which getting tax exemption4 was important. The manner in which the founder highlights the tax-exempt issue presents it as an important concern of social entrepreneurs. Another probable reason of strategic significance for establishing TFB in the US first, was that, global social entrepreneurial impact investments were impossible to be channelled into countries such as Bangladesh where the permissive legal framework and administrative structures were absent. It was our understanding that, such funding (investment) for so called social enterprises could only be transferred to jurisdictions that had social enterprise as a legally supported sector (e.g. the US and the UK). During data collection in 2016, Bangladesh did not have formal protocols to allow non-profit charitable organisations to function as ‘social enterprises’, let alone receiving such quasi-investments. According to the NGO Affairs Bureau documents, the social entrepreneurial funding that TFB received from Porticus Global was first received by the TFB-US, then was transferred to the TFB-Bangladesh as an NGO grant in strict compliance with the NGO Affairs Bureau regulations. However, the market embeddedness of this establishment is evident in the organisation’s beginning as a ‘company’ and the emphasis on achieving tax exemption status. What started as a company in the US synchronously transformed into a non-profit trust and later an NGO in Bangladesh. The entrepreneurial and business vocabulary used by the founder points at the shaping of her imagination by a business framework culturally grounded in the broader US context. This is an insightful case of how diaspora and an associated transformational imagination now play a key role in constructing global entrepreneurial subjectivities, related aspirations and their re-operationalisation with/in distant local jurisdictions. What is social enterprise? The founder provided a rationalised perspective on social enterprises, which bore clear correspondence with the discourses and practices that overlappingly characterise philanthrocapitalism, venture/new philanthropy, impact investment and social enterprises. As stated in the epigraph by the founder, the key ideas related to social enterprise are: investors, social impact, enterprise venture, and measurement of return, while the enabling and imperative logic is social impact. Extrapolating from the epigraph, social enterprise is seen to be primarily about investment and the actors who are capable of making such investments. Regardless of an investor’s focus on financial dividend/returns, such investments are viewed by the founder as non-traditional in their focus on social welfare, and therefore deemed as altruistic. In fact, here, dividend is reimagined and argued to be measured in terms of social impact, and vice versa. That is, impact is measured in terms of whether and how measurably lives are being affected by the investment and associated programmes. TFB is a recipient of one such impact investment, which was

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applied for and subsequently granted by Porticus Global.5 However, particularly in relation to the TFB/TFAll movement, the founder explained how she viewed impact in and through her practice: So, in Teach For All’s case it is the impact defined by each organisation. And for us we talk about ending educational inequity. That’s what we mean by impact. And so, the way in which we do that is through the student achievement in the classroom [meaning] how much are the students learning, how much are they growing, and it’s through the leaders we are building through our fellowship and our alumni movement. And so, Teach For All is working to help accelerate the impact of each organisation, their effectiveness in doing these things, by sharing expertise, sharing counsel, almost like consulting [appropriate] for various aspects of our organisation. That’s kind of how Teach For All works. TFB defining impact for itself gives reason enough to research formulative differentials between other TFAll partners in regards to social impact and programme design (see Crawford-Garrett & Thomas, 2018). Impact for TFB involves several layers of problem imagination and designed interventions. At the broadest thematic level, impact is addressing educational inequity, something TFAll propagates. Then at the school/classroom level impact is enhancing students’ learning achievements and outcomes (actual results). Then at the systemic level impact is given a movement like shape meant to change/transform the educational system. This change is to be driven by the leadership that TFB fellows are trained in and are expected to deploy in future in their respective professional capacities. However, the last sentence of the interview extract is particularly important in its explanation of the nature of knowledge and advisory support TFAll provides to TFB. Even though TFB claims itself as an organisation independent of TFAll, the latter’s advisory role in the acceleration of impact of TFB amounts to no less than monitoring and measuring of impact, yet also signifies propulsion. Because, what is acceleration without time-framed measurement of developments and their speed? A system-wide cross-sectoral approach to impact The entrepreneurial mode of leadership that TFB proselytises through its alumni movement involves all social sectors within a nation-wide approach. The founder clearly explained that the leadership training for the fellows was meant to have long-term effects in all sectors, including education. The idea is, since the recruits are high achieving graduates, that in future they are more likely to obtain high positions in their respective fields. Once given the social entrepreneurial leadership training, these fellows will be able to support TFB’s future developments. The following statement from the founder clarifies further:

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I am talking about the leadership part. So, we want these people [fellows] to become the long-term leaders of Bangladesh in education and as well as outside of education. The solution has to be a combination of both. … So, what we need is the people [fellows] who are doing this programme, who are building the skills, who then need to go into policy making. They need to go into research tasks … The fellows are not essentially meant to be teachers or educators or even educational specialists in the longer term. Rather, they are expected to be leading a movement of change makers. Indeed, this is not only change in relation to educational inequity, it is also change of the fundamental structures of educational management and leadership. This is a vision of intersectoral social entrepreneurialisation with a specific focus on education. The founder explained her views of long-term impact in the following way: And there should be more entrepreneurs, who should take those lessons and figure out how to do it. We need our fellows to get into the health care sector and figure out how does health combine with education. How does legal aid combine with education? And how does housing affect education. How does nutrition affect education? So, what we want to create is a generations of change makers. Right! And so, that’s how we are hoping to have [established] that long-term impact [occurs] through the short term, demonstrating [that] it’s possible. Clearly, the view of social entrepreneurial change expressed by the founder is not only (education) system-wide. To be accurate, it is also an all-sector long-term approach to change in governance. More importantly, this is an issue that invites democratic deliberation from all possible fronts (see Tompkins-Stange, 2016). However, in achieving the above stated short-term goals and long-term social entrepreneurial visions, the founder underscores the inevitability of quality organisations and exemplary institutional practices. Exemplifying the notion of ‘relentless pursuit’ as found in Teach For America practices (see Thomas & Lefebvre, 2018), but also in Teach For Bangladesh’s media work (see Adhikary et al., 2018), the founder emphasised organisational best practice: I talked to you a little while ago about the quality of institutional practice. So that’s very important. We don’t want to be just another NGO; we want to be a [accented] very, very high performing organisation. So, what that means is everyone within our organisation, from me to fellows, to our cleaning boy, needs to operate with high level of professionalism and attention to excellence. In this extract, a defining feature of the NGO–SE nexus is identifiable. It implies that SE is equal to N(GO) + 1. That is, unlike traditional N(GO)s that

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supplement government’s efforts in addressing social issues through grants, SEs innovate, modulate and become the symbol of best practice in one specific social problem area. Social entrepreneurial spirit is meant to be intensely competitive and infinitely perfectionist, regardless of the culture they work for and within (see Blumenreich & Gupta, 2015 for insights on Teach For India). The idea is that the social entrepreneurial undertaking has to be proved to be successful, and that success has to be better than all others – a proud niche. On this note, Thomas and Lefebvre (2018) have shown how such over-driven, almost zealous, practices can be dangerous and often involve various forms of symbolic and real violence, while this power-drive can also provoke productive possibilities (see Foucault, 1991a, p. 194; Gaventa, 2003, p. 2). Related, one major finding of the research underpinning this chapter was a globally endowed but locally active policy movement from NGOs to SEs and associated debates. Among many, one such debate was around the rootedness of social enterprises in Bangladesh. Some argued that social entrepreneurialism is what has been done so far mainly by Sir Fazle Hasan Abed6 and Dr Mohammad Yunus7 through their NGOs, and thus had already existed in Bangladesh for decades. While, others, including very influential members of the political and bureaucratic elites, argued that NGOs should not be equated or intermingled with business practices. The founder’s view of this NGO-SE nexus was more attuned with the former trend of argument. She thought that in the context of Bangladesh, one really does not need to look outside of the country to learn social entrepreneurship, it is already there in Bangladesh: I don’t think that I see social entrepreneurship as a separate thing [from NGO]. Really, that, you know, I think, especially as a Bangladeshi, social entrepreneurship is something that has been happening in Bangladesh for decades and decades after decades. Whether you talk about Abed Bhai, or Yunus Bhai or anyone else. Really! Social entrepreneurship has been happening in Bangladesh from the beginning of time. So, I don’t think I have ever thought like learning separately about a new idea of social enterprise. I simply see it as someone who is trying to innovate and set up a new idea or set up a new system that has a social impact. TFAll itself is a social enterprise; its network partners must be social enterprises as the associated funding is sourced by impact investors mainly, and the goal is social impact. These are the characterising tenets of philanthrocapitalism and its global social entrepreneurial policyscapes. As a part of this global social entrepreneurial milieu, as the founder rightly said, she did not have to learn social entrepreneurship, as a matter of fact she was living a life as such already. But her approach to Sir Fazle Hasan Abed and Dr Muhammad Yunus as pioneers in SE knowledge apparently put an equalising sign between NGO practices and those of SE. Her perception of leading

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NGO figures in Bangladesh was premised on the logic that anyone trying to innovate and create a system for addressing and governing social issues is a social entrepreneur: a combination of transformativist and innovatist approach to SE. This view is important because, besides primarily acknowledging NGOs as social enterprises, it also creates room for any other types of organisation that would systemically serve a social purpose, including for-profit businesses (NGO + 1). This view is in complete unison with that of Bill Drayton, who is deemed the father of the idea of social enterprise (see Koo, 2013; Ludwig, 2012). It is important to note that the social entrepreneurial movement in Bangladesh is often represented by NGO leaders (including Sir Fazle Hasan Abed and more recently Dr. Ananya Raihan) who were trained as Ashoka Fellows in Drayton’s US-based Policy Institute. The broader research, of which this chapter is a part, found that these debates on nomenclature and local rootedness foregrounded two expectations from the emerging de facto social enterprises; one was tax exemption and the other was allowing NGOs to run parallel businesses. The argument was, since NGOs were actually social enterprises in what they did (impact), and NGOs were facing sharp decline in external grants, NGOs should be allowed to run parallel businesses for sustenance. And since, such businesses are not premised upon unmixed profit motives and are meant to be doing social good, they should not be taxed. This is the NGO + 1 = SE equation, at least in the current context of Bangladesh. Related, at the time of data collection, a policy movement was underway underscoring such arguments. However, this social entrepreneurial mode of systemic thinking is only partially portrayed without an understanding of how the government’s role is viewed therein. What is expected of the government? It was revealing to note that TFB’s transformative vision of a social entrepreneurial future for the education sector did not preclude the government. Rather, in the founder’s opinion and as far as local support was concerned, the government emerged as the principal site of and support for such transformation: For us it was very important to have the government support us from the very beginning. We don’t see this in any way as opposing the government. Rather we want to work in collaboration with the government … And given the fact that the vast majority of the primary schools in Bangladesh are government primary schools, and because we wanted to walk within the mainstream, it was important that we have permission to operate within the government public school system. The founder’s description of the government’s support for TFB also signalled some of the reforms that a social entrepreneurial future would entail for the government. Bangladesh is undeniably a low-resource country, yet its

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government runs one of the largest education systems in the world with a lowend percentage of GDP spent on education. In this context, the TFB founder thought it important that the government of Bangladesh rethink its budgetary allocation for education and particularly teacher education. In further nuancing TFB’s mandate for systemic change, the founder underscored the necessity of the government’s prioritisation of funding education in an efficient way. In the founder’s view, scarcity of funding apparently created the deficient situation within the system that TFB sought to address. Apparently, her argument was ‘you get only what you are ready to pay for’: Bangladesh has one of the lowest per capita GDP investment in education in the world. If we look at our percentage of spending in terms of GDP, it is one of the lowest in the entire world and even in the region. What this shows? It is possible [to provide high quality education for poor children]. But you have to reallocate your resources or re-prioritise. The question is, what is needed to make this happen? If we realise, that ok what we need is higher quality teachers, higher quality training and better compensation, then we act as pressure point to help [government] change some of those things [by] showing them that this is possible if you [government] are willing to prioritise. TFB is an organisation funded and guided by various philanthrocapitalist actors (see Adhikary & Lingard, 2017). What it tries to demonstrate to the government, and thereby act as a pressure point for, is to show that given proper funding, social entrepreneurial interventions can ensure high quality education even for the poorest of the poor communities. And this is exactly what BRAC8 has achieved over the decades as an NGO. So, something must have become unsettling or anachronistic with NGOs. Mannan (2015, p. 59) in his anthropological insider’s account of NGOs in Bangladesh has identified three distinctive stages of NGO evolution: from the ‘gestation period’ (1971–1975) to ‘the consolidation stage’ (1975–1990), to ‘the NGO industry in the age of globalization’ (1990 to present). Among many major transformations, the third phase came with a gradual decline in donor support, while the residuals came increasingly with conditions such as abandonment of social mobilisation approach and adoption of a market approach to social programming. This drive also involved popular encouragement to buy NGOs’ services and products – this is the social entrepreneurial spirit – while the public were increasingly moralised as responsible for their own development (see Mannan, 2015, pp. 84–85). However, the government, in the sense articulated above by the founder, was not prioritising augmented funding and that was a reason why capable actors within the country were seeking for funding elsewhere and in most cases exogenously. While global funds are undeniably important for the establishment and operation of de facto social enterprises such as TFB, the founder used

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an interesting figure of speech that implied one agitated reality characterising the global fundraising culture. When asked about global events and associated affordances, the founder exclaimed quite frankly about how, among many other motivations, fund-searching ticks on the checklist of the SE participants of such global events: But more than anything they offer us more than an opportunity to learn and see what’s happening globally and see what we can adapt and see what we can steal. … I mean, if you are in the education business, you have to ‘beg, borrow and steal’ in whatever you do. Yes, it’s all in service for our students, right? Kids! So, if I have to beg for something … Probably, given the government’s re-prioritisation of funding for social entrepreneurial undertakings, the support seeking practices implied in ‘begging, borrowing and stealing’9 for addressing educational inequity would become more nationally facilitated. Although this is a path that needs to be forged upon hard and honest work, which is what TFB desires to achieve and represent by its drive for excellence. Even though, the TFB founder politely took it on herself, such metaphoric expressions also portray the level of competition, networking and convincing that characterise today’s global fund hunt culture. Being a part of this social milieu has its charms and affordances, but also involves hardship. And that is where the founder shows grit and success. However, when interviewed as a part of our larger research, all the NGO leaders stressed that exogenous funding for NGOs was in sharp decline in Bangladesh. In place, a growing hunt for alternative funds and donations, or often contractual programmatic or technical assistance with the government followed. Adding to that was an observable drive towards various forms of start-up investments that characterise the fundamental principles, processes and proclivities of philanthrocapitalism.

Conclusion In recent years, social enterprise policy discourses have started echoing within the primary education and NGO sectors in Bangladesh (government gatekeepers for TFB). Essentially, the origin, demand, forms, and functions of SE are currently being debated and negotiated in policy sites and spaces within and outside of government premises, all coalescing into various forms of policy movements. Although debatably new in Bangladesh, a simple googling of ‘social enterprise in Bangladesh’ presents over thirty million results in just about half a second. This clearly means substantial work has been underway on social enterprise within the country, despite such organisational formulations not having any institutional and legal status yet. Social entrepreneurial discourses now appear in publications pertaining to research, (edu)business and social policy both within and beyond Bangladesh. In the global context, the Anglophone West is leading such expansive frontiers,

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particularly in relation to education. While various contextual and culturally attuned glocal meanings are often ascribed to this primarily business idea, social enterprises basically use business solutions to address social-humanitarian causes by recycling entrepreneurial dividends/profits. This blend curiously blurs the already thinning line between NGO activities and business profiting. As such, profit and social good stand reciprocally as the poplar terminals of the spectrum of social entrepreneurial practices: an example of what Shamir (2008) has referred to as the moralising of the market. These philanthrocapitalist policy conditions nuanced above are findings of a broader research project, where TFB was taken up as a symptomatic case capable of examining the rise of philanthrocapitalism within the investigated governance landscape in Bangladesh. This chapter has demonstrated how the TFB founder and her organisation embodied social entrepreneurial aspirations, sentiments, and logics underpinning philanthrocapitalism. The research found that social enterprise and impact investment were the centre of ideational gravity around which all the policy dynamics of TFB, but also within the PESoB and the NGO sector were revolving, with varying degrees of intensity and extensity. The environment was similar to what Peck and Theodore (2015) have theorised as ‘fast policy conditions’, where policy dynamics of various speed, scope, involvements, and spatialities pursue the same (SE) goal in different ways at different levels as they overlap. We noted that the PESoB and the NGO sectors were continually mediating, inter alia, the influences of global philanthrocapitalist actors, who constituted policy influence of various spatialities, cultural formulations, and speed of relationships. A policy advocacy movement that laboriously sought to establish social enterprise as an overarching policy panacea for all social sectors in Bangladesh was actively underway. Interestingly, the discursive aspirations, sentiments and logics deployed by the TFB founder in her construction of social enterprises were clearly identical to those underpinning this ongoing movement. The central debates around the root, name, permission for parallel business, and tax remission were also fundamental to what the participants of this advocacy movement were enacting as an intended policy (Ball, Maguire, & Braun, 2012). As a result, although not exclusively, NGOs and their history in education in Bangladesh are being continually reconstituted as an organically home-grown phenomenon that needed to be re/viewed as social enterprises. Powerful global actors and their ‘glocal’ collaborators demonstrated a common understanding of SE constituting a glocal landscape of collective aspirations (Appadurai, 1996). Within this landscape, various actors and their differing interests coalesced to benefit from the envisioned SE-Sector in Bangladesh. Among these many different actors, the old and established [g]local NGOs appeared as the most powerful interests. In fact, NGOs are rapidly opting for a social entrepreneurial organisational identity and associated operational form, using gaps within the existing government regulations that still tend to separate business enterprises from NGOs. The central debate around this SE–NGO dilemma points at the

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perceived need for tax remission for the intended SEs. This is where the TFB founder’s biography and social entrepreneurial standing became particularly illuminating. It is through this interview with her that we came to know of and understand these non-educational issues and developments that now affect education and its governance so profoundly. Although TFB is still a comparatively small organisation in Bangladesh, it is illuminative in relation to the emergent social enterprise agenda. Vis-à-vis social enterprises, and in a de facto fashion, TFB symptomatically represents the ongoing changes within the larger policy and administrative landscape that apparently govern various social sectors including education in Bangladesh. In this sense, TFB was a methodological window through which we were able to identify some of the major issues, debates, aspirations and involvements that gave synergy to the philanthrocapitalist approach to solving educational problems existing in Bangladesh. In the process, we witnessed how the global and the local are increasingly becoming enmeshed in the imagination of national issues and the designing and enactment of remedial policies. Considering the NGO-SE nexus and its future, it is probably only a matter of time before SEs become one major player in educational governance in Bangladesh. The ‘NGO + 1 = SE’ equation will be institutionally drawn, perhaps with some necessary contextual, path-dependent idiosyncrasies. And there will be pros and cons of it, as always. Yet, the productive possibilities and the various forms of resources that such transformations would bring into the system would require accountable and reflexive usage. Bangladesh’s vision to meet the UN’s SDG goals relies substantially on such an approach. Social enterprises also bring in possibilities of self-reliance and job opportunities if facilitated in a systematic systemic way, while the pitfalls of inconsiderate and uninformed profit making will always remain a possibility. While both the exogenous and the endogenous stakeholders, sector specialists and authorities are continually negotiating the possibilities of social enterprise across sectors, each has their own rationales, interests, and asymmetric power and resources. We can only assume that the future of social enterprises in Bangladesh and particularly in education is a possibility that eventually will unfold, yet by no means do we see here a monolithic future. Linking the TFB founder’s postulations with theories and practices of social entrepreneurialism, the future that we see of educational governance in Bangladesh, holds three major considerations. These are related to funding, taxation and the organisational nature of social enterprises. Future funding sources can be imagined as varied, including traditional grants, philanthropic donations, impact investments, government allocations, and even crowd sourcing. Although, local culture and realities will substantially mediate such imaginations in path dependent ways. While the taxation issue still remains a terrain of debate, its extent will eventually be determined by all the stakeholders involved, including the government. Social enterprises in Bangladesh are an organisational form that the government is gradually getting to understand.

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Our research found that the government was waiting for it to become an ‘organically grown’ phenomenon in Bangladesh, so that the former could then intervene to create policies for its systemic development. TFB, as we have tried to show, has been one embryonic catalyst in this emergence.

Notes 1 This interview was conducted as a part of completed doctoral research on social innovation in education in Bangladesh. The research project was first approved and then introduced to NGOs (e.g. TFB, and others) by the NGO Affairs Bureau of Bangladesh through a formal letter. This letter and a broad project summary were submitted to the TFB founder, who enthusiastically signed the consent form for voluntary, informed participation. Any personal information irrelevant to the social entrepreneurial formation of TFB, or not publicly available, or not gathered from the government sources, has not been used here. See Adhikary (2019) for more information. 2 Voice, enact and negotiate their cultural beliefs and values (Tompkins-Stange, 2016) in normative forms (Thomas, 2018, p. 189). 3 More on this can be found in Adhikary (2019) and Adhikary and Lingard (2017). 4 This is increasingly becoming a key debate within the NGO sector of Bangladesh. 5 Porticus Global is a philanthrocapitalist organisation that manages and develops the philanthropic programmes of charitable entities established by Brenninkmeijer family entrepreneurs. 6 The founder of Building Resources Across Communities, formerly Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC). BRAC’s non-formal education model is widely used across the globe. Sir Abed is a believer in market/business driven social programming. 7 A Nobel Laureate and founder of microcredit programmes and Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. 8 BRAC is a Bangladesh based NGO active in education both in Bangladesh and in several least developed countries. 9 The founder mentioned this interesting phrase when she was asked about the intended benefits derivable from global conferences. According to the Cambridge Dictionary it means ‘to do whatever is necessary to get something’. In the Teach For All context, this phrase often refers to the use of donations, free legal advice, probono expertise, donated office space, etc. Our research on TFB confirmed such global-local endowment dynamics in Bangladesh.

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Teach For Bangladesh and social enterprise 137 TFAll. (2017a, 18 July). Highlights from our first global social innovation event. Retrieved 3 December 2018 from https://teachforall.org/news/highlights-our-first-global-socia l-innovation-event. TFAll. (2017b, 3 October). Global innovation hub. Retrieved 3 December 2018 from https://teachforall.org/global-innovation-hub. Then, V., Schober, C., Rauscher, O., & Kehl, K. (2017). Social return on investment analysis: Measuring the impact of social investment. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Thomas, M.A.M. (2018). ‘Policy embodiment’: Alternative certification and Teach For America teachers in traditional public schools. Teaching and Teacher Education, 70, 186–195. Thomas, M.A.M., & Lefebvre, E.E. (2018). The dangers of relentless pursuit: Teaching, personal health, and the symbolic/real violence of Teach For America. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 39(6), 856–867. Thompson, J.L. (2002). The world of the social entrepreneur. International Journal of Public Sector Management, 15(5), 412–431. Tompkins-Stange, M.E. (2016). Policy patrons: Philanthropy, education reform, and the politics of influence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Yates, B.T., & Marra, M. (2017). Social return on investment (SROI): Problems, solutions … and is SROI a good investment? Evaluation and Program Planning, 64, 136–144. Yin, Y.M., Dooley, K., & Mu, G.M. (2019). Why do graduates from prestigious universities choose to teach in disadvantaged schools? Lessons from an alternative teacher preparation program in China. Teaching and Teacher Education, 77, 378–387.

Chapter 8

Mobilising the philanthropic neoliberalisation of Teach For All in Spain Geo Saura

Introduction The proliferation of the Teach For All network (TFAll) plays a special role in the reconfiguration of educational policies. The expansion of the global TFAll network, through its subsidiaries in 53 countries, has led to the consolidation of new philanthropic policy networks that are already operating with momentum in the transformation of educational systems – especially in the processes of teacher training – in multiple territories. Because of the new ways of configuring education policies and agendas, in which philanthropic networks such as TFAll are entering into public-private spheres, the field of educational policy is undergoing intense debate. The philanthropic foundations of TFAll are part of new policy networks which lead configurations, designs, and the implementation of policies in global education agendas jointly with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and think tanks. The philanthropic networks of TFAll, as shown by critical policy studies, modify scenarios through educational reforms characterised by new representations of governance, privatisation, and neoliberalisation (Adhikary & Lingard, 2017; Ball, Junemann, & Santori, 2017; Crawford-Garrett, 2013; La Londe, Brewer, & Lubienski, 2015; Olmedo, Bailey & Ball, 2013; Scott, Trujillo & Rivera, 2016). The structures of these policy networks are framed within the presence of a global paradigm shift of governance of policies (Peck & Theodore, 2015) that consolidate the ‘turn of mobility’ in social theory (Urry, 2007). This shift in policy studies is identified by uninterrupted movements of policy governance and is configured through ‘global assemblages’ (Collier & Ong, 2005). Assemblages is the English translation of the philosophical concept of French origin ‘agencement’ that Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari constructed to explain the multiplicities by which the capitalist system works (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). It is not a conglomerate of predetermined pieces, nor a random mixture of elements. Assemblage is founded on ‘the rejection of unity in favor of multiplicity, and the rejection of essence in favor of events’ (Nail, 2017, p. 22). Assemblages have no centres, but they act under a multiplicity formed by a set of interwoven

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heterogeneous elements that, by constantly evolving, express their territorial identity under re-territorialisations and over-codifications. They cannot be analysed under ‘a perspective focused on the detailed qualitative and ethnographic study of the practice of assembling some form of coherence, such as a policy’ (McCann & Ward, 2013, p. 8). These assemblages are shaped by processes of ‘mobility’ and ‘mutation’ of ‘fast policies’ so that policies are constantly modified during their travels before relocating within specific geographies. These changes in global governance (e. g. assemblages, mobilities, and mutations) have been defined as the focus of ‘post-transfer’ approach (McCann & Ward, 2013; Peck & Theodore, 2012). These transformations of the shift in mobility, defined as policy post-transfer, are contemporary analyses that require paying attention to the ‘new spaces of the political cycle’ and ‘the mobility of discourses’ (Gulson et al. 2017, p. 3). New analytical foci illuminate the terrains of political configurations through mobile processes of global educational reforms contextualised in specific geographies. Investigations of TFAll’s philanthropic networks, through posttransfer analytical frameworks, are necessary to complement and intensify previous research on the private political actors that have led to the political transfers of globalisation and the pro-privatisation reforms of educational systems (see, for example, Rizvi & Lingard, 2010; Steiner-Khamsi & Waldow, 2012). The proliferation of ethnographic and qualitative analyses of philanthropic policy networks in specific geographies enables the understanding of heterogeneous and diverse elements that assemble to lead and recontextualise political reforms of contemporary neoliberalisation in education. The exploration of policy networks of philanthropic governance is, in turn, a means of analysis to investigate the union of heterogeneous nodes and/or elements that set contemporary reforms in motion (Au & Ferrare, 2015; Ball, Junemann & Santori, 2017; Hogan, Sellar & Lingard, 2015; Olmedo, 2017). As global governance evolves, it is necessary to analyse how the TFAll philanthropic network is resituated in defined spaces, thus generating transformation processes through education policy reforms. The purpose of this chapter is to analyse how, through these global governance processes, the policy network of Empieza por Educar (ExE), TFAll's affiliate in Spain, generates new processes of neoliberalisation in the context of Spanish education policy. This chapter, then, is organised into four sections. The first section focuses on broadening the analyses that relate to the notions of philanthropy and neoliberalisation that have become the new forms of government after the most recent crisis of capitalism. The second section addresses the research methodology used to examine the new forms of network governance of philanthropy in education. The methodological process is based on ‘network ethnography’ (Howard, 2002), as it adapts to the analysis of policy networks in education (Hogan, 2015). The third section, as a case study of global assemblages and mobile policies, analyses the structure of the Spanish philanthropic policy network ExE and its effects on ‘metagovernance’ (Jessop, 2016). The fourth section

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takes into account the discourses and narratives of the philanthropic network of TFAll in Spain as a means of constructing new ‘neoliberal subjectifications’ (Foucault, 2008; Lazzarato, 2015) in teaching. To do this, the last section examines the structure of teaching through policy mutations in the discourses on entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial spirit, leadership, resilience, and agents of change in the philanthropic policy network.

Philanthropic neoliberalisation and capitalist crisis As TFAll was launched in 2007 at the Global Clinton Initiative (see Chapter 3), a global economic crisis of capitalism generated important changes in public policies. This crisis has led to the development of new forms of ‘neoliberal capitalist governmentality’ (Lazzarato, 2015, p. 12) that have transformed the structures of policies. Policies became increasingly constructed through policy networks of global governance, although what has happened in this last crisis is not unprecedented. Since its inception, the capitalist system has had cyclical crises. From different theoretical positions, from Marxist theory (Marx 2000 [1867]), anarchist theory (Kropotkin, 1970 [1927]), Deleuzian philosophy (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), and more contemporary structuralist Marxism (Harvey, 2014), scholars have all clairvoyantly illustrated the relationship between capitalism and crisis. A symbiotic binomial (crisis/capitalism) has been established because crisis has an inherently repetitive nature that occurs, disappears, and reappears cyclically, which is typical of the very ontology of capitalist functioning. These cyclical processes of transformation occur when the logic of reproduction of capitalist axioms encourages threats against durability. Once the functioning of capitalism feels the danger, capital tends to reinvent itself in different ways in order to replace the threatening cycles (Harvey, 2014). The systems of production and the modes of government, in all the processes of permutation of capitalism, are redone and reinvented to be re-established as something different from what they were before the crisis. In other words, capitalism benefits, feeds off, and reinvents itself in response to crises – a phenomenon highlighted most prominently by Canadian writer and activist Naomi Klein (2007). In relation to modes of governing, one of the most significant aspects of the last capitalist crisis is the potential for new philanthropic actors on the structuring of public policies. This new philanthropy, or ‘philanthrocapitalism’ (Edwards, 2008; Bishop & Green, 2010), differentiates itself from ‘traditional philanthropy’ (Frumkin, 2006) or ‘scientific philanthropy’ (Saltman, 2010) that acts to solve the inequalities of the capitalist crisis. The field of education, together with that of health, is where philanthrocapitalists focus their interests. The global crisis has led governments to reduce their social investments thus creating a window of opportunity for contemporary philanthropy to incorporate business successes into the reconfigurations of policies and to influence educational agendas. This new philanthropy is part of broader networks of

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global governance through which privileged actors lead political agendas. They possess the ability to act on compressed time margins to influence large spaces (Peck & Theodore, 2015). The presence of unknown ways of governing allows new philanthropic actors, especially within foundations and growing policy networks, to begin to occupy essential roles and become leaders in the transformation of educational systems. They had a strong influence on the political transformations of the last crisis, through what Mitchell and Sparke (2016, p. 725) synthesise ironically, in a paradoxical but very truthful sense: ‘capitalists rescuing capitalism from capitalism’. Although philanthropy, widely understood as altruistic actions towards charity and social problems, has existed since the time of classical Greece (Sulek, 2010), important changes have emerged in the last decade. The discursive logic of Bill Gates on the philanthropic actions that are developing through the ‘Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’, through what he calls ‘creative capitalism’ (Kiviat & Gates, 2008, p. 1), have had a lot to do with these processes of change: Capitalism has improved the lives of billions of people – something that’s easy to forget at a time of great economic uncertainty. But it has left out billions more. They have great needs, but they can’t express those needs in ways that matter to markets. So they are stuck in poverty, suffer from preventable diseases and never have a chance to make the most of their lives. Governments and nonprofit groups have an irreplaceable role in helping them, but it will take too long if they try to do it alone. It is mainly corporations that have the skills to make technological innovations work for the poor. To make the most of those skills, we need a more creative capitalism: an attempt to stretch the reach of market forces so that more companies can benefit from doing work that makes more people better off. We need new ways to bring far more people into the system – capitalism – that has done so much good in the world. There’s much still to be done, but the good news is that creative capitalism is already with us. Within these new logics of global philanthropy, a number of foundations are leading these global transformations: The Gates couple through the ‘Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’; Bill and Hillary Clinton through ‘The Clinton Foundation’; and Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) under the ‘Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’. It is the materialisation of extremely wealthy actors who, through large financial donations to the foundations they created and lead, are exercising the ability to influence policy and transform educational systems from their individual visions. What is characteristic of this new philanthropy is the direct relationship between the actions of ‘giving’ while expecting specific results, at the same time as the donors are involved in the ‘political community’ actively configuring the educational agendas and

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moving their business philosophy to charity. New philanthropic actions are often presented to the market as a solution to address social problems. For Saltman (2010) this new philanthropy merges risk philanthropy with social entrepreneurship through a rationalisation of monetary contributions. It is a strategic philanthropy, market-conscious, impact-oriented, knowledge-based, highly committed, and driven by maximising the leverage of the donor’s capital (Bishop & Green, 2010). This incipient philanthropy is governed by three pillars to improve the actions of traditional philanthropy: (1) providing larger economic amounts and for longer periods; (2) creating indicators of the impact of the investment; and (3) exercising a closer relationship between providers and recipients where philanthropists act as advisers to the problems and solutions (Saura, 2018). In addition to economic benefits, which are always well received within the new logics of charity, this new philanthropic community creates policies and measures their impacts, while redirecting the investments obtained from the economic return invested. The essential characteristics of new philanthropy are the ability to donate, create policies, and extract benefit from the investment. That is, a new philanthropy where power relations circulate under ‘incessant three-dimensional flows’ (Saura, 2016, p. 251) through the donation of capital, the creation of policies, and the perpetuation of capitalist logics. The birth of new philanthropists who spread the logic of capitalism on a global scale is a significant occurrence in the latest unprecedented crisis of capitalism. The transformations of this contemporary philanthropy in educational agendas, as an entry of new private actors in political decision-making, verify contemporary processes of what Osborne & Gaebler (1992) defined as ‘reinventing government’. These emerging transitions and steps from ‘government to governance’ (Rhodes, 1997) have resulted in what Jessop (2016) terms ‘metagovernance’. These are processes typical of neoliberal capitalist governmentality that have been legitimised after the start of the most recent global crisis of capitalism in 2007. A regime of governmentality of contemporary neoliberalisation where policies are configured in global assemblages (Collier & Ong, 2005) and characterised by ‘policy mobilities’ (Urry, 2007; Peck & Theodore, 2015) that ‘mutate’ before landing in specific geographies. These processes of transformation of governmentality have to be considered as neoliberalisation instead of neoliberalism – a neoliberalisation that identifies a regime that is not finished and is not homogeneous or ‘monolithic’ (Brenner, Peck, & Theodore, 2010; Springer, Birch, & MacLeavy, 2016). The processes of contemporary neoliberalisation are always changing and are identified by the ways in which they are re-contextualised and remade. The present neoliberalisation, in a future of versatile multiplicities, is characterised by mobile processes of re-adaptation, re-situation, and mutation of policies in different geographies. Hence, there became a greater need to analyse specific spaces in which global policies emerge.

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Methodology: Network ethnography in policy networks in education To analyse the transformations of TFAll in Spanish educational policy, this study utilises the methodological perspective of ‘network ethnography’ (Howard, 2002). Network ethnography is a methodological hybridisation that unifies the principles of socio-political network analysis with analysis procedures more typical of traditional ethnographic studies. It is an appropriate approach to understand the changes of ‘socio-spatial relationships’ (Jessop, Brenner & Jones, 2008) of contemporary governance. The methodological process is developed through three interconnected activities (Ball, Junemann & Santori, 2017; Olmedo, Bailey & Ball, 2013; Saura, 2018). The first activity involves extensive internet research to analyse the narratives of philanthropic foundations, the companies, and the actors that make up the policy network, as well as discovering the professional histories of members of the network. Different resources are examined: websites; institutional networks blogs; YouTube videos; Twitter, Facebook, blogs, LinkedIn, and Instagram pages of networks and their members; then on to books, reports, and articles with authorship in the nodes that make up the network. In this study of ExE, data was gathered through this first phase in an effort to identify who comprises the ExE network, how they interrelate, what aims their actions have, and as a prior step to select the key informants of the ethnographic work. The second phase is based on exploring social connections and the ‘network capital’ (Urry, 2007) generated within the policy network by identifying nodes and relevant cases that make up the interaction between companies, organisations, institutions, and individual actors. The policy network is generated through Gephi software. The third activity that constitutes network ethnography are the typical components of traditional ethnography such as interviews, observations, and field notes. For this study, data was drawn from fifteen semi-structured interviews and field notes taken after accessing different events, meetings, foundations, and companies within the ExE network. The procedures of this third phase of data collection are carried out to capture the social interaction between and among network actor and discover the discursive logics and the mechanisms that configure the policies. The ethnographic process uses an intentional sampling of key informants and continues with the ‘snowball sampling’ technique (Noy, 2008), once the participants provide data and facilitate access to other interviews and meetings. The data of each phase of research were systematised through the axial coding processes provided by the QSR NVivo software12.

Global assemblages re-established in the governance of the Spanish state The TFAll affiliate in Spain, ExE, started operating in 2011 and recruits young university graduate leaders, who do not need to have prior teacher training, to work for two years as teachers in centres in three Spanish regions: Madrid,

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Catalonia, and the Basque Country. After a very selective recruitment process, they receive intense training in leadership and education for five weeks in the ‘Summer Institute’ in Madrid, while they teach compulsory education students who have failed examination subjects. Their first contact with teaching is based on the logic of ‘teaching to the test’, as is the case with TFA (Lefebvre & Thomas, 2017) since, during the five intense weeks of training at the Summer Institute, they have to successfully enable their students to pass the examinations to be able to access the next course. When they finish the two-year contract with ExE, the young leaders are called ‘alumni’, and the network seeks that they commit to the diffusion of the causes and principles of the foundation for life. ExE, as in the different countries of the TFAll global network, is developed under a discursive logic that maintains that education can eradicate social inequalities, helping students ‘succeed’ despite the structural conditions and historical origins that foster such inequalities: The obstacles they face – poverty, hunger, discrimination, trauma, and school systems that do not provide them with the education they need – are overwhelming. And when millions of children are not learning, it affects us all – perpetuating poverty, dividing societies, and weakening economies. (Teach For All, 2019) Therefore, ExE mobilises the global discourse of TFAll under these premises: The social and educational inequality in our country is growing. At ExE we want all children to be able to do and be whatever they want, regardless of the environment in which they are born or live. The solution begins with education. (ExE, 2018) Among the heterogeneous elements that make up the assemblages, the political actors are a very important part. They serve as critical nodes of the networks that lead and connect other nodes to constitute pro-privatisation political governance. At the core of the ExE network is Ana Botín, president and founder of ExE, who appears in the top 10 of Forbes magazine’s ‘The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women’. In the many companies she manages, she holds powerful positions: as executive chairman of the Spanish multi-national commercial bank and financial services Company (Santander Group) and a director of The Coca-Cola Company. Through a multiplicity of assembled nodes, she has the capacity to operate in a political network that connects important companies, social and business entrepreneurs, philanthropic foundations, bank branches, universities, religious institutions, and governments (see Figure 8.1).

Figure 8.1 ExE policy network generated through Gephi software

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The network has the ability to formalise an assemblage between entrepreneurs, corporations, public and private institutions, foundations, and government agencies, of great importance in the Spanish political context. They work together as an assembled network and through a multiplicity of heterogeneous elements: political community, desires, speeches, events, political practices, etc. As an essential element, Botín has the potential to expand the ‘network capital’ that, according to Urry (2007), makes it possible for an increase in ‘social capital’ within networks through connections between nodes that are always in social construction with multiple objectives. The network capital occurs within a political community comprised of a limited number of participants in a governance process (Rhodes, 2006). In order to attract young leaders, ExE promotes itself by showing the opportunities and advantages of this social capital provided by the network: You will have access to a business network of great national and international prestige that highly values the experience as a Participant in a Teach For All Network Program: Google, McKinsey and Visa are partners in the Teach For All network, and, nationally, ExE has partners such as Uría Menéndez, Deloitte, Deutsche Post-DHL, Marcelino Botin Foundation, Ramon Areces Foundation, Caixa Foundation, and Barclays Foundation. (ExE, 2012) Within ExE, as in any other assemblage, there are always heterogeneities with an identity that claim a territory to modify (Wise, 2005), and they are spatial, both in the territorial and scalar sense (McCann & Ward, 2013). ExE has emerged to reclaim its territory within the educational system to reform the country after the economic crisis. ExE’s aim is to reformulate the educational system and improve education to solve the serious consequences of the economic crisis. In the Spanish context, the consequences of the crisis materialised with drastic austerity measures, economic decline, high unemployment rates, and migratory flows of highly qualified postuniversity youth to countries with higher employment rates. In 2011, a constitutional reform was carried out – the second since 1978 – supported by the two major parties (i.e. Popular Party and Socialist Party). The change opened up the possibility for the State to rescue and merge banks, which was accompanied by tax advantages in exchange for donations. The economic crisis was seen as a window of opportunity for the proliferation of newly created philanthropic foundations and for companies to act in the improvement of health and educational policies. Although Spain was not traditionally a country with high philanthropic participation, it now ranks eighth in the world according to the volume of capital donated and in first place in relation to the asset expense rate, which identifies the broad desire for rapid social impact (Johnson, 2018).

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These changes in philanthropy, in which the emergence of ExE is framed, have to be understood as assemblages that verify that policies are not coherent products that are transferred in complete packages, but are constructed in broader social processes. The analyses of policies assembled in specific networks are useful to understand that policies and governance processes are relational sets of multiplicities of elements. Political interests and proposals are formed and defined simultaneously with policymaking. The notion of ‘policy mobility’ (Hannam, Sheller & Urry, 2006) is useful in analysing how in these assemblage processes, policies are configured in incessant mobile processes (England & Ward, 2016; Brenner, Peck & Theodore, 2010). Policy mobility is inherent in contemporary neoliberal governmentality. It is not a question of analysing how and among which actors the policies of context X are translated or transferred to context Y. Rather, it is about starting from the idea that policies are alive, and they are being modified through their global movements, even when they are perceived as being immobile in specific geographic settings. The political mobilities of networks under new forms of ‘spatialising of social relations’ (Ball, 2012, p. 5) are dynamics to shape contemporary policies that are ‘spatialised’ globally, opening up previously untrodden pathways to create policies. In these constructions there are, at the same time, unknown and traditional entrances and exits, both of actors and of discourses that move beyond the imagined geographies. As noted by McCann and Ward (2012), the notion of ‘policy mobility’ refers to ‘the social and spatial complexity of movements of all sorts’, and also to ‘fluidity, mobilisation and de-territorialisation, but, necessarily also about moorings, stabilities, and territorialisations’ (p.9). Through governmental agreements with the state government and the regional governments of Madrid, Catalonia, and the Basque Country, ExE leads the reform of teacher training in Spain through philanthropic actions that re-territorialise, through privatisation, what were previously State responsibilities. In Catalonia and the Basque Country, the network has put in place a new teaching induction programme, which replaces the traditional state examination requirement to become a public teacher. The policy network has reached an agreement with the government of Madrid for teachers who work for two years with ExE to be given preference to work in Catholic schools (ExE, 2018). These are some examples of policies that reterritorialise previous spaces belonging to the State government, which are consolidated through a contemporary representation of governmentality. This is achieved through implementing policy technologies where the state governs the market, representing what Foucault defined as ‘state phobia’ (Foucault, 2008, p.187). Government changes that situate state actions under a ‘strategic-relational approach’ are shaped through an ‘assemblage of institutions, organisations, and interactions involved in the exercise of political leadership and in the implementation of decisions that are, in principle, collectively binding on its political subjects’ (Jessop, 2016, p. 16). ExE, as in other cases, is the emergence of elements assembled in philanthropic political networks that are

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consolidated through governance processes and metagovernance structures (Olmedo, 2017). Multiplicities of network relationships are generated in novel processes of state capitalism.

Policy mutations constructing neoliberal teaching subjectivities It is important to note that the mobility shift shows that currently policies are identified by their mutation character (McCann & Ward, 2012). The idea of policy mutation means that programmes, agendas, and ideas are in a process of constant variation. From their creation until the moment they are implemented, policies undergo changes and are reconfigured in order to fit into their new spaces. In this section, I will discuss particular aspects of ExE narratives that are being incorporated in the reform of the Spanish educational system to build new teaching subjectivities. It is common for new philanthropists to come together through meetings, conferences, congresses, and encounters, to formalise epistemic philanthropic communities through which they direct and select policies to bring about change in the processes of reforms of educational agendas. The World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) initiative, led by the Qatar Foundation and Banco Santander, is a good example of this. As, Sheikha Hind, Vice Chairperson and CEO of Qatar Foundation says: The WISE-Santander partnership reflects our dedication to finding solutions to global education challenges. And we are delighted to have a strong ally in Banco Santander as we work together to achieve shared objectives. (WISE, 2017a) In the 2017 initiative ‘WISE@Madrid Imagining the Future of Education’ Ana Botín, the President of Banco Santander and of TFAll-Spain network, set out her proposals: [ExE] is an organisation which enables some of the most talented young graduates in Spain to spend a few years at the start of their careers teaching in public [state] schools. Ana Botín is aware of the benefits of these philanthropic alliances to reformulate education. She clarifies her principles (WISE, 2017b) to change the policies where the main philanthropic epistemic communities are formed and expresses their investment wishes: One of the great privileges of my job is that I get to spend time imagining the future, and talking to the smartest people in the world about their plans and visions. What will the future look like for children now at school? My first hope is that the future will be fairer. My second hope is

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that the future will be more collaborative. … Our government’s role is to enable this by encouraging institutions to be more adaptive to change. Echoing Botín’s sentiment, ExE promotes their vision, endorsed by TFAll, under these narratives of meritocracy based upon educational achievement: The social and educational inequality in our society is growing. In ExE, we want all boys and girls to be able to do and be what they want, regardless of the environment in which they are born or live. The solution begins with education. (ExE, 2018) In order to achieve these aims, ExE does not want ‘traditional teachers’, but new subjects turned leaders. The policy network aims to turn teachers into leaders through an amalgam of narratives that it collects from TFAll, as well as global discourses on leadership and entrepreneurship with business visions. Thus, they exhibit their idea of the teacher as leader through the Spanish network of ExE when it promotes the programme in universities: We believe that teacher training is fundamental. The competencies that a transformational teacher must have are the same as business leaders, in the sense that they must meet certain managerial skills. (Javier Rogla, co-founder of ExE 2011–2016 and 2016-present Head of Universities at Banco Santander, SA) This concept of entrepreneurial leadership is based on the broader principles on which Ana Botín developed her investments. As she declared in a speech at the Annual Convention of the Institute of Directors 2013, this entrepreneurial spirit needs to be fostered in new generations: Profit, wealth creation, competition – these are not dirty words but the lifeblood of a dynamic economy … to create more companies like Monetise we need to start with our young people, we have many world-class schools and universities in the UK, but there’s more we can do to instill that optimism, that spirit of entrepreneurship in the young. (Institute of Directors, 2013) Another participant of ExE ratifies it in this way: We define ExE as a development programme in educational leadership. We need to develop the people who will lead those changes … everyone has many ideas on what to do in education, but we … basically in the programme what we do is empower leadership experiences. (Alumni 3)

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As the foundation pointed out these leaders/entrepreneurs are created by way of ‘an eminently practical training’ and ‘coaching’ to help them be more effective in their classroom management (Gutiérrez & Costa, 2014, p. 30). These conceptions of teaching are governed by the discourse expressed by ExE in order to eliminate inequalities by improving the evaluations of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) of the OECD. They are new understandings of teaching, which legitimise new devices to perpetuate the ‘performativity’ where the teaching experience is one thing, and productivity, measurability, management, and effectiveness are everything. The ideas of leadership and effectiveness of ExE (2018) are the mutation and the readaptation of Design thinking and the model of ‘Teaching as Leadership’ (Farr, 2010) as used by TFAll: We pursue a global goal, to fight against educational inequalities, adapting the programs to the particular challenges of each country. The national contexts are apparently very different, but the nature of the educational problem has similarities that allow Teach For All organisations to share good practices, innovations and resources. These logics about the transformation of teachers into leaders are developed through the expansion of the notion of resilience that is core among the participants of the philanthropic network. As one of the main actors that generates discourses on how teachers should become leaders, a teacher of the TFAll network is the one who ‘assumes responsibility and control of self and surroundings and challenges as obstacles to be navigated and overcome on the way to goals’ (Farr 2010, p. 199). This concept of teacher leadership is a clear example of the need to generate resilient teachers. The political network TF, as TFAll acts in the British and New Zealand contexts (Bailey, 2015; CrawfordGarrett, 2018), generates these new forms of neoliberal subjectivisation of teaching to internalise in the subject the responsibility of solving social problems from the classroom. Resilience is a mechanism of subjectivation through the management of uncertainty (O’Malley, 2011), which makes the subjects responsible and tests their individual adaptability (Joseph, 2013). A new form of neoliberal governmentality is understood as the confluence between control techniques exerted on the self and on others, or conduction of behaviour (Foucault, 1983). The state holds the subject responsible so that it finds opportunities to be overcome at every moment of risk or threat. In short, resilience is consolidated as a new form of neoliberal governmentality that the state resituates at moments of risk as challenges for the subject to take personal responsibility for social inequalities. But these limits of leadership are not confined to the classroom, but go beyond schools. The aim is to introduce leadership in teachers to be projected as ‘agents of change’ through a ‘lifetime commitment’ to the principles of the policy network:

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The impact we expect is … that participants in the programme develop the skills and mentalities to exercise change and ‘commit for life’ with the cause of educational equity, thus generating a pool of change agents. (ExE, 2016) As one of the managers of ExE, who had previously taken part in the program and is now an alumnus, points out, the intention is a broad and expansive movement: We do not create agents of change, but we want to create a movement of agents of change. (Alumni 4) These narratives about agents of change are typical of the different branches of the global TFAll network, which are consolidated as processes of control of contemporary biopolitics from a Foucauldian vision, through population regulation mechanisms. These discourses on teaching try to understand the teaching subject as ‘a form of power which subjugates and makes subject to’ with two meanings of subject: ‘subject to someone else by control and dependence and tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge’ (Foucault, 2008, p. 212). On the one hand, a subject is created, who believes him or herself to be a leader responsible for solving social problems and eliminating inequalities. On the other hand, the subject is tied to his or her own identity as a leader, which is created by the narrative logic of the policy network. These devices have promoted ‘insecurity, inequality, and individualisation as part of ensuring the conditions for power to exercise a hold over conduct’ constituting ‘the formation of a new type of individual, the subject who is an “entrepreneur of him/herself” who is meant to fit into the frame of society remade as an “enterprise society”’ (Lazzarato, 2015, p. 101). Through these discourses of leadership formation, new processes of neoliberal governmentality are consolidated through policy technologies that hold the subject responsible for social problems, producing flows that de-territorialise the State.

Conclusions New processes of global governance are transforming the ways that policies are created. It is a paradigm shift in governance that is characterised by the development of global assemblages, mobility processes, and policy mutations. They represent policy structures assembled through reflective governance, accelerated transnationalisation of policies and practices, and greater mobility of political techniques and policymakers (Peck & Theodore, 2015). All these transformations are part of a new regime of neoliberal governmentality that has come with the last capitalist crisis. A regime has to be considered as neoliberalisation that has been readapted and recontextualised. Therefore, a living and

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heterogeneous neoliberalisation which continuously transform the spaces of different geographies. In all these processes of present governance, the proliferation of philanthropic political networks plays a special role in the reconfiguring of education policy. The geographical recontextualisation of TFAll’s policy networks is producing profound changes in the creation of educational agendas. The expansion of the philanthropic network TFAll, in the multiplicity of spaces in which it now operates, is leading these transformations that consolidate new trajectories of neoliberalisation of educational systems. The various branches of TFAll are responsible for reforming educational systems in different scenarios by modifying teacher training and incorporating neoliberal practices and privatisation processes in state public education systems. By reframing teachers as leaders, to holding them accountable to the cause of inequities, TFAll commits leaders to act as agents of change and to fight for the aim of eradicating inequalities under the logic and ideals of the global network. Each branch is constituted in a political network formed by companies, foundations, bank branches, public organisms, individual donors, leaders, entrepreneurs and gurus that lead these reforms of educational systems. All networks are configured through global spaces and meetings (face to face and at other times online) that make the ways in which educational policies are configured more opaque and more diffuse. The philanthropic political network ExE acts through an assemblage of heterogeneous interrelations that are configured, in multiplicities of spaces and relationships, in the neoliberalisation of the Spanish educational system. It is a case of analysis that forms part of the regime of governmentality and global circulation of policies. There are modes, pathways and specific sites through political materialisations that are part of a global project of educational reform, ‘derived from one place into reformed and changed arrangements elsewhere’ (Peck & Theodore, 2015, p. xxvii). The Spanish philanthropic network –formalised among entrepreneurs, corporations, public and private institutions, foundations, and government agencies– is interrelated through a ‘network capital’ that transforms Spanish educational policy. It composes an assemblage that unifies a political community of desires and political practices that, together, contribute to the privatisation of teacher training with the purpose of eradicating educational inequalities. These are intrinsic dynamics to ‘state phobia’ (Foucault, 2008, p. 187) which seize education policy under new neoliberal reterritorialisations of the public sphere. The ExE foundation, mobilising and changing policies from TFAll, aims to transform the teaching function. For this, it wants teachers to become leaders, under a vision of leadership and business entrepreneurship; a leadership that is completed through the vision of ‘teaching as leadership’ and educational coaching programmes. The philanthropic policy network places teachers under a vision of resilience in the face of adversity and risk, so that, individually, they are responsible for social improvement. They conceptualise leaders as agents of change who fight, throughout their entire life, for the principles of the network. Ultimately, these discourses are policy technologies of contemporary governmentality which create new neoliberal teaching subjectivities.

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Teach For All in Spain 155 Noy, C. (2008). Sampling knowledge: The hermeneutics of snowball sampling in qualitative research. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 11(4), 327–344. O’Malley, P. (2011). Resilient subjects: Uncertainty, warfare and liberalism. Economy and Society, 39(4), 488–509. Olmedo, A. (2017). Something old, not much new, and a lot borrowed: Philanthropy, business, and the changing roles of government in global education policy networks. Oxford Review of Education, 43(1), 69–87. Olmedo, A., Bailey, P., & Ball, S.J. (2013). To infinity and beyond … Heterarchical governance, the Teach For All network in Europe and the making of profits and minds. European Educational Research Journal, 12(4), 492–512. Osborne, D., & Gaebler, T. (1992). Reinventing government: How the entrepreneurial spirit transforming the public sector. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Peck, J., & Theodore, N. (2012). Follow the policy: A distended case approach. Environment and Planning, 44(1), 21–36. Peck, J., & Theodore, N. (2015). Fast policy: Experimental statecraft at the thresholds of neoliberalism. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Rauschenberger, E.R. (2016). Reconstructing the emergence of Teach First: Examining the role of policy entrepreneurs and networks in the process of policy transfer. Doctoral dissertation, University of Edinburgh. Rhodes, R.A.W. (1997). Understanding governance: Policy networks, governance, reflexivity and accountability. Buckingham: Open University Press. Rhodes, R.A.W. (2006). Policy network analysis. In M. Moran, M. Rein & R.E. Goodin (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of public policy (pp. 423–445). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing education policy. London: Routledge. Saltman, K.J. (2010). The gift of education: Public education and venture philanthropy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Saura, G. (2016). Neoliberalización filantrópica y nuevas formas de privatización educativa: La red global Teach For All en España. RASE, Revista de la Asociación de Sociología de la Educación, 9(2), 248–264. Saura, G. (2018). Saving the world through neoliberalism: Philanthropic policy networks in the context of Spanish education. Critical Studies in Education, 59(3), 279–296. Scott, J., Trujillo, T, & Rivera, M.D. (2016). Reframing Teach For America: A conceptual framework for the next generation of scholarship. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24(12), 1–29. Sondel, B., Kretchmar, K., & Ferrare, J.J. (2015). Mapping the education entrepreneurial network: Teach For America, charter school reform, and corporate sponsorship. In W. Au & J.J. Ferrare (Eds.), Mapping corporate education reform: Power and policy networks in the neoliberal state (pp. 65–85). New York: Routledge. Springer, S., Birch, K., & MacLeavi, J. (2016). The handbook of neoliberalism. London: Routledge. Steiner-Khamsi, G., & Waldow, F. (Eds.). (2012). Policy borrowing and lending: World yearbook of education, 2012. New York: Routledge. Sulek, M. (2010). On the classical meaning of philanthrôpía. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 39(3), 385–408. Teach For All. (2019). What we do. Retrieved 10 November 2019 from https://tea chforall.org/what-we-do. Urry, J. (2007). Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Chapter 9

Teacher educators and the pedagogical and curriculum complexity of Teach For All in Australia Julianne Moss, Trevor McCandless, Bernadette Walker-Gibbs, Mary Dixon, Danielle Hitch, Kate Johnstone and Jill Loughlin Introduction The Teach For model fits within the history of Australian workplace-based teacher education. In this chapter we focus on the role of teacher educators in the Teach For All (TFAll) movement in Australia. Preparing teachers for schools where inequality is an explanatory factor of uneven student learning outcomes is a well-reported and significant part of the recent discourses of Australian education (Halsey, 2018; Longaretti & Toe, 2018; Scholes, et al., 2017; Weldon, McKenzie, Kleinhenz, & Reid, 2012). These discourses reflect global policy debates about inequality, disadvantage, equity, and education. In Australia, over the past two decades, government policy direction and university teacher education programmes have created special initiatives to increase the number of pathways into initial teacher education. In policy terms, these workplace-based alternate-entry pathways seek to unequivocally redress disadvantage and equity for students in these contexts, and to provide pre-service teachers with the skills and dispositions to ensure they excel as ‘quality’ teachers in these schools. The definition of what constitutes a disadvantaged school in Australia can be remarkably broad. In some instances, this includes all schools with an ICSEA (Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage1) below 1000. That is, the bottom fifty percent of all Australian schools. International and Australian research indicates that concerns of equity, inequality and the preparedness to work in contexts where students are living in distress remain poorly understood by graduating teachers (Mayer et al., 2017; Florian, Young, & Rouse, 2010; Moss & Harvie, 2015). The introduction of Teach For Australia in 2009 by the Commonwealth government through the then Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and supported by the State of Victoria, was intended to provide a solution to hard to staff schools in rural and low socio-economic settings, initially in Victoria. This chapter examines the evidence for and particularities of the TFAll

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movement and its enactment in the Australian context since the introduction of a TFAll affiliated programme in 2009 (ACER, 2013; Rice, et al., 2015; dandolo partners, 2017). The focus of this chapter is data generated from teacher educators (that is, university academics and school mentors) who participated in the university component of this alternate-entry, workplace-based initial teacher education programme in Australia from 2014 to 2018. The evidence is situated in a comprehensive literature review and qualitative data generated from both policy analysis and interviews with 10 Australian teacher educators recruited from the university and school sectors across three state/territory jurisdictions. These teacher educators were engaged in the design, implementation, and meeting of the requirements for a nationally accredited teacher education programme. All but one of the authors of this chapter were engaged, to varying degrees, in the design and implementation of this programme. The chapter outlines how alternate-entry, workplace-based teacher education is shifting and reshaping the pedagogical and curriculum landscape of Australian teacher education. Theoretically, we draw on the resources of complexity theory (Cochran-Smith et al., 2016; Mayer et al., 2017) and Bacchi’s policy analysis (Bacchi, 2009) to conclude that while many advantages can be found in the TFAll approach, the task of enacting a transformative professional model of teacher preparation suited to the longstanding challenges of countering inequality and social disadvantage remains an urgent educational question. Specifically, learning to teach and teaching to learn in sites of social disadvantage is rendered as unresolved. We argue that elements of transformation can be heard in the fissures of what these teacher educators say, but that often these remain hidden, not explicitly stated, nor understood as a curriculum issue for teacher education.

Policy background To understand where TFAll fits within the Australian educational policy landscape, we offer a brief overview of Australia’s education policy foci. From this we argue that TFAll is a manifestation of the rise of global, market-orientated, neoliberal, political, and economic agendas staged in the public policy arena. TFAll in Australia reached three states and two territories during 2009–2018 and included more than 370 teacher education students (see Teach For Australia Annual Reports 2015–2017). The programme discussed in this chapter was designed and implemented during 2014–2018 at Deakin University as a registered teacher education programme emanating from Victoria, Australia, engaging with 293 of the total 370 students mentioned above in three states and two territories. In the short history of teacher education in Australia, there are legacies of alternate-entry, workplace-based programmes present. Teach Next, funded by the Commonwealth Government and supported by the Labor Gillard Government, operated from 2010 to 2013, but ended due to a range of difficulties. These

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included Teach Next graduates not meeting the different state regulations required to train as a teacher and some states not allowing them to teach in schools unless they were already fully qualified. When NSW, South Australia and Western Australia pulled out of the second Teach Next recruitment round, the federal government reallocated $6.4 million of the original $16 million it had promised for Teach Next to Teach For Australia (Maslen, 2013). As such, the TFAll model might be understood as providing a necessary spur for innovation. There has been less proliferation of alternative entry routes to qualifying as a teacher in Australia than has been evident in the United States or the United Kingdom. The National Exceptional Teachers for Disadvantaged Schools Programme (NETDS), which commenced around the same time as Teach For Australia, bears similarities to TFAll programmes in terms of addressing notions of ‘exceptional’ teachers engaged to work in disadvantaged schools (SVA, 2019; see Blumenreich & Rogers, 2016 for more on the ‘best and brightest’ discourse). NETDS started in 2009 at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane (Lampert & Burnett, 2017). Currently, the NETDS programme remains unique in being housed within an Australian mainstream initial teacher education (ITE) undergraduate programme and specifically addressing ITE in a way that systematically merges on-campus curriculum with a highly mentored professional experience in partnership with high-poverty schools. In addition, NETDS facilitates various forms of networked employment pathways that ensure these pre-service teachers are known to the low socio-economic status (SES) schools so that then go on to be overwhelmingly employed by them upon graduation (Lampert & Burnett, 2017). Similar to TFAll programmes, NETDS has ties with philanthropic organisations, but as its founders’ comment, ‘A measure of the programme’s long-term sustainability was seen as the embedding of NETDS into the mainstream teacher education programme already accredited and operating’ (Lampert & Burnett, 2017, p. iv). Australian teacher education is leveraged by assessment standards authorised by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). The last decade has been dominated by policy discussions which have included the imperative for higher academic attainment for entry into the teaching profession. Despite this stated imperative, there is little evidence that early career teachers receive additional support, regardless of their prior academic attainment, nor of improved conditions of employment for teachers more generally that might help draw higher performers from other possible professional pathways (Mayer et al., 2017). Moreover, the current Australian education landscape is embroiled in bipartisan support for policies that actively work against teachers being engaged as competent, efficacious and independent professionals, including: government funding of independent (private) schools, a national curriculum, a vocational focus on the purposes of education linked to global economic competitiveness, managerial assessment strategies (including high-stakes testing mechanisms), and a focus on accountability in assessing the performance and effectiveness of teachers and teacher education (Connell, 2013).

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Work-based teacher education programmes in the Australian context The TFAll programme in Australia, like the model deployed elsewhere (Crawford-Garrett & Thomas, 2018; Rauschenberger, 2016, 2017) is largely employment-based, with recruits (known as associates) receiving six-weeks of introductory training before placement in secondary schools as the teacher-incharge of their classrooms. The programme is not accredited to provide teacher qualifications in Australia (ACER, 2012), although it does have this ability in some states in the United States where the programme was founded (Chiang, Clark, & McConnell, 2017). It is therefore obliged to enter into arrangements with university providers if their associates are to qualify as teachers (dandolo partners, 2017). To date, such arrangements have been made with three universities: University of Melbourne (2010–2015),2 Deakin University (2015– 2018), and the Australian Catholic University (ACU) (2018–2021). Associates, the same term that is used in some other international programmes for TFAll recruits (see Crawford-Garrett & Thomas, 2018, for more on names of teachers in TFAll programmes), have a differing status as a teacher. Associates, under the Deakin model, were provisionally registered teachers working in schools and simultaneously studying for a teacher education degree. They were clustered both in schools and in regions in three states: Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia; and in two territories: the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory. This means that to be able to qualify as a fully registered teacher in the states and territories of Australia, associates were concurrently engaged in undertaking three roles across their two-year commitment:   

working in schools; completing the requirements of a Masters of Teaching degree (since the partnership with Deakin and subsequently with ACU); and completing the TFAll affiliate components (see ACER, 2012; dandolo partners, 2017).

The Australian literature reports that these three aspects of the programme came into conflict with one another (ACER, 2013), with associates seen as likely to devalue the university components when faced with meeting the demands of the classroom and TFAll programme components. These latter components are mostly centred on their ‘leadership’ programme, presented as ‘an individualised programme that supports Associates’ leadership development in both education and outside of education’ (ACER, 2012, p. 8; dandolo partners, 2017). However, the interest in this chapter is not in going over this ground. While the interview data from this study reflects these issues and challenges, we are interested in shaping a pedagogical and curricular understanding that, as Mayer et al. (2017) suggest, will support

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teacher educators to play an active, outward facing, powerful role in shaping teacher education for a changing world, extending our understanding of what teacher education actually is, and where teacher education takes place, and ‘reforming’ teacher education where reform is shown to be required. (p. 133) The TFAll network stresses that it draws its recruits from an elite pool of students who have not previously studied teaching and would otherwise be unlikely to become teachers. This entry into teacher education is distinct from, for example, that of the National Exceptional Teachers for Disadvantaged Schools programme which focuses on pre-service teachers in an existing university-based teacher education programme (ACER, 2012; McConney, Price, & Woods-McConney, 2012; Scott, Trujillo, & Rivera, 2016). In the TFAll model, teaching is understood by policy makers as less a profession and more a skill acquired through practice. As such, policy makers perceive university initial teacher education courses as being too ‘theoretical’ (Zeichner & PeñaSandoval, 2015) when ‘what works’ (La Londe, Brewer, & Lubienski, 2015; Mockler, 2011; Scott, Trujillo, & Rivera, 2016; Skourdoumbis, 2012) more closely resembles an apprenticeship (Akbar & Jackson, 2012; Cervini, 2015; McConney, Price, & Woods-McConney, 2012; McIntyre & Thomson, 2016). This view has provided an opening in Australia and internationally for the TFAll movement. Under these policy readings, the received wisdom is that the most important in-school factor influencing student attainment is the teacher (Hattie, 2009) is interpreted to mean that the reason why students in low-SES schools are underperforming has less to do with the complex social factors facing these students (Cochran-Smith et al., 2016; Zeichner & Peña-Sandoval, 2015) than with the asserted low-ability of the teachers (Rice, Volkoff, & Dulfer, 2015). Core to the mission of the TFAll movement is the notion of tackling the problem of inequality of educational achievement (Kopp, 1989, 2003). The solution proposed is to attract highly-educated young people with a desire to effect change in high-poverty schools. Since these young people generally have a proven background in navigating the education system themselves, they are understood to also have the subject knowledge necessary to teach (ACER, 2013; Muijs, Chapman, & Armstrong, 2012; Teach For Australia, 2016b; Windsor, 2014). This, in turn, is premised on the belief that teaching ability is predicted from content knowledge coupled with superior verbal ability and exemplary leadership skills (Darling-Hammond et al., 2005; Ludlow, 2011). Recent research indicates that the perspective on the nature of teaching held by teachers in TFAll programmes changes once they finish their two-year commitment compared to when they begin the programme. For instance, a study conducted in the US and Brazil found that, ‘Around half of the TFA teachers interviewed and the vast majority of interviewed Ensina! teachers had come to question the efficacy of the TFAll model, both as a teacher education

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programme and an education reform initiative intended to address educational inequality’ (Straubhaar, 2020, p. 316). Over three decades, the Australian policy landscape has shifted from notions of equality of outcomes to equality of opportunity (Marginson, 1997; Teese, 2011). Australia now assumes differential outcomes, not because of our unwillingness to invest in educational attainment, but due to a presumed lack of merit of those within the system. Since the system is perceived as essentially merit based – and since merit is taken as realised solely according to natural ability coupled with personal effort (Littler, 2018) – this paradigm shifts the blame for student failure back upon the presumed lack of merit of the teachers of the disadvantaged. In sum, student success or failure is understood to be due to ineffective teachers blocking student success. Ignored and diminished are the effects of the social, cultural, economic, and/or cognitive disadvantage these students face (Crawford-Garrett, 2017; Gipps, 1994).

Linking complexity theory with critical policy analysis The theoretical work that underpins this pedagogical and curriculum research in teacher education is informed by complexity theory and critical policy analysis, an approach previously used in another large-scale teacher education research project (see Mayer et al., 2017). We argue, following Davis and Sumara (2009), that teacher education systems are adaptive and therefore education can be thought of as sites-of-learning where experiences trigger transformations in learners and within teacher education. This position challenges the logic of fixed knowledges about teaching, learning, and teacher education. The larger qualitative study this paper draws upon was designed around three questions:   

How do pre-service teachers learn to teach in a course that is largely located outside the university system? What elements of the teacher education curriculum are supportive of learning to teach? How does collaboration across institutions (schools and university and notfor-profit organisations) affect pedagogy and curriculum?

The focus in this chapter is the second of these questions. The chapter also builds from the only large-scale research into ITE conducted in Australia (Mayer et al., 2017), which concluded that research that speaks back to policy is valuable. Issues of policy and teacher education curriculum are rarely aligned or viewed as being significant questions for researchers. Complexity theory structures our analysis, and it has been used extensively in education and educational research (Cochran-Smith et al., 2016; Davis & Sumara, 2009; Hetherington, 2013), but it is better known within curriculum studies (Doll, 2012; Gough, 2012).

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Complexity theory has been described as a change theory attentive to evolution and adaptation that takes place through cooperation and competition (Battram, 1999; Morrison, 2002; Stewart, 2001). It enables us to simultaneously grasp ‘the many layers of dynamic nested activity that are constantly at play’ (Davis & Sumara, 2009, p. 28). Unlike mechanical scientific theories, and more like other social theories, complexity theory explains relations and interconnections as the site of interest, rather than seeking simple cause-and-effect models dependent upon linear predictability (Cilliers, 1998; Youngblood, 1997). Renowned curriculum theorist William Doll (2012) has been influential in the adoption of complexity theory in education. He draws upon Ilya Prigogine’s work on dissipative structures in far-from-equilibrium thermodynamic systems (Prigogine & Stengers 1984), which stress the formation of complex, sometimes chaotic structures. Complex organisms are defined by their systems, and these are understood as adaptive, fluid, goal-seeking, learning, hierarchical, selforganising, open, emergent, and marked by disequilibrium. The parts in a complex organism are described as being ‘autocatalytic’, ‘entangled’, ‘inseparable’, and ‘non-reversible’ (Morrison, 2006). That is, ‘A complicated system can be analysed by breaking it into its parts and studying the linkages among them. A complex system resists this kind of analysis because its behaviours exceed the sum of its parts’ (Fenwick et al., 2011, p. 22). For instance, Mant (1999) compares complicated and complex systems with his metaphors of bicycles and frogs. He explains that a bicycle is a complicated system (rather than a complex one), in that it can be taken apart and reassembled such that it is likely to work better than before. This is certainly not the case with a frog which cannot be disassembled without killing it. Also, even tiny changes to the frog’s environment can have catastrophic impacts. In this sense, the environment and the frog are self-similar in ways that the environment and the bike are not. Complex systems rarely have predetermined boundaries separating inside from outside the system. We are forced to stop thinking of systems as ‘things’, but rather as complexes of relationships manifested within an evolving context of overlapping processes (Fenwick et al, 2011). Complex systems are highly dynamic by definition. This dynamism is central to understanding complex systems, although it does not exclude them displaying emergent patterns. It is just that these patterns are highly contingent, and can change due to what might otherwise appear innocuous interventions (c.f. the butterfly effect, Gleick 2008). As such, ‘it is impossible to predict which (change) will most influence what will happen next’ (Fenwick et al., 2011, p. 22). A complex system evolves in time and is deeply imbedded in its context. It rarely has an identifiable beginning or end. Unlike strictly mechanical scientific processes, there is no possibility to return complex systems to their initial conditions to confirm ‘repeatability’. The positivist notion ‘all else being equal’ makes little sense within such systems, since ‘all else’ is always deeply contingent within a complex whole. Complex systems are defined as always being

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in the middle of a process where any ‘starting point is the output of the previous iteration’ (Fenwick et al., 2011, p. 26). Context, therefore, is everything, and as Fenwick, Edwards, and Sawchuck (2011) highlight, ‘human beings too often seek order, control, clear direction, strict boundaries and measurable outcomes’ (p. 39). There are rewards in seeking to present complex systems as if they were amenable to simple policy interventions; however, the eclectic diversity of overlapping processes and influences in complex systems always confound this desire for simplicity. It is for this reason that we have made use of Bacchi’s (2009) policy model to help us untangle the relationships driving recent Australian educational policy frameworks. The aim is to use this model to help uncover the relationships driving the processes in which policies, lived experiences, and the social situatedness of an intervention like TFAll are enmeshed. Bacchi’s policy model seeks the ‘reproblemisation’ (p. 19) of policy discourses. It brings to the fore the power relationships, contradictions, and paradoxes lurking behind apparently obvious policy solutions. It highlights the situatedness of these solutions by contrasting this apparent simplicity with the irreducible complexity of the lived experience of the schools where they are to be applied. Bacchi seeks to reintroduce complexity by posing the question: cui bono? That is, in bringing to the fore the interests underpinning various policy interventions and representations, she highlights their relational nature while stressing that ‘discourses are plural, complex and at times, inconsistent’ (p. 19). Her approach asserts that what the problem is represented to be (WPR in her terms) already suggests the solution of the problem, such that those with the power to represent the problem also constrain available solutions (p. 1). Complexity theory and Bacchi’s policy model enable us to extend discussions of inequality. TFAll presents itself as a policy alternative in teacher education that foregrounds social justice. Bacchi helps problematise this positioning, displaying teacher education’s entanglement within the politics of policy that surfaced in Australia over the past decade, immersed between the needs of students, schools, governments, businesses, and university providers. Her model helps uncover the power imbalances existing between these players and the situatedness of solutions, where what might work in one context may not elsewhere. This helps undermine the argument that complexity theory does little to address questions of responsibility or the political (Fenwick et al., 2011, p. 53).

Teacher educator interviews The data generated from the 10 qualitative interviews with teacher educators is part of a larger qualitative study designed through the three key research questions introduced earlier in this chapter. The empirical work was conducted by a researcher not party to the design and/or implementation of the TFAll teacher education curriculum at Deakin University. Thematic analysis was initially used and aligned to the overall aims of the project which, as stated in the second research question, was conceived as a teacher education pedagogical and curriculum study. The larger qualitative study engaged complexity theory

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by seeking the observations, interviews, discussion, and reflections of a broad range of participants. As anticipated by complexity theory, the knowledge generated in this research proved deeply contextual and situated, reflecting school location, the phase of the intervention, and teacher educator experience and expertise. In using complexity theory to critique this policy intervention, we sought out these voices to value their professional judgement, something too often silenced within positivist research as it smooths and aggregates. Ten teacher educators, four university-based staff and six school-based mentors, participated in semi-structured interviews during 2016–2018. This project draws from the resources of a team of seven researchers. The semistructured interviews, as per the ethical requirement of the project, were conducted by research assistants since the insider status of individual researchers may have been considered a conflict of interest. Monthly, two-hour team meetings were held over the life of the project using dialogic processes to review and understand these interview data. Prior to each meeting, researchers reviewed the de-identified interview transcripts in light of the second research question. The research team borne through the lived experiences of teacher education curriculum design and implementation were cognisant of the research meeting as a community of practice where our central concern of teacher education curriculum remained our direct focus. This position, built upon complexity theory, does not conceive curriculum as linear and sequential, but as marked by disequilibrium. Here we are acknowledging that our approach to qualitative research is not that of conventional humanist qualitative research, but rather aligned to what St Pierre (2018) has described as ‘truly experimental inquiry – attending to the surprises that point to difference and refusing the impoverished answers we’ve given to the questions the world has posed. If one has read and read, one cannot not put theory to work – it will happen’ (p. 605). Our research team, to this end, kept moving through analysis, findings, drafting the layering of multiple narratives of policy texts and the prior and embedded experiences of teacher educators involved with the TFAll programme partnered with Deakin. All ten educators interviewed had longstanding engagements with school systems and extensive experience in teacher education in school settings – whether as leading teachers, policy advisors or administrators – before entering teacher education in an academic role or becoming mentors to the associates. At a macro level, the teacher educators were focused on associates’ professional development and recognised both enablers and barriers to their emerging sense of teacher professional identity, such as their ability to:   

build relationships with students; identify and sustain their commitment to the programme paying their salary; and develop personally, often in a differing state or territory to where they gained their initial degree qualification, which typically was not in the field of education.

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In asking the key research question, ‘What elements of the teacher education curriculum are supportive of learning to teach?’, the ten teacher educators were overall optimistic, rather than cautious, on many counts when they reflected on the teacher education curriculum offered through the programme. However, it was evident that the teacher educators hesitated in fully endorsing an approach to professional socialisation that is vocational in orientation, particularly when it is located in the most challenging of Australia’s socio-economic contexts where levels of uneven educational attainment dominate. While the theory/practice relationship in learning to teach was often problematised at a general level, the teacher educators did not consider a nuanced or deep interrogation of a pedagogy and curriculum as required for socially just education. Arguably, such an interrogation could and should characterise a teacher education programme design for students who have the greatest needs in schools characterised as ‘hard to staff’ (see, for instance, Delpit, 2006). According to these teacher educators, professional learning in a workplace-based teacher education curriculum includes:   

   

positive classroom experiences, introductory practical, theory-to-practice exposure, where ‘associates have the experience where they truly own their own class and they’re not sort of borrowing someone else’s’; acknowledgement of the intensity of the first 6–12 months of a programme of this type, since, ‘if the associates are only in survival mode, they’re not going to make any difference’; recognition that completing a Masters-level award with both a school and university workload is challenging, where the programme ‘only allows the strongest to survive, but I worry that the system loses what could have been very good teachers’; affirmation that being in the classroom from the beginning of a programme is valuable, which ‘allows them to link theory and practice very well’; collegiality from other teachers experiencing the same challenging situation is recognised and endorsed, where the associates, ‘learn from each other’; attribution of being a member of a prestigious programme; and an introduction to understandings of social disadvantage, that for most of the associates proves to be ‘kind of a cultural shift too and I think that’s quite difficult to do’.

The interpersonal resources offered by teachers in schools in sharing their experiences, working with colleagues, previous associates, mentorship, peer support, all-in-all supported a better understanding of the context where the TFAll associates were learning to teach. Student diversity, student engagement, and expectations for students proved important elements in preparing them, and in their initial experiences of learning to teach. There was also a perception by them that teacher education preparation in a single

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alternative-entry workforce-based programme can be variable across the vast geographical reach of Australia. When the university teacher education component moved to the Deakin University in 2014, the programme was concurrently being delivered through the affordances of an online university across three Australian states (Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania) and two territories (the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory; dandolo partners, 2017). While other teacher education courses dedicate the majority of student time to on-campus learning, and limited time in schools, the TFAll model in Australia inverts this with almost no time on-campus and the majority of time spent in charge of a classroom. In the Deakin model, the associates were enrolled in a fully online, cloud-based Master of Teaching degree customised from the Deakin teacher education curriculum and accredited with the Victorian Institute of Teaching as a separate programme with a dedicated Course Director and team of academic and professional staff. Beyond the variable experience of the associates across states, territories, and school contexts, the teacher educators noted the existential uncertainty that arose from the recruitment of teaching associates, who in the main came from backgrounds with markers of social and cultural privilege. However, overriding such advantages, the teacher educators strongly reported issues concerning personal well-being created by the workload of a programme that unsettled the work-life balance of these newly employed teachers and compounded by the long distances they had moved to take up their teaching position. These findings echo recent research in the field and affirm what teacher educators already know about the emotional intensity of learning to teach (Britzman, 2003) but that are exacerbated in workplace-based learning curriculum models (Matsui, 2015; Thomas & Lefebvre, 2018; Veltri, 2010). The professionalisation and professional emergence of the associates’ learning, in the view of teacher educators, did not add up to a single identity. Their pre-existing content knowledge, previous work experience and teaching experience remained unstable variables, as was each associate’s emotional response to learning to teach. The emotional responses included prolonged personal challenges that extended across a wide continuum of professional and professional identities from: (a) enjoying the challenge; and (b) growing confidence and excitement, which one teacher educator described as ‘learning in the midst of it’. As she explains, ‘there’s so much to be gained from being in the midst of it and making decisions and applying knowledge’. This excitement is contrasted with concerns for both the associate and the teacher educator where:  

professional and deep-seated personal anxiety emanates from a curriculum model which carries a salaried position; and the requirement of the completion of a two-year equivalent full-time Master of Teaching degree are simultaneously exposed.

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As the same teacher educator continues: one of the challenges for us is that the associates, having gone very quickly into the classroom, are often put into a kind of coaching situation even with the greater support that they’re getting around their … where they just don’t quite have the language to draw on. They don’t have that talk – that pedagogical talk – to draw on that you might develop over two, three, four years of an ITE course, so when we’re asking them to think about what their issues are and how they might solve some of those issues – using coaching models that are very similar to how you would work with any first year teacher – again that talk is not quite as well rounded for them to draw on. So it doesn’t (only) challenge … them and their pedagogical development, but also us and the teaching education pedagogy.

The tensions in alternative-entry workplace teacher education curricula These interview data were caught in a moment in time, that is, the second year of the implementation of the teacher education curriculum of only one university provider. Nevertheless, the four final themes hold open the tensions for the pedagogy and curriculum of teacher education:    

learning to teach; supportive elements of an alternative teacher education curriculum model; collaboration between institutions; and challenges and barriers of the model and implementation.

The key question that guides this chapter ‘What elements of the teacher education curriculum are supportive of learning to teach?’ returns to the significance of curriculum inquiry as a central lens of teacher education research. Curriculum inquiry, a term used by Green (2003, 2018), reminds us that in Australia ‘reflexive scholarly accounts of the curriculum field are still rare’ (p. 124). An essential part of the work of teacher education nested in the terms of curriculum inquiry and complexity theory is the deliberation and analysis of the ‘rhetoric and rules of reasoning’ (Green, 2003, p. 131) that have shaped the recent policy and practice discourses in Australia. One of the teacher educators, for example, speaks to learning to teach and the intersection with questions of pedagogy and curriculum for an alternateentry, workplace teacher education programme as being nested in practices that in turn speak to social reproduction and the status quo: it’s seated in practice rather than theory, that there’s actually an idea that when you see another teacher teaching you can see that they are – what they actually do on the ground, that’s a really important part of it. There’s

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a lot of ideas that take a long time to filter into schools, either because of cost or because of lack of expertise or available expertise in the school and so some … pedagogical programmes don’t get taken up very quickly, (but in) other sites and schools it does. So, I guess an advantage of learning while you’re in the school is that you can actually see what’s being used currently by that school, because a lot of pedagogies (are) also very highly contextualized. This teacher educator is articulating the tenets of the well-rehearsed theory/ practice binary that has been used to vilify university-based teacher education and allowed policy concerns to denounce the role of preparation that stages professional experiences over time. She raises deep concerns for teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and the importance of contextually shaped teacher judgement as critical to understanding how teachers ‘do’ things in one setting compared to another. Another interviewee affirms these issues and highlights the reproductive power of institutional practices working against transformation for teacher education programmes and socially-just practices for students with the greatest level of educational disadvantage and thereby needing to be engaged in the classroom: Yes, there are differences in the way that we’re learning to teach … and some of them are not so great. We are seeing some replicated practices out there from people who are possibly under stress and not coping with the programme. So, they morph it back into far more chalk-and-talk than they ever intended. They will replicate the easiest practices, and possibly the worst practices, from the professionals that are around them and that’s understandable given the nature of what they’re doing. I think there is more opportunity for us to get out there and do professional development on the ground and try to change things in their practices. Because of them being located you can get them to implement those kind of things – really you might try them out very quickly in the classrooms but not when they’re under stress with the combination of the four days class teaching and one day for university coursework. It’s very, very challenging to ask them to do anything else out of their comfort zone. The above excerpts highlight the challenge for all key stakeholders in designing and delivering a programme simultaneously able to be fully engaged in community and contexts while also being scalable to the mass teacher education programmes that characterise teacher education approaches in Australia. Part of the challenge, as another interviewed teacher educator stressed, is that ‘a lot of it is dependent on how the school views the associate teachers. If they view them as a stop gap and exploit them … I think that limits or makes it extra difficult for [associates] to learn to teach.’3

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In this study, the teacher educators highlight that while there are affordances and challenges to the pedagogical and curriculum questions for alternative-entry workplace-based teacher education programmes, overall the longstanding challenges of countering poverty and social disadvantage surface and remain unresolved. This applies both for the TFAll approach and to teacher educators’ sense of their own agency more broadly. However, other teacher educators were concerned that the difficulties of the model were intentional, and about the failure ‘not to really listen to our comments about the workload impact on the candidates’.

Discussions on curriculum and pedagogy The teacher educators in this study conceive that while it is possible to design and implement curriculum models, the core issues for building a teaching workforce are caught up in larger questions of education, particularly in how schooling as a socially-just enterprise has evolved in the Australian context. The programme provides a very small percentage of graduate teachers in Australia. Of the 16,000 graduate teachers from Australian universities in 2013, only about 90 of them (about 0.5%) were from this initiative. In line with Bacchi’s policy problem perspective, the popularity of the programme with government, regardless of these small numbers, is due to it achieving objectives that few other programmes associated with teacher education can (ACER, 2012). For instance, it has drawn strong support from philanthropic organisations. This means that it occupies an unusual space situated between government, businesses, schools, and the community more generally. The government, in particular, has a strong preference to occupy this space (ACER, 2012). In 2019, the Australian Government has continued its considerable financial support, even as the Australia Capital Territory recently pulled out of the programme, citing its high costs and teacher attrition. The $14.9 million (Australian dollar) in funding to the current iteration of the programme will enable the recruitment of a further two intakes of at least 120 participants each, with a focus on recruiting individuals with a background in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills – often difficult for the schools participating in the programme to attract. Programme participants in teaching positions in secondary schools will draw from Northern Territory, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia. While in schools, programme participants will work as teachers, for two years, and receive a high degree of support while they complete a Master of Teaching (Secondary) (Australian Government, 2019). Associates are reported as being held in high regard by principals (ACER, 2012), who compare them favourably to other graduate teachers, despite associates not having yet graduated. Principals respond well to the associates’ enthusiasm, commitment, and subject knowledge. There is no question that, particularly in rural and regional Australia, schools have had ongoing problems in attracting and retaining teachers.

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Yet, research has long pointed to the fact that teachers feel more comfortable teaching children like themselves (Little & Bartlett, 2010; Mayer et al., 2017), that is, teaching in schools similar to those they, themselves, had attended. The pressures of working at schools in remote locations make life particularly difficult for young people who are separated from their support networks of family and friends, adding to the stress of an already difficult introduction to the profession. Many of the teacher educators echoed this, questioning if the associates’ academic success might not hinder them learning to teach in a way that ‘works best for the kids they teach’. We suggest that the policy problem that TFAll purports to address, and in turn the pedagogical and curriculum issues it surfaces, constructs education mostly in economic and technicist terms. The international literature affirms that TFAll presents a highly managerialist and neoliberal (Apple, 2012) approach to teaching and learning, presenting teaching as a form of leadership (Farr, 2010; Goldstein, 2015; Teach For Australia, 2016a, 2016b). This approach is premised on, and measures its own effectiveness according to, the results obtained in raising standardised test scores (Farr, 2010; Goldstein, 2015). It presents a data-driven approach to teaching and learning, focused on the teacher, and certainly not upon the complexity of the contexts in which teacher and student are situated. This notion privileges content knowledge over pedagogy, and practice over theory (Laczko-Kerr & Berliner, 2002) – in fact, the model is premised on such privileging, with associates placed in charge of classrooms after merely six-weeks of training (Farr, 2010). This would otherwise place the model in conflict with Australian government policy, focused upon ensuring graduate teachers demonstrating a broad range of skills prior to being placed in charge of classrooms (AITSL, 2017). While it is true associates are required to demonstrate these same teaching standards by the end of their two-year commitment, by that time they have been teaching, unsupervised, for two years. A significant proportion of them will then leave teaching after becoming fully qualified. According to the dandolo partners (2017) report, a third will have left teaching by the first year after their two-year placement, while the report’s authors estimate that ‘the average Associate spends 4.7 years teaching including their two year placement, of which 3.2 years are in a school below the ICSEA national median’ (p. 16) – that is, a year and a half of their teaching sojourn will be spent in an above-average school.

Conclusion Across Australia, TFAll is currently attractive within the Australian policy landscape because it fits within the discourses that define that landscape, i.e., privatisation, competition, marketisation, and corporatisation. TFAll provides young and enthusiastic, high-achieving recent graduates a pathway into teaching. This is at a time when there is bipartisan support to restrict entrance to initial teacher education to those with literacy and numeracy skills in the

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top 30% of all Australians (AITSL, 2019). Such a notion reduces teaching to the transmission of knowledge with the expectation that the more content knowledge one has, the better able they will be at improving learning outcomes (Heggart, 2017). However, such a view is contradicted by research into teacher effectiveness that shows teachers with similar life experiences to their students prove more effective in raising attainment (Gipps, 1994; Darling-Hammond, 2013). Further, pedagogical content knowledge (the ability to anticipate the likely impediments to learning and to have multiple strategies to teach the same content directed across the full range of students in the classroom) has been shown to be as important as additional content knowledge (Laczko-Kerr & Berliner, 2002). TFAll ostensibly seeks to redress inequality, but it creates its own fault-lines, as yet not fully understood, within the broader public conceptions of Australian education and the teacher education landscape. Carol Bacchi’s (2009) Analysing Policy is, as we have argued, a useful lens in addition to complexity theory with which to interrogate Australia’s educational policy landscape and to understand why Australia has proven fertile ground for the planting and subsequent growth of TFAll – our nation’s hybridised version of Teach For America. Bacchi asserts that policies are responses to identified ‘problems’ within a society – but rather than these problems having an objective reality in themselves, they work to construct discourses reflective of the power structures within society. She asserts that what a policy problem is represented to be immediately frames possible ‘solutions’. Her method of policy analysis is critical in the sense that it encourages a focus on whose interests are served by current representations of policy problems, the problem’s genealogy, and whose voices are silenced by such a representation similarly illuminate power. The explicit intent of her method is to encourage radically different representations of policy problems. While TFAll claims to raise the profile of the teaching profession (ACER, 2012; Kopp, 2003), it potentially does the opposite (Labaree, 2010). Little empirical research has been conducted on the TFAll movement in Australia. In this chapter we have pointed to the pedagogical and curriculum dilemmas for teacher educators who notice both the tensions and the struggles faced by TFAll associates and to point out the lack of examination of the ‘rhetoric and rules of reasoning’ (Green, 2003, p. 131) of the model. A complex system’s capacity to maintain coherence is tied to ‘the deep commonalities of its agents’ (Davis & Sumara, 2009, p. 39). Its place and role are one of continual ‘deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Roy, 2003). Complexity theory offers researchers and practitioners refreshed affordances to understand pedagogies and curriculum decisionmaking and their entanglements within the policy contexts. This, as we have illustrated in this chapter, reveals that much of what is reported by the teacher educators is unsurprising given the extensive critique of the TFAll model in the wider international literature.

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While pedagogy and curriculum exist on the edge of policy discourses, their mere existence is evidence of the potential for change. Education is oriented toward the unimagined, indeed, the currently unimaginable (Davis & Sumara, 2009). Educational practice that grounds itself in complexity theory suggests a radical restructuring of schooling practice. The teacher educators in this study recognise the affordances of alternative-entry workplace teacher education curricula, yet its realisation is undermined by the technical approaches to teacher education curriculum endorsed by government. As one teacher educator said, ‘I think in trying to disrupt things governments could have talked more with the primary providers, higher education providers’. Until there is serious national engagement with the issues of the complexity of teaching and the role of teacher education curriculum in this process, it is difficult to see how improvements can be made to address the concerns of equity and inequality that programmes such as TFAll were created to address. TFAll fits uncomfortably within the Australian educational landscape and acts more to undermine than to challenge the traditional forms of ITE provision conducted by Australian universities. There are significant barriers for people who wish to enter the teaching profession that can be addressed by employment-based pathways. As such, these pathways could provide a means for people with work histories, who are otherwise excluded, with ways into the profession. However, the model has not proved effective in retaining associates in the profession in Australia, nor in keeping them in disadvantaged schools following their two-year commitment (dandolo partners, 2017). With a clearer focus upon pedagogical practices that have been shown to assist disadvantaged students, coupled with more support provided to initial teachers (both in terms of emotional and pedagogical practice), the teacher educators interviewed in this study saw a clear role for employment-based education within the Australian ITE system. As one said, ‘I just think it’s a wonderful model … but as I said, it has its drawbacks if the workload is too heavy’. An adaptive proposition to the complex challenges that remain deeply ingrained in education requires a response to the politically-shaped policy framing of Australian education. To this end, teacher educators would benefit by taking up the analytical power of complexity theory. However, such bottom up emergence requires more focus on the human and non-human elements of education, an enmeshing of the social and the human.

Notes 1 The Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage is a measure designed to identify ‘like schools’. The input data include: parental education and occupation, student language background, indigeneity, and rurality. A score of 1000 defines the average school (www.myschool.edu.au/more-information/information-for-parents/ma king-a-fair-comparison).

174 Moss, McCandless, Walker-Gibbs et al. 2 See Windsor (2014, 2017) for more insight into the university partnership with the University of Melbourne. 3 See Thomas (2018) on Teach For America teachers’ perceptions of their schools’ receptiveness to them entering teaching.

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Teach For All in Australia 175 Crawford-Garrett K., & Thomas M.A.M. (2018). Teacher Education and the Global Impact of Teach For All. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.417. dandolo partners. (2017). Teach For Australia program evaluation report. Retrieved from https://docs.education.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/final_tfa_public_report.pdf. Darling-Hammond, L. (2013). Getting teacher evaluation right: What really matters for effectiveness and improvement. New York: Teachers College Press. Darling-Hammond, L., Holtzman, D.J., Gatlin, S.J., & Heilig, J.V. (2005), Does teacher preparation matter? Evidence about teacher certification, Teach For America, and teacher effectiveness. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 13(42), 1–48. Davis, B. & Sumara, D. (2009). Complexity as a theory of education. Transnational Curriculum Inquiry, 5(2), 33–44. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. London: Athlone Press. Delpit, L. (2006). Other people’s children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York: New Press. Doll, W. (2012). Pragmatism, postmodernism, and complexity theory: The ‘fascinating imaginative realm’ of William E. Doll, Jr, ed. D. Trueit. New York: Routledge. Farr, S. (2010). Teaching as leadership: The highly effective teacher’s guide to closing the achievement gap. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Fenwick, T., Edwards, R., & Sawchuck, P. (2011). Emerging approaches to educational research: Tracing the sociomaterial. London: Routledge. Florian, L., Young, K., & Rouse, M. (2010). Preparing teachers for inclusive and diverse educational environments: Studying curricular reform in an initial teacher education course. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 14(7), 709–722. Gipps, C. (1994). Beyond testing: Towards a theory of educational assessment. London: Routledge. Gleick, J. (2008). Chaos: Making a new science. New York: Penguin Books. Goldstein, D. (2015). The teacher wars: A history of America’s most embattled profession. New York: Anchor Books. Gough, N. (2012). Complexity, complexity reduction, and ‘methodological borrowing’ in educational inquiry. Complexity, 9(1), 41–56. Green, B. (2003). Curriculum inquiry in Australia: Toward a local genealogy of the curriculum field. In W.F. Pinar (Ed.), International Handbook of Curriculum Research (pp. 123–141). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Green, B. (2018). Engaging curriculum: Bridging the curriculum theory and English education divide. Abingdon: Routledge. Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. London: Routledge. Halsey, J. (2018). Independent review into regional, rural and remote education – literature review. Retrieved from https://docs.education.gov.au/node/50286. Heggart, K. (2017). Here’s what is wrong with testing teachers and Teach For Australia. EduResearch Matters. Retrieved from www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=2171. Hetherington, L. (2013). Complexity thinking and methodology: The potential of ‘complex case study’ for educational research. Complexity, 10(1/2), 71–85. Kopp, W. (1989). An argument and plan for the creation of the teacher corps. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University. Kopp, W. (2003). One day, all children. New York: PublicAffairs.

176 Moss, McCandless, Walker-Gibbs et al. La Londe, P., Brewer, T., & Lubienski, C. (2015). Teach For America and Teach For All: Creating an intermediary organization network for global education reform. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(47), 1–25. Labaree, D. (2010). Teach For America and teacher ed: Heads they win, tails we lose, Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1–2),48–55. Laczko-Kerr, I., & Berliner, D. (2002). The effectiveness of ‘Teach For America’ and other under-certified teachers on student academic achievement: A case of harmful public policy. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 10(37), 1–53. Lampert, J., & Burnett, B. (2017). Forward to special issue: Teacher education for high poverty schools. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 42(4). Little, J.W., & Bartlett, L. (2010). The teacher workforce and problems of educational equity. Review of Research in Education, 34(285). Littler, J. (2018). Against meritocracy: Culture, power and myths of mobility. New York: Routledge. Longaretti, L., & Toe, D. (2018). School leaders’ perspectives on educating teachers to work in vulnerable communities: New Insights from the coal face. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 42(4), 1–18. Ludlow, C. (2011). Alternative certification pathways: Filling a gap? Education and Urban Society, 45(4), 440–458. Mant, A. (1999). Intelligent leadership. St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Marginson, S. (1997). Educating Australia: Government, economy and citizen since 1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maslen G. (2013). Journey into teaching. Retrieved from www.smh.com.au/education/ journey-into-teaching-20130426-2iir0.html. Matsui, S. (2015). Learning from counternarratives in Teach For America – Moving from idealism towards hope. New York: Peter Lang. Mayer, D., Dixon, M., Kline, J., Kostogriz, A., Moss, J., Rowan, L., Walker-Gibbs, B., & White, S. (2017). Studying the effectiveness of teacher education: Early career teachers in diverse settings. Singapore: Springer. McConney, A, Price, A., & Woods-McConney, A. (2012). Fast track teacher education: A review of the research literature on Teach For All schemes. Retrieved from http s://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/10228. McIntyre, J., & Thomson, P. (2016). Poverty, schooling, and beginning teachers who make a difference. In J. Lampert & B. Burnett (Eds.), Teacher education for high poverty schools. Education, equity, economy (Vol 2) (pp. 153-170). New York: Springer. Mockler, N. (2011). Beyond ‘what works’: Understanding teacher identity as a practical and political tool. Teachers and Teaching, 17(5), 517–528. Morrison, K. (2002). School leadership and complexity theory. Hoboken, NJ: Taylor and Francis. Morrison, K. (2006). Complexity theory and education. APERA. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3a45/a521a19135943f7c743c2ccaf63242969791.pdf. Moss, J., & Harvie, K. (2015). Cross-curriculum design: Enacting inclusive pedagogy and curriculum. In J.M. Deppeler, T. Loreman, R. Smith, & L. Florian (Eds.), Inclusive pedagogy across the curriculum: international perspectives on inclusive education (pp. 259– 279). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing. Muijs, D., Chapman, C., & Armstrong, P. (2012). Teach First: Pedagogy and outcomes: The impact of an alternative certification programme. Journal of Educational Research Online. 4(2), 29–64.

Teach For All in Australia 177 Prigogine, I., & Stengers, I. (1984). Order out of chaos: Man’s new dialogue with nature. New York: Bantam Books. Rauschenberger, E. (2016). Reconstructing the emergence of Teach First: Examining the role of policy entrepreneurs and networks in the process of policy transfer. Doctoral dissertation, University of Edinburgh. Rauschenberger, E. (2017). Critically examining the emergence of Teach First. Retrieved from www.bera.ac.uk/blog/critically-examining-the-emergence-of-teach-first. Rice, S., Volkoff, V., & Dulfer, N. (2015). Teach For/Teach First candidates: what conclusions do they draw from their time in teaching? Teachers and Teaching, 21(5), 497–513. Rogers, B.L. & Blumenreich, M. (2013). Reframing the conversation: Insights from the oral histories of three 1990 TFA participants. Teachers College Record, 115(1), 1–46. Roy, K. (2003). Teachers in nomadic spaces: Deleuze and curriculum (Vol. 5). New York: Peter Lang. Scholes, L., Lampert, J., Burnett, B., Comber, B.M., Hoff, L. & Ferguson, A. (2017). The politics of quality teacher discourses: Implications for pre-service teachers in high poverty schools. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 42(4). Scott, J., Trujillo, T. & Rivera, M.D. (2016). Reframing Teach For America: A conceptual framework for the next generation of scholarship. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24(12), 1–33. Skourdoumbis, A., (2012). Teach for Australia (TFA): Can it overcome educational disadvantage? Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 32(3), 305-315. St Pierre, E.A. (2018). Writing post qualitative inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 24(9), 603–608. Stewart, P. (2001). Complexity theories, social theory, and the question of social complexity. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 31(3), 323–360. Straubhaar, R. (2020). Teaching for America across two hemispheres: Comparing the ideological appeal of the Teach for All teacher education model in the United States and Brazil. Journal of Teacher Education, 71(3), 307–318. SVA. (2019). National Exceptional Teachers for Disadvantaged Schools (NETDS). Retrieved from www.socialventures.com.au/work/nationalexceptional-teachers-fordisadvantaged-schools/. Teach For Australia. (2016a). Annual report 2015. Retrieved from www.teachforaustra lia.org/2016/06/02/annual-report-2015/. Teach For Australia. (2016b). Our promise: Tackling educational disadvantage. Retrieved from www.teachforaustralia.org/2016/03/20/promise-tackling-educationa l-disadvantage/. Teese, R. (2011). From opportunity to outcomes: The changing role of public schooling in Australia and national funding arrangements. Carlton: Centre for Research on Education Systems, Melbourne Graduate School of Education. Thomas, M.A.M. (2018). ‘Policy embodiment’: Alternative certification and Teach For America teachers in traditional public schools. Teaching and Teacher Education, 70, 186–195. Thomas, M.A.M. & Lefebvre, E. (2018). The dangers of relentless pursuit: Teaching, personal health, and the symbolic/real violence of Teach For America. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 39(6), 856–867. Veltri, B. (2010). Learning on other people’s kids: Becoming a Teach For America teacher. Charlotte, NC: IAP.

178 Moss, McCandless, Walker-Gibbs et al. Weldon, P., McKenzie, P., Kleinhenz, E., & Reid, K. (2013). Teach For Australia pathway: Evaluation report phase 3 of 3. Retrieved from https://research.acer.edu. au/teacher_education/12. Windsor, S. (2014). Citizenship and inequality: The Teach For Australia program and the people who enter it. Doctoral dissertation, University of Melbourne. Windsor, S. (2017). Teach For Australia: What, who, why, and how well?. In M. Akiba, & G. LeTendre (Eds.), International handbook of teacher quality and policy (pp. 492–504). New York: Routledge. Youngblood, M. (1997). Life at the edge of chaos. Dallas, TX: Perceval Publishing. Zeichner, K., & Peña-Sandoval, C. (2015). Venture philanthropy and teacher education policy in the US: The role of the New Schools Venture Fund. Teachers College Record, 117, 1–44.

Chapter 10

Teach First Cymru Whose mission? Teach First and the Welsh Government’s ‘National Mission’ for education Alex Southern Introduction This chapter offers a comparative analysis of definitions of ‘professionalism’, as articulated by Teach First Cymru and Graduate Teacher Programme (GTP) beginner teachers, studying at the same university in Wales. Based on findings from empirical research, discussion focuses on how these two groups of student teachers articulate the concept of teacher ‘professionalism’, and how this relates to the new professional standards and policy in Wales. During focus group discussions and interviews, the two groups of participants expressed differing articulations of ‘professionalism’. The responses underline the difference between the self-reliance, and corporate identity, of the Teach First beginner teachers, and the more collaborative, learner-centred approach of the GTP group. While not by itself conclusive, this points to variations in how student teachers perceive the teaching habitus that highlight a fracture in how current initial teacher education programmes prepare students for the profession. The chapter concludes with discussion of how the Teach First ‘values’ are placed within the current policy framework of the Welsh Government’s ‘National Mission’ for Education (Welsh Government, 2017a), and considers whether a more cohesive approach to ITE would be more appropriate in the Welsh context.

Education in Wales Responsibility for education in Wales shifted from the UK’s central government in Westminster to the Welsh Government after the Welsh general election in 1999, during which a slim majority voted for devolution. Education policy in Wales is administered by the Department for Education and Skills, and is guided by the Government’s close adherence to the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child (Welsh Government, 2015). Central to Welsh Government education policy is the aim to raise standards of pupil outcomes, and to break the link between levels of attainment and poverty (Welsh Government, 2014). Within this context, the Welsh Government (WG) has sought to effect educational change, largely in response to the falls in

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attainment of Wales’s children and young people in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tables between 2006 and 2013 (Wheater et al., 2013). The WG recently commissioned reviews of the curriculum and of the provision of initial teacher education (ITE). The final reports, Successful Futures (Donaldson, 2015), and Teaching Tomorrow’s Teachers (Furlong, 2015) cross-refer and propose a comprehensive overhaul of the curriculum, and the re-accreditation of ITE across all programmes that award Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). QTS is the professional requirement that enables teachers to work in state schools that are maintained by Local Authorities. The process of designing the new curriculum began in 2015, and phased implementation will begin from September 2022. After issuing positive responses to these reviews, and adopting all recommendations, the WG launched its National Mission for education in Wales in September 2017 (Welsh Government, 2017a). The National Mission is essentially about raising standards in education and comprises education reform with the overall aim of ensuring all young people in Wales have equal opportunities to reach the highest possible standards. The Mission is described as an action plan, spanning the years 2017–2021, that aims to ‘professionalise’ the workforce. It incorporates significant changes in the structure of the curriculum, career-long professional learning for teachers, ITE, and the professional standards that define the sector. Of interest in discussions here, is the dual focus on changes to ITE and the new professional standards that structure and describe the skills, knowledge, and competencies required to be a teacher in Wales. These changes are described in the Welsh Government’s National Mission as follows: strengthen ITE using new accreditation criteria which will expect higher education institutions and their school partnerships to collaborate in the design and running of high-quality teacher training programmes. (Welsh Government, 2017a, p. 25) Introduce new Professional Standards for Teaching and Leadership (and dedicated standards for support staff), promoting teaching excellence and supporting career-long professional learning, collaboration, innovation, and effective leadership. (Welsh Government, 2017a, p. 15) The history of shifting professional standards in teaching can be traced back to 1984, when the Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (CATE) was established by the UK Parliament to approve the initial teacher training programmes for new teachers (Burgess, 2000). Until that time, the knowledge and skills requirements of new teachers were described as ‘professional competencies’, and their assessment and achievement was defined by the ITE providers, usually higher education institutions. In 1994, CATE was replaced by the Teacher Training Agency (TTA), which later introduced the Standards and Curriculum for

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achieving QTS in 1999 (Burgess, 2000). Trainee teachers are required to demonstrate they have achieved all of the Standards throughout the course of their training programme, in order to achieve QTS, and gain employment as a teacher. The move from competencies to Standards came amidst a Conservative Government-driven culture of rhetoric surrounding ‘falling standards’ in schools and the struggle for control over the school curriculum asserted by teachers, unions, and central government (Carr & Hartnett, 1996; Goodson, Anstead, & Marshall Mangan, 1998; Simon, 1991). The Standards were key to government plans to raise levels of attainment in literacy and numeracy, and represented a move away from previous articulations of ‘professional competencies’ to a more centralised regulation of the profession. The (UK) Government claimed the aim was to guarantee high-level skills in all those entering the teaching workforce (Burgess, 2000). However, the Standards have also been argued to bring the training of teachers into the realm of party politics by shifting control from the pedagogical expertise that resides within higher education institutions, to central Government (Golding, 2015). These arguments have resonance in the current climate of educational reform in Wales. The overhaul of this combination of core aspects of the profession marks a significant and deliberate shift in the teaching habitus (Bourdieu, 1988) – in what it means to be a ‘teacher’ in Wales. Furthermore, the shift in overall control of initial teacher education from the higher education institutions (HEIs), to a model whereby programmes are co-created with schools, demonstrates an increased emphasis on practice in ITE that moves beyond more traditional schools-based routes into teaching. The model reflects the co-creation of ITE that exists in the relationship between schools and HEIs that is brokered by Teach First and has formed the basis of the organisation’s business model.

Teach First Cymru: A brief history Teach First Cymru is the name of the Teach First programme in Wales. Cymru is the Welsh word for Wales, and the organisation has taken this as its brand name in the country. The initial, three-year contract between Teach First and the Welsh Government began in 2013. The programme was delivered by Teach First Cymru in partnership with the University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD) from 2013 to 2017, and offered places for student teachers in secondary schools across South Wales initially, expanding to North Wales in 2016. Since 2017, the programme has been delivered through a Higher Education partnership comprising Bath Spa University and Cardiff Metropolitan University. The programme is now funded by the Central South Consortium, which is responsible for local authority activity in that region. As a result, Teach First student teachers are now placed solely in South Wales. There are four regional consortia, responsible for local authority activity across Wales. The consortia are organised geographically, and each consortium comprises a

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varying number of local authorities, according to population size, number of schools, and geographical reach. The four regional consortia are: Central South Consortium Joint Education Service (CSCJES), Education Achievement Service (EAS, serving South East Wales), Education through Regional Working (ERW, covering Mid and West Wales) and Regional School Effectiveness & Improvement Service (GwE, North Wales). The empirical research informing this chapter took place during the partnership with UWTSD, and the following overview will centre on the programme’s activity during that time to give context to later discussion. In parallel with Teach First in England, the programme aimed to recruit graduates to work in the most disadvantaged areas of Wales, guiding them through the two-year Leadership Development Programme, which began with the six-week ‘Summer Institute’, intensive training course. The 2013 Summer Institute, which marked the start of the research project under discussion here, incorporated workshops, seminars, and lectures at the UWTSD site in Carmarthen, South-West Wales; school placements; micro teaching; subject studies; and time spent at the Teach First ‘Impact Conference’ in Leeds. In September, the beginner teachers are placed in schools classed as ‘disadvantaged’ according to the number of pupils eligible for free school meals (eFSM) and the schools’ qualification for the Welsh Government’s Pupil Deprivation Grant (PDG). The Grant was launched in 2012 and is a source of additional funding for schools to invest in approaches that aim to tackle disadvantage. Allocation of the PDG is dependent on the number of pupils who are eFSM or who are Looked After Children, for whom the local authority has parental responsibility (www.gov.wa les/educationandskills). At the time of writing, information on the Teach First website explains that in England, a combination of scores on the Income Deprivation Affecting Child Index (IDACI), and Achieving Excellence Areas (AEA) is used to identify primary and secondary schools that are eligible for the Teach First Leadership Development Programme. The IDACI and AEA describe socio-economic status and areas in most need of support (www.gov.uk; www.teachfirst.org.uk). In Wales, the eligibility criteria are slightly different. Teach First Cymru works with secondary schools where at last 40% of the students come from the poorest 20% of families, with band 4 and 5 schools given priority (www.teachfirst.org.uk). These are the two lowest bands in the school ‘performance’ scale, which takes into account GCSE grades at A*–C, pupils’ top eight GCSE grades, GCSE grades in English or Welsh and Maths, and attendance. Regardless of the differences across England and Wales, Teach First operates a parallel process in both countries through which schools apply to be a part of the programme, requesting teachers in specific subject areas. Teach First trainees are then assigned to the schools, matched by the subject areas required. Once in school, the trainees receive support from a complex structure of mentors and tutors across the school, Teach First, and university partnership (Teach First, 2014; Teach First/UWTSD/Welsh Government, 2014). The

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subjects offered by UWTSD over the 2013–2017 period were English, Modern Foreign Languages, Maths, Science, and Welsh. In 2013–2014, the first year of operation in Wales, Teach First Cymru had an allocation of 40 participants, distributed across schools in South Wales. By comparison, 186 participants were placed in London schools in 2003, the organisation’s first year of operation, and the number of Teach First participants placed across England in the 2013–2014 school year was 1,398 (NCTL, 2014). In addition to the variations in recruitment at Teach First Cymru compared to programmes in England, in terms of number of participants, subject areas, and the focus on secondary schools, it is also worth some consideration of the difference in ITE provision, and the linguistic differences in the two countries. The recruitment to and organisation of ITE differs in Wales and England. In England, teaching is considered to be a skill, whereas it is conceptualised as a profession in Wales, and this fundamental divergence runs through the differing approaches to ITE. Politicians in Wales, as well as in Scotland and Northern Ireland, commissioned reviews of the curricula. These were carried out by academics in all three nations. The reviews of ITE in Wales emphasised the importance of providing student teachers with a robust research context for teaching (Furlong, 2015; Tabberer, 2013), and this view has been adopted by the Welsh Government and incorporated into the National Mission for Education (Welsh Government, 2017a). In recent years, the shift in England has been for schools to take the lead in teacher education, and for a diverse range of organisations to offer provision and accreditation. In Wales, there has been a recent move for schools to play a more active and equitable part in teacher education, but this is achieved through strong partnership between the schools and the HEIs accrediting the qualifications. In England, HEIs do not always deliver ITE. While the Governments of both England and Wales still exercise control over ITE through the Inspectorate, the quality of ITE programmes is measured and assured differently. In Wales, the quality of the programmes is assured by a small number of providers delivering accredited programmes that are inspected and reviewed by the Universities’ Quality Assurance process, as well as through Estyn, the Inspectorate, and the Education Workforce Council. In England, quality is assured by enabling a large and diverse number of providers to compete for the market. Quality is therefore proven by the number of applicants to each programme, which is a function of the applicants’ ability to distinguish between providers (Davies et al., 2016). The culture of ITE therefore differs significantly in England and in Wales. In terms of linguistic differences, there are a number of key issues worth outlining here. Wales is a dual language country in which 19% of the adult (16 +) population speak Welsh,1 according to a National Survey conducted in 2017–2018 (www.statswales.gov.wales). Welsh is a compulsory subject up to GCSE in English Medium schools in Wales, taught as a second language. The National Assembly for Wales reports that in 2014–15 there were 391 Welsh-

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medium primary schools, 39 dual stream schools, 33 English schools with significant use of Welsh, and 862 English-medium primary schools. In the same time period, there were 23 Welsh-medium secondary schools, 27 bilingual schools, 9 English schools with significant use of Welsh, and 148 Englishmedium secondary schools. Welsh-medium education is therefore still in the minority in Wales, but the language is present in all schools across the country, if only through, for example, the use of ‘incidental’ Welsh in the classroom. This linguistic context is important to note when considering that the majority of the Teach First cohorts during the 2013–2017 period came from England, with no prior knowledge of the language or devolved education system. The training programme therefore incorporated introductory language and cultural heritage sessions for the cohorts, by way of orientating the new teachers within the specific setting. The logistics of this inclusion is perhaps less important than the potential impact on the Teach First beginner teachers’ means of integrating into the communities, underlining the importance of effective mentor support, and a cohesive university-school relationship.

Teach First and the GTP: A comparative research project The current educational context in Wales, as indicated by the National Mission (Welsh Government, 2017a), highlights the value placed on school-based models of teacher education and the partnership between higher education institutions and schools. This model is not new to Initial Teacher Education in Wales, but its placement in Welsh Government policy marks a distinct shift in approach, and, coupled with the changes to professional standards, the future of the profession. In the 2014–2015 school year, I carried out empirical research to address the following questions: 1

2

How do Teach First Cymru beginner teachers conceptualise ‘professionalism’, ‘disadvantage’, and ‘challenge’, and how does this compare with their counterparts on the Graduate Teacher Programme at the same University? How are these articulations of ‘professionalism’ situated within the context of Welsh Government education policy, and what are the implications for Initial Teacher Education?

The GTP is another school-based route into the teaching profession. As with Teach First, the GTP student teachers spend the year of their programme based in a school, and have a mentor in that school, as well as within the Higher Education Institution awarding the qualification. The GTP student teachers have to achieve the Government-defined Professional Standards to be awarded with ‘QTS’ in their teaching practice, which qualifies them to teach in the classroom. However, they do not have to complete the Post-Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE), which is an essential element of the Teach First

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training programme. My aim for this piece of research was to explore how student teachers articulated their own conceptualisations of their dual roles, and of the profession more broadly, and to conduct a comparative analysis of these conceptualisations across the two programmes. I was also keen to investigate whether the public-facing, marketing, language of Teach First and representations of the organisation and its cohorts in the media were played out in reality; the extent to which the public representations of Teach First matched the opinions and perceptions of a small selection of participants in Wales; and if these differed from the perceptions of student teachers on another school-based route at the same university. My intention was to begin to unpack some of these representations, and consider the extent to which the concerns of Leaton Gray and Whitty (2010), that the Teach First teacher identity is transitory and could potentially disrupt the teaching habitus, was evident in the perceptions and ambitions of this small sample of Teach First student teachers. With the publication of the National Mission (Welsh Government, 2017a), I have returned to the datasets to explore in more detail how these two different groups of student teachers conceptualised professionalism, the relationship to the new professional standards for teaching, and the interrelationship between these and the Teach First values. The dataset was generated through focus group discussions with GTP (n = 6) and Teach First participants (n = 4) in December 2014 and June 2015; and individual, semi-structured interviews with each of the research participants (n = 10) mid-way through the year-long training programmes. Research participants were drawn from the entire cohort of student teachers enrolled in the Teach First (n = 39) and GTP (n = 17) programmes for the academic year commencing 2014. Participants were invited to volunteer, at a whole-cohort training day, with the aim of generating a random sample who would cooperate with the research in order to avoid non-response. Six volunteers came forward from each cohort, who would form the basis of a year-long exploratory case study. The participants were training in different schools across South, South-East and West Wales. Two volunteers from the Teach First cohort later withdrew from the research, for undisclosed reasons, leaving four case studies for the final data. It is important to note the differences in school settings across the Teach First and GTP groups at the outset, as this potentially impacts on the responses and perspectives of the research participants, as well as any conclusions that can be drawn from the analysis. At the time of the research, Teach First Cymru did not offer a primary route, so all participants were teaching in secondary schools. The Teach First group were all teaching in secondary schools, and were mainly placed in classes that were on the C/D border at GCSE level, as is typical for the Teach First programme. Whereas, the GTP group were all training within primary settings, whether at Foundation Phase (age 3–7) or across other Key Stages in the primary school (ages 7–11). This had not been the intended design of the groups, but a result of voluntary participation in the research. While there had been some initial interest from secondary student teachers,

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imminent Estyn inspections had deterred these participants and the final volunteers from the GTP programme all came from primary schools. Estyn is Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education and Training in Wales, independent of the National Assembly, but in receipt of funding from the Welsh Government. Estyn is responsible for inspecting quality and standards in education and training in Wales, for all local-authority maintained nurseries; schools and colleges; and teacher education and training; alongside local authority, adult learning, and the justice sector. The role of the inspectorate is to ensure education and training meets pre-determined standards, and make recommendations for areas of improvement (www.estyn.gov.wales). The focus group discussions centred on the trainees’ views of teaching, why they chose the profession, and their particular training route. The aim was to generate data that would enable the comparative analysis of the trainees’ aspirations and perceptions of teaching, and to repeat this line of questioning later in July 2015 to investigate emerging definitions of ‘professionalism’. There are limitations to using focus groups in generating reliable data, particularly when the group share the characteristic of being on the same teacher training programme. However, holding separate focus groups for Teach First and GTP trainees aimed to enable a comparative analysis of discourses used by student teachers across the two training programmes. The semi-structured interviews followed a guide, written in advance, and focused on participants’ experience of teaching, and the questions asked reflected concepts raised in the public discourse surrounding the Teach First programme. The questions included the challenges they faced, how they would overcome them, what ‘lessons’ they had learned, and what ‘qualities’ they felt they possessed as teachers. I also carried out semi-structured interviews with the Programme Leads on the GTP and Teach First, asking parallel questions around each of the routes into teaching. See appendix for focus group and interview questions. The research received ethical approval from the UWTSD Ethics Committee prior to commencing. A brief word on positionality – at the time of the research I was employed as a member of staff within the Faculty of Education and Communities at UWTSD on a research contract. However, I had no connection to the ITE courses on offer through the Faculty, in terms of teaching, course design, or programme delivery. Nor did I supervise any of the students, or know any of them personally. Nevertheless, there was a risk that participants may have felt coerced into taking part in the research, or providing biased responses during the focus groups or interviews, purely due to my connection with the University. This risk was acknowledged in the application for ethical approval, and mitigated through verbal and written assurance prior to voluntary, informed consent being granted. Participants were informed of their rights to anonymity, confidentiality, and that the research would have no impact on their role as student teacher/school employee, or member of staff at UWTSD, respectively. Interviews and focus group discussions were audio-recorded, transcribed,

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coded, and thematised. The dataset was analysed using critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2013; Gee, 2005; Rogers, 2011), with the aim of firstly, exploring the participants’ conceptualisations of the teaching profession and their role within it. The second, wider aim of this analysis was to understand the impact of the organisation’s discourse, as articulated through the Teach First Mission and Values, on student teachers’ perceptions of themselves as beginner teachers and their own relationship to this discourse.

Defining ‘professionalism’ Findings from this research are published elsewhere (Southern, 2018); however, a brief overview here will help contextualise later discussion. In particular, the findings – albeit from a small sample of participants - show the relationship between how the Teach First Cymru group conceptualise the ‘outstanding’/ ‘challenging’ dichotomy established by both Teach First rhetoric and portrayed in some popular media. For example, the 2014 documentary TV series, Tough Young Teachers, followed the experiences of Teach First trainees in schools in London. The representations of the student teachers, the schools, and their pupils establishes a binary division between success, represented by the Teach First teachers, and failure, represented by the ‘struggling’ pupils in ‘disadvantaged’ schools. The representations highlight the division between the middle class, ‘Elite Graduates’ (Stanfield & Cremin, 2013) and the working class pupils. This dichotomy is borne out in some of the British popular press. Teach First ‘participants’ are frequently referred to as ‘high-flying’, ‘top graduates’ from ‘leading universities’ who are ‘making a difference’ by ‘giving something back’ in ‘challenging’ circumstances to pupils in ‘disadvantaged’ schools (for example, Beadle, 2010; Clare, 2006; Daily Mail Reporter, 2012; Exley, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c; Kirkup, 2010; Maddern, 2009; McVeigh, 2013; Wegg-Prosser, 2002; Woodward, 2003). However, the way in which the group of Teach First student teachers who participated in the research project describe their own experience of teaching did not simply reflect the outstanding/challenging dichotomy, evident in media representations of the programme. They did not, for example, see either the schools or pupils as challenging. Challenge, for them, stemmed from issues relating to their own development as teachers, looking after their own well-being, and feeling confident in their new role. By way of contrast, the challenges that the GTP group described were more practical in nature, and external to the trainees, such as getting to grips with ICT, and the workload. The Teach First group’s strategies for overcoming the challenges also differed from the GTP trainees. One of the Teach First group explained to his peers that ‘self-leadership’ was the way to overcome any challenge; a term which derives from the Teach First Values, and which implies a singular, potentially aloof, approach to teaching. The sample size does not allow for generalised conclusions, and there could be many reasons why

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participants responded in this way during the conversation/interview. However, the use of this language raises some interesting questions for discussion, that serve as a means to explore the varying rhetoric across ITE programmes. The Teach First Values were reflected in many of the strategies for overcoming challenge offered by the rest of the group. For example, ‘reflection’, ‘honesty’, and ‘taking responsibility’ were noted. The GTP group discussed the importance of experience in overcoming the challenges they faced, as well as the value of building good relationships with experienced colleagues. The responses reflect the selfreliance and acknowledgement of, if not adherence to, corporate identity of the Teach First participants. Whereas, the GTP group describe a more collaborative approach to the training process both in the focus groups, and during interviews. While not by itself conclusive, as highlighted above, this does point to variations in student teachers’ experience of ITE and of their role in schools. Of particular interest here is the discussion within each of the groups around conceptualisations of what it means to be ‘professional’. In the second focus group, which took place in June, towards the end of the school year, I asked the student teachers to reflect on their experience of teaching so far. The focus groups both took place during whole-cohort training days held at the University, at a break in the sessions. The groups each sat around a table, on which I had placed two sheets of flip chart paper and pens. On the first sheet, I had written, ‘How would you describe a good teacher? ’ and on the second, ‘How would you define professionalism? ’ My aim was to allow participants to add individual ideas to the paper that they could then discuss as a group. I explained the questions on the flip chart paper, and then began with the other focus group questions. The responses given by each of the groups are detailed in the Table 10.1 and Table 10.2. These are transcribed as written, but presented in linear form; in some instances, the text was written at an angle, according to where participants were seated. The responses vary across the groups in two interesting aspects that can be understood as representing the differences in the rhetoric of these programmes. Firstly, the responses from the Teach First beginner teachers are more descriptive, goal-oriented, and reflect the rhetoric of the programme’s mission and values. For example, being ‘inspiring’ mimics the Teach First mission statement that, ‘We support committed individuals to become inspirational classroom leaders, giving every young person the chance of a better future’ (www.teachfirst.org.uk). The response to the question regarding what it means to be a good teacher, as, ‘investing in others and giving of oneself’, reflects the corporate discourse of the programme, evident in the ‘Commitment’ Value statement that, ‘We do all we can to achieve our mission’. This value appears noble on the face of it, however, when combined with notion of classroom leadership stated explicitly in the Mission, the value seems less altruistic. The GTP participants in this research project offered less detailed responses to the two questions. The overlap between individual contributions, and the expression of ideas in one- or two-word phrases implies a more straightforward conceptualisation of what it means to these beginner teachers to be a ‘good’ or

Teach First Cymru 189 Table 10.1 How trainee teachers on the GTP and Teach First described a ‘good’ teacher How would you describe a good teacher? How would you describe a good teacher? [Graduate Teacher Programme (GTP) [Teach First group] group]                    

Risk taker Commitment Prepared Enjoy what they are doing! Organised Confident Adaptable Enthusiastic Fun! Reflective Effective Fun Dedicated Good time management Fair Organised [Symbol] Committed Happy [Symbol] Confident [Symbol]

                

Humourous [sic] and easy to approach Positive Knowledgeable Focus Caring about the pupils Able to differentiate support to include all Can demand control over teaching space – positive environment! -> classroom displays Learning from pupils Honesty Inspiring Care for the whole child Getting children to critically look at the world Knows subject and how to apply it to each kid Boundaries set Actually cares Manages behaviour to ensure learning takes place Investing in others and giving of oneself

Table 10.2 How trainee teachers on the GTP and Teach First defined ‘professionalism’ How would you define ‘professionalism’? [Graduate Teacher Programme (GTP) group]

How would you define ‘professionalism’? [Teach First group]

             

 Respect for all learners  Having the same positivity and attitude no matter what is happening behind the scenes.  Ownership  Building relationships!  A care for other people’s development and interaction with other  Organisation  Presenting yourself at all times in an appropriate way – in a way you show your best self  Time-management

Honest Long hours Organised Fair! Hard working Team player Inclusive Good model – skills - character Inclusive Hard-working Willing Non-judgemental Team player Honest

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‘professional’ teacher. The expression also lacks the corporate tone of the Teach First marketing. This is to be expected, given the diverse nature of the two programmes, and perhaps does not imply anything more than a reflection of the learning culture within which these student teachers were situated. However, this is of interest in and of itself, since the divergent cultures of these programmes may well meet in the staff room when the two ‘sets’ of teachers take up professional posts. The implication here is that we have two different ‘types’ of teacher, leading us to question what the impact might be on the wider education system. The second difference of interest here is the Teach First respondents’ focus on self, and the GTP group’s more collaborative responses to the questions. For example, compare the description of professionalism as ‘ownership’ and ‘show [ing] your best self’ from the Teach First group, with the ‘team player’ and ‘inclusive’ responses from the GTP student teachers. This contrast was present in the two groups’ different approaches to completing the task. I did not give specific instructions as to how participants should or could address the questions; only that I’d like them to consider them and add responses as they saw fit. As soon as the focus group had begun in earnest, the Teach First participants began writing on the sheet of paper, while others in the group were responding to verbal questions. There was no discussion among the group, either about previous contributions to the paper, or the manner in which they might complete the task. Whereas, the GTP beginner teachers discussed the verbal questions as a group, and didn’t touch the flip chart paper or pens until I prompted them at the end of discussion. The task itself was completed collaboratively. All of the GTP group spoke, wrote, laughed, and joked throughout the activity. This can be seen in the transcriptions of the focus groups during the task, below. GTP Focus Group 2 So, how would you describe a good teacher? Pens please! Or you can tell me and I’ll write it. [Participants have flip chart paper and pens in front of them with two questions: How would you describe a good teacher? And how would you define ‘professionalism’?] 2: Just draw a picture of me! AS: Yeah, there you go! 2: [points to self] Winner! 1: I’m just going to draw a big, smiley face. AS: I love that. [points to the word ‘effective’ on flip chart paper] 6: I need to be that. AS: That always made me laugh, ‘that’s all I’ve ever wanted to be!’ 6: Yeah, I just want to be that! 1: Are we combining them, are we? [Chatter and laughter as the participants write their ideas on the sheet] AS:

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What’s the word where you’re not, erm … Crazy? Yeah, where you’re willing to get up and do whatever, even if you look a bit of a tool? 6: Uninhibited! 4: Outgoing? 6: Confident? 2: Outgoing, yeah? 4: Confident I s’pose, wouldn’t it? 1: [while writing the word] Confident. Oh, we’ve got that. 2: Oh that’s the one! Risk-taker! [Laughter] AS: They so win over this side, and there’s more of you! Have a think about the other one, if you’ve run out of ‘good’ stuff. 2: Yeah, professionalism is like not judging others, and things like that. 1: Unprejudiced. 3: Long hours. Always comes out doesn’t it? Heavy bags. 6: Steal some of theirs. AS: Are you copying? Is someone copying over here? 6: Inclusive? 1: Willing, I’ve got willing, you’ve got to be willing. 6: Willing – you’ve got to be willing! 1: ‘Cause you’re going to do it anyway! 2: Honest! That’s a good one! Honest. 1: We’ll have that! 2: Sharer. 4: I think fair would be … AS: Do you think there’s a fair amount of overlap, because you just mentioned it, between being a good teacher and professionalism, do you think the two things are basically the same? 1, 2, 3, 6: Yeah. 2: You were willing to move everything from there to there, weren’t you? 1: I was. AS: For one fleeting moment, in a burst of enthusiasm! 1: I was going to go, [indicates moving responses from ‘good teacher’ question down to ‘professionalism’]. I’m a risk-taker! 2: Yeah, I think realising now, ‘Oh I could easily put all of these in there’ 1: Yeah, they would all fit wouldn’t they? They’d fit in both sections. What does this say? 6: Skills. AS: Looks like ‘skins’ from up here. 1: Yeah. It looks like it says, ‘sites’. 6: I’ve got proof, in my file, that I’ve got nice handwriting! [chatter, laughter – c.1 min 30s] 2: 1: 2:

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Teach First Focus Group 2 Thank you for this! Anything further to add? Please feel free to say it! Is that it? I know, well, you’ve scribbled so much, I don’t feel like bothering to ask you the question! [Participants were writing notes on flip chart paper in response to written questions, throughout the conversation] 7: It’s really hard to talk about teaching without being really cheesy isn’t it? It’s really hard to talk about it, without being like, 9: Trained into using all them buzzwords isn’t it? 7: Yeah, it’s all rainbows and butterflies and impact! 10: Surely any teacher, regardless of whether they’re doing a PGCE or a Teach First programme, would say that they do like having an impact on the way the kids learn in the classroom? AS: I think it’s the choice of language isn’t it? They might not use exactly that phrase. Like, using the ‘impact’, because that’s quite a Teach First-y word isn’t it? 7 AND 9: Yeah, it’s true. 9: In the QTS standards, if I keep using ‘impact’ in the standards, I must get full marks! [Laughter] AS: 10: AS:

During this task, the GTP group took the opportunity to discuss the questions, to talk light-heartedly about their experience in school, and comment on each other’s suggestions. The tone of the conversation is much lighter, more collegial, jovial. Whereas, the Teach First conversation – albeit brief – is still focused on what Teach First teaches about these concepts, rather than what the student teachers have learned first-hand, through personal experience. There could be many reasons why the tone and approach was different, not least the varied teaching requirements of the two groups as primary or secondary class teachers. For example, factors such as personality differences; timing of the focus groups – in the school year, and time of day; the prior context of the focus groups; and individual experience of the training day in which the session took place. However, the variations highlight previously identified differences in culture of the programmes (see Southern, 2018 for further discussion on this), and of conceptualisations of professionalism played out through the research project. The final comment from the Teach First participant – that she will achieve QTS simply by repeating the word ‘impact’ - was made in jest. Nevertheless, this particular reference to the professional standards required for QTS is interesting. The Teach First student teacher was clearly aware of the need to meet the professional standards set out by Welsh Government. However, in the discussion amongst the group, these standards have been conflated with the Teach First Mission and Values, and the organisation’s focus on ‘impact’. Whether this student teacher really did repeat the word ‘impact’ throughout

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her standards documentation is immaterial; it is the association between the corporate language of Teach First and conceptualisations of professionalism that raises a number of key points for further discussion. The research outlined above took place in 2015 and, since that time, the Welsh Government has published new Professional Standards for teaching and leadership. The new professional standards are part of the WG National Mission (Welsh Government, 2017a), the overall aim of which is to raise standards in education by ‘professionalising’ the workforce. The professional standards describe the ‘skills, knowledge and behaviours that characterise excellent practice and support professional growth’ and are divided into five overarching standards (Welsh Government, 2017b, p. 2). The five standards comprise pedagogy, collaboration, innovation, leadership, and professional learning. Alongside these are the ‘values and dispositions’ (Welsh Government, 2017b, p. 3) that aim to guide teachers in meeting the standards effectively. These are: Welsh language and culture; rights of learners; literacy, numeracy, and digital competence; the professional learner; the system role; and professional entitlement. The standards for teaching describe the required levels of competence according to teacher experience, and describe what a ‘professional’ teacher should be and do, according to the Welsh Government. They are not dissimilar in structure and implication to the Teach First Values, articulated as follows: Leadership – We lead by example in everything we say and do Excellence – We strive to be the best we can Collaboration – We make a greater impact through working with others Integrity – We act responsibly at all times Commitment – We do all we can to achieve our mission (www.teachfirst.org) There is obvious overlap between the WG and Teach First through the standards of leadership and collaboration, for example. However, the way in which these are described, and how they were interpreted by Teach First student teachers during the research project, present divergent perspectives on professionalism. The Welsh Government explanation of the standard of leadership is as follows, ‘the teacher exercises leadership through all aspects of professional practice to support the efforts of others across the school and beyond to fulfil the educational ambitions for Wales’ (Welsh Government, 2017b, p. 57). Within this leadership standard, there is a further sub-section, entitled ‘Taking responsibility for self’. This rhetoric seems to reflect the Teach First focus on ‘self-leadership’ and link with the values of integrity and commitment. However, further interrogation of this standard reveals that the descriptor for student teachers aiming to achieve QTS is that, ‘the teacher demonstrates professional attitudes and behaviours, developing positive relationships with learners, parents/carers and colleagues, which illustrate a personal commitment to the fundamental principles of equity and of maximising the potential of all learners’ (Welsh Government, 2017b, p. 59).

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The WG’s approach to leadership focuses more on collaboration than it does on self. This example is representative of the distinction between the WG professional standards and the values promoted by Teach First. There is little conflict in principle between the two approaches to articulating professionalism. Where the Teach First rhetoric challenges that of Welsh Government is in overlooking notions of collaborative endeavour. The marketing enticement to ‘hone your skills and practice, and prepare yourself for school leadership’ (www. teachfirst.org.uk) places the emphasis on self and leadership as an isolated/isolating concept. Any recognition of context is limited to the representations of schools and their pupils as disadvantaged and therefore in need of appropriate leaders. Furthermore, the claims that, ‘you will be trained and equipped with the advanced leadership skills to inspire children to achieve their ambitions. You’ll also gain experience that will boost your career, whichever path you choose to take after completing the programme’ establish a firm link between the programme and individual achievement (www.teachfirst.org). As Elliott (2018) argues, with its neo-liberal ideological underpinnings, Teach First shapes its already privileged ambassadors into its own image, creating a Trojan army of mini neo-liberalists, empowered to move onwards and upwards from the classroom to the boardroom, taking with it its elitist sense of entitlement and a heroic, individualistic, meritocratic approach to the work that it does. (p. 9) This neoliberal agenda does not sit well within the education or social culture of Wales, which runs counter to the market-driven approach that exists in England (Davies et al., 2016). It is worth considering the dynamics of the relationship between the two countries in this respect, and the history of Wales, both before and since devolution, which has allowed for greater autonomy over our governance. There is not scope within this chapter to consider the historical and contemporary resonance of the control stemming from the Government in Westminster. Readers should to refer to recent, scholarly analyses for detailed context in this regard (e.g. Johnes, 2019; Brooks, 2017). However, the centuries-long history of dominance over public affairs in Wales that derives from the Parliament in England has some relevance here. Teach First as an organisation has benefitted from the marketisation of education in England, and participants have grown significantly in number. Yet, the ‘Trojan army’ of ambassadors (Elliott, 2018) will struggle to move onwards in Wales, with an education system that prides itself on its egalitarianism.

Conclusion: Teach First Cymru – whose mission? The research I carried out in 2014/15 is relatively small-scale, and is therefore not generalisable. However, the contrasting dispositions of the participants from the Teach First and GTP cohorts raise interesting questions around how these

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different approaches to teacher education generate divergent conceptualisations of the profession. This, in turn, raises questions around how these diverse conceptualisations are compatible in one education system. Leaton Gray and Whitty (2010) describe how the teaching habitus has shifted in response to increasing (UK) government control over the specific requirements and expectations of teachers. This shift has led to new understandings of the profession, and of professionalism, which are characterised by compliance with government initiatives and achievement of ‘standards’. Leaton Gray and Whitty (2010) argue that Teach First is an example of a route into teaching that has been developed in response to this increase in government control, which is creating an education workforce who are less focused on teaching and more on developing a generic graduate career for personal gain. Or, as Stanfield and Cremin (2013) describe them, ‘Elite Graduates’ who are disrupting the habitus by focusing on building their own social, economic and cultural capital. Given the total number of student teachers that comprise the Teach First Cymru cohorts, it is unlikely that the programme alone will bring about a shift in the teaching habitus in Wales. In the 2014–2015 academic year when the research took place, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) targets for secondary school ITE places across the three Teacher Education Centres was 880 student teachers. The number of Teach First student teachers that academic year, all of whom were based in secondary schools, was 34. This number increased in the following academic year to 60 student teachers and has now been reduced again, to around 25, following the relocation to the Central South Consortium. The volume of teachers in Wales who have qualified via the Teach First route into the profession is therefore unlikely to influence the overall habitus. More likely is that the organisation will respond to Welsh Government directives, particularly with regards to the professional standards, and fall in line with current policy while retaining the characteristic Teach First brand and rhetoric. This has already begun, with greater emphasis being placed on schools to lead on the student teachers’ development, than had previously been the case. Nevertheless, there is a rhetorical schism between the Teach First Mission and the National Mission (Welsh Government, 2017a) articulated by the Welsh Government. The current move to ‘professionalise’ teaching in Wales represents a reassertion of the Government’s control over the teaching profession. However, the focus on professional learning and emphasis on schools to have greater influence in developing Initial Teacher Education through partnerships with higher education institutions, does leave space for the sector to shape the profession from within. This in turn gives scope for the concept of professionalism to develop in line with the priorities and expertise of teachers. Teach First Cymru will need to respond to these evolving conceptualisations in order to continue to thrive in Wales, and this may mean shifting away from the corporate rhetoric of self-leadership to a more collaborative articulation of professionalism.

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Note 1 This figure derives from a national survey of over 10,000 people of Wales, which was then scaled up to give an indication of the proportion of the population identifying as Welsh speakers.

Appendix: Interview and focus group questions Participant interview questions 1

How was your first term of full-time teaching? i ii

2

What has been your biggest challenge? i ii

3

And how will you go about doing this?

How do you think you’ve changed since September? i

7

Why is it important to you?

What do you want to improve upon? i

6

How are you progressing? Can you give me an example?

What do you consider to be your best quality as a teacher? i

5

What have you found to be the most effective strategies/approaches to overcoming this challenge? How did you develop these strategies?

What do you hope to achieve this term? i ii

4

Was that what you expected? What have been the highlights?

Who or what has motivated that change?

What is the most valuable lesson you’ve learned? i

From whom/what?

Focus group questions Focus Group 1: Autumn Term 2014 (Sep–Oct 2014) Introduction to the research project: requirements and process of the research, issues of confidentiality and anonymity, informed consent. Opportunity for any questions. First Reflective Journal questions circulated for completion and submission to research team December 2014.

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Questions for discussion among the group: 1 2 3 4

Why do you want to be a teacher? What kind of teacher do you want to be? What do you think will be your greatest challenge/barrier? How will you deal with it?

Focus Group 2: End of Summer Term 2015 (July 2015) Feedback on the research process. Opportunity for any questions and areas for improvement. Questions for discussion among the group: 1 2 3

Why do you want to be a teacher? How would you describe a ‘good’ teacher. What are the qualities that you think are essential? What has been your biggest ‘success’ over the year? a

4 5 6

How did you achieve it?

What do you know now that you wish you’d known in September? How would you define ‘professionalism’ Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?

References Beadle, P. (2010, 10 August). Children will lose out under new education policies. The Guardian. Retrieved on 5 November 2015 from www.theguardian.com/education/ 2010/aug/10/ education-policies-misguided. Bourdieu, P. (1988). Homo academicus, trans. P. Collier. Cambridge: Polity. Brooks, S. (2017). Why Wales never was: The failure of Welsh nationalism. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Burgess, H. (2000). What future for initial teacher education? New curriculum and new directions. The Curriculum Journal, 11(3), 405–417. Carr, W., & Hartnett, A. (1996). Education and the struggle for democracy: The politics of educational ideas. Buckingham: Open University Press. Clare, J. (2006, 4 March). Teach First is a brilliant idea: Absolutely everyone wins. The Telegraph. Retrieved 5 November 2015 from www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ 1512041/TeachFirst-is-a-brilliant-idea-absolutely-everyone-wins.html. Daily Mail Reporter. (2012, 24 November). 2,000 elite young teachers are parachuted in to tackle Britain’s toughest schools. Mail Online. Retrieved 9 November 2015 from www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2237877/2-000-elite-young-teachers-parachu ted-tackle-Britains-toughestschools.html#ixzz3qzUgwyBQ Davies, P., Connolly, M., Nelson, J., Hulme, M., Kirkman, J., & Greenway, C. (2016). ‘Letting the right one in’: Provider contexts for recruitment to initial teacher education in the United Kingdom. Teaching and Teacher Education, 60, 291–302.

198 Alex Southern Donaldson, G. (2015). Successful futures: Independent review of curriculum and assessment arrangements in Wales. Cardiff: Welsh Government. Elliott, J. (2018). Teach First organisational discourse: What are Teach First teachers really being trained for? Power and Education, 10(3), 264–274. Exley, S. (2014a, 15 August). Bright lights and hard truth: This is Teach First. TES. Retrieved 5 November 2015 from www.tes.com/article.aspx?storycode=6439811. Exley, S. (2014b, 7 April). Teach First trebles its presence in early years sector. TES. Retrieved 5 November 2015 from www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/ teach-firsttrebles-its-presence-early-years-sector. Exley, S. (2014c, 3 January). The unstoppable rise of Teach For all. TES. Retrieved September 29, 2015, from www.tes.com/article.aspx?storyCode=6387560. Fairclough, N. (2013). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London: Routledge. Furlong, J. (2015). Teaching tomorrow’s teachers: Options for the future of initial teacher education in Wales. Oxford: Department of Education, University of Oxford. Gee, J. (2005). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. London: Routledge. Golding, J. (2015). What has the Coalition Government done for the development of initial teacher education? London Review of Education, 13(2), 113–124. Goodson, I.F., Anstead, C.J., & Marshall Mangan, J. (1998). Subject knowledge: Readings for the study of school subjects. London: Falmer Press. Johnes, M. (2019). Wales: England’s colony? Cardigan: Parthian Books. Kirkup, J. (2010, 5 July). More top graduates to teach in tough schools. The Telegraph. Retrieved on 5 November 2015 from www.telegraph.co.uk/education/education news/7871417/Moretop-graduates-to-teach-in-tough-schools.html Leaton Gray, S., & Whitty, G. (2010). Social trajectories or disrupted identities? Changing and competing models of teacher professionalism under New Labour. Cambridge Journal of Education, 40(1), 5–23. Maddern, K. (2009, 28 August). A class of their own? The rise and rise of Teach First graduates. TES. Retrieved 5 November 2015 from www.tes.com/article.aspx?story code=6021552. McVeigh, T. (2013, July 20). Graduates reject lure of city jobs to be teachers in deprived schools. The Guardian. Retrieved 5 November 2015 from www.theguardia n.com/education/2013/jul/20/graduates-teach-deprived-schools NCTL. (2014). National College for Teaching and Leadership annual report and accounts 2013–2014. London: NCTL. Rogers, H. (ed.) (2011). An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education. New York: Routledge. Simon, B. (1991). Education and the social order. 1940–1990. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Southern, A. (2018). Disrupting the habitus? Media representations and participant experience of Teach First: an exploratory case study in Wales. Teachers and Teaching, 24(5), 584–597. Stanfield, J., & Cremin, H. (2013). Importing control in initial teacher training: Theorizing the construction of specific habitus in recent proposals for induction into teaching. Journal of Education Policy, 28(1), 21–37. Tabberer, R. (2013). A review of initial teacher training in Wales. Cardiff: Welsh Government. Teach First. (2014). Your partnership with Teach First. Cardiff: Teach First.

Teach First Cymru 199 Teach First/UWTSD/Welsh Government (2014). Working Together on the Teach First Programme. Cardiff: Teach First. Tough Young Teachers. (2014). Episodes 1–6 (broadcast dates 9 January 2014; 16 January 2014; 23 January 2014; 30 January 2014; 6 February 2014; 13 February 2014) [television programme]. London: Victory Television/BBC/Teach First. Wegg-Prosser B. (2002, 10 July). Teach for the skies. The Guardian. Retrieved 5 November 2015 from www.theguardian.com/education/2002/jul/10/highereducation.uk. Welsh Government. (2014). Qualified for life. Cardiff: Welsh Government. Welsh Government. (2015). Programme for government for children. Cardiff: Welsh Government. Welsh Government. (2017a). Education in Wales: Our national mission. Action plan 2017–2021. Cardiff: Welsh Government. Welsh Government. (2017b). New professional standards for teaching and leadership in schools [online]. Retrieved from https://consultations.gov.wales/sites/default/files/con sultation_doc_files/170302_professionalteachingstandards_consultationdocument_en.pdf. Wheater, R., Ager, R., Burge, B., and Sizmur, J. (2013). Achievement of 15-year-olds in Wales: PISA 2012 national report [online]. Retrieved from www.nfer.ac.uk/p ublications/PQUK02. Woodward, W. (2003, 29 July). Quick fix. The Guardian. Retrieved 5 November 2015 from www.theguardian.com/education/2003/jul/29/teachertraining.schools.

Part IV

Teaching and leading

Chapter 11

Imagining and realising ‘good quality education’ Capital mobilisation by elite graduates of prestigious universities teaching in rural Chinese schools Yue Melody Yin and Karen Dooley Introduction The Chinese government has initiated national programmes to attract teachers to rural areas, including (i) the Free Pre-Service Teacher Education Programme, which waives tuition fees for young people who return home as teachers for rural areas; and (ii) the Special Teaching Post Plan for Rural Schools, which offers attractive remuneration and benefits to university graduates for three years of rural service (OECD, 2016). The latter programme has successfully recruited and placed hundreds of thousands of ‘young, energetic, and well-educated new university and college graduates’ in rural schools (Du, 2018, p. 62). In 2015, over 90% of these teachers remained on beyond their three-year terms (OECD, 2016). Nonetheless, large numbers of 代课教师 (daike jiaoshi, temporary, nongovernment teachers) who are typically neither qualified nor licensed are concentrated in rural schools (Lam, 2017). At the same time, non-government organisations that run alternative programmes of teacher recruitment and placement have been permitted to assist in redressing some of the challenges of rural education (Crowley, 2016; Hsu, 2017; Lam 2017). Alternative teacher preparation programmes originated in countries such as the United States and England and are often pitted against more traditional teacher education programmes that provide more comprehensive and extension preparation (Lefebvre & Thomas, 2019). Against the backdrop of global neoliberalism, in recent years, this mode of teacher recruitment has been introduced into the landscape of teacher education in China. The organisation now known as Exceptional Graduates as Rural Teachers (EGRT)1 is only one of several that share some common characteristics with, if not direct influence from, Teach For America and Teach For All (Crowley, 2016; Lam, 2017). Founded in the 2000s, EGRT was registered as a Private Non-Enterprise Entity that recruits exceptional graduates to work as classroom teachers for rural areas where educational resources are extremely scant. To date, around 2000 fellows have finished or are in service for the programme.

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EGRT fellows are sent into rural primary schools (Year 1–Year 6) and junior secondary schools (Year 7–Year 9). In China, there are 9 years of compulsory schooling. Entry into the post-compulsory senior school years is by examination. After the government concentrated the limited resources available for education in ‘key schools’ after 1978 to cultivate talents to serve the nation’s economic development, a more hierarchical schooling system emerged (leading, subsequently, to strenuous efforts to reduce differences between schools2). At the time of the research reported here, only the students who scored the most outstanding examination results were able to enter the more prestigious schools. A similar logic has been applied to university entrance. High-quality education resources have been concentrated in selected universities, specifically, ‘211 Project’ and ‘985 Project’ institutions. To clarify, 100 universities were selected for extra funding in 1995 to build prestigious higher education options for the 21st century, and three years later a sub-set of 39 of these was selected for additional funding in order to create ‘world-class’ institutions3. All these institutions are widely regarded as prestigious universities in China. Excellent performances in the National College Entrance Examination offer students (Year 12) opportunity to attend these universities. Therefore, examination scores are central to the potential futures available to school students. In this context, examinationoriented education has prevailed, with ferocious competition developing since 1978 (Zhao, Selman, & Luke, 2018). However, the critique of this kind of education has mounted owing to drawbacks that include elitist design and funding structure, lack of flexibility and humane care, excessive homework, and extreme examination pressure (Thøgersen, 2000). In this context of intensifying examination-oriented competition, an alternative set of ideas relating to 素质教育 (suzhi jiaoyu or ‘education oriented to improving the quality of the person’; hereafter, ‘quality-oriented education’) gained ground during the late 1990s. These ideas were eventually enshrined in national education policy. 新课改 (xin kegai, the New Curriculum Plan) was promulgated, for instance, to shift the education system from its examination orientation to an emphasis on holistic development. In place of subject-based curriculum directed towards examinations and teacher-centred pedagogy, student-centred pedagogies were advocated, along with integrated curriculum (You, 2018). These ideas resonate with EGRT goals relating to critical thinking (analysing and applying information to solve problems) and character development (goal-setting and persistence), although the programme also pursues improved test scores. Rural students have not typically enjoyed the access of their urban peers to such an education before entering the classes of EGRT fellows (Lam, 2017). There is, however, evidence of EGRT fellows finding teaching in general, and realisation of EGRT ideals in particular, unexpectedly difficult (Yin, 2018). Similar difficulties were reported in Lam’s (2017) study of Teach For China fellows in rural schools. Our interest here is in the educational thinking that underpins EGRT and the translation of this thinking into educational practice by EGRT fellows as elite graduates of prestigious

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universities. Through qualitative analyses of interviews with participants in the EGRT programme, we address two questions:  

How did EGRT fellows understand ‘good quality education’ prior to their entry into placement classrooms? How did EGRT fellows realise their understandings of ‘good quality education’ in practice?

We develop the chapter in three sections. First, we briefly introduce some of the thinking tools, developed by Pierre Bourdieu, that are useful for this study. Second, we present findings and analyses that provide insight into the two research questions proposed above. Finally, we discuss implications for EGRT fellows and future training in EGRT programmes – and others like them.

Habitus and cultural capital of EGRT fellows Habitus is a system of dispositions, including attitudes, tastes, values, perceptions and beliefs which are socially constructed and incline one to act in one or another way (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990). As explained by Wacquant (1992), there is a certain homology between these mental structures and social structures; indeed, the two are genetically linked. To clarify, the objective division and differentiation of society – particularly the grouping of the dominant and the dominated – inscribes subjective cognitions in social agents. As agents are constantly exposed to the extant social context, they internalise its logics of typology. Their mental schemes are product of social divisions embodied as dispositions (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). These schemes take the form of a system of classification, … mental and bodily schemata that function as symbolic templates for … practical activities – conduct, thoughts, feelings, and judgement – of social agents. (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 7) In other words, social agents acquire classificatory schemes that enable them to perceive and judge the social world. Crucially for this chapter, these schemes typically enshrine the perspectives of the dominant and construe the dominated as inferior or lacking (Bourdieu, 1977, 1984, 1989). In the empirical context in which this study was conducted, the social division between the urban and the rural is sharp. As a result, education in rural areas lags its urban counterparts given limited funding and a teaching force that includes many daike jiaoshi, teachers who are neither qualified nor licensed. In the hierarchy of the education system, rural compulsory education takes the most subordinate or inferior position. In contrast, prestigious universities occupy the very top position of the education system, located in the most developed cities with the richest educational resources. Due to this huge

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disparity, cumulative exposure to the external division between the rural and the urban brings about the internalisation of a classificatory scheme for perceiving external social contexts. For EGRT fellows, the classificatory scheme of habitus might set up many assumptions and then influence how they make value judgements and recognise social practices in their placement schools. In this situation, habitus is like a compass, directing agents’ subsequent practice – consciously or unconsciously. With values and perceptions of good quality education in mind, fellows are set up to mobilise the resources they have accumulated as elite graduates of prestigious universities in order to achieve certain goals in accord with their assumptions and beliefs. These resources might be understood as ‘cultural capital’, a concept coined by Bourdieu to understand the knowledge, skills, manners, education and academic qualifications implicated in cultural and social reproduction through education. Bourdieu (1986) described three inter-convertible states of cultural capital: the objectified, institutionalised, and embodied. It is hardly surprising that teachers and students hold different amounts and configurations of cultural capital. However, that gap between teacher and student is widened considerably when elite graduates of prestigious universities enter disadvantaged rural schools as teachers. Internationally, such graduates are more likely to be from privileged families than not (Reay, 1998; Straubhaar & Gottfried, 2014). Although some EGRT fellows may not come from the wealthiest families, they are not likely to come from the poorest of families either. This is because EGRT service requires them to be able to defer taking a well-paid job for at least two years after graduation. EGRT fellows tend, therefore, to be relatively rich in the objectified cultural capital that can be attained through conversion of economic capital (e.g. ownership and mastery of books, paintings, and musical instruments). This is on top of the wealth of institutionalised cultural capital (i.e. degrees) they enjoy as graduates of prestigious universities in China or overseas. These riches present a sharp contrast to the criteria by which regular staff are typically recruited for service in disadvantaged rural schools; for example, daike jiaoshi do not have the institutionalised cultural capital of formal qualifications or licenses. Finally, EGRT fellows have abundant embodied cultural capital. As constant academic winners, fellows have been cultivated for many years by their families and prestigious universities, internalising socially valued dispositions through immersion in elite institutions and enriched cultural contexts. On the one hand, this may distance the fellows from their students; on the other, there is potential for the fellows to mobilise their capital to make a difference for students in disadvantaged schools.

Good quality education and its realisation in the classroom: The empirical study In the course of visits to six placement schools, the lead author undertook semistructured interviews with 16 EGRT fellows. Table 11.1 provides demographic information on these participants (i.e. gender, age, educational backgrounds, and

Capital mobilisation in China 207 Table 11.1 Demographic characteristics of interviewees Name

Gender

Age

Status of university

Highest degree

Area of family origin

Chao Feng Hua Long Lu Min Na Ren Rui

Male Male Female Male Female Female Female Female Male

24 27 27 27 27 23 24 27 28

bachelor’s master’s master’s master’s master’s bachelor’s bachelor’s master’s bachelor’s

urban urban rural rural rural fringe rural rural rural

Shuang Sun Wei Xiang Xiu Ying Zhao

female Male Male Male female female female

23 30 25 24 24 22 24

985 Project 985 Project 985 Project 985 Project 211 Project 211 Project 985 Project 985 Project Non-211/985 Project US university 985 Project 985 Project 985 Project 985 Project 985 Project 985 Project

bachelor’s doctoral bachelor’s bachelor’s bachelor’s bachelor’s bachelor’s

urban urban urban urban urban rural urban

Source: adapted from Yin (2018, p. 98)

geographical area of family origin). All the EGRT fellows can be considered ‘academic winners’. Fourteen had graduated from prestigious universities in China (two from ‘211’ Project universities and 12 from the even more select ‘985’ Project universities). Of the remaining two, Shuang had graduated from a renowned university in the US and Rui from a highly regarded regional university in China. Ten of the participants had a bachelor’s degree, five had a master’s degree and one held a doctorate. With respect to family origin, eight participants were from urban and seven from rural areas, with the remaining participant from an urban-rural fringe area. The participants were placed in different types of schools. Three were elementary schools, two were junior secondary schools, and one was a nine-year school (combining elementary school and junior secondary school levels). The schools were in different geographical locations: three were in small villages, two in towns, and one in an urban-rural fringe area.

Imagining good education for rural classrooms The data here were elicited by the interview question: 你心目中理想的农村 优质教育是什么样子? (From your perspective, what is ‘good quality

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education’ (youzhi jiaoyu) for rural classrooms?). All participants had ready answers to this question; indeed, they indicated they had begun envisioning their teaching in rural classrooms from the moment they decided to apply for the EGRT programme. Data relating to each participant’s imaginings of good quality education is presented in Table 11.2. According to Table 11.2, an obvious commonality was that participants’ imaginings of ‘good quality education’ were associated with 素质教育 (suzhi jiaoyu or quality-oriented education). By way of interpretative background

Table 11.2 Good quality education for the rural classroom Participant

Characteristics of good quality education in the classroom

Chao Feng

Promote holistic development and broaden the horizon of students. Care for every student’s holistic development and provide students with mental and cognitive support. Make each student happy; promote holistic development; and bring something novel and interesting from outside to my students. Both improve students’ examination scores and enhance students’ critical thinking. Student-centred education. Make every student enjoy learning and think independently. Facilitate students to know how big the outside world is, and thus they have infinite possibilities. Help every student understand him/herself and find his/her own strengths. Student-centred with passion and initiative. In addition to students’ examination performance, education should emphasise students’ physical and mental health, and principles of being a social person. Let students see the outside world and live in a more poetic way. Teach every student how to lead a better life. In addition to subject knowledge through text books, good education can guide every student to find what they want to do in the future, and then try their utmost to achieve it; can teach students how to communicate with others and appreciate arts like music, painting, and novels; and can make students feel love and love others. Bring something interesting and meaningful to students. Students and teachers can communicate in an equal and democratic way, then resonate with each other. Make students happy and able to care for each individual.

Hua Long Lu Min Na Ren Rui Shuang

Sun Wei Xiang

Xiu Ying Zhao

Source: adapted from Yin (2018, p. 107) The answers listed in the table are direct quotes (translated from the Chinese original for reporting purposes).

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here, it is useful to note that the term ‘suzhi’ works as a marker of excellence and appears in discourse on backwardness and social distinction. In the pursuit of a suzhi of high-quality capabilities through education, wealthier urban families have provided their children with expensive private lessons that do not necessarily improve examination performance, for example, music, art, foreign languages and sports; and study abroad and travel (Fong, 2007). By contrast, some rural families have striven to help their children accumulate a suzhi of societally valued knowledge by paying for them to audit classes the year before enrolment, establishing kindergartens, and championing academic over vocational curricula (Murphy, 2004). The intent is to enable success in academic competition that is particularly ferocious in areas where education is the most likely route out of rurality and poverty (Kipnis, 2001). For rural families, the pursuit of suzhi does not necessarily fit easily, then, with suzhi jiaoyu (quality-oriented education). This is not the case for more affluent urban families for whom quality-oriented education and good quality education are more likely to dovetail such that quality-oriented education is more readily considered to be ‘good quality education’ by the fellows. Quality-oriented education has been opposed to examination-oriented education. Where the first priority of examination-oriented education is outstanding scores, a core value of quality-oriented education is studentcentredness, to nurture personal ability and develop character through decreasing excessive schoolwork. It was noted that ‘good quality education’ in the minds of interview participants was congruent with ‘quality-oriented education’. With this educational ideology in mind, fellows paid attention to students’ holistic and all-round development, beyond textbooks and examinations. The fellows’ definitions of a ‘good quality education’ centres on ideas of ‘student-centred’, ‘holistic development’ (participants Chao, Hua, Feng), and higher-order thinking skills – such as independent thinking (Min) and critical thinking (Long). This was consistent with other research which found that alternative programme fellows of Teach For China distinguished themselves from local educators who they felt were ‘mainly concerned about test scores, relied too heavily on rote memorisation’ (Lam, 2017, pp. 61–62). As a second commonality, many interview participants emphasised individual feelings during learning. From their perspective, learning should be a process of joy and love. More specifically, words like ‘enjoy’ (Min), ‘happy’ (Hua), ‘a better life’ (Wei) and ‘passion and initiative’ (Rui) were employed to describe the education the fellows hoped to bring to local students. Ways of achieving this included building democratic and equal teacher-student relationships (Ying), offering mental and cognitive support (Feng), and caring for both physical and mental health (Shuang). That is to say, good quality education as identified by participants included an emphasis on personal feelings. Education should bring individuals happiness rather than the suffering commonly perceived from examinationoriented education. Similar findings are in the extant literature which found that Teach For China fellows were ‘morally opposed to corporal punishment’, to local educators’ use of ‘inhumane methods to discipline students’ (Lam, 2017, p. 62).

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A third common point was that the fellows’ imagining of good quality education usually extended beyond the local context. The interview participants believed that a good education should expand the views of local students. In their view, EGRT fellows were responsible for providing ‘something interesting and meaningful’ (Xiu), something novel and interesting (Hua) to help local students to understand the outside world (Na and Sun). This finding, too, is consistent with the extant literature in which it has been observed that some Teach For China fellows ‘felt they could serve as a window for students to the outside world’ (Lam, 2017, p. 60). In summary, good quality education, as imagined by the fellows, was typically associated with quality-oriented terms that have more readily been translated into practice in urban education. Owing to the unequal distribution of prosperity, there has been a massive income gap and also social contempt towards rurality in the classification of rural people as backward and inferior (Li, 2013). In these terms, rural areas and rural education were classified as inferior by the participants. The unique cultures, values, and traditions were not explicitly valued by any of the interview participants. Rather, these elite university graduates represented the urban as advanced and superior, and themselves as normal and able, rendering the rural population as ‘others’ with implications of deviation from the norm and lack of ability. As explained by Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992), this process might show that the classification schemas of habitus are not simply imposed on the larger population, but are naturalised and taken for granted, (mis)recognised as legitimate by the dominant groups, gradually becoming a social consensus, namely, doxa or common sense. Thus, interview participants, by virtue of the classification schemas of their habitus, were able to make judgements about local education, and to believe that it needed to be changed by inculcation of their advanced urban ways. Internationally, it has been found that this type of deficit thinking is more likely to happen when teachers and students are from vastly different backgrounds (Lampert, Burnett, & Lebhers, 2016). The effect is to let systemic inequities off the hook (Anderson, 2013). In-classroom practice for realising imaginings of good quality education According to the above findings, the good quality education (youzhi jiaoyu) as imagined by the EGRT fellows was mainly quality-oriented (suzhi jiaoyu) and directed towards opening students’ eyes to life beyond their rural worlds. With this clear image of what kind of education they desired to realise, the fellows tried hard to mobilise their resources in their classrooms to make a difference for students in disadvantaged schools. We look now at how they did this. Cultivation of quality-oriented abilities and skills Some interview participants (i.e. Sun, Shuang, Xiang, and Rui) designed and conducted their classes for the purpose of not only imparting content

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knowledge to local students, but also cultivating learning/thinking abilities and relevant skills. As EGRT fellows, they pre-defined their role as that of bringing local students something other than mere memorisation of content knowledge in textbooks. Due to this, they commonly regarded the learning of content knowledge to be a mere carrier for lessons that holistically improved personal learning and thinking abilities; they wanted their students to do more than just obtain knowledge itself. Accordingly, their in-classroom teaching performances aligned with the core ideology of quality-oriented education. This quality-oriented mindset and corresponding teaching performances were different from the traditional examination-oriented practices widely adopted by local teachers. Therefore, one teacher working at a primary school, Rui, made an effort to cultivate local students’ learning and thinking abilities – something EGRT fellows considered to represent a remarkable difference between themselves and local teachers: If local teachers worked hard enough, they could also improve students’ academic outcomes. However, limited by their educational backgrounds and personal experience, it was hard for them [local teachers] to update their pedagogies, which made us [EGRT fellows] irreplaceable in promoting students’ personal abilities. Both our educational ideologies and life experience were special and scarce resources in local areas, and that was the real meaning of us for placement schools. This was the base on which I designed my class. (Rui) In Rui’s view, EGRT fellows were unique in rural schools because they brought something novel to rural schooling. From his perspective, examination scores were not a big deal: rural students would do better if their teachers simply worked harder. More central to our argument here, is Rui’s view that local teachers had difficulty in teaching anything that went beyond the transmission of textbook content for examinations. Rui attributed this to the teachers’ lower qualifications and narrower experience of the world. Rui’s dismissal of the pursuit of examination scores and content knowledge, and his emphasis on personal abilities, reflect his quality-oriented educational ideology. Rui regarded the teaching method of EGRT fellows as advanced and superior to those of local teachers. His thinking here betrayed a binary classificatory scheme which contrasts the fellows with the local teachers, resulting in an instance of deficit thinking about local educational practice. Accordingly, he viewed cultural resources owned by EGRT fellows as scarce, valuable – irreplaceable, even – for local students. More specific curriculum designs and pedagogies featuring quality-oriented ideology are evident in the accounts given by Sun, Shuang and Xiang. According to themes emerging from the data, these participants thought of crucial educational and personal abilities in terms of such capabilities as ‘higher-order

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thinking’, ‘logical analytical ability’, ‘independent thinking’, ‘critical thinking’, and ‘presentation and communication skills’. Take Sun as an example: In my science class, I always tried hard to train them how to think in a scientific way with rigorous logic. At the same time, I consciously encouraged them to think by themselves. Now, my students could perform much better than those who just recited what was written in the textbooks. (Sun) Sun’s emphasis was not only on imparting scientific knowledge but also on developing students’ scientific spirit and method. He contrasted his students to other students taught by a rote method, and believed his pedagogical method was effective in improving performance in class. He asserted that while curricular content could be recited, it was much more important to learn how to think independently, like scientists who obtained results through a set of logical inferences. It meant that students could not only grasp a particular point of knowledge, but also come to understand where that knowledge had come from and how to create such knowledge. In addition to independent thinking, Long tried to cultivate local students’ critical thinking through his teaching, regarding it as a significant means of learning and thinking. This mode of thinking was rarely mentioned in disadvantaged schools; and so he consciously trained his students’ critical thinking while preparing or delivering classes. In trying to enculturate local students with ‘independent thinking’ and ‘critical thinking’, Sun and Long were mobilising embodied cultural capital which they had gained from their own educational backgrounds so as to inculcate it into the students in their own classrooms. The ways that EGRT fellows designed and conducted their lessons was not random; it was, rather, based on the values the fellows prioritised and the capital they had accumulated. In addition to relatively abstract thinking abilities, good communication and presentation skills also seemed to be essential learning capacities for the local students studying with the EGRT fellows, Xiang and Shunag. Xiang organised an activity named the ‘three-minute speech’ at the beginning of every class. Students were asked to take turns to make a short public speech on a specific topic. Xiang reported that this initiative effected some changes, and that the students gradually shed their sense of shame and nervousness. Another fellow, Shuang, also designed some particular sessions to make local students express themselves in class: I just tried to create more opportunities for them to speak out in my Chinese class. In this way, students’ communication skills could be trained. Local teachers tended to ask students to recite what they were taught, which was very boring for both the teachers and the students. I knew scores were important; however, if students just repeatedly recited what would be examined, what would be the meaning of education? Perhaps because I had studied abroad before, I thought we should respect

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children’s nature and not press them so much in primary schools. I tried to give my students opportunities in class to express themselves. (Shuang) According to Shuang’s account, her class tended to be student-centred, one of the prominent features of quality-oriented education. Similar to Xiang, extra speaking opportunities were intentionally given to students. Citing her overseas study experience, Shuang could see no sense in rote learning. By her own account, studying abroad had made Shuang much less tolerant of examinationoriented education. The degree obtained from a renowned foreign university further optimised her cultural capital in both embodied state and institutionalised state, which endowed her with more confidence and power to challenge the practices established in rural schools. In conclusion, the interview participants showed a generally negative attitude towards rote learning and didactic pedagogies. In contrast, they had more enthusiasm for the cultivation of abilities such as critical thinking, independent thinking, and presentation/communication skills. In the US, Anyon (1981) observed that students from different social backgrounds experienced different forms of education based on their social class. For instance, students in working class schools were usually provided with fragmented facts accompanied by rule-governed disciplines; this might be similar to the experience of the local students in the placement schools. In contrast, pedagogy provided to students in middle class schools emphasised conceptual understanding; while affluent professional schools, in contrast, stressed independent thinking, meaning making and construction, discovery and creativity. Due to this differentiated experience, a ‘disdain chain’ was gradually established and legitimated. Middle and upper class members tended to look down upon the education which the working class received, and misrecognise others as inferior and backward. There was little possibility of them identifying or locating others’ strengths (Smart, Hutchings, Maylor, Mendick, & Menter, 2009). Similar findings emerge from research in ‘no excuses’ charter schools (‘poverty is no excuse for low achievement’) in the US staffed primarily by teachers drawn from Teach For America (TFA) and a TFA-like organisation (Sondel, Kretchmar, & Hadley Dunn, 2019). That research documented the racialised disdain of elite personnel for local communities, students and teachers. These analyses from another national context are cause for consideration. Since most of the interview participants in this study had enjoyed the best education resources throughout their schooling and higher education, coming from privileged family backgrounds (Yin, 2018) similar to those of other alternative teacher recruitment programmes, like TFA and Teach First (Anderson, 2013; Hramiak, 2014), it was easy for them to believe that their education was superior and more advanced than that offered in their placement schools. With this scheme in mind – a deficit thinking model – they worked hard in class to mobilise their accumulated cultural capital to increase and upgrade the corresponding configuration of capital held by local students.

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Expanding local students’ views Several participants, including Sun, Feng, Wei, Xiang, Zhao, Long and Min, mentioned that they felt compelled to broaden the knowledge horizons of the local students in their classes. These participants sought to develop students’ understandings of the world beyond the rural villages into which the students had been born and where they were now living. As for the translation of these ideas into concrete teaching approaches, the methods described by Zhao, Feng, and Long were representative of what all the fellows reported in their interviews. Zhao spoke of trying to broaden students’ horizons while delivering content knowledge in her geography class: When I taught geography, I hoped to give them a big view of the world, not just the knowledge itself. If they really want to know where this country is located, then they could directly search on the Internet. Therefore, I did not force students to recite the knowledge but rather sought to make them interested in looking for something exciting in the world. (Zhao) Zhao encouraged her students to obtain knowledge from the Internet. This is an important learning capability, a ‘know–how capacity’, embodied cultural capital that Zhao herself had attained as a winner of educational competition. But she seemed unable to see the advantages gained from her privileged background and did not seem to consider that rural students may not have this capacity. From her perspective, reciting knowledge was boring and useless; it was the world beyond this small village that was worth exploring. In effect, Zhao conveyed her own view of the world through her geography class. Another participant, Feng, used the metaphor of a ‘magic treasure box’ (百宝箱) to describe his role with his students. Feng was born in one metropolis in China and studied in two others for his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. During his study, he had been to the University of Oxford and the University of Melbourne on academic exchange. He also had some internship experience in international companies and institutions. Feng regarded his rich personal experience in developed cities nationally and internationally as treasure, a scarce form of cultural capital he could share with local students, who lived in isolated rural and mountainous areas. In contrast to Zhao and Feng, who were from developed cities, Long had grown up in a rural village. Unlike Zhao, who tried to change her students’ views of the world by inserting a big world picture through content knowledge, Long introduced the outside world to local students through his own experience: I sometimes share my own travelling experience to my students such as my tours to many places of interest, my study experience in Beijing, when there was relevant content in my lessons. (Long)

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Long deliberately shared his own tourist experience and urban life in the metropolis with the local students in his class. Although he grew up in a rural area similar to where his students lived, he seemed to have no interest in sharing his own rural experience of growing up. He tended rather to be more proud of his tourist experience of visiting different places beyond his hometown, and of his urban life in a metropolis. Long valued the world beyond rural areas very highly, and this informed his lessons. Interestingly, based on their particular emphasis on broadening students’ horizons by introducing them vicariously to life in developed urban areas, the interview participants seemed to have reached the consensus that city life, beyond rural areas, was what students should be pursuing. See the comments from Min: I found their [local students’] knowledge was so limited, namely, their vision was so narrowed. Some of them thought that they knew everything; indeed, they knew nothing about the outside world. What they knew was just what happened in this small village, and they did not realise how beautiful the outside world was. Therefore, they were more likely to follow others’ ideas like ‘study was useless’ and easily dropped out. (Min) Min attributed the fact of local students’ low motivation to learn to their limited understanding of the world beyond their hometown. This reflects Min’s deficit thinking in relation to her students. Given that they in fact had access to the Internet and other media, like movies and TV programmes, it seems unlikely that the students did not know about other places. However, from Min’s perspective, they knew nothing beyond their village. Min’s appraisal – inherent in the use of the word ‘just’ – suggested that she found it hard to value what happened in rural areas. Instead, life outside the small village was ‘beautiful’. This view clearly showed Min had a classificatory scheme which contrasted the rural unfavourably with the urban. Although Long came from a small village and Min was born in an undeveloped urban-rural fringe area, these two fellows tended to share the deficit discourse of their urban counterparts. While family is the main place to acquire the dominant culture codes, it is still possible for fellows to internalise the surrounding social structures into their own dispositions (Dumais, 2006). However, it was also witnessed among students who have succeeded against the odds in the education system. The success of those students tends to be ‘dependent, at least in part, on [them] abandoning their own working class background’ (Lampert et al., 2016, p. 38) and assimilating middle class values and norms in their later educational journey (Harris & Wise, 2012). According to the above findings, the way in which the interview participants tried to expand their students’ horizons in class was to stimulate and motivate them to study hard and leave for developed urban areas. They represented urban areas as developed and beautiful destinations, and rural areas as

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underdeveloped and ignorant places which local students should leave. As EGRT fellows, they seemed to believe it was their responsibility to open local students’ eyes to the urban world, and that in doing so they might make a difference, enabling them to step out of rural areas. Owing to the drastic social divide between rural and urban areas after the Reform and Opening-up policy, the whole rural community, the spiritual sanctuary for ancient Chinese, has effectively been devalued in contemporary China (Rao & Ye, 2016). Within this social structure, the classificatory scheme of the habitus displayed by these interview participants has emerged. Alongside this classificatory scheme, the participants in this study became involved in their schools by mobilising cultural capital that was highly valued in prestigious universities and urban areas. They tried to take advantage of their assumed dominance to legitimise that capital in disadvantaged schools located in rural areas. In summary, when the participants in this study became involved in classrooms in disadvantaged schools, they distinguished their classes from those of local teachers by judging what they considered to be more valuable through their own classificatory schemes. These classificatory schemes of the habitus represent the internalisation of social structures. In a context of unbalanced development of rural and urban areas, urban areas were assumed to be better choices and deserving of pursuit while rural areas were perceived as places to leave. Urbanites have normally associated rural people with low suzhi, and rural poverty is often attributed to the low suzhi of a population with little education and seen as an impediment to the rise of the Chinese nation on the global stage (Li, 2013). Given their classificatory schemes, the fellows tended to view a pedagogy of imparting knowledge as fragmented facts to be inferior to one which pursued higher-order thinking and related skills of communication and presentation. The higher-order thinking and skills they mentioned as their goals were elements of the embodied cultural capital usually prioritised by middle or upper class families and elite schools. Emphasis on these abilities, then, was also a reflection of the social hierarchy whereby students in disadvantaged schools were located in a lower position and their middle or upper class counterparts in higher positions. In mobilising their capital to try to help rural students move beyond their village worlds, EGRT fellows were re-enforcing rather than in any way challenging the discourses associated with existing structural inequalities. At first glance, EGRT fellows’ emphasis on student-centred approaches seems a point of contrast from the test-oriented pedagogies imposed by TFA and TFA-like teachers in ‘no excuses’ charter schools in the US (Sondel et al., 2019). However, the structural relation between EGRT fellows and their rural students is akin to that of the TFA and TFA-like fellows and their urban students. Moreover, in both cases the common-sense and practice of the teachers was saviourist, promising a path – the only path – out of the local community and into prosperity.

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Conclusion and sociological reflection on alternative teacher recruitment programmes It is a worldwide challenge to recruit good quality teachers for disadvantaged schools (Miller, 2012). Emerging alternative teacher recruitment programmes that target elite graduates who mostly avoid the teaching profession are one response to this. This indeed contributes to delivering high academic achievers to hard-to-staff schools. However, the notion of the ‘high-quality teacher’ idealised in this kind of programme might be challenged on the basis of the practice that ensues in classrooms. The EGRT teachers’ practice drew on understandings of quality-oriented education that had been taken up most enthusiastically in urban areas, and involved middle and upper class taste. This model of good quality education for rural students constituted a point of substantial difference from the classes delivered by local teachers. Given the brevity of the fellows’ two-year terms in their placement schools, it could not be assumed that their vision of holistic development would be realised. Moreover, there was the possibility of detracting from the unrelenting study regimens by which rural students in less developed provinces compete for access to the more limited educational resources available to them. In addition, since EGRT fellows were conditioned to regard urban life as a better choice which should be pursued by rural students, rural areas were easily labelled by them as impoverished and lagging. Hence, the strategies EGRT fellows adopted for piquing students’ motivation to learn were mainly through introducing the world beyond their villages, which had nothing to do with recognising local values and advantages. This is notable in light of the conclusions of a study of the first year of TFA (Popkewitz, 1998). In that research it was argued that the social commitment of TFA in particular, and the global reform movement in general, to reducing inequities was thwarted in practice. This was traced to the architecture of a doxa of pedagogic and other discourses embodied in the reformers. These discourses, it was argued, inclined reformers to practices that created rather than eliminated social differentiations. The valorisation of role models is one instance, and hopes of nurturing ‘potential’ in order to ‘save’ or ‘rescue’ students from their local situation is another. While the historical and cultural particularities of EGRT in the 2010s differ substantially from those of TFA in the 1990s, these points of resonance are cause for reflection. Preparing teachers to meet the needs of students in disadvantaged schools calls for specialised training (Azano & Stewart, 2015). To this end, fellows might be expected to learn how to challenge stereotypes, misconceptions, and bias with sociological perspectives. Then they might gradually become aware that what they imagined as good quality education for rural students was the product of the classification schemata of their habitus and might actually do nothing to change the structures of existing educational inequality. As has been observed in another context, students in disadvantaged schools are waiting for

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teachers who ‘understand the importance of place, value their life worlds, and build … appropriate teaching and learning opportunities’ (White, 2008, p. 9). Perhaps this is what EGRT might pursue in future.

Notes 1 EGRT is used as a pseudonym in order to maintain the confidentiality of participants. 2 The Compulsory Education Law of the People’s Republic of China (2006) prohibited the use of the term ‘key’. Article 22 reads: ‘People’s governments at or above the county level and the administrative departments for education shall promote balanced development among schools by narrowing the differences in the conditions for school running, and they shall not divide the schools into key and non-key schools. And the schools shall not divide the classes into key and non-key classes’ (www.china.org.cn/ china/LegislationsForm2001-2010/2011-02/15/content_21925515.htm). 3 ‘211’ denotes that the project was designed to create 100 prestigious universities for the 21st century (211). 985 denotes the year (1998) and month (5) in which the project to upgrade some of the 211 universities to world standard was launched.

Acknowledgements Yue’s work in this chapter was supported by the China Scholarship Council and Queensland University of Technology. Yue and Karen thank Dr Guanglun Michael Mu and Associate Professor Hilary Hughes for their contribution to data analyses and interpretation during Yue’s thesis work, subsequent co-authored papers, and the development of this chapter.

References Anderson, A. (2013). Teach For America and symbolic violence: A Bourdieuian analysis of education’s next quick-fix. The Urban Review, 45(5), 684–700. Anyon, J. (1981). Erratum: Social class and school knowledge. Curriculum Inquiry, 11(3), 297–297. Azano, A.P., & Stewart, T.T. (2015). Exploring place and practicing justice: Preparing pre-service teachers for success in rural schools. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 30(9), 1–12. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of a practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital (trans., R. Nice). In J. G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press. Bourdieu, P. (1989). Social space and symbolic power. Sociological Theory, 7(1), 14–25. Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J.-C. (1990). Reproduction in education, society and culture, second edition (trans., R. Nice). London: Sage. Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Capital mobilisation in China 219 Crowley, C.B. (2016). Teach For/Future China and the politics of alternative teacher certification programs in China. In L. Lim & M.W. Apple (Eds.), The strong state and curriculum reform: Assessing the politics and possibilities of educational change in Asia (pp. 1310–1347). New York: Routledge. Du, L. (2018). ‘Make it back’? The social positioning of the new generation of rural teachers in China. In G.M. Mu, K. Dooley & A. Luke (Eds.), Bourdieu and Chinese education: Inequality, competition and change (pp. 62–80). New York: Routledge. Dumais, S. (2006). Elementary school students’ extracurricular activities: The effects of participation on achievement and teachers’ evaluations. Sociological Spectrum, 26(2), 117–147. Fong, V.L. (2007). Morality, cosmopolitanism or academic attainment: Discourses on ‘quality’ and urban Chinese-only-children’s claims to ideal personhood. City and Society, 19(1), 80–113. Harris, C.T., & Wise, M. (2012). The impact of participation in undergraduate extracurricular activities on the transformation of habitus among American medical students. Sociological Spectrum, 32(6), 491–509. Hramiak, A. (2014). Using a cultural lens to explore challenges and issues in culturally diverse schools for Teach First beginning teachers: Implications for future teacher training. Professional Development in Education, 40(1), 147–163. Hsu, C.L. (2017). Social entrepreneurship and citizenship in China: The rise of NGOs in the PRC. New York: Routledge. Kipnis, A. (2001). The disturbing educational discipline of ‘peasants’. The China Journal, 46(2), 1–24. Lam, S.G. (2017). Teach For America goes to China: Teach For China, educational equity, and public sphere participation in education (美丽中国 – 教育公平与公共 参与). Doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Lampert, J., Burnett, B., & Lebhers, S. (2016). ‘More like the kids than the other teachers’: One working-class pre-service Teacher’s experiences in a middle-class profession. Teaching and Teacher Education, 58, 35–42. Lefebvre, E.E., & Thomas, M.A.M. (2019). Alternative routes to teaching. In M.A. Peters (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Teacher Education. Singapore: Springer. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/978-981-13-1179-6_49-1 Li, H. (2013). Rural students’ experiences in a Chinese elite university: Capital, habitus and practices. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 34(5–6), 829–847. Miller, L.C. (2012). Situating the rural teacher labor market in the broader context: A descriptive analysis of the market dynamics in New York State. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 27(13), 1–31. Murphy, R. (2004). Turning peasants into modern Chinese citizens: ‘Population Quality’ discourse, demogaphic transition and primary education. The China Quarterly, 177, 1–20. OECD. (2016). Education in China: A snapshot. Retrieved from www.oecd.org/china/ Education-in-China-a-snapshot.pdf. Popkewitz, T.S. (1998). Struggling for the soul: The politics of schooling and the construction of the teacher. New York: Teachers College Press. Rao, J., & Ye, J. (2016). From a virtuous cycle of rural-urban education to urbanoriented rural basic education in China: An explanation of the failure of China’s rural school mapping adjustment policy. Journal of Rural Studies, 47, 601–611.

220 Yue Melody Yin & Karen Dooley Reay, D. (1998). ‘Always knowing’ and ‘never being sure’: Familial and institutional habituses and higher education choice. Journal of Education Policy, 13(4), 519–529. Smart, S., Hutchings, M., Maylor, U., Mendick, H., & Menter, I. (2009). Processes of middle class reproduction in a graduate employment scheme. Journal of Education and Work, 22(1), 35–53. Sondel, B., Kretchmar, K., & Hadley Dunn, A. (2019). ‘Who do these people want teaching their children?’ White saviorism, colorblind racism, and anti-Blackness in ‘no Excuses’ charter schools. Urban Education, advance online publication. Straubhaar, R., & Gottfried, M. (2014). Who joins Teach For America and why? Insights into the ‘typical’ recruit in an urban school district. Education and Urban Society, 48(7), 627–649. Thøgersen, S. (2000). The ‘quality’ of Chinese education and the new ideal student. Nordic Newsletter of Asian Studies, 4, 4–7. Wacquant, L.J.D. (1992). Towards a social praxeology: The structure and logic of Bourdieu’s sociology. In P. Bourdieu & L.J.D. Wacquant, An invitation to reflexive sociology (pp. 1–59). Cambridge: Polity Press. White, S. (2008). Placing teachers? Sustaining rural schooling through place-consciousness in teacher education. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 23(7), 1–12. Yin, Y. (2018). From university graduates to teachers in disadvantaged schools: A sociological study of participation in an alternative teacher recruitment program. Doctoral dissertation, Queensland University of Technology. Yin, Y.M, & Dooley, K., & Mu, G.M. (2019) Why do graduates from prestigious universities choose to teach in disadvantaged schools? Lessons from an alternative teacher preparation program in China. Teaching and Teacher Education, 77, 378–387. You, Y. (2018). The seeming ‘round trip’ of learner-centred education: a ‘best practice’ derived from China’s New Curriculum Reform? Comparative Education, 55(1), 97–115. Zhao, X., Selman, R.L. & Luke, A. (2018). Academic competition and parental practice: A study of Habitus and Change. In G.M. Mu, K. Dooley & A. Luke (Eds.), Bourdieu and Chinese education: Inequality, competition, and change (pp. 144–174). London: Routledge.

Chapter 12

Professional duties and support for Teach For All fellows as reported by school principals A case study of two European countries Sarah Schneider and Hermann Josef Abs Introduction In order to develop a deeper understanding of the research context, the first section examines selected individual challenges in the educational policy context in Bulgaria and Austria. Subsequently, the qualification provided by alternative pathways into the teaching profession is discussed. Lastly, an overview of the national alternative pathway programmes of Teach For Austria and Teach For Bulgaria is given. The next section focuses on the theoretical background of teacher professional duties as well as the support provided for beginning teachers on the basis of a theoretical and empirical framework. Especially at the beginning of their career, teachers are dependent on support in order to cope with the new requirements. Hence attention is often drawn to the importance of supportive (e.g. induction programmes) and cooperative offers. Cooperation can be understood as the social interaction of individuals, groups and institutions. Cooperation theory distinguishes three levels affecting cooperation: individual level, interpersonal level, and structural level. Cooperation at the structural level examines organisations, learning cultures, and leadership (Balz & Spieß, 2009). Structures can be made accountable for the provision of beginning teachers with information about common expectations and professional development activities. On this theoretical background, the chapter will focus on professional duties and on forms and frequencies of support offers through cooperation, as they are implemented at the structural level by the principals. The third section presents research questions, and the fourth section outlines the sample and methodology of the study. The fifth section explains results, compares them with the results of other international studies and shows that school principals expect teachers in alternative training to often fulfil the same professional duties as experienced teachers with traditional training, even if these professional duties may be generally different depending on the country. Teacher induction was compared, with a specific focus on Teach For All placement schools. These schools create diverse support structures and the prospective

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teachers receive a lot of support. In addition, the prevalence of opportunities for cooperation was analysed and the survey looked more specifically into content areas for cooperation. The results show that teachers cooperated with fellows in various areas, even if these areas may be generally different depending on the country. Finally, the sixth section summarises the results, puts them into perspective, and illuminates them further.

Selected challenges at national levels within Austria and Bulgaria It is difficult to make common statements about the educational context for Austria and Bulgaria because there are differences between the countries due to the particular historical, economic, and political developments and due different traditions of teacher education and schooling. However, on the basis of the education policy recommendations of the European Union and Europe-wide studies – such as Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) research, and the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) – some overlapping challenges can be identified. Inequality of schooling The Austrian and Bulgarian education systems are characterised by social inequality. Evidence of this inequality can be found in international studies (e.g. OECD, 2016a, 2016b) as well as in the national education report for Austria (Gerhartz-Reiter, 2018). In particular, it becomes clear that factors such as pupils’ national origins, and low occupational status of pupils’ parents, contribute to an increased risk that pupils’ educational potential and life chances may not be realised (Vogtenhuber et al., 2016). Intergenerational educational mobility in Austria can be classified as ‘particularly low’ in international comparison (Gerhartz-Reiter, 2018). The analysis by Ilieva-Trichkova & Boyadjieva (2014) based on data from the European Social Survey (2006 to 2010), supplemented by data from EUROSTUDENT III (2007), points out that Bulgaria, despite the expansion of higher education before and especially after 1989, is one of the countries where inequality in access to higher education caused by socioeconomic disadvantages is still endemic. Socioeconomic factors have a strong effect on Bulgarian students’ results at school, and nearly half of all children are at risk of poverty and social exclusion (Teach For Bulgaria, n.d.). Shortages in teacher supply Austria and Bulgaria also face a number of difficulties in making the supply of teachers meet the demand for teachers. The most common challenge is the shortage of teachers in some specific subjects and is usually linked to the MINT

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subjects (mathematics, information technology, natural sciences, and technology). In addition, both countries mention a shortage of teaching staff in certain geographical areas and an ageing teaching population. For example, in Bulgaria in 2015, almost half of all teachers (48%) were at least 50 years old. It is also becoming apparent that there are already too few teachers in Austria, and that there will be too few teachers in the future (EACEA, 2018). Bulgaria also faces the challenge of a high drop-out rate from the profession. The recruitment of young people into the teaching profession also constitutes a qualitative challenge in view of the objectives of educational reforms (von Kopp, 2014).

Initial teacher training A closer look at the initial training of teachers in Europe reveals that two main models for teacher training can be distinguished: first, a pedagogical component is completed in parallel to subject-related studies (simultaneous model); or second, a pedagogical component is completed subsequent to subject-related studies (consecutive model). In Bulgaria, both options are available for training for elementary to upper secondary education, and most prospective Bulgarian teachers complete their studies according to the simultaneous model (EACEA, 2013). In Austria, teacher training takes place at pedagogical colleges (teacher training for elementary and primary level and lower secondary level) and universities (all teacher training posts). The simultaneous model is mainly available for teachers at teacher training colleges, whereas universities tend to use a more consecutive model. Alternative pathways into the teaching profession Against the background of the above challenges at the national levels, alternative educational pathways into the teaching profession are increasingly being considered and developed. According to EACEA 2018, in Austria and Bulgaria, the government did not provide alternative opportunities for acquiring teaching qualifications in primary and secondary education in 2016 and 2017 (EACEA, 2018). Now in Bulgaria, the University of Plovdiv has developed a new master’s programme for certifying teachers. In cooperation with Teach For Bulgaria, the University has created a master’s programme which combines theoretical courses at the University with practical experience gained in school. Master’s students have to work as teachers in schools while at the same time taking university courses (Abs et al., 2019). National-level ‘Teach For All’ programmes In addition to alternative pathways to the teaching profession which are created by the state, public-private partnerships between school administrations and non-governmental organisations offer alternative teacher training programmes.

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One such example is the international, non-profit ‘Teach For All’ organisation, which consists of a network of independent, locally run and locally funded organisations. In Europe, there are a total of 16 national partner organisations (i.e. Teach For All). Establishment of Teach For Austria and Teach For Bulgaria The results presented in this chapter refer to the context of two of these organisations: Teach For Bulgaria (TFBulgaria) and Teach For Austria (TFAustria). Both programmes were established to address educational injustice in the respective countries. Teachers themselves are seen as instrumental to achieving this goal because motivated teachers have an influence on the learning success. Therefore, in Austria, TFAustria fellows teach students at schools with a high risk of early drop-out. The Bulgarian fellows give priority to teaching at schools whose students score below average in national external evaluations. At these schools, the fellows work with an above-average number of children with a minority or migration background, as well as those with a financially weak background (Teach For Austria, n.d.; Teach For Bulgaria, n.d.). Training and support Training in the TFAustria fellow programme in Austria consists of three components: preparation for the school assignment stage, training on the job, and experience outside of the classroom. During the preparation for the school assignment, the fellows spend five weeks at an online campus. During this time, 20 to 25 hours per week of self-study addresses topics such as teaching and class leadership. Mainly the fellows work on their own during this time, but there are always opportunities for conversations between TFAustria trainers and fellows. Afterwards, the TFAustria fellows spend six weeks at a summer academy, where they prepare intensively for their school assignment. They spend the first three weeks in Linz and the last five days in Vienna. The summer academy includes two project weeks either in Vienna or in Amstetten during which the fellows are instructed directly on working with students. During the on-thejob training phase, fellows teach for two years as full-time teachers at a school. In addition to the job at school, they also attend teaching-relevant workshops and seminars hosted by TFAustria. Moreover, they are accompanied by experienced trainers during their entire fellowship period. This means that a trainer from TFAustria comes to their school to analyse the lessons with the fellows and to conduct development talks. fellows also have the opportunity to gain experience outside of the classroom and to access to a network of external partners from politics, the business world, and civil society (Abs et al., 2019; Teach For Austria, n.d.). The fellows in Bulgaria begin their training at the preliminary institute. Participants visit classrooms, observe how current teachers teach, and attend

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workshops and seminars, working on case studies in the field of education. At the same time, the principals of the TFBulgaria partner schools are providing vacancies for teaching assignments, which the fellows will fill for two years. TFBulgaria fellows complete a full-time, seven-week summer institute. The first three weeks of the summer institute are dedicated to practical training, which prepares fellows for the annual summer academy for 1st to 12th grade pupils, which takes place at two schools in Sofia. The fellows plan the lessons, teach, and analyse the results of their students, while a team of coordinators observes their lessons and gives feedback. Participants in the summer institute also learn additional skills, e.g. how to manage their classrooms. Unlike in Austria, participants also receive all relevant information about the partner schools and can choose their prospective school. During their time at school, the TFBulgaria fellows also work with a coordinator who provides them with professional support. Coordinators support, for example, by observing the lessons and guidance so that teachers can improve their work and assist the fellows’ future professional development. During the two-year programme, the Bulgarian fellows develop their own extracurricular school and community projects. This also gives them access to a network of external partners (Abs et al., 2019; Teach For Bulgaria, n.d.). After successful completion of the programme, interns from Bulgaria receive a teaching permit, which is not possible in Austria. The two Teach For All partner organisations manage the remuneration of their fellows very differently. In Austria, regular beginning teachers earn at least €2,050 per month. The exact amount depends on their working hours. If they work more than their contractual 20 hours, they are paid for their additional work. TFAustria scholarship holders work under a ‘special contract’, which grants them lower remuneration compared to the contracts of regular school teachers. In Bulgaria, the financial incentive for fellows is twice as high as the monthly salary of regular teachers (1200 Lev; approx. €568). Due to differing costs of living, for the purpose of comparison the salaries need to be put in relation with the average annual gross salary of the countries. The annual gross salary in Austria amounts to approximately €43,593, whereas the lowest income for teachers starts at €33,157 and can increase up to €70,853. The minimum salary of teachers in Bulgaria is significantly less than the annual gross salary of approximately €7,202 but can increase considerably because maximum wages are not fixed. In the recent past, Bulgaria passed new legislation increasing teachers’ salaries with the objective of motivating young professionals to become teachers in a long term (EACEA, 2016; Abs et al., 2019).

Theoretical background on professional duties and support for beginning teachers To better understand the professional development of teachers in TFAustria and TFBulgaria, it is important to consider the factors affecting new teachers’ experiences in the field. At the start of their careers, beginning teachers struggle

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with many demands and expectations. Common problems include overload due to many different professional duties, but also poor professional relationships with colleagues at school (Fetherston & Lummis, 2012). Melzer et al. (2015) have analysed the professional duties of teachers on the basis of a review of international studies and identified teaching itself as the most common and time-consuming professional duty. Researchers have also found out which professional duties are perceived as particularly challenging by beginning teachers, namely: time management in relation to, for example, preparation time for lessons at home; additional meetings (Brindley & Parker, 2010; Brouwer, 2007; Casey et al., 2013; Haggard et al., 2006; Laming & Horne, 2013; Lee & Lamport, 2011; Priyadharshini & Robinson-Pant, 2003, as quoted in Baeten & Meeus, 2016); and classroom management (Bolhuis, 2002; Casey et al., 2013; Haggard et al., 2006; O’Connor et al., 2011; Powers, 2002; Priyadharshini & Robinson-Pant, 2003, as quoted in Baeten & Meeus, 2016). In order to be able to deal better with expectations and professional duties in the (new) job, the relevance of cooperation and support offerings for teachers, especially for beginning teachers, is repeatedly shown in research and in practice. Research has highlighted and confirmed several times the positive impact of different forms of cooperation e.g. on the development of new teachers’ professional and pedagogical competences and on their professional wellbeing (Bonsen & Rolff, 2006; Fußangel et al., 2010; Gräsel et al., 2006; Schwartz et al., 2014). Cooperation can be understood as the social interaction of individuals, groups, and institutions (Balz & Spieß, 2009). Cooperation theory distinguishes between three levels, each which affect cooperation. At an individual level, personality traits, and attitudes are essential for cooperation. At the interpersonal level, cooperation requires coordination processes and trust. Finally, cooperation at the structural level examines organisations, learning cultures, and leadership (Balz & Spieß, 2009). Cooperation structures as well as the possibility of cooperation at any time (e.g. fixed dates for the exchange of teaching materials, etc.) are of specific interest because they may be easier to change than personality traits or interpersonal dynamics. Structures can be made accountable for the support of beginning teachers through information about common expectations, resources at hand, and professional development activities. Therefore, the analysis in this chapter focuses on the forms and frequencies of support offered through cooperation at the structural level by principals, whose leadership role has a particular influence on support and cooperation at school (Schmich & Burchert, 2010). The first few years of working are challenging for new teachers, which is why they need significant support during this time. Support from colleagues and subject matter experts can also help to achieve better performance in challenging professional duties. Induction and mentoring programmes in the early stages of a teacher’s career enable teachers to develop their professional skills and to build links within the school environment. The aim of the induction phase is to supplement the initial training of teachers through further training, personal help, and counselling (EACEA, 2018).

European principals’ perspectives 227

According to the Eurydice network (EACEA, 2018), a one-year induction period for teachers has been compulsory in Austria since 2015/2016 for qualified teachers who have completed their teacher training in the consecutive model and who are able to teach at the higher track secondary schools. The induction programme takes place at the end of initial teacher training, when the future teachers have completed their studies and passed a university examination. From September 2019, the induction programme will also be compulsory for all new teachers in primary and secondary education. In Bulgaria, there are no central rules for fully qualified teachers (EACEA, 2018). The European Commission (2010) highlights the importance of support for new teachers during induction programmes. Induction programmes may involve e.g. vocational training, planned meetings with school management, and mentoring. A mentor is typically an experienced teacher who is appointed to take responsibility for new colleagues. The mentor is usually a teacher, who introduces new teachers to professional life and provides them with support and, where appropriate, coaching, and guidance. In Bulgaria mentoring is recommended though the majority of school principals (94.6% of TALIS participants) also stated that mentoring is included in their induction process (OECD, n.d. a). In Austria, in addition to mentoring, the induction phase also includes support in the planning and evaluation of teaching hours, further vocational training measures (courses/seminars), and participation in the teaching of other teachers and/or class observation (EACEA, 2018). At present, the lower secondary schools in which the TFAustria fellows are employed do not have such a compulsory induction programme and mentoring system for young teachers with a traditional teacher education, which is why the principals are currently still taking care of young teachers. In addition, school authorities carry out compulsory inspections. Baeten and Meeus (2016) researched various teacher training programmes adapted for second-career teachers and determined seven components that the programmes should cover. Teacher training programmes should:       

include a preparatory phase; provide opportunities for transferring the expertise of second career teachers to the teaching profession; provide opportunities for self-directed learning and peer support; integrate course work and practical experience; provide extensive practical experience; provide intensive mentoring support; and be flexible in adapting programmes to the individual needs of participants.

Boyd et al. (2009) collected data on all first-year teachers and the test scores of their respective pupils in Mathematics and English as well as detailed information on the components of over 30 different teacher preparation programmes in New

228 Sarah Schneider & Hermann Josef Abs

York City. They found that some graduates of teacher preparation programmes had a much greater impact on pupil performance and that the programmes that produced the more effective teachers in the first year were usually characterised by a greater focus on practical experiences, such as lesson planning, student assessment, and teaching. Especially at the beginning of their careers, teachers depend on support in order to develop the capacity for autonomous action. Hence attention is often drawn to the positive effects of supportive and cooperative offers. This raises the question of how the recommendations of the European Commission are actually being implemented, specifically in what way and how often support services are used in schools. Empirical studies and experience documented at schools clearly show that cooperation often takes place only to a limited extent, and a lack of sophisticated forms of teacher cooperation has also been demonstrated (Steinert et al., 2006; Terhart & Klieme, 2006; Soltau & Mienert, 2010).

Research methodology Drawing on this theoretical background, this chapter focuses on the structural level of support for TFAll teachers in Austria and Bulgaria. First, we investigate the expectations placed on beginning teachers who are following an alternative pathway into teaching. This refers to the concrete expectations that the principals have for the new teachers, especially with regard to the concrete professional duties the teachers have to fulfil. Second, we explore the extent of induction support processes and the forms of cooperation provided by the schools. Methods In order to cover expectations placed on Teach For All fellows and the support they receive from the structural dimension of the school, school principals who are responsible for the induction of Teach For All fellows were surveyed. This chapter uses a partial sample of the international project, ‘A New Way for new Talents in Teaching (NEWTT)’.1 NEWTT is an ERASMUS+ Key Action 3 project funded by the European Commission for three years (2016–2019). The project is defined as a ‘policy experiment’ comparing alternative and traditional paths into the teaching profession in five European countries (Bulgaria, Austria, Latvia, Romania, and the Basque Country) with the aim of promoting policy reforms. NEWTT implements a semi-experimental design comparing traditionally- and non-traditionally–trained beginning teachers during their first two years. In the five participating countries, alternative teacher training programmes based on the concept of Teach For All were set up, but partly tailored to national needs. The evaluation of the NEWTT project analyses inter alia processes of competence and educational acquisition and compares them with those of prospective teachers trained in traditional teacher training programmes (Abs et al., 2019).

European principals’ perspectives 229

In two of the five participating countries, it was possible to supplement the semi-experimental design of the NEWTT project with a survey of school principals. The term semi-experimental refers to the fact that the participants could not randomly be assigned to the experimental conditions. The survey of principals took place in Austria and Bulgaria, as these are the two countries with the largest teacher samples. This was a one-time survey collecting data in an online format after the traditionally-trained beginning teachers and the Teach For All fellows had served in their schools for one year. The survey addressed all principals from schools where participants of the NEWTT project were teaching. The questionnaire asked for background information on the person and the school, school management, cooperation and support with and for new teachers, professional duties of new teachers in alternative teacher training, and the perception of new teachers in alternative teacher training. Instruments The instruments for the survey were developed around the research questions and, wherever possible, in alignment with the questionnaires used in TALIS (OECD, 2010, 2014) and PISA (OECD, 2009). The main source was TALIS, which surveyed teachers and principals in 34 countries. Both Austria and Bulgaria participated in TALIS 2008 and/or TALIS 2013. In addition, the TALIS study provides the basis for a comprehensive discussion of culture-specific trends in responding to surveys. Anchoring the analysis provided in this chapter in the TALIS study makes it possible to compare results with nationally representative samples and to adapt the questions to national contexts. Sample Originally, it was planned to assess principals whose schools employ fellows (intervention group) as well as principals without fellows at their schools (control group). Unfortunately, there was no sufficiently large control group in the two countries, so the results that follow refer exclusively to principals leading schools at which the beginning teachers in the alternative TFAustria and TFBulgaria teacher training programmes were placed in Austria and Bulgaria respectively. A total of 45 Bulgarian and 24 Austrian principals from Teach For All placement schools were contacted. Of these, 19 principals in Bulgaria and 20 principals in Austria completed the questionnaire (see Table 12.1). In both countries, there was one invalid case because contradictory information was provided. Most of the school principals surveyed from both countries were female (79.5%). It is striking that in Bulgaria, there were only female participants in the survey (94.7% female; 5.3% did not give information on their gender). In Austria, 35% of respondents were male. The high number of female principals is not unusual at least for Bulgaria, where 72% of all school types (ISCED 1–3) are

230 Sarah Schneider & Hermann Josef Abs Table 12.1 Sample – gender and age Female

Austrian principals (n = 20) Bulgarian principals (n = 19) All principals (n = 39)

Male

Age

Frequency

Percentage

Frequency

Percentage

Median

Standard deviation

13

65%

7

35%

55.26

5.35

18

100%

0

0%

51.63

6.50

31

81.6%

7

18.4%

53.45

6.16

headed by women, while in Austria there is still a proportion of 48% women in the principal’s office (ISCED 1–3) (EACEA, 2013). Austrian principals are on average 55.26 years old (SD = 5.35). In comparison, the Bulgarian principals are younger, with an average age of 51.63 years (SD = 6.50). 95% of the surveyed Austrian schools were located in a large city, while in Bulgaria 42.1 % of schools were located in hamlets or rural areas or villages. The remaining schools in Bulgaria were mainly divided between small towns (31.6%) and towns, cities, and large cities (26.4%). The types of schools in Bulgaria and Austria were different and cannot be directly compared. In Bulgaria, 78.9% of the surveyed schools were elementary or secondary schools, and 21.1% were high schools. The majority (95%) of surveyed schools in Austria were schools with multiple education programmes in secondary education. The term student–teacher ratio refers to the quotient of the total number of students and the total number of teachers. It should not be confused with class size, which refers to the number of students taught together in a class. However, this ratio serves as an indication of the relative size of the teaching staff in a given country. In European countries, the average student–teacher ratio is 14 students per teacher in primary education and 13 students per teacher in secondary education. In Bulgaria and Austria, the average student–teacher ratio is 17.6 (Bulgaria) and 12.2 (Austria) in primary education, and at secondary level, 12.2 (Bulgaria) and 9.6 (Austria) students per teacher (EACEA, 2013). Against this background, it is not surprising that there are significantly (t(29.69) = 3.73, p = 0.00) fewer teachers in the NEWTT sample at Bulgarian schools (M = 25.79, SD = 14.97) than in Austrian schools (M = 40.75, SD = 9.23). However, both countries have on average similar student numbers (Bulgaria M = 303.05, SD = 193.12; Austria M = 318.45, SD = 84.78). At the time of the survey, an average of M=2.65 (SD = 1.87) fellows from Teach For Austria were in place at each of these schools, while an average of M=2.37 (SD = 1.16) fellows were assigned to the participating Bulgarian schools. This difference is not significant (t(37) = 0.56, p = 0.58).

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Research results and findings The following results show that school principals expect teachers in alternative training to often fulfil the same professional duties as experienced teachers with traditional training, even if these professional duties may be generally different depending on the country. The comparison of teacher induction in the two countries shows that these schools create diverse support structures. The results of opportunities for cooperation show that principals and teachers cooperated with fellows in various areas, even if these areas may be generally different depending on the country. The analyses are based on descriptive statistics (number of n, mean, and standard deviations). Where there were relevant differences between the groups, t-tests were performed. Such t-tests helped determine whether group differences in certain variables were statistically significant or not. If the p-value in the t-test is less than 0.05, there is statistical evidence that the mean values of the two groups are not equal; the mean of one group is significantly higher or lower than the mean of the other group. If the p-value in the t-test is less than 0.01, the significance level is even stricter. At a significance level of 5%, there is a probability of error in 5% of cases; at a significance level of 1%, there is a probability of error in 1% of cases. Professional duties performed by TFAustria and TFBulgaria fellows In a first step, the professional duties performed by the fellows at schools are examined in more detail. At the most general level, professional duty descriptions of teachers are provided in terms of the number of lessons they have to teach. However, it should be borne in mind that teachers also work when they are not in class, for example by preparing lessons. A high number of lessons per week means that teachers have to spend more time preparing lessons and that they therefore have less time for other professional duties. It is thus important to distinguish between total working time, school attendance, and weekly teaching hours. A European comparison of full-time teachers shows that Austria has the lowest number of lessons (teaching hours) per week in Europe with 17 to 18 hours, but a total working time of 40 hours a week. Teachers in Bulgaria have the highest number of teaching hours (22 to 26 hours) and a school attendance of 40 hours a week (EACEA, 2015). Within the scope of the random sample from the NEWTT survey, however, the surveyed school principals have made statements deviating from this evidence with regard to the fellows’ weekly teaching hours. The majority (95%) of school principals surveyed in Austria stated that the TFAustria fellows taught between 20 to 26 hours per week, while the number of hours in Bulgaria varied more. Although the majority of Bulgarian principals (73.7%) stated that the TFBulgaria fellows taught between 20 to 26 hours a week, 10.5% stated that they taught 27 or more hours a week, but 15.8% only reported 14 to 19 working hours per

232 Sarah Schneider & Hermann Josef Abs

week. Due to the small number of principals in the study, these differences are not significant (t(37) = –0.62, p = 0.54). Based on the number of lessons per week, we have also recorded which additional professional duties are required of the fellows and how often they are required. To be more precise, we have recorded whether and how often the fellows have to teach, plan a lesson, support students effectively, correct and mark students’ exams, conduct projects with their students outside of lessons, support students individually outside of the classroom, collaborate with the students’ parents, support other teachers in their lessons, document their work, participate in planning and implementation of projects, and perform administrative tasks (including communication, office work, and other administrative tasks). For each professional duty, principals were asked to assess the frequency of this activity on a scale of 1 to 6 (1 = not an accepted activity for the fellows; 2 = temporary activity, if any; 3 = rarely recurring activity; 4 = monthly recurring activity; 5 = weekly recurring activity; and 6 = daily recurring activity). Figure 12.1 shows the percentages of the frequency of the fellows’ activities based on the principals’ statements by country. Most school principals in both countries stated that teaching (97.3%), planning a lesson (97.3%), and support (94.6%) were the core daily professional duties of the fellows. In addition, 82.9% of principals in both countries stated that fellows had to document their own work at least once a week. Other than this documentation work, most principals (72.2%) stated that fellows did not carry out administrative tasks, or if they did, that these were a monthly or rarely occurring activity.

Figure 12.1 Frequency of fellows’ professional duties according to principals in Bulgaria and Austria

European principals’ perspectives 233

While in Austria, the majority of school principals (88.9%) saw the correction and evaluation of student work as a daily professional duty for teachers, Bulgarian school principals (63.2%) tended to think that this should be a rarely reoccurring employment, if at all. This difference is significant (t(23.39) = –1.11, p = 0.00). When it comes to the professional duty of doing projects with students outside of lessons, there was no majority pattern reported in this activity among the Austrian school principals, while 79% of the Bulgarian school principals saw it as at least a monthly recurring employment for the fellows. This difference is not significant (t(25.88) = 6.79, p = 0.28). The same applies to the professional duty of individual support outside of the classroom. Here, too, the responses of the majority of principals in Austria did not yield a majority trend, while 84.2% of Bulgarian principals saw individual support outside of the classroom as at least a weekly recurring employment for the fellows. This difference is significant (t(25.79) = –4.32, p = 0.00). Most principals in both countries (Bulgaria 84.2%, and Austria 77.8%) stated that the professional duty of collaboration with parents was at least a monthly recurring employment for the fellows. The professional duty of supporting other teachers in their teaching was considered by the majority of Austrian principals (64.7%) to be a daily reoccurring employment, while the Bulgarian principals (63.2%) saw it as a rarely recurring activity, if at all. This difference is significant (t(34) = 3.82, p = 0.00). Most principals in both countries (Bulgaria 63.2% and Austria 88.9%) stated that the professional duty of participating in the planning and implementation of projects was at least a monthly recurring employment for the fellows. While in Bulgaria, this professional duty only recurred monthly and weekly, in Austria it was also seen as a daily recurring employment. This difference is significant (t(35) = 3.29, p = 0.00). Teacher induction In the second step, teacher induction is compared in the two countries, with a specific focus on Teach For All placement schools. EACEA (in 2015 and 2018) and TALIS (in 2008 and 2013) surveyed principals and teachers and asked about formal induction programmes for newcomers to teaching (EACEA, 2015, 2018; OECD, n.d. a, n.d. b) In 2008, Austria still ranked 54% of schools as being without mentoring structures and 44% as being without formal support for new teachers in lower secondary education schools (Schmich & Schreiner, 2009). In Bulgaria, only 16.2% of school principals reported that there was no induction process for beginning teachers, and 16.9% reported that there was no mentoring programme or policy in their school for beginning teachers (OECD, n.d. a). In 2013, only Bulgaria took part in the TALIS survey, while Austria did not. 62.5% of Bulgarian principals reported the existence of formal and informal induction programmes for all new teachers to the school, and 22.7% had induction programmes for teachers new to teaching in lower secondary education schools. 42% of principals confirmed the availability of mentoring for all teachers

234 Sarah Schneider & Hermann Josef Abs

in the school (OECD, n.d. b) even though induction programmes are not compulsory or centrally regulated in Bulgaria. Further, a greater proportion of beginning teachers in Bulgaria took part in such programmes than in countries where it is compulsory. Our results also show that the majority (89.5%) of all Bulgarian principals surveyed indicated that there was an induction process at their school. Bulgarian principals reported more frequently that all new teachers at school (52.6%) or new teachers for whom this was their first teaching activity (36.8%) went through an induction process. In contrast, principals in Austria reported only 21.1% of all new teachers and 15.8% of teachers undertaking their first teaching activity went through such a process. TALIS 2013 (OECD, n.d. b) also covered the elements of the induction programmes and their occurrence in schools on the basis of the school principals’ statements. Due to Austria’s non-participation in TALIS 2013, this data is only available for Bulgaria. Accordingly, induction programmes in Bulgaria comprised the following elements: mentoring by experienced teachers (94.6%), scheduled meetings with principal and/or colleague teachers (91.9%), courses/ seminars (54.7%), team-teaching (54.1%), collaboration with other schools (25.4%), a system of peer review (16.1%), networking/virtual communities (15.7%) and a system of diaries/journals and portfolios, etc., to facilitate learning and reflection (0%). The principals in our sample also provided information about the elements of their induction programmes. Since not all schools offer an induction programme, not all principals answered this question. Figure 12.2 shows the presence of elements of the induction programmes based on the statements of principals in our survey and the results of the TALIS survey for Bulgaria in percent.

Figure 12.2 Elements of teacher induction programmes in Bulgaria and Austria

European principals’ perspectives 235

The majority of school principals in both countries stated that the following structures and activities were included in the induction process: mentoring by experienced teachers (100% of NEWTT participants and 94.6% of TALIS participants), and scheduled meetings with the principal and/or colleague teachers (83.3% of NEWTT participants and 91.9% of TALIS participants). It is striking that the Bulgarian respondents to the TALIS study barely (15.7%) reported the element of networking/virtual communities, while this element was indicated by 58.3% of NEWTT respondents from both countries. It is interesting to note that schools in Bulgaria employing TFBulgaria fellows implemented a system of peer reviews more often than schools in Bulgaria and Austria in general; and while team-teaching was reported as an induction technique by all principals in Austria, it seemed to be rarely implemented in Bulgaria. In addition, some of the principals employing TFBulgaria fellows in their schools stated that a system of diaries/journals, portfolios, etc. was also being used, whereas generally this is not part of the induction programme in Bulgarian schools. Opportunities for cooperation As a third step, the prevalence of opportunities for cooperation is analysed. The majority of principals in both countries indicated with almost no differences between the countries that they met with new teachers (66.7%) and fellows (74.3%) once or twice a month. According to the school principals of both countries, opportunities for exchanging teaching materials and methods between fellows and traditionally-trained teachers occurred mainly once a week (50%) or once a month (26.3%). The survey looked more specifically into content areas in which fellows cooperate with teachers at schools. The principals were asked to indicate their agreement or disagreement regarding the existence of cooperation based on a four-point answer scale for each content area, whereby ‘1’ meant that there was no cooperation at all and ‘4’ meant that the principal was certain that cooperation took place. Figure 12.3 shows the mean values of the statements regarding the various content areas for Bulgaria and Austria. Teachers cooperated with fellows in various areas. The principals of both countries (97.3%) predominantly affirmed the statement that teachers and fellows cooperated in ‘handling interdisciplinary lesson themes’ (M = 3.38, SD = 0.55), and 94.7% also affirmed that teachers and fellows cooperated in ‘implementing new teaching concepts and methods’ (M = 3.39, SD = 0.60). The majority of the principals of both countries (92.1%) affirmed that teachers and fellows cooperated in ‘interdisciplinary discussions of students’ performance’ (M = 3.37, SD = 0.63). And 92.1% of respondents affirmed that teachers and fellows cooperated in ‘supporting students with learning deficits together’ (M = 3.47, SD = 0.80). The countries also differ with regard to the areas they indicated. While in Austria, all school principals mostly (36.8%) or completely (63.2%) agreed

236 Sarah Schneider & Hermann Josef Abs

Figure 12.3 Mean values of the principals’ assessment of levels of cooperation between fellows and teachers in a range of content areas

(M = 3.63, SD = 0.50) that there was cooperation with regard to ‘preparing single lessons’, 89.5% of Bulgarian principals generally agreed with this statement, but they agreed ‘mostly true’ (73.7%) (M = 3.0, SD = 0.68). This difference is significant (t(36) = 3.31, p = 0.00). The situation is similar with regard to cooperation in the joint planning of teaching units and projects. While in Austria, all principals ‘mostly’ (26.3%) or ‘completely’ (73.7%) agreed (M = 3.74, SD = 0.45), in Bulgaria, 83.3% of respondents generally agreed with this statement again, but their responses were distributed across ‘mostly true’ (44.4%) and ‘completely true’ (38.9%) (M = 3.22, SD = 0.73). This difference is significant (t(28.10) = 2.56, p = 0.02). Interestingly, 47.4% of Bulgarian school principals stated that ‘cooperative teaching’ is a rare form of cooperation between teachers and fellows at schools (M = 2.63, SD = 0.68), while this form of cooperation was reported by all school principals in Austria (100%). This difference is significant (t(29.84) = 6.29, p = 0.00)

European principals’ perspectives 237

Discussion As far as the professional duties are concerned, we can show that it is important to have a closer look at the professional duties of the beginning teachers in alternative training, as these can be weighted differently than professional duties of experienced teachers or can deviate from them. The professional duties can also be different in a country comparison. According to NEWTT survey of principals, the international findings (Melzer et al., 2015) that teaching is one of the main professional duties of teachers can also be confirmed here for the beginning teachers in alternative training in Bulgaria and Austria. In particular, the finding that most school principals in both countries state that planning a lesson is one of fellows’ daily professional duties must be seen in the light of the fact that this professional duty is also seen as very challenging by most beginning teachers (Baeten & Meeus, 2016). Austrian fellows generally tended to work on a broader spectrum of professional duties than fellows in Bulgaria. The Austrian principals estimated more professional duties as daily routine than the Bulgarian principals. It is noticeable that the principals in Austria indicated a higher average number of lessons per week for the fellows than is generally the rule for full-time teachers in Austria. This seems unusual in view of the other professional duties that the fellows in Austria are also expected to perform. This result could be related to the fact that other professional duties of the fellows are more limited after all, and/or that the fellows at the participating schools have agreed to more (teaching) hours on the basis of a special contract. At this point it would have to be checked once again how the ratio between teaching time and total working time for the fellows was determined. In Bulgaria, some fellows teach fewer hours than full-time teachers. This could be explained by a slightly different focus on their professional duties, since the results show that more time is spent on out-of-school work with students (projects, support outside of the classroom). This is especially interesting in comparison with the Bulgarian experienced teachers. They stated that they spent 87% of their time in class, and a total of 13% of their time on administrative tasks and keeping order in the classroom (5% and 9%, respectively). They also reported spending an average of approximately 18 hours per week teaching, 8 hours preparing lessons, and 5 hours marking student work (OECD, 2014), while the professional duty of marking student work for the fellows seems to be rather subordinate. An induction programme in schools can be supportive for beginning teachers. It is interesting to note that some of the Bulgarian and Austrian schools in our sample offered induction programmes for beginning teachers, even though the Austrian government will only shortly impose an obligation to offer such programmes on the school types surveyed here, and the Bulgarian government does not mandate an obligation to offer induction programmes at all. In Austria, induction programmes were only offered by half of the schools surveyed, but many beginning

238 Sarah Schneider & Hermann Josef Abs

teachers with a traditional education in this type of school wish for this type of programme. They feel only adequately prepared for teaching in the narrower sense (Schmich & Schreiner, 2009). When looking further at the elements of the induction programmes, it is noticeable that mentoring took place in 100% of cases in both countries. Beyond the quantity indicated, the quality of the mentoring provided by the school remains unclear, as details of implementation were not asked for. In addition, there is a national difference in the comparison of the use of the elements of the programmes, e.g. schools in Bulgaria implemented a system of peer reviews more often than schools in Bulgaria in general and in Austria; and while team-teaching was reported as an induction technique by all principals in Austria, it seemed to be rarely implemented in Bulgaria. The look at the fellows’ range of professional duties, shows that the support and cooperation of principals and colleagues is very important in order to build up pedagogical and professional skills (Schwartz et al., 2014). The existing structure of the cooperation and support offers at the schools can be seen as an indicator of how equipped the fellows can ultimately carry out their work. It also shows whether and to what extent the principals allow such structures to develop at all. The principals surveyed in both countries stated that there were different and regular cooperation offers for the Teach For All fellows in their schools, such as a visit by the principal, (topic- and pupil-related) talks with (beginning) teachers, exchange of materials, etc. The countries also differ with regard to the areas they indicated. In Austria seems to be more cooperation with regard to ‘preparing single lessons’, ‘cooperation in the joint planning of teaching units and projects’ and ‘cooperative teaching’ than in Bulgaria. Conclusion Considering the entire preparation phase and the two-year period that the fellows spend at school, it becomes clear that the Teach For All programmes, together with the schools surveyed in the present sample, are oriented in many respects towards the components of teacher training programmes as analysed by Baeten and Meeus (2016). The fellows receive intensive preparation, among other things, in the institutes where specialist and pedagogical knowledge is imparted. During this phase, as well as during their time at schools, they have the opportunity for exchanging ideas with other (beginning) teachers. In addition, they gain direct insights into the practical work and can, for example, learn from other teachers through many team-teaching units in Austria and thus quickly gain practical experience. The fellows also receive additional support from contact persons and mentors through the programmes. Results of the NEWTT project highlight some aspects of this additional support through the comparison of the different training structures of traditionally-trained beginning teachers and the alternatively-trained beginning teachers.

European principals’ perspectives 239

Abs et al. (2019) also asked the Teach For All fellows and traditionallytrained beginning teachers about the different types of learning opportunities they had received. This enquiry distinguished between theoretical input, reflection with a trainer/mentor, reflection with colleagues, and experiences with students. In Bulgaria, it was found that the fellows had more learning opportunities through reflection with the Teach For Bulgaria trainers, and that they received more theoretical input during the training sessions, than the traditionally-trained beginning teachers. The Austrian fellows all reported at least one learning opportunity of the type ‘theoretical input’ and ‘reflection with trainer/mentor’ while traditionally-trained beginning teachers reported significantly fewer learning opportunities than the fellows for all different types (Abs et al., 2019). The contribution and the results of the study are mainly limited to two selected European countries, Austria and Bulgaria. But the comparison makes it quite clear that country-specific analysis is necessary. Furthermore, the study may be criticised because of the small sample size. But the specific sample of principals still covers a major proportion of the schools participating in the NEWTT programme within the respective countries. The group of school principals surveyed is a relevant sample as these principals are responsible for implementing the professional duties for the fellows and the cooperation structures at their schools. Moreover, it must be considered that there are inevitable problems with standardised, social science surveys in terms of the response tendencies of the interviewees (social desirability, consent tendency, the tendency towards the middle, as well as the tendency towards mildness or hardness) (Bogner & Landrock, 2015). It cannot be ruled out that there might have been an element of increased social desirability, i.e. that the respondents oriented themselves towards a perceived norm and therefore responded in line with the perceived expectations of other persons involved in the project. But this can be partly controlled by comparing results with the national representative samples and by focusing on interpreting the profile of responses rather than the absolute values. The study results provide starting points for comparative research on the structural level of teacher support within the two countries, since, for example, only little comparative data on the cooperation offers is available internationally. A further comparison of the structural level (statements of school management) with the individual level (statements of fellows) could be made in accordance with the model of Balz & Spieß (2009) in order to obtain more detailed information. For example, by taking into account individual perspectives an approach could be formulated for further research, such as the actual participation in offers of cooperation. Alternative ways into the teaching profession are an important element to meet the current challenges (lack of teachers, etc.). The creation of various support structures in the schools contributes to the fact that beginning teachers can face their professional duties more confidently. In addition, the TFBulgaria

240 Sarah Schneider & Hermann Josef Abs

and TFAustria programmes presented here in parts offer practice-oriented and continuous support (regular discussions, more learning opportunities, etc.) for the duration of the assignment in the schools. The implementation of some of these aspects from the programmes would be a possibility to be considered for national public teacher training. In addition, the question arises whether (inter)national guidelines for alternative teacher training programmes would further help to clarify the expectations of new teacher candidates and political authorities.

Note 1 NEWTT is co-funded by the European Union, Project 564718-EPP-1–2015–2BG-EPKA3-PI-Policy Experiments.

References Abs, H.J., Anderson-Park, E. & Morgenroth, S. (2019). Recruiting and preparing alternative teachers: A European policy experiment in education. NEWTT impact evaluation: Final report. Essen: Universität Duisburg-Essen. Retrieved from https://duepublico2. uni-due.de/receive/duepublico_mods_00048690. Balz, H. & Spieß, J. (2009). Kooperation in sozialen Organisationen: Grundlagen und Instrumente der Teamarbeit. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Baeten, M., & Meeus, W. (2016). Training second-career teachers: A different student profile, a different training approach? Educational Process: International Journal, 5(3), 173–201. Bogner, K. & Landrock, U. (2015). Antworttendenzen in standardisierten Umfragen. Mannheim, GESIS – Leibniz Institut für Sozialwissenschaften (SDM survey guidelines). doi:10.15465/sdm-sg_016. Bolhuis, S. (2002). Alternative routes to teaching in secondary education in the Netherlands. European Journal of Teacher Education, 2(3), 223–238. Bonsen, M. & Rolff, H. G. (2006). Professionelle Lerngemeinschaften von Lehrerinnen und Lehrern. Professional learning communities for teachers. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 52(2), 167–184. Boyd, D., Grossman, P. L., Lankford, H., Loeb, S., & Wyckoff, J. (2009). Teacher preparation and student achievement. Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 31(4), 416–440. Brindley, R., & Parker, A. (2010). Transitioning to the classroom: Reflections of second-career teachers during the induction year. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 16(5), 577–594. Brouwer, N. (2007). Alternative teacher education in the Netherlands 2000–2005. A standards-based synthesis. European Journal of Teacher Education, 30(1), 21–40. Casey, P., Dunlap, K., Brister, H., Davidson, M., & Starrett, T. (2013). Sink or swim? Throw us a life jacket! Novice alternatively certified bilingual and special education teachers deserve options. Education and Urban Society, 45(3), 287–306. EACEA. (2013). Key data on teachers and school leaders in Europe: 2013 edition. Eurydice Report. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. EACEA. (2015). The teaching profession in Europe: Practices, perceptions, and policies. Eurydice Report. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.

European principals’ perspectives 241 EACEA. (2016). Teachers’ and school heads’ salaries and allowances in Europe – 2015/16. Eurydice Facts and Figures. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. EACEA. (2018). Laufbahnen für Lehrkräfte in Europa: Zugang, berufliche Weiterentwicklung und Unterstützungsangebote. Eurydice-Bericht. Luxemburg: Amt für Veröffentlichungen der Europäischen Union. European Commission. (2010). Entwicklung kohärenter und systemweiter Einführungsprogramme für Junglehrer: ein Handbuch für politische Entscheidungsträger. Arbeitsdokument der Dienststellen der Europäischen Kommission SEC 538. Luxemburg: Amt für Veröffentlichungen der Europäischen Union. Fetherston, T., & Lummis, G. (2012). Why Western Australian secondary teachers resign. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 37(4), 1–20. Fußangel, K., Dizinger, V., Böhm-Kasper, O. & Gräsel, C. (2010). Kooperation, Belastung und Beanspruchung von Lehrkräften an Halb- und Ganztagsschulen. Unterrichtswissenschaft, 38(1), 51–67. Gerhartz-Reiter, S. (2018). Bildungsungleichheit und vorzeitiger Bildungsausstieg in Österreich. In G. Quenzel & K. Hurrelmann (Eds.), Handbuch Bildungsarmut (pp. 523–544). Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Gräsel, C., Fußangel, K., & Pröbstel, C. (2006). Lehrkräfte zur Kooperation anregen eine Aufgabe für Sisyphos? Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 52(2), 205–219. Haggard, C., Slostad, F., & Winterton, S. (2006). Transition to school as workplace: Challenges to second career teachers. Teaching Education, 17(4), 317–327. Ilieva-Trichkova, P. & Boyadjieva, P. (2014). Dynamics of inequalities in access to higher education: Bulgaria in a comparative perspective. European Journal of Higher Education, 4(2), 97–117. Laming, M. & Horne, M. (2013). Career change teachers: Pragmatic choice or a vocation postponed? Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 19(3), 326–343. Lee, D., & Lamport, M. (2011). Non-traditional entrants to the profession of teaching: Motivations and experiences of second-career educators. Christian Perspectives in Education, 4(2), 1–39. Melzer, C., Hillenbrand, C., Sprenger, D., Hennemann, T. (2015). Aufgaben von Lehrkräften in inklusiven Bildungssytemen – Review internationaler Studien. Erziehungswissenschaft 26(51), 61–80. O’Connor, E., Malow, M., & Bisland, B. (2011). Mentorship and instruction received during training: Views of alternatively certified teachers. Educational Review, 63(2), 219–232. OECD. (n.d. a). TALIS 2008 Database. Tables and figures. Chapter 3: The professional development of teachers. Retrieved 2 December 2018 from http://www.oecd.org/ education/school/creatingeffectiveteachingandlearningenvironmentsfirstresultsfromta lis.htm#Findings. OECD. (n.d. b). TALIS 2013 Database, Table 4.1. Retrieved 2 December 2018 from http://www.oecd.org/education/school/talis-excel-figures-and-tables.htm. OECD. (2009). PISA 2006: Technical report. Paris: OECD. OECD. (2009). TALIS 2008: Technical report. Paris: OECD. OECD. (2014). Teaching and learning international study: TALIS 2013 – technical report. Paris: OECD. OECD. (2016a). Education at a glance 2016: OECD indicators. Paris: OECD Publishing. OECD. (2016b). PISA 2015 results (volume I): Excellence and equity in education. Paris: OECD Publishing.

242 Sarah Schneider & Hermann Josef Abs Powers, F. (2002). Second-career teachers: Perceptions and mission in their new careers. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 12(3), 303–318. Priyadharshini, E., & Robinson-Pant, A. (2003). The attraction of teaching: An investigation into why people change careers to teach. Journal of Education for Teaching, 29(2), 95–112. Schmich, J., & Schreiner, C. (Eds.) (2009). TALIS 2008. Schule als Lernumfeld und Arbeitsplatz. Erste Ergebnisse des internationalen Vergleichs. Graz: Leykam. Schmich, J., & Burchert, A. (2010). Kooperation von Lehrerinnen und Lehrern: Nur im Ausnahmefall? In: J. Schmich & C. Schreiner (Eds.), Talis 2008: Schule als Lernumfeld und Arbeitsplatz. Vertiefende Analysen aus österreichischer Perspektive. BIFIE Report 4/ 2010. Graz: Leykam. Schwartz, K., Klusmann, U. & Möller, J. (2014). Lehrerkooperation. Ein Überblick über die empirische Befundlage. Retrieved 23 January 2019 from https://d-nb.info/ 1137509724/34. Soltau, A. & Mienert, M. (2010). Unsicherheit im Lehrerberuf als Ursache mangelnder Lehrerkooperation? Eine Systematisierung des aktuellen Forschungsstandes auf Basis des transaktionalen Stressmodells. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 56(5), 761–778. Steinert, B., Klieme, E., Maag Merki, K., Döbrich, P., Halbheer,U. & Kunz, A. (2006). Lehrerkooperation in der Schule: Konzeption, Erfassung, Ergebnisse. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 52, 185–204. Teach For Austria. (n.d.). Über das Programm./ Projekt. Sommerwochen. Retrieved 28 November 2018 from www.teachforaustria.at/fellow-programm/uber-das-programm// www.teachforaustria.at/projekt/sommerwochen Teach For Bulgaria. (n.d.). Our program. Retrieved 28 November 2018 from https://za ednovchas.bg/en/our-program. Terhart, E., & Klieme, E. (2006). Kooperation im Lehrerberuf: Forschungsproblem und Gestaltungsaufgabe. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 52, 163–166. Vogtenhuber, S., Siegle, T., & Lassnigg, L. (2016). Kontext des Schul- und Bildungswesens. In M. Bruneforth, L. Lassnigg, S. Vogtenuber, C. Schreiner, & S. Breit (Eds.), Nationaler Bildungsbericht Österreich 2015. Das Schulsystem im Spiegel von Daten und Indikatoren. Vol 1. Graz: Leykam. von Kopp, B. (2014). Lehrerbildung im Ausland: Aktuelle und innovative Tendenzen der Lehrerbildung in internationaler Perspektive. In H. Döbbert, B. v. Kopp & H. Weishaupt (Eds.), Innovative Ansätze der Lehrerbildung im Ausland. Studien zur International und Interkulturell Vergleichenden Erziehungswissenschaft, Vol. 19. Berlin: Waxmann.

Chapter 13

Unpacking Teach For All’s conceptualisation of leadership through the ‘Teach For All Talks’ series Rolf Straubhaar Introduction According to Teach For All’s (TFAll) broader theory of change, educational inequality can be challenged when innovative solutions to local inequities are shared on a larger scale. Within this paradigm, educational leaders are the crucial figures who identify and scale up such solutions. In the words used on TFAll’s website, ‘To change the status quo for children, we need leadership … [and] Teach For All is developing collective leadership to improve education and expand opportunity for all children’ (Teach For All, 2018a). Given the crucial role afforded to educational leaders within this theory of change, it is important to first better understand how TFAll leaders operationalise their model. In other words, we must first gain a deeper understanding of how the concept of leadership is understood organisationally by TFAll. To gain that deeper understanding, this chapter explores the following questions: what does TFAll mean by leadership and collective leadership? According to TFAll, what is the theoretical framework for how collective leadership is developed? Lastly, what does TFAll organisationally see itself as doing to develop collective leadership? These are difficult questions to answer, in part because TFAll represents a large, dispersed network of organisations operating in very disparate national policy contexts. Lesley Bartlett (2003, 2010) refers to organisational movements like TFAll as educational projects. According to Bartlett (2010), educational projects are ‘durable (but not permanent) constellations of institutions, financial resources, social actors, ideologies, discourses, pedagogies, and theories of knowledge and learning that shape the way people think about schooling and its purpose’ (p. 52). This construct is useful for analysing movements like TFAll from a variety of angles by focusing on the ideologies and discourses ‘that shape the way people [within TFAll] think about schooling and its purpose’ (Bartlett, 2010, p. 52). Namely, to understand how TFAll operationalises terms like leadership and collective leadership, we must first understand the broader ideologies and discourses which give TFAll shape and form.

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To do this, it is important to identify potential data sources which best reveal (or reflect) the common organisational thinking of TFAll’s leaders and employees. One fruitful source of data for better understanding the ideology behind how particular terms are discursively conceptualised within TFAll is the TFAll Talks series, in which Wendy Kopp as a representative of TFAll’s leadership (and the organisation’s co-founder) interviews prominent educators, politicians, and thought leaders about their perspectives on education. In these public discussions, typically held either in person at TFAll’s New York headquarters with a live audience or on the internet via platforms like Skype or Zoom, participants and audience members are free to ask questions of the invited guest. As I watched archived video of the TFAll talk series (Teach For All, 2018b), I noticed common threads in the phrasing of questions asked by both CEO Wendy Kopp and TFAll audience participants. I argue that these commonalities are the closest we might come to seeing and understanding the organisational thinking at work in TFAll. By documenting and identifying these common points of TFAll’s organisational thinking, it becomes easier to understand the theory of change undergirding TFAll’s actions. For instance, when we see organisational announcements from TFAll about a new country/programme, a new area of organisational focus, or a particular campaign within the organisation, the findings of this chapter will have identified ideological commonalities that can help us understand the organisational values in which these actions are based. In this chapter I draw on critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2001) to analyse TFAll’s recorded Talks series to answer the following research question: How is the concept of leadership operationalised in the discursive interactions captured in the TFAll Talks series? First, I will set the groundwork for this discussion by exploring the theoretical foundations of leadership oft-cited by TFAll leadership. This is followed by a brief exploration of the existing literature on TFAll, and the contribution this type of study represents to that literature. Next, I describe my methodological approach to this study, before documenting and discussing each of the primary points of my findings: namely, that TFAll sees itself as a leadership development organisation, that they also see education as the best sector within which to develop leaders, and end by summarising (and exploring the ramifications of) TFAll’s operational definition of leadership.

Theoretical framework Before one can effectively explore the way in which leadership as a concept is operationalised by TFAll, it is first important to explore the theoretical underpinnings cited by TFAll leaders as informing their thinking. The two primary influencers cited by Wendy Kopp (Peter Senge Talk, 2017) are Peter Senge (Senge, Hamilton, & Kania, 2015) and Ronald Heifetz (Heifetz, 1994; Heifetz, Kania, & Kramer, 2004), who operationalised the terms collective leadership and adaptive leadership, respectively.

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Perhaps what is most interesting about Senge, Hamilton, and Kania’s (2015) work on collective leadership is that it is does not, in fact, define collective leadership. Instead it identifies collective leadership as the undefined yet desirable outcome of identifying and elevating what they call ‘system leaders’ (Senge, Hamilton, & Kania, 2015, p. 27). To define system leaders, they refer to the Indo-European root word for ‘to lead’, which they define as ‘[stepping] across a threshold … [letting] go of whatever might limit stepping forward’ (Senge, Hamilton, & Kania, 2015, p. 28). Such leaders do not necessarily have disciplinary training or a plan of attack, but rather a larger, inspiring vision. In their words, system leaders, are so convinced that something can be done that they do not wait for a fully developed plan, thereby freeing others to step ahead and learn by doing. Indeed, one of their greatest contributions can come from the strength of their ignorance, which gives them permission to ask obvious questions and to embody an openness and commitment to their own ongoing learning and growth that eventually infuse larger change efforts. (Senge, Hamilton, & Kania, 2015, p. 28) Such a description of leadership will sound very familiar to those who study Teach For America or TFAll or study the teachings of founder Wendy Kopp. As Kopp (2007) told the graduating class of Rhodes College, ‘The world needs your inexperience. It needs you before you accept the status quo, before you are plagued by the knowledge of what is impossible’. Within this vein of thought on leadership, inexperience is appealing because those who hold it are not stunted or held back by the limitations the experienced have learned to put upon themselves. When system leaders with this mindset are able to ‘see the larger system’ they are working in, Senge, Hamilton, and Kania (2015) argue that they are able to ‘[shift] the collective focus from reactive problem solving to co-creating the future’ (pp. 28–29). By shifting the thinking of a larger group, they are exercising what these thinkers refer to as collective leadership. Ronald Heifetz and his colleagues have developed a related framework cited often in TFAll circles: that of adaptive leadership (Heifetz, 1994; Heifetz, Kania, & Kramer, 2004). To Heifetz (1994), adaptive leadership refers to the ability to work with (rather than be thrown off by) the process of change within an organisation and its social context. When these two ideas (collective and adaptive leadership) are utilised together, as will be seen below in the expressed thoughts of TFAll leaders and invited guests, they can result in a framework like TFAll’s that emphasises the ability to inspire, to think big, and to adapt quickly to changing circumstances. As both of these terms (and thinkers) arise disciplinarily in business schools and discussions of social entrepreneurship, I agree with Lahann and Reagan (2011) that TFAll (and its predecessor and sister programme Teach For America) combines business language and corporate culture with progressive social ideals (like social justice and civil rights) to

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promote a corporate-friendly vision of how to end social inequality: through the fostering of future generations of business-minded leaders (a combination of values that may seem contradictory, given that inequality is necessary for capitalism to function).

Situating this study in the existing literature Insightful and thorough interview-based qualitative explorations of the ideologies held by TFAll participants have been conducted in a number of TFAll’s nationally-based affiliates. On the basis of two months of ethnographic participant observation and follow-up interviews with all participants, Daniel Friedrich (2014) is one of the first to explore the thinking of participants in one such affiliate, in this case Enseñá por Argentina. Through extensive semi-structured interviews with over 50 Teach First supporters in the United Kingdom, Rauschenberger (2016) thoroughly explores how and why that programme was developed as a corollary to Teach For America, and over time became the first example programme of international transfer that led to the development of TFAll. More recently, Crawford-Garrett (2018) uses phenomenological, in-depth interviews with programme participants, leaders, and alumni in Teach First New Zealand to analyse the ways in which they utilise discourses of grit and resilience to understand their students’ behaviour and performance in their classrooms. Similarly, in a survey of programme participants in Teach First Norway, Nesje (2016) explores participants’ motivations for joining the programme. In their network ethnography of Teach For Bangladesh, Adhikary and Lingard (2018) conducted interviews with 20 of the programme’s participants in support of their thesis that Teach For Bangladesh represents a ‘localised globalism’ of the larger TFAll phenomenon. However, while this rich literature on TFAll affiliates continues to grow, in studies that have been done of TFAll at the systemic level there has been relatively little analysis of direct, interview-based interactions in which TFAll leaders explore their own thinking in depth. Within the literature on TFAll as a network, various scholars have conducted excellent work: Friedrich, Walter and Colmenares (2015) have analysed TFAll’s social media presence, La Londe, Brewer and Lubienski (2015) have explored their policy structure, Gautreaux and Delgado (2016) have discussed the mass media coverage of TFAll across 12 countries, and Ahmann (2015) has documented their use of personal narrative in official organisational materials. However, as of yet there is no study that has gained access to gather the kind of insight that is possible through direct, semi-structured qualitative interviews with TFAll’s central office. This study attempts to fill these gaps by providing some insight into how key TFAll personnel, present and participating in the TFAll Talks series, conceptualise leadership. While in this study I was not able to include direct interviews conducted personally by myself as a researcher, I here try to utilise existing datasets to approximate such a study as much as possible.

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Methodology In order to achieve the kind of qualitative insight made possible by qualitative interviews, it was necessary to explore all possible avenues for documenting such interviews with TFAll leadership. However, as other scholars have noted in their own efforts at ‘studying up’ (Nader, 1969), or conducting qualitative research with elite organisational leaders and policymakers, the use of gatekeepers, and other access issues can make such inquiry difficult (Desmond, 2004; Dexter, 2006; England, 2002; Kezar, 2003). It was through the process of exploring alternatives to direct semi-structured interviews that I first considered the affordances of using the TFAll Talks series as an alternative data source. While the TFAll Talks series is based in pre-recorded interviews conducted by TFAll leaders rather than interviews conducted by an outside researcher, this dataset provides a level of qualitative depth heretofore unseen in organisational studies of TFAll. TFAll Talks The TFAll Talks series was begun by Wendy Kopp in 2013 as a learning activity that would allow the TFAll network to benefit from the experience of outside scholars, practitioners, and thought leaders. In Kopp’s own words when introducing the TFAll talk with Kennedy Odede, ‘the goal [of the series] is really to engage our community with thought leaders in the realms of education and social innovation and other fields so that we cannot exist wholly within our own bubble’ (Kennedy Odede Talk, 2015). In other talks, Kopp describes the purpose of the series as ‘a way to provoke and advance the thinking of the staff and both our global organisation and our partner organisations’ (Nancie Atwell Talk, 2015) and a way ‘to help advance our thinking as a community’ (Elizabeth Green Talk, 2015). The series has had new talks released sporadically from its beginning in 2013 to the time of this writing in 2018. The earlier talks tended to be recorded at TFAll’s New York City headquarters, with a live audience consisting of TFAll staff and invited guests. In more recent years, the recordings have primarily been done via electronic media like Zoom and Skype, which has facilitated wider audience participation from TFAll affiliates around the globe. In Table 13.1 I have listed all the TFAll Talks that had occurred at the time of this analysis. Talk topics varied in scope and focus. At times, talks were targeted to the specific initiative led by the participant – for example, Dave Levin’s talk focused on his new character education initiative; Mona Mourshed mostly summarised a recent report she had produced at McKinsey; and Lenora Chu discussed her recent book. Also, relative to the focus of this particular study, some participants (such as the author Malcolm Gladwell and Rebecca Winthrop, Director of the Brookings Institution) did not address leadership as a principle at all. However, the majority of the talks were broader in scope and

248 Rolf Straubhaar Table 13.1 TFAll Talks participants Date of Talk (year/month/day)

Interviewee name

Title/position

2013/04/12

Pam Cantor

2013/04/24 2013/09/26

Andreas Schleicher Amanda Ripley

2014/09/18 2015/02/02

Ben Rattray Dave Levin

2015/02/22 2015/04/27 2015/05/20 2015/09/28 2016/01/14 2016/07/24 2017/04/18

Kennedy Odede Aditya Natraj Elizabeth Green Nancie Atwell Jacqueline Novogratz Julia Gillard Dzingai Mutumbuka

2017/05/03 2017/06/28

Malcolm Gladwell Peter Senge

2017/07/17

Pak Tee Ng

2017/08/14

Ronald Heifetz

2017/10/04 2017/11/21

Lenora Chu Mona Mourshed

2018/01/22 2018/02/28 2018/04/10 2018/05/14

Rebecca Winthrop Lant Pritchett Kan Suzuki Sanjeev Arora

Turnaround for Children, President/ CEO PISA, Head/Coordinator Journalist, The Smartest Kids in the World – and How They Got That Way Change.org, CEO KIPP Charter Schools, Co-Founder/ CEO Shining Hope for Communities in Nigeria Kaivalya Educational Foundation Chalkbeat, CEO/Editor-in-Chief Winner, Global Teacher Prize Acumen, Founder/CEO Former Prime Minister (Australia) Association for Education Development in Africa, Chair Author, Outliers, Blink, The Tipping Point Society for Organisational Learning, Founder Singapore’s National Institute of Education, Associate Dean Harvard University, Director of left for Public Leadership Author, Little Soldiers McKinsey & Company, Head of Global Education Practice Group Brookings Institution, Director Harvard University, Professor Minister of Education (Japan) Project ECHO, Director

did address leadership in some capacity. Specifically, Kopp utilised these talks as a way to discuss and disseminate specific principles of leadership that she hoped TFAll and its affiliates could use or incorporate into their own work (for example, one of TFAll’s affiliates could choose to incorporate some of Dave Levin’s character education principles, or Jacqueline Novogratz’s approach to leadership development, or the like).

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Data collection The TFAll Talks series is available on the TFAll website (Teach For All, 2018b). With the help of a doctoral research assistant, all available TFAll Talks at the time of this study were transcribed (22 in total). These are included in Table 13.1, organised chronologically by the date of the recorded talk. When a particular talk is cited in the analysis to follow, the citation will be parenthetical, including the interviewee’s name and the date of the talk. It should be noted that since the time of writing this chapter, three more TFAll talks have taken place, with Steven Hatfield (Principal with Deloitte Consulting), Aisha Oyebode (leader of the Bring Back Our Girls movement), and Ju-Ho Lee (the former Minister of Education for South Korea). Due to the cohesive themes that had come out of analysis of the previous TFAll Talks, I did not feel it necessary to include these three additional talks in the present analysis.

Data analysis My primary means of data analysis in this study is critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2001). Critical discourse analysis is useful as a means of examining the implicit meanings and assumptions inherent in conversational interactions, thus revealing the larger ideologies and social structures that inform them (Fairclough, 2001). More specifically, critical discourse analysis involves taking a piece of writing or a speech act (in other words, a form of discourse) and trying to understand not only the explicit, superficial meaning of what is being written or said, but also any underlying messages that are being communicated to the listening or reading audience. For example, in one passage I explore in more detail below Jacqueline Novogratz, founder and CEO of Acumen, discusses a time when some of her managerial decisions led some of her donors to stop financially supporting Acumen’s work. The explicit meaning of this speech act is that she had to make a hard decision, and that had consequences. As I explore in greater detail below, her word choice and several other more implicit elements of her speech were at the same time communicating that her decisions had been an example of brave leadership, which the audience would be wise to emulate. The means by which I explore these more contextual and implicit messages is through critical discourse analysis. In this chapter, I am particularly interested in the implicit meanings communicated by TFAll Talks participants in how they talk about educational leadership and its role in educational change or reform, and how their discussions of educational leadership utilise framings and word choices that reveal deeper assumptions about educational reform and social change. With regards to my coding process when identifying common themes within the dataset of 22 Talks, I was heavily influenced by the methodology outlined by Emerson, Fretz and Shaw (1995). That is, I first read through all 22 Talks several times, and each time trying to identify trends or themes of how

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participants talked about leadership. With each reread, I would reexamine the themes I had identified with my coding thus far, and make changes as necessary when new themes arose.

Findings The analysis of the Talks Series yielded three broad themes regarding how participants conceptualise and operationalise leadership. Specifically, I note that (1) TFAll sees its primary mission as being the creation of future leaders, because (2) education is seen as the best means to create leaders and because (3) leadership (conceptualised here primarily as being a change agent through urgency, grit and persistence) is seen as the only way to solve the world’s problems. I also explore how Wendy Kopp and the invited guests in these TFAll Talks wrestle with resistance to TFAll’s proposed solutions to these problems, primarily by arguing that they are ahead of their time and go against the ‘status quo’. Lastly, I explore the ways in which several TFAll Talks participants used the Talks Series to push back against these core leadership principles. TFAll’s mission: Creating leaders When introducing speakers or framing her questions, TFAll CEO Wendy Kopp frames her points within TFAll’s broader theory of change, reiterating that the organisation’s primary purpose is leadership development. In her discussion with Ronald Heifetz, she states, ‘I think our core purpose across TFAll is to develop collective leadership to ensure all children fulfill their potential’ (Ronald Heifetz Talk, 2017). When talking to Head of PISA, Andreas Schleicher, she similarly notes, ‘the core mission of each of these Teach For All programmes is essentially to do this, like to cultivate the future leaders, not only for the education system but for the political system and for all sectors of society’ (Andreas Schleicher Talk, 2013). Though TFAll fellows in various contexts are initially recruited to teach in high-poverty schools, Kopp argues that the purpose of teaching in low-income, marginalised communities is to offer fellows a holistic view of social inequality. In another part of her discussion with Andreas Schleicher, she puts it this way: One thing that we talk a lot about across the Teach For All network is, you know, sort of the importance of building leadership capacity within each community and each country. Meaning, because this is a systemic issue, and especially when it becomes so vividly clear when you spend time in a place like the Mississippi Delta, that if we’re really going to ensure opportunity for our kids, it’s got to be about educational opportunity, but also economic development and improving the healthcare system. So ultimately, I guess the idea that’s kind of, as you know, at the core of

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the Teach For All kind of model is this notion that we need to develop the leaders of the future who will be deeply committed to ensuring educational opportunity, and just opportunity for all kids. (Andreas Schleicher Talk, 2013) Through her use of the example of a Teach For America corps member in the Mississippi Delta, Kopp argues that placements in marginalised, low-income communities allow participants in the programme to consider the ways in which educational and economic opportunity are intertwined. By emphasising the big picture and de-emphasising localised classroom experiences, TFAll is framed by Kopp as a means of preparing leaders who can recognise social inequality across sectors, whether in education, health care, economics, or elsewhere. What is lacking in Kopp’s rhetoric, however, is any explanation of how experience working in low-income communities inherently leads to this type of social awakening. Education: The most promising sector for leadership preparation Many TFAll Talks participants agree with Kopp that education, more specifically teaching, is the most efficient and effective sector through which to prepare leaders. In one of the talks, Jacqueline Novogratz, the CEO of Acumen, a global venture capital fund that sponsors social entrepreneurs, argues that ‘there’s nothing more exponential than education’ (Jacqueline Novogratz Talk, 2016) in provoking social change. To explain why, she shares this anecdote: I visited actually [one teacher], who was one of the Teach For India fellows who became an Acumen Fellow, who’s now at [a school system in India], and he’s working to bring a new way of learning into the school system. And I was sitting in his class and he had values written around the room and every month the kids have a different value that they hold. And this month was generosity. And I was sitting next to the smart-aleck kid of the class who was really trying to impress me with everything he did. He was so adorable. And, I said, give me your journal. I want to see your journal. And so I just grabbed his journal, really expecting fairly, not much – just given how smart-alecky he was – and there was this page where he said, for me, generosity is my father because when my father was young, his dream was to be a singer. Then he had me and he realised that for me to have my dreams, he had to be a contractor. And I thought, okay, this kid is being taught character. So then you think, you start multiplying that. So I think we’re on our way. (Jacqueline Novogratz Talk, 2016) Several implicit messages are embedded within this narrative which help explain why Novogratz sees education as an effective means of social change.

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In this anecdote, both the teacher and the child are framed as leaders. First, there is the teacher/fellow who Novogratz was visiting. This teacher began teaching through Teach For India (a TFAll affiliate) and then underwent an entrepreneurship fellowship with Novogratz’s organisation, Acumen. Through these experiences, this individual had begun a career as a social entrepreneur, and Novogratz identifies the entrée to that career as being time working in education. Second, there is the level of the children, illustrated in Novogratz’s anecdote about the ‘smart-aleck’ in this fellow’s classroom. By reading this student’s journal, and inferring from the student’s description of his father’s sacrifice for his education that the child was being taught character development, Novogratz is framing the child as a future leader also. Kopp shares a similar vision in other TFAll Talks, explicitly making the connection that part of TFAll’s leadership development work is focused on the children in TFAll fellows’ classrooms. In one talk, Kopp says that part of how TFAll is ‘reimagining education’ is because ‘the students in our classrooms are actually growing as leaders who have the competencies and mindsets and dispositions and agency and such to actually navigate a turbulent economy and solve these increasingly complex problems’ (Lenora Chu Talk, 2017). While none of the talks contain any concrete discussion of how participation in TFAll fellows’ classrooms inherently leads to student leadership growth, an implicit connection between the two was implied often by both Kopp and her invited guests (just as Kopp earlier implied an implicit connection between participation in TFAll and the development of social consciousness). As one further example, Kopp says this in her discussion with Dzingai Mutumbuka, the Chair of the Association for Education Development in Africa: So, as you know, these organisations are all … working to do what you just articulated, to develop as we think about it, collective leadership. Leadership of the students, galvanise the rising generation, all these promising future leaders, super well educated to channel their energy into this arena, and themselves teach but then exert leadership ultimately at every level of the system. Sort of try to follow in your footsteps ’cause we need leaders at every level, and even across sectors to get where we’re trying to go. (Dzingai Mutumbuka Talk, 2017) Again, while statements like this imply a link between participation in TFAll fellows’ classrooms, whether as fellows or students, and leadership development, there is no further discussion of how TFAll participation inherently develops leadership potential. The connection is taken as a given, by both Kopp and participants such as Jacqueline Novogratz, Dzingai Mutumbuka, and Andreas Schleicher. Also, neither Kopp nor any of these participants note the negative implications of this kind of model for leadership development for the larger educational systems in which TFAll affiliates place their participants (de Saxe, Bucknovitz, &

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Mahoney-Mosedale, 2018). For example, due to the short time commitment required of Teach For America teachers and their relatively low salaries (due to inexperience), many districts, particularly in urban centres, have come to rely on Teach For America as a source of relatively cheap labour (Hootnick, 2014), hiring Teach For America recruits while displacing more experienced and qualified (and thus, more expensive) teachers. This cycle has very negative implications for students, as more and more students in the underfunded, highpoverty schools targeted by Teach For America are taught by less and less experienced teachers (Kretchmar & Sondel, 2014). Leadership: The primary way to solve the world’s problems Another assumption inherent to the TFAll theory of change, as presented in comments at these TFAll Talks, is that leadership is the primary way to address the world’s problems. An employee of TFAll says to Jacqueline Novogratz: ‘earlier on you were talking about sort of how leadership is, we’re in the earlier stages of kind of [the] realisation that leadership is just core to solutions to the biggest problems’ (Jacqueline Novogratz Talk, 2016). Within the same talk, Kopp makes a similar comment: because even on this topic of leadership, I think we feel in education that we are trying to help people come to the idea that leadership is really the core of the solution. I mean, we’d love to be able to solve this in other ways; like maybe we could give every kid a computer, or we could do change to policy, or do many other things. But really taking an intentional approach to cultivating the leaders we need in, in like vast quantities at a local level. We don’t see the path to transformational change without doing that. (Jacqueline Novogratz Talk, 2016) It is particularly interesting to see the kinds of comparisons Kopp makes between leadership and other potential proposed ‘solutions’ to global inequality. She mentions initiatives to increase computer access to marginalised children as well as the general topic of policy; however, in her opinion, policy (whether related to computer access, or class size, or anything else) is not going to be sufficient to address the scope of global inequality. For that, the only proposed solution is again this notion of leadership development.

TFAll’s definition of leadership Given the points of TFAll’s theory of change that have been identified thus far – that TFAll’s purpose is leadership development, that education is the best sector for leadership development, and that leadership development is the only sufficient proposed solution to global inequality – a significant question

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remains: In TFAll’s conceptualisation, what exactly is leadership? What is it that makes one a leader capable of working against global inequality? As framed in this talk series, TFAll’s definition of leadership is predicated on three principles: fostering systemic change through ideology, maintaining persistence in the face of challenges, and foregrounding a sense of urgency even when efforts lead to failure. Systemic change through ideology Within the TFAll Talks, several primary points surface regarding how TFAll has operationalised the concept of leadership: first, leadership is the ability to drive systemic change by bringing others on board with a particular idea or ideology. As discussed in the theoretical framework, Peter Senge is the author of what Wendy Kopp says is her ‘favorite article’ which she has shared widely in TFAll, ‘which many of us across the network have been reading and studying and thinking about the implications of, as it relates to our work to, to affect community level progress’ (Peter Senge Talk, 2017). On this subject of leaders driving systemic change, Senge expresses the following: We need leaders who can drive change. Well, that’s fair enough. You know, if you divulge and then sit around do nothing, nothing much happens. But the leaders who were the most artful, real systemic change and not only kind of initiating and moving, they’re moving in a particular way where they’re continually pausing and paying attention to what you might call the relational space. You know, are people really connected to this idea? (Peter Senge Talk, 2017) This is a particularly interesting point, because it directly connects to Kopp’s efforts as a thought leader over the last several decades – namely, fostering systemic change by promoting an idea, and trying to lead people to connect with that idea. In Kopp’s case, the idea itself is the premise of Teach For America, and now TFAll – namely, the recruitment of idealistic, capable young people who would not otherwise be interested in education into truly marginalised classroom spaces, so that they can gain the vision necessary to become tomorrow’s leaders. Over several decades, Kopp has arguably effectively built several organisations (Teach For America and now TFAll) by recruiting people to also believe in and work towards this idea. In another comment in her talk with Pak Tee Ng, the Associate Dean of Singapore’s National Institute of Education, Kopp cites another thinker whose theory supports this means of change which she herself has promoted: One of the thought leaders who we’ve learned a lot from across our network around organisational development is Jim Collins. He found that in

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the top performing organisations around the world, very similarly to what you said, there’s a very strong core ideology that people are deeply loyal to. (Pak Tee Ng Talk, 2017) This sense of deep loyalty to a strong core ideology is evident in the comments made in the TFAll Talks series, whether by Kopp, her guests, or the TFAll staff who largely make up the series’s audience. Organisational grit and persistence Another principle of leadership articulated in these talks is the notion of persistence in the face of challenges, or what some participants frame as grit, as popularised in the education literature by Angela Duckworth (2016) who has participated in TFAll events (Teach For All, 2019a). As Jacqueline Novogratz states in her TFAll Talk: a lot of the leadership that we need in the world comes at a price. We both paid that price, whether it’s losing a big donor or whether in some cases it’s losing potentially losing your life for saying things out loud that nobody else has. How you feel about moral courage, and I actually think that’s where it’s connected to building a posse of people that will both support you and push you. And finally the grit. Well, not finally, the grit and persistence. What keeps you going? What sustains you? That’s also connected to posse. Mario, I see here, is another fellow. These guys are in this for the long term. (Jacqueline Novogratz Talk, 2016) Several key ideas in this narrative require unpacking. First, Novogratz articulates that leaders stand on principle, even in the face of substantial personal or professional costs. Later in the same talk, Novogratz mentions the criticism she has faced for accepting donations from large multinational corporations as one such cost. In the face of such critiques, Novogratz argues that grit and persistence allow leaders to move forward as does strategic support from like-minded individuals or what she calls her ‘posse’. Within this framework, it is the support of this posse (similar to what Kopp describes in the previous sections as the core group who are loyal to a core ideology) that helps leaders maintain grit and persistence in the face of challenges. Leadership as urgency Lastly, leadership is framed in several of the talks of the TFAll Talks series as a sense of urgency, the fire in one’s belly that leads one to act and push forward, even if that means learning from failure along the way. This is a core value of TFAll: on the organisation’s website, it states due to their belief in their potential to enact change, the staff of TFAll ‘act with courage, boldness,

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urgency and perseverance in pursuit of transformational impact’ (Teach For All, 2019b). Within the TFAll Talks, Jacqueline Novogratz frames this succinctly: If you are not willing to fail, you will not succeed. And then actually following that up by celebrating the failures, which is really hard to do. We, like you, work in so many cultures where failure is not allowed. And so can we talk about it? Can we build it? I think that is part of what we as leadership programmes need to do a better job of. And so I think that those are the pieces, but there’s no better way to learn than to start. And there’s no better way to gain confidence, including the confidence of moral courage, than to start. (Jacqueline Novogratz Talk, 2016) In this framework, to be a leader is to see and recognise a social problem, and then have the ‘confidence of moral courage’ to start pushing against it as soon as possible, even if those efforts may occasionally end in failure. Indeed, failure here is not only framed as inevitable, but as laudable, because failure is how one learns. What is interesting about this conceptualisation is that it does not place any priority on, once one has identified a social problem, studying what has already been done on the subject before taking action oneself. While many thinkers (e.g. Firestein, 2015) agree that failure can be a powerful learning tool, it seems strange to give no priority to studying previous failures if one wants to avoid repeating the past efforts of others.

Outside resistance to core ideology One of the most interesting trends across the TFAll Talks series is noting how Kopp and guests recognise that, while the theory of change they outline remains clear to them, it is not readily accepted by others outside the network. First, Kopp recognises that potential fellow recruits to TFAll may not yet have a TFAll mindset. In her discussion with former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Kopp states that all these organisations around the world are working to inspire a bunch of folks who might not have thought about channeling their energy towards education to commit initially two years. But then, you know, we’re working to translate those initial two year commitments to teach in high need communities into lifelong commitments to lead and advocate for change. (Julia Gillard Talk, 2016) Implicit in this statement is the recognition that recruits have not thought about education prior to joining the TFAll network, and that even those fellows who complete their two years may not yet be committed ‘to lead and advocate for change’ in the long term. Rather, those are goals TFAll is working toward – specifically building the deep loyalty to the organisation’s core ideology that Kopp discussed above (Pak Tee Ng Talk, 2017).

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In other talks, Kopp expresses frustration that educators and educational policymakers do not share her vision and focus on leadership development. To Andreas Schleicher, she states, yet that notion [leadership development] is so unpleasant in the public discussions about what it’s going to take to actually get where we’re trying to go. I mean, how many people say, oh, leadership capacity. [Instead] they’re talking about teachers, they’re talking about standards, they’re talking about … [trails off]. (Andreas Schleicher Talk, 2013) Kopp here centers leadership capacity as the issue that, in her opinion, should take priority in public educational discourse. In contrast, Kopp mentions other common topics of educational discussion – teachers, standards, and the like – and frames them as less important. The clear implication is that educational policymakers’ focus on subjects other than leadership development is ill-placed. In another talk, Kopp goes further, expressing frustration that education conferences and other spaces of public discussion are not as focused on leadership development as TFAll: Don’t you think it’s interesting that we … I mean, you could go to 100 education conferences, and the number of sessions on how do we develop the leadership we need … I’ve been to a couple in my life, I think, we just don’t take an intentional approach to cultivating the leadership capacity we need in education whereas if you got a bunch of CEOs together … in the corporate world they invest so much in leadership development and they obsess over it. (Dzingai Mutumbuka Talk, 2017) The comparison between educational and corporate discourse here is striking. Kopp points to educational discussions as a source of frustration, lacking focus on leadership development, while corporate discourse is framed as placing an appropriate amount of focus on it. In her talk with Jacqueline Novogratz, Kopp takes this idea further: One of our struggles here at Teach For All is that we feel like, I mean our topic, our thing that we’re obsessed about, I don’t know that it has ever been on an education conference agenda, right? Like we’re trying to create a space for this to generate resources, attention, policy change around this idea that if we’re not making a much more intentional – taking a much more intentional approach to cultivating leadership capacity, we will never get there. This is a foreign idea. And I think what we’re hearing is this is not a foreign idea in the realm of social enterprise and, and the private

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sector. I think there is more of an embrace that leadership is crucial and we need to make a real investment and cultivating it. (Jacqueline Novogratz Talk, 2016) Again, education conferences are framed as spaces lacking in discussion of leadership development, while the private sector is framed as appropriately focusing time and resources on it. This quote builds upon the previous one as Kopp frames the role of TFAll within this dialectic; namely, that TFAll is purposefully being cultivated as a space that can bridge these worlds, bringing the focus on leadership development seen in private enterprise into education. This is reflected in part by the number of TFAll Talks participants who come from business, investment firms, or consulting groups – such as Mona Mourshed, Jacqueline Novogratz, Ben Rattray, and Steven Hatfield.

Participants pushing back on TFAll’s theory of change Interestingly, two of the participants in the TFAll Talks series push back on elements of the organisation’s theory of change outlined above. First, Ronald Heifetz challenges the sense of urgency that has been associated with leadership in quotes from Kopp and others, and second, even more forcefully, Lant Pritchett resists the notion that leaders always play a significant or central role in enacting social change. First, in the TFAll Talk with Harvard professor Ronald Heifetz, an audience participant who self-identifies as Badukar asks how they can slowly work through complex systems to build leadership while also maintaining the sense of urgency that brought them to this work in the first place: So my question is more around this piece around because you’ve spoken multiple times around the idea of impatience and being more patient by building leadership. I think given the problem that we are all trying to solve and given the complicated complex systems that we are all part of, how do we balance this whole building leadership piece and the urgency to solve the issue? Because the impatience I believe is also stemming from this idea that it takes a lot of time to mobilise people in such complex systems, so just want to hear your thoughts on the urgency with which all of us have to solve this problem of adequacy in our countries and how do we just balance out with the process of this adaptive nature of the work that we all go through? (Ronald Heifetz Talk, 2017) To frame his response, Heifetz first notes that the questioner’s name translates into English as ‘honeybee’. He then uses the metaphor of a honeybee trying to cross-pollinate flowers to explain the need for patience in this work:

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So as you go around cross-pollinating and trying to get all these flowers to bear fruit, I think that you have to be impatient but you also have to be in it for one, or two, or three lifetimes, that you know the equity that you want to bring needs to be brought fast but it’s going also to take time. And you need to stay in the game for the long haul because it’s not going to turn over fast, and the people who wanted to turn over in a jiffy end up becoming revolutionaries and they generally then spend 20 years, again they spent a long time finally achieving their revolution and then they finally win the revolution and discover now I’m a government bureaucrat and I have no idea what to do. I mean it just takes time to change a culture and to change an economy. And so you have to work it in a tireless fashion but in a way that also stewards your own resources to be able to stay in the game for the long haul. (Ronald Heifetz Talks, 2017) This response validates some elements of the construct of leadership I have summarised here; specifically, Heifetz recognises that leaders need a certain degree of impatience to push for change. However, he also argues that for change to be long-standing, leaders need to be more than passionate revolutionaries, but also (once the revolution is won) competent bureaucrats who understand the roots of structural inequalities and the potential policy solutions that can ameliorate them. This notion of training and technical competency is missing from the working definition of leadership articulated by Kopp and others above, and it is one of the primary critiques made against the TFAll model more generally – that TFAll alumni are passionate about addressing educational inequality, but lack the understanding of the structural nature of inequality to adequately do so (see, for example, Trujillo, Scott, & Rivera, 2017). In another TFAll Talk, Harvard professor Lant Pritchett uses his own research (Andrews, Pritchett, & Woolcock, 2017) on the role of leadership in successful reform to push back even more strongly against the notion that leaders can and should play a central role in promoting social change. In his research, Pritchett describes what he calls ‘solution-driven, leadership-driven reform’ as ‘the dominant paradigm’, in which ‘the role of someone designated at the leader of an organisation is to look around the world, look around their own organisation, and identify the solution. And then the job of the leader is to make sure the solution is adopted’ (Lant Pritchett Talk, 2018). To Pritchett, while this is ‘a common model of leadership’, for ‘sufficiently complex tasks’ like systemically addressing educational inequality, ‘that model just doesn’t work’ (Lant Pritchett Talk, 2018). To clarify why it doesn’t work, he cites the results from his study (Andrews, Pritchett, & Woolcock, 2017) to argue that ‘the idea that there’s an off-the-shelf solution that the CEO or leader, official formal leader of the organisation, is going to identify that can be implemented and if implemented, can achieve the objective, is just vanishingly small’ (Lant Pritchett Talk, 2018). At another point

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in the talk, Pritchett similarly states that ‘It’s just rare where a single dynamic individual in the role as the authorised leader of a formal organisation identifies a solution and that solution is adopted and actually implemented and has success’ (Lant Pritchett Talk, 2018). What is particularly intriguing about this critique is that this model of leadership is implicit not just in the TFAll construct of leadership outlined above, but in Wendy Kopp’s own personal story of founding Teach For America (and later TFAll), as outlined by Kopp in her own memoirs (Kopp, 2008, 2012). Namely, Kopp was that ‘single dynamic individual’ who ‘identifies a solution’ and then creates an organisation to implement that solution. Indeed, the premise of TFAll as an organisation is that the model of leadership development created by Teach For America is a solution that is applicable, with some contextual changes, across the globe. To her credit, in the TFAll Talk with Pritchett, Kopp recognises that Pritchett’s findings challenge the central focus TFAll has put on leadership: ‘I do think you, in a very good way, challenge our focus on leadership as the core of the solution’ (Lant Pritchett Talk, 2018). Given that, it is laudable that Pritchett was invited to this series, which is built on the premise that thinkers outside the organisation have something to contribute to TFAll’s work. At the same time, it does not seem that the focus of TFAll is likely to change as a result of Pritchett’s critique, as later in the same discussion Kopp states that ‘I personally feel that your whole philosophy here … is actually so affirmative for what we’re doing’ (Lant Pritchett Talk, 2018). She does not elaborate about what part of his discourse affirms the institutional mission, but her statement implies that shifting TFAll’s mission, or its focus on leadership development, is unlikely.

Reconciling the lack of evidence substantiating TFAll’s mission In the context of research like Pritchett’s, the resistance to TFAll’s working definition of leadership, focus on leadership development, and overall theory of change becomes more understandable. If recruiting others (whether they are TFAll fellows, policymakers or politicians) to TFAll’s core ideology is becoming harder and resulting in more pushback, perhaps that is because that core ideology is not as universally true as some proponents believe. There is an interesting moment in the TFAll Talk with Andreas Schleicher that is relevant here. Kopp begins a question by noting that ‘the core mission of each of these Teach For All programmes is … to cultivate the future leaders’, as has been noted above. She then follows up by noting that among policymakers, there is an ‘absence of sort of an understanding about how crucial that is’. She ends by asking, ‘What would you recommend in terms of our building demand for this model?’ (Andreas Schleicher Talk, 2013). In other words, she is asking how Schleicher would recommend they go about getting more buy-in to TFAll’s focus on leadership development.

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Schleicher responds surprisingly candidly, recognising that there is not a research base supporting this focus, but saying that he personally believes it to be good and appropriate, because leadership is what convinces people to believe in the power of education: I don’t have really much evidence and this is a very, very hard challenge. But I think that’s, it’s crucial, you know. Without that leadership, you don’t get public support for education. You don’t get the value placed on education, you don’t, don’t even get meritocratic society. Meritocracy in society very much depends on people actually valuing the role that education plays. But I don’t have any kind of simple answer for that. (Andreas Schleicher Talk, 2013) Schleicher argues that he does not have a research base that could be persuasive in getting policymakers to buy into TFAll’s core ideology that leadership development is essential to social change. However, he expresses his personal hope that leadership will gain political and discursive attention, because he believes that only through leadership do people buy into the notion of meritocracy. Meritocracy, or the idea that if anyone, regardless of circumstances, works hard enough in their education, that education can help them get ahead in life, is an interesting thing for Schleicher to focus on in this context. Schleicher states that you need leaders who promote public education in order to get support for it. However, if public education is sufficient for meritocracy to function, if education truly is the great equaliser, by which those who have fewer privileges can get ahead on their own merits – why does the public need leaders to convince them of this? If education truly promotes meritocracy, shouldn’t that be self-evident? In this statement, I would argue that Schleicher gives reason to doubt the validity of TFAll’s focus on leadership development rather than reason to believe in it. However, in several of these talks Kopp puts forward a different reason to explain the dearth of research to support TFAll’s focus on leadership development: the research simply has not yet been done, but the focus is nonetheless merited. In Kopp’s words, ‘That message seems like it hasn’t yet seen its prime. Like it seems like maybe we’re a little bit ahead of our time on that’ (Jacqueline Novogratz Talk, 2016). In statements like these, Kopp seems to be revealing that her own loyalty to this core ideology, to paraphrase her own statements quoted above (Pak Tee Ng Talk, 2017), is, indeed, very deep.

Discussion and conclusion Through critical discourse analysis of 22 talks in the TFAll Talks series, I have argued that Wendy Kopp and her invited guests revealed a great deal about the centrality of leadership development to TFAll’s theory of change. In their comments, TFAll’s leaders clearly indicate that the organisation’s purpose is the

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creation of future leaders, not only in education, but across all societal sectors. They have argued that education is a particularly fruitful site for leadership development, as both teachers and students can be prepared as future leaders. Kopp and others have also argued that leadership is the only way to address social inequality on a global scale, and that leadership, as conceptualised here, is based in several principles: maintaining a sense of urgency, persisting through challenges and hard circumstances, and creating a network of like-minded individuals who are committed to a shared core ideology. I have noted times when Kopp and others have recognised that not everyone quickly buys into or agrees with TFAll’s leadership development vision, especially among practitioners and scholars in the field of education. I have also noted how the key supporters of TFAll’s leadership ideology are situated in the private sector, and that several academics have used their time in this series to push back on the primacy given to leadership development and the conceptualisation of leadership within TFAll. However, despite that resistance, Kopp’s reactions suggest a reluctance to change this overall vision. While it is unlikely that TFAll will change their mission to develop future leaders any time soon, it will be interesting to see if the organisational operationalisation of leadership, or definition of what leadership means, stays the same or shifts in the face of future pushback.

References Adhikary, R.W., & Lingard, B. (2018). A critical policy analysis of ‘Teach For Bangladesh’: A travelling policy touches down. Comparative Education, 54(2), 181–202. Ahmann, C. (2015). Teach For All: Storytelling ‘shared solutions’ and scaling global reform. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(45),1–27. Andrews, M., Pritchett, L., & Woolcock, M. (2017). Building state capability: Evidence, analysis, action. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bartlett, L. (2003). World culture or transnational project? Competing educational projects in Brazil. In K. Anderson-Levitt (Ed.), Local meanings, global schooling: Anthropology and world culture theory (p. 183–200). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Bartlett, L. (2010). The word and the world: The cultural politics of literacy in Brazil. New York: Hampton Press. Crawford-Garrett, K. (2018). Lacking resilience or mounting resistance? Interpreting the actions of Indigenous and immigrant youth within TeachFirst New Zealand. American Educational Research Journal, 55(5), 1051–1075. de Saxe, J.G., Bucknovitz, S., & Mahoney-Mosedale, F. (2018). The deprofessionalization of educators: An intersectional analysis of neoliberalism and education ‘reform’. Education and Urban Society, 52(1), 51–69. Desmond, M. (2004). Methodological challenges posed in studying an elite in the field. Area, 36(3), 262–269. Dexter, L.A. (2006). Elite and specialized interviewing. Colchester: European Consortium for Political Research. Duckworth, A. (2016). Grit: The power of passion and perseverance. New York: Scribner.

The ‘Teach For All Talks’ series 263 Emerson, R.M., Fretz, R.L., & Shaw, L.L. (1995). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. England, K. (2002). Interviewing elites: Cautionary tales about researching women managers in Canada’s banking industry. In P. Moss (Ed.), Feminist geography in practice: Research and methods (pp. 200-213). Oxford: Blackwell. Fairclough, N. (2001). Critical discourse analysis as a method in social scientific research. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods for critical discourse analysis (p. 121–138). London: Sage. Firestein, S. (2015). Failure: Why science is so successful. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Friedrich, D.S. (2014). Global microlending in education reform: Enseñá por Argentina and the neoliberalization of the grassroots. Comparative Education Review, 58(2), 296–321. Friedrich, D., Walter, M., & Colmenares, E. (2015). Making all children count: Teach For All and the universalizing appeal of data. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(48), 1–21. Gautreaux, M., & Delgado, S. (2016). Portrait of a Teach For All (TFA) teacher: Media narratives of the universal TFA teacher in 12 countries. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24(110), 1–28. Heifetz, R. (1994). Leadership without easy answers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Heifetz, R.A., Kania, J.V., & Kramer, M.R. (2004). Leading boldly. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2(1), 20–31. Hootnick, A. (2014, 21 April). Teachers are losing their jobs, but Teach For America’s expanding. What’s wrong with that? The Hechinger Report. Retrieved from: http:// hechingerreport.org/teachers-losing-jobs-teach-americas-expanding-whats-wrong. Kezar, A. (2003). Transformational elite interviews: Principles and problems. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(3), 395–415. Kopp, W. (2007, November 7). Rhodes College – The power of inexperience. Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr2Qk1tiW4E. Kopp, W. (2008). One day, all children…: The unlikely triumph of Teach For America and what I learned along the way. New York: PublicAffairs. Kopp, W. (2012). A chance to make history: What works and what doesn’t in providing an excellent education for all. New York: PublicAffairs. Kretchmar, K., & Sondel, B. (2014). Organizing resistance to Teach For America. Rethinking Schools, 28(3). Retrieved from www.rethinkingschools.org/articles/orga nizing-resistance-to-teach-for-america. Lahann, R., & Reagan, E.M. (2011). Teach For America and the politics of progressive neoliberalism. Teacher Education Quarterly, 38(1), 7–27. La Londe, P.G., Brewer, T.J., & Lubienski, C.A. (2015). Teach For America and Teach For All: Creating an intermediary organization network for global education reform. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(47), 1–28. Nader, L. (1969). Up the anthropologist: Perspectives gained from ‘studying up’. In D. Hymes (Ed.), Reinventing anthropology. New York: Random House. Nesje, K. (2016). Teach First Norway-who joins and what are their initial motivations for teaching?. Acta Didactica Norge, 10(2), 150–178. Rauschenberger, E.R. (2016). Reconstructing the emergence of Teach First: Examining the role of policy entrepreneurs and networks in the process of policy transfer. Doctoral dissertation, University of Edinburgh. Senge, P., Hamilton, H., & Kania, J. (2015). The dawn of system leadership. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 13(1), 27–33.

264 Rolf Straubhaar Teach For All. (2018a). What we do. Retrieved on 7 July 2019 from https://teachforall. org/what-we-do. Teach For All. (2018b). Teach For All Talks. Retrieved on 10 December 2018 from https://teachforall.org/topics/teach-all-talks. Teach For All. (2019a). Global learning lab hosts student leadership discussion series. Retrieved on 25 August 2019 from https://teachforall.org/news/global-learning-la b-hosts-student-leadership-discussion-series. Teach For All. (2019b). 10 year report. Retrieved on 25 August 2019 from https://tea chforall.org/10-year-report. Trujillo, T., Scott, J., & Rivera, M. (2017). Follow the yellow brick road: Teach For America and the making of educational leaders. American Journal of Education, 123(3), 353–391.

Part V

Conclusion

Chapter 14

Final thoughts on Teach For All From where and where to? Matthew A.M. Thomas, Emilee Rauschenberger and Katherine Crawford-Garrett

Beginning final thoughts Teach For All (TFAll) and its affiliate organisations have already left an indelible mark on the field of education. For the teachers who have participated in these programmes, who may never have considered teaching, their lives have been shaped by their experiences – positive or negative – in the TFAll programmes and schools in which they participated and worked. For the principals and teacher educators who have supervised and supported these novice teachers, their work has involved learning how to mentor and coach beginning teachers who entered the profession through an alternate teacher education model, and likely also how to navigate relationships with a third-party organisation, such as the TFAll affiliate. For policymakers and the general populace, perennial questions concerning educational equity, quality, financing, and policy have (re)emerged in new, and sometimes confounding ways. And finally, for the students who are taught by teachers from TFAll programmes, their lives have been informed and influenced by their teachers, yet we know surprisingly little about how (cf. Crawford-Garrett & Thomas, 2018). This final concluding chapter aims to accomplish two tasks. First, it begins by tracing two thematic lines that flow throughout this volume – consistency and change – in an effort to provide an ex post facto comparative perspective of how TFAll and its programmes operate cross-nationally. Second, the chapter poses several critical questions about the future of TFAll programmes and the contexts in which they operate. These questions include: a b c d e f

Can and will TFAll continue to grow? What will become of TFAll alumni and their career trajectories? How will the TFAll network evolve? What are the long-term effects of Teach For All? Where and how has TFAll been resisted? and What do we still need to know about TFAll?

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These and other questions aim to examine the lasting impact of TFAll and also suggest an emerging global research agenda (e.g. Crawford-Garrett & Thomas, 2018; Scott, Trujillo, Rivera, 2016) for exploring the continued growth and prominence of TFAll and its affiliate programmes.

Thematic lines: Consistency and change While each of the chapters in this volume reflect a distinct empirical study and therefore a unique perspective on TFAll programmes, two broad thematic lines cut across these studies: consistency across contexts and the changing of educational climates. These themes yield important insights about the global impact of TFAll and its affiliates. Consistency across contexts The first theme pertains to consistency across contexts. As outlined in Chapter 2, the genealogy of TFAll starts with Wendy Kopp’s initial idea and the launch of Teach For America (TFA). Other social, political, and economic factors certainly influenced the context in which this idea and programme emerged – including A Nation at Risk, rampant teacher shortages, and the media’s decry of the ‘me generation’ (cf. Kopp, 1989; Mitchell, 2009), among others – but without TFA, TFAll would not exist. The genealogy highlights how core elements of the model spread internationally, and were taken up, or touched down (Adhikary & Lingard, 2018), across wildly diverse national and cultural environments (see Chapter 3). For example, teachers/fellows/associates/ambassadors/corps members completing a two-year teaching commitment is a consistent and nonnegotiable facet of TFAll programming, regardless of the nation-state in which it operates. And indeed, to be a member of TFAll, affiliate programmes must agree to and continue to uphold sets of principles related to the values, programmatic features, and organisational design of their respective social enterprises (TFAll, 2019c). Yet as any scholar of comparative and international education or international development might attest, ‘what works’ in Afghanistan may not ‘work’ in Argentina or Armenia or Austria, all countries where TFAll affiliates operate currently. And of course, how the ‘problem’ is understood, defined, and represented (Bacchi, 2009) matters immensely, in spite of rhetoric suggesting that solutions can be shared to solve largely ‘uniform’ problems (see Chapter 3). For this reason, and perhaps others, in recent years TFAll has been more careful about its branding of origin stories and the language surrounding its relationships with affiliate programmes. As noted on its website, ‘Teach For All believes that local ownership is critical to maximising the impact of our approach in countries around the world’ (TFAll, 2019b). The emphasis on local ownership is key here, though as evidenced through multiple chapters in this volume, the locality or ‘localness’ could be called into question given the lingering ties to TFA – and the United States, perhaps by proxy – and to a certain

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extent Teach First UK as the prototypes. For example, Nimer and Makkouk (Chapter 6) highlight deep political, programmatic, and financial links with US organisations implicit in the founding of Teach For Lebanon. Elsewhere, Adhikary and Lingard (Chapter 7) show how experiences in TFA influenced Teach For Bangladesh’s founder’s vision for how educational equity could be addressed through reform and social entrepreneurship. Indeed, founders of several TFAll affiliate programmes have been alumni of TFA (e.g. Bangladesh, Cambodia), and alumni of TFA and Teach First UK can be found working for many TFAll affiliate programmes around the world. Finally, many of the special privileges afforded to TFA alumni by elite graduate schools in the US (e.g. Harvard, Princeton, Columbia) are also available to TFAll alumni, including fee waivers, two-year deferrals, and special scholarships (TFAll, 2019a). In sum, the ‘American-ness’ of core parts of the programme may be difficult to erase, even as TFAll aims to localise its mission as it simultaneously goes to scale. As another example of consistency, the discourse of recruiting the ‘best and brightest’ is fairly constant across the various TFAll contexts. Nesje (Chapter 4) illustrates clearly that Teach For Norway, in conjunction the company Equinor, wanted to recruit top masters and PhD graduates into the programme to help ensure the highest potential productivity (i.e. human capital) for the oil and gas industry, which aimed to hire participants after the programme. Other chapters focused on China, Lebanon, and South Africa, also exemplify the perpetuation of the ‘magical thinking of the “best and brightest”’ (Blumenreich & Rogers, 2016, p. 1). Even Teach For Liberia, among the newest TFAll affiliate programmes, draws consistently on this discourse in stating its purpose as ‘enlisting Liberia’s most promising future leaders’ and recruiting ‘high achieving young professionals’ (Teach For Liberia, 2019). While recruiting brilliant and motivated teachers into the profession is certainly a good thing – particularly in contexts with high degrees of educational inequality – one must also consider the lingering effects of this programmatic and discursive approach. What problems may be created when seemingly innate characteristics and personal qualities are privileged over systematic programmes that prepare teachers to teach? Does this logic imply that the onus for rectifying complex educational issues should fall primarily on ‘super-achievers’ who have generally been successful (i.e. the ‘winners’) in the current education system? Also, do all teachers need to be superhero saviours reflective of the new form of ‘branded professionalism’ (Whitty, 2014) in order to be effective? These and other concerns are worth further consideration as this consistent aspect of the TFAll model continues to be applied across contexts. At the same time, the chapters in this volume do signify attention to context. The geographical locations selected by affiliate programmes (i.e. where they send their participants) vary from remote to rural to semi-urban to urban. The age levels and subject areas to be taught by the corps members, associates, fellows, etc., also vary along with the extent of support and training they receive

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before and during their two-year placements. In the Australian context, Moss et al. (Chapter 9) highlight the unique nature of mentoring novice teachers in an alternative teacher education programme that has online components due to disparate and distant placements of teachers. Research by Abs and Schneider (Chapter 12), indicates that the duties, roles, and support of TFAll fellows in Austria and Bulgaria varied considerably, suggesting more research into how best to mentor and support these novice teachers is necessary. Indeed, comparing the consistency of these programmes across contexts with contrasting structures, cultures, and policies emerged throughout the chapters as an area worth examining in future research. Changing of educational climates The second theme concerns the changing of climates within the various nation-states where TFAll has spread. By this we mean the educational policy climates as well as broader aspects of teaching, learning, and schooling, and the ways they are affected by TFAll and its constituent programmes. As noted in the chapters in this volume and other literature cited in Chapters 1, 2, and 3, TFAll aims to reshape educational equity around the globe toward a day when ‘one day, all children’ receive a high-quality education (Kopp, 2001). This trope reflects a meritocratic vision that most education reformers would concur is a goal worthy of pursuit. Yet, many scholars and practitioners take issue with the means through which TFAll and its affiliates aim to achieve this end. For example, some have argued that TFAll promotes private sector thinking within public schooling, including the deregulation and marketisation of teacher preparation (see Chapter 2) and the use of public-private partnerships in education, more broadly (see Chapter 3). Additionally, as Straubhaar discusses in Chapter 13, TFAll’s underpinning vision – marketed as its ‘theory of change’ – shifts responsibility for schooling from the nation-state and local authorities to the ‘collective leadership’ of innovative individuals. Whether celebrating inspirational teachers and data-driven principals or generous philanthropists and social entrepreneurs, the message from TFAll is that the solutions to educational inequities around the world will come from individual champions of educational equity who largely come from outside the current governments and school systems. Thus, in TFAll’s vision, it is through the ‘collective leadership’ of these individuals, sharpened and emboldened through the TFAll network, that significant systemic change will come. A clear impression throughout the volume is the way in which TFAll programmes are both implicitly and explicitly associated with changes to social and educational policies. Several chapters explore the ways in which philanthropy and (social) entrepreneurship, for example, work to alter extant policy contexts and institutionalise new forms of governance and policymaking. Saura (Chapter 8) and Elliott (Chapter 5) both address the roles of philanthropy within TFAll affiliate programmes, including Spain, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.

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Meanwhile, Adhikary and Lingard (Chapter 7) examine social policy in Bangladesh and the remaking of relations between state and non-state actors. Finally, Nesje (Chapter 4) describes how the emergence of Teach For Norway reflects a shift toward marketised systems, where an external oil company plays a role in setting the acceptance criteria for entry into higher education, a policy arrangement that belies the nation’s largely social and egalitarian structures. Changing climates can also be felt within initial teacher education and the teaching profession. University partnerships with TFAll organisations present new opportunities and challenges for universities and teacher educators as they work with/in new systems and forms of teacher recruitment, education, and professional support. In Chapter 9, Moss et al. highlight some of the structural challenges for associates in the programme, as they sought to complete online coursework while simultaneously teaching in Australian classrooms. As Thomas and Lefebvre (2020) suggest, both ‘being and becoming’ a teacher at the same presents unique challenges for these synchronous-service teachers. Indeed, it seems that teachers in TFAll programmes may introduce and reinforce novel perspectives of teaching, learning, and schooling. Southern’s findings (Chapter 10) show how notions of teacher professionalism differed between teachers in the Teach First Cymru programme and those in the Graduate Teacher Programme, and how Teach First values were imbued in the minds of the participants. Related sentiments were evident in the Chinese context, where the teachers in Yin and Dooley’s study (Chapter 11) perceived local teachers and students as needing, respectively, pedagogical reform and rescue from their own rurality. Even as some of these findings may be unique to individual contexts, it is notable that throughout the chapters some common sentiments emerged related to the perspectives of teachers in TFAll programmes. As these perspectives become more commonplace and gain additional currency, they become further examples of the ways in which TFAll affiliate programmes are changing educational climates. Here, too, additional research is certainly warranted.

Core/corps questions to consider In what follows we pose several critical questions about TFAll as well as its future and lasting impact. This section arguably takes a speculative turn, as the future for TFAll and those involved or interested in it are necessarily uncertain. Nonetheless, we feel it is beneficial to consider these questions as we document a trail of issues that may arise in the coming years and decades. Given TFAll’s remarkable growth to date, it seems worthwhile to wonder where it may be headed next. First, can and will TFAll continue to grow? What if it becomes truly global? In the Sociological Imagination, C. Wright Mills (2000 [1959], p. 215) offered some tools for developing intellectual acuity. He notes, ‘the release of imagination can sometimes be achieved by deliberately inverting your sense of

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proportion … If something seems very minute, imagine it to be simply enormous, and as yourself: What difference might that make?’ With this in mind, what if TFAll continues its rapid expansion, and affiliate programmes existed in nearly all countries around the world. Relatedly, what if each national affiliate rapidly expands their programmes on a national scale to produce tens of thousands of alumni in the next decade, much like TFA and Teach First UK have done? At this level, the power of its transnational network and robust collection of TFAll alumni would be immense. To date TFAll’s ten-year intended outcomes include being ‘an interconnected global community of students, teachers, alumni, staff and allies who are learning from and supporting each other’ and ‘an influential voice in the global discussion, advocating based on our diverse experiences for equity and opportunity for children’ (TFAll, 2019d). Indeed, if the expansion in Africa and other parts of the world continues, TFAll’s leadership and alumni may be mentioned alongside the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Education International, and other major players in global education and governance as key drivers of international change. Second and relatedly, what will become of TFAll alumni and their career trajectories? As noted previously and throughout the volume, there already exist deep connections between and across various TFAll programmes, facilitated in part by TFAll’s annual Global Conference as well as other programme-to-programme associations and visits. In 2016, TFAll had over 3,600 alumni outside the US and the UK (Kwauk, Perlman Robinson, & Spilka, 2016), and this number is poised to grow exponentially as affiliate programmes expand in both number and reach. Similar to TFA and Teach First UK, TFAll is working toward funnelling its pipeline of future leaders into social, political, economic, and educational sectors. One example of policy leadership can be found in Latvia, where the CEO of the TFAll affiliate programme, Lespe-jama- Misija (Mission Possible), became the Minister of Education and Science. As if this linear trajectory from TFAll affiliate CEO to Ministry of Education and Science was not adequate evidence of the potential power of TFAll alumni to affect change, the new Minister, Ma-rı-te Seile, explicitly transferred the values from the TFAll programme to government level, stating, ‘Mission Possible’s values – excellence, goal-orientation, openness and responsibility – will also be my values in my position of minister’ (TFAll, 2014). As many TFA alumni have arisen as champions of school choice, fast-track alternative training, and other neoliberal reforms, one wonders how the experiences and perspectives of TFAll alumni will influence their engagement in various national and international leadership roles. Or perhaps alumni will become disillusioned and disenfranchised, as some have done (Brewer & deMarrais, 2015; Brewer, deMarrais, & McFaden, 2020; Oldham & Crawford-Garrett, 2019). Overall, the best outcome may be TFAll alumni who learn from their (in)experience and work to ensure educational institutions are adequately supported by local and government entities and regulations are in place to ensure teachers are appropriately educated, mentored, championed, paid, and respected.

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Third, how will the TFAll network evolve? As an ‘umbrella organisation’ (Straubhaar & Friedrich, 2015), TFAll has launched a series of programmes and initiatives to strengthen its programming across the network, including but not limited to its annual Global Conference, Global Learning Lab, and Communities of Practice. Through these and other ventures, TFAll seems committed to uniting its staff, teachers, and alumni in a ‘collective’ yet exclusive network, but one must wonder whether the organisation is truly a horizontally oriented platform for sharing knowledge and practices, or a more hierarchical system of power-brokers that draws on its transnational capital to advance the neoliberal education reform strategies with which the TFA model is so closely aligned. There is certainly a potential for the network to be a critical, reflective voice that challenges its own assumptions, but the question remains whether this is true to its intents. Perhaps evidence lies in the extent to which Kopp and other TFAll staff are willing to allow affiliates to adapt and critique the model, which could lead to a ‘localising’ of the network as programmes seek freedom to adapt more to their own contexts; this could be the case of TEACH South Africa, Teach First Norway, and even Teach For Canada, all of which are currently unaffiliated with the network. While Kopp and others suggest the organisation is keen to facilitate learning from its members regardless of national context and stage of programme development, to what extent is democratic governance actually practised? Fourth, what are the long-term effects of TFAll? More specifically, what role will TFAll play in shaping the future of teacher education, the teaching profession, and education more widely? One possible outcome is the continued promotion of alternative pathways to teaching and a concomitant decline of university-based, college-recommending teacher education programmes. Will traditional teacher education as we know it be deemed obsolete? As TFA has worked with the Relay Graduate School to institute its own parallel track in the US, so have TFAll affiliates sought arrangements that prioritise the institutional knowledge and experience of the affiliate programme over traditional institutions with established expertise (e.g. Mungal, 2016; Subramanian, 2019). Moreover, what happens if teaching is only perceived as a two-year stop-over to other work? Might TFAll contribute to the demise of veteran, career teachers? Or at its best, perhaps TFAll will utilise its considerable economic and political clout to raise the status of education, including traditional, government-funded public institutions, such that corporate sector involvement and financial support from foundations is not necessary. Fifth, where, how, and why has TFAll been resisted? As noted in this volume, many critics have been vocal about the considerable expansion of TFAll programmes around the world. Yet some sites of resistance have emerged, and it would be helpful to know more about them. Crawford-Garrett and Thomas (2018) highlighted three such contexts: San Francisco, California; New South Wales, Australia; and Scotland, United Kingdom. Since that publication, the Houston Independent School District voted not to renew its contract with TFA,

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meaning that principals would not hire TFA teachers within the school district, the largest in Texas and seventh largest in the USA (Carpenter, 2019; HISD, 2019). Elsewhere, the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) severed its contract with Teach For Australia, with the ACT’s education minister citing two primary concerns: (1) ‘the low retention of participants in the teaching workforce compared to the investment required to collaborate with TFA[ustralia]’; and (2) ‘the ACT government’s focus on investment in strengthening initial teacher education, support for new graduates, and growing the existing workforce capability as one strong cohort of educators’ (McGowan, 2018, para 6–7). What other sites exist – Samoa, Singapore, Switzerland, etc. – and what socio-political conditions have led to the removal, reluctance, or continued resistance of TFAll? Finally, what do we still need to know about TFAll? As noted elsewhere in this volume and particularly in Chapter 3, scant empirical research has been conducted on TFAll affiliate programmes beyond those in the US and UK. There are hotspots of research, for sure – such as Argentina, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, etc. – but there are massive geographical pockets, conceptual spaces, and empirical data that are yet unexplored. Can you help advance research on this growing global network?

References Adhikary, R., & Lingard, B. (2018). A critical policy analysis of ‘Teach for Bangladesh’: A travelling policy touches down. Comparative Education, 54(2), 181–202. Bacchi, C. (2009). Analysing policy: What’s the problem represented to be? Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson. Blumenreich, M., & Rogers, B.L. (2016). TFA and the magical thinking of the ‘best and the brightest’. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24(13), 1–35. Brewer, T.J., & deMarrais, K. (Eds.). (2015). Teach for America counter-narratives: Alumni speak up and speak out. New York: Peter Lang. Brewer, T.J., deMarrais, K., & McFaden, K. (Eds.) (2020). Teach for all counter-narratives: International perspectives on a global reform movement. New York: Peter Lang. Carpenter, J. (2019, 9 May). HISD trustees vote against renewing district contract with Teach For America. Houston Chronicle. Retrieved from www.houstonchronicle.com/news/ houston-texas/houston/article/HISD-trustees-vote-against-renewing-district-13834070. php. Crawford-Garrett, K., & Thomas, M.A.M. (2018). Teacher education and the global impact of Teach For All. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Retrieved from https://oxfordre. com/education/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264 093-e-417 HISD. (2019). About us. Retrieved on 9 December 2019 from www.houstonisd.org/ domain/7908. Kopp, W. (1989). An argument and plan for the creation of the teachers corporation. Honour’s thesis, Princeton University. Kopp, W. (2001). One day, all children …: The unlikely triumph of Teach for America and what I learned along the way. New York: PublicAffairs. Kwauk, C., Perlman Robinson, J., & Spilka, S. (2016). Teach For All – Building a pipeline of future education leaders around the world. Washington, DC: Center for Universal Education, The Brookings Institution.

Final thoughts on Teach For All 275 McGowan, M. (2018, 28 November). ACT pulls out of ‘costly’ Teach for Australia program over retention rates. Retrieved on 12 November 2019 from www.thegua rdian.com/australia-news/2018/nov/28/act-pulls-out-of-costly-teach-for-australia -program-over-retention-rates. Mills, C.W. (2000 [1959]). The sociological imagination. New York: Oxford University Press. Mitchell, S.A. (2009). Teach For America: We have their attention, now where do we go from here? A plan for the alumni movement. Doctoral dissertation, University of Southern California. Mungal, A.S. (2016). Teach For America, Relay Graduate School, and the charter school networks: The making of a parallel education structure. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24, 1–30. Oldham, S., & Crawford-Garrett, K. (2019). ‘A problem they don’t even know exists’: Inequality, poverty, and invisible discourses in Teach First New Zealand. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 27(128), 1–24. Scott, J., Trujillo, T. & Rivera, M.D. (2016). Reframing Teach For America: A conceptual framework for the next generation of scholarship. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24(12), 1–34. Straubhaar, R., & Friedrich, D. (2015). Theorizing and documenting the spread of Teach For All and its impact on global education reform. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(44), 1–8. Subramanian, V. (2019). Parallel partnerships: Teach for India and new institutional regimes in municipal schools in New Delhi. International Studies in Sociology of Education. doi:10.1080/09620214.2019.1668288. Teach For Liberia. (2019). Home. Retrieved on 18 October 2019 from https://tea chforliberia.org/. TFAll. (2014, 7 November). Latvian partner CEO to lead Ministry of Education. Retrieved on 9 December 2019 from https://teachforall.org/news/latvian-partner-ceo-lead-minis try-education. TFAll. (2019a). Graduate partnerships. Retrieved on 9 December 2019 from https://tea chforall.org/graduate-partnerships. TFAll. (2019b). Launch a network partner. Retrieved on 9 December 2019 from http s://teachforall.org/launch-network-partner. TFAll. (2019c). Network partners. Retrieved on 9 December 2019 from https://tea chforall.org/network-partners. TFAll. (2019d). Our 25-year vision. Retrieved on 9 December 2019 from https://tea chforall.org/about#27101. Thomas, M.A.M., & Lefebvre, E.E. (2020). Teaching synchronous-service teachers: Traditional teacher education at a crossroads. Teachers College Record, 122(7). Whitty, G. (2014). Recent developments in teacher training and their consequences for the ‘University Project’ in education. Oxford Review of Education, 40(4), 466–481.

Index

academic capitalism 67 Act for Lebanon 102 Ashoka Fellows 129 agency 112, 170, 252 alternative pathways into teaching (teacher training routes) 3, 5, 7, 14, 16, 49, 71, 270, 272, 273; in Austria and Bulgaria 221, 223–4, 228–229, 231, 237–240; in Australia 159, 167, 168, 170, 173; in China 203, 213, 217 altruism 23, 36, 89 Appadurai, Arjun 122, 132 assemblage(s) 76, 138–9, 142, 144, 146–7, 151–2, 163; see also policy Association for Education Development 252 Australia 51, 53, 157–63, 167–73, 248, 273, 274 Austria 42, 45, 49, 221–240, 268, 270 Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership 159 Bacchi, Carol 158, 164, 170, 172, 268, Ball, Stephen J. 14, 26, 37, 46, 90, 92 Bangladesh 13, 43, 45, 269, 271; and Teach For Bangladesh 118–125, 127–134 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 19, 141 Bologna process 83 Booz and Company 102 Botín, Ana 144, 146, 148–9 Bourdieu, Pierre 26, 91, 92, 99, 110, 181, 205, 206, 210 Bulgaria 42, 45, 221–3, 224–5, 228–30, 234, 238; and teacher supply 222–3; and teacher training 223, 227; see also Teach For Bulgaria

business 15, 27, 38, 64 70, 73, 89, 99, 117, 164, 170, 224, 258; in London 22; and NGOs 129; and philanthropy 90, 92, 142; and strategies/l anguage 17, 85, 107, 118, 125, 128, 132, 149, 245 Business in the Community 22 Cantor, Pam 248 capabilities 26, 209, 211 capital: cultural 91, 205–6, 212–14, 216; and economic/financial 38, 46, 140, 142, 146, 206, 273; and human 7, 13, 26; and network 143, 146, 152; and symbolic 26, 91; and various forms of 7, 91 195; and venture 251 capitalism 246; and crisis 140, 142; and philanthro-capitalism 53, 118, 128, 131, 132, 140, 141; academic capitalism 67; creative capitalism 141 change: and adaptive leadership 245; and agents of 100, 106, 110–111, 127, 140, 150, 152, 250 and alumni 272; and career 25; and educational 179; educational policy 90, 96, 140, 146, 148, 152, 173, 180, 257 global governance 139 and ideology 109–110, 254, 261 initial teacher education 180 language/discourse and 84–85, 90 philanthropic 147 political 17, 25, 53, 64. 74, 133, 147, 259 professional standards 184 programmatic 19, 25, 39, 126 social 26, 36, 40, 127, 151, 161, 249–251 students’ perspectives 214 teacher’s perspectives 161 see also theory of change

Index 277 China 48, 203–218, 269 charter schools/network(s) 3, 16–17, 21; and no-excuses 8, 213, 216; see also Levin Dave Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) 5, 36–38, 118 complexity theory 158, 162–5, 168, 172–3 see also Doll, William consultant(s) see McKinsey & Company critical discourse analysis see discourse culture: dominant culture 215; education 111, 193, 194, 210, 256, 259; and governmental/policy 181; and global fundraising 131; and initial teacher education183, 190, 192; local 133; organisational (TFAll) 6, 48, 190, 192, 245 curriculum: and China 204, 211; and complexity theory 163, 165; and control of 70, 181; and corporate 4; and culturally responsive 26; dilemmas in 172; inquiry 168; and New Curriculum Plan 204; and Norway 65; and policy discourses 172–73; and standardisation 9; and South Africa 81; and summer institute 17; and teacher education and 159, 162, 164–68, 173, 180 deficit: and model/thinking 53, 97, 103–4, 210–211, 213, 215; and student learning 235 Deleuze, Gilles 138, 140, 172 democracy 76n1 diaspora: and Bangladesh 121, 125 discourse 4, 37, 73, 97, 101, 104, 110–11, 144, 150, 159, 186–188, 209, 257, 260, 269; and critical discourse analysis 26, 85, 101, 244, 249, 261; and Clinton Global Initiative 37; and deficit 215; and social entrepreneurial 7, 120, 131; institutional 80, 85, 87–91 Doll, William 163 see also complexity theory educational projects 243 elitism 121 elitist 194, 204 emotions:emotional intensity 167; emotions about teaching 84, 167, 173; and Teach For America 124

Empieza por Educar (ExE) 42, 49, 139, 143–52 England 22–25, 64, 66, 82–4, 194, 203 enterprise(s) see social enterprise(s) entrepreneur 65, 151; and policy 16, 26; and social 39, 50, 118–119, 123, 129, 252 entrepreneurship 64, 65, 96, 149, 152; and policy 26; and social 7, 14, 18, 25, 118, 128, 142, 245, 269 Equinor 49, 65–66, 68–76, 269 European Commission 227, 228 European Union 222, 240n1 Exceptional Graduates as Rural Teachers (EGRT) 203–5, 217–18; and empirical study 206–7; and good education 207–213; and habitus/cultural capital of 205–6; and local students’ views 214–16 Free Pre-Service Teacher Education Program (in China) 203; see also teacher education failure 162, 170, 187, 254–6 Foucault, Michel 99, 101, 147 foundation: and Barclays 146; and Caixa 146; and Clinton 141; and ExE 150, 152; and Gates 19, 141; and Nuffield 82; and phase 185; and Qatar 148; and The Saje 86; and Walton 19; and Zenex 86 Gillard, Julia 157, 158, 248, 256 globalisation 6–7, 53, 63, 99, 110, 118, 139 Global education reform movement 8, 9, 46 governance 69, 118–19, 120, 127, 132–3, 138–44, 147–8, 151–2, 194, 270, 272–3; and higher education 63–5, 74–6; and theoretical perspectives 66–8 see also education governmentality 122–4, 140, 142, 147, 150–2 Graduate Teacher Programme (GTP) 179, 184–90, 192, 194 graduates: ‘exceptional’ 23, 46, 52, 101, 159–161, 203 grit 4, 52, 131, 246, 250, 255 Guattari, Felix 138, 140, 172 habitus 122, 179, 181, 185, 195, 205–6, 210, 216, 217

278 Index Harvard University 248, 258, 259, 269 hegemony 92, 98 higher education: and access to 25, 222; and equity 105, 222; in Europe 63; in Lebanon 98; in Norway 65; and state-centred model 67–74, 18; and marketized model 98; see also governance; teacher education Her Majesty’s Inspectorate 82, 186 Hobby, Russell 25 ideology: and neoliberalism 85–86, 92, 96, 110; and networks 37; and quality- vs. examination-oriented education 209, 211; and Teach For All 244, 254–6, 260–2 Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage 257, 173n1 individualisation 151 innovation 5; in education 74, 159; and social 134n1, 247; and Welsh teaching standards 180, 193 Integrated Strategic Planning Framework (in South Africa) 81 knowledge: and content 161, 167, 170–72, 180, 210–14; and cultural capital 206; and economy 96; and pedagogical 162, 169, 238; and social enterprise 128; and subjectivity 151; and Suzhi 209; and students 214–15; and Teach for All 13, 26–7, 73–4, 126, 273; and transmission of 74, 216 Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) 8, 16 Kopp, Wendy: and TFA 3, 8, 14–19, 79, 268; memoir of 24; and Teach First 22; and Teach For All 39, 40, 273; and TFAll Talks 244–5, 247–8, 250–62; and Teach For Lebanon 102 leader 40, 88, 111, 149, 151, 252, 254, 256, 259–60 leadership: and educational change 149, 249, 254, 258–59, 261, 272 learning 47, 163, 189, 208–9, 211–12, 214, 218, 226–7, 234, 240; and areas 81; and entrepreneurial 123–4; and deficits 103–4, 235; and knowledge transfer 74; and outcomes 50, 126, 157, 172; and rote 81, 213; and students 126, 144, 157; and social enterprise

128; and teaching 91, 119, 158, 162, 166–9, 171, 180, 193, 195, 251, 270 Lebanon 42, 45, 97–99, 101,104, 106, 110, 269 Levin, Dave 16, 248 London First 22, 27 materialisation 141, 152 McKinsey 19, 22, 38, 146, 247, 248, methodological hybridization 143 Mourshed, Mona 247, 248, 258 National Exceptional Teachers for Disadvantaged Schools (NETDS) programme 52, 159, 161 National Association of Head Teachers 25 National Teacher Corps (US) 14 neo-colonialism 92 neoliberalism 3–4, 7, 50, 86, 92, 96–97, 99–100, 101, 110, 112, 142, 203; and in education 96–7; and Teach For All 86; and Teach For America 3, 50 neoliberalisation 53, 138–40, 142, 151–2 New Labour 82 New Schools Venture Fund 16 NEWTT (A New Way for New Talents in Teaching) 49, 228–229, 23–31, 235, 237–39 network(s): and capital 143; and global 36, 39, 47, 79, 152; and philanthropic 138–39, 141, 152; and policy 37, 140, 143, 144, 151–2 network ethnography 49, 120, 139, 143, 246 New Zealand 13, 40, 43, 45, 150, 274 no-excuses approach 8; see also charter schools/network(s) NGO Affairs Bureau of Bangladesh (NGO-AB) 118, 125, 134n1 non-governmental organisation(s) (NGO) 48, 50, 86–87, 96, 97, 99, 102, 118–19, 120, 121, 125, 127–9, 132–4 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 40, 41, 138, 150, 272 outcomes: and equitable 4, 64, 162; and socioeconomic background 39; and student learning 50–51, 64, 126, 157, 162, 172, 179, 211; and TFAll and 272

Index 279 Peace Corps (US) 3, 14, 27, pedagogy 26, 81, 92, 109, 171, 173, 193, 204, 213, 216; and social justice in education 166; of teacher education 162, 168 performativity 150 philanthro-capitalism 118, 125, 128, 131, 132, 140; and approach 133; and organisation 134n5; see also capitalism; venture philanthropy philanthro-capitalist(s) 123, 130, 132; see also philanthropists, capitalism philanthropy 37, 47, 84, 87, 139–40, 148, 270; and new/venture 90–91, 120, 125; see also philanthro-capitalism philanthropists: and Teach For All 36–7, 53, 87, 92, 270; and Teach For America 4, 15, 16; and ‘new’ 117–18, 142, 148 policy: and higher education 64; mobility 138–9, 147–8, 151; and mutations 140, 148, 151; and neoliberalism and 92, 96, 158; and networks 37, 140, 143, 144, 151–2; and philanthropy 152; and transfer 55; and South Africa 81–2; and Teach For All 40, 53, 86, 139; and Teach For America 17, 20; see also assemblage Porticus Global 6, 118, 125, 126, 134n5 Princeton University 14, 15, 27, 269 principal(s) 88, 170, 222–40, 267, 270, 274 private sector 90, 270; and career opportunities 3; and expansion of 96; and giving/philanthropy 38; and inequality 98–99; and involvement in education 17, 98; and leadership development and 258, 262; and policy environment 50; and public-private partnerships 79, 86; see also philanthropy privatisation 96, 138–139, 144, 147, 152, 177 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 65, 70, 150, 180, 229, 250 public-private partnerships 79, 86 Relay Graduate School of Education 8, 26, 273 religious affiliation 99 resilience 150, 152

resistance 6, 41, 53, 163; and Teach For All 24, 250, 256, 260–2, 257, 273–4 responsibility 19, 66, 70; 179, 216; and complexity theory 164; and corporate social (CSR) 5, 22, 65, 70, 75–76, 87–88, 90; governmental 66, 73 and individual/self 97, 100, 112, 150, 188, 193, 270; leadership 150; parental 182; and Teach First 188; and Teach For America 19; and Teach For All programmes 150, 270, 272; and teacher education/training 70, 73, 75, 227 Ripley, Amanda 248 Saatchi and Saatchi 102 Santander (bank) 148–9 Schleicher, Andreas 40, 248, 250–2, 257, 260–1 see also OECD school(s): and high poverty (low decile) 53, 159, 161, 250; and reform 3, Senge, Peter 244–5, 248, 254 social enterprise(s) 6, 16, 48, 87, 117–120; and NGOs 129–131; and Teach For All 257, 269; and Teach For Bangladesh 120–1, 125, 128, 130–134; see also entrepreneurship social impact 117–118, 120, 125–6, 146; see also philanthro-capitalism; social enterprise social justice 5, 21, 87, 89, 101, 164, 245 social reproduction 168, 206 socialisation 21, 97, 166, 271 South Africa 7, 38, 42, 45, 47, 80–82, 110, 269, 270 Spain 37, 42, 45, 140, 143, 146–8, 270 Special Teaching Post Plan for Rural Schools 203 Statoil see Equinor subjectivity(ies) 46, 119–23, 125, 148, 152 systemic change 4, 5, 14, 41, 97, 100, 106, 110, 112, 118–119. 130, 217, 254, 270 Teach First (UK) 5, 7, 13–14, 27, 36, 42, 45, 50, 269, 272; and expansion 23–25; and founding 22–23; and Norway 63, 64, 66; and reconfigured 25; and research on 26, 246; and South Africa 79–80, 82–91; and Teach For All 36–8; and Wales 179, 181–195, 271

280 Index Teach First New Zealand (TFNZ) 51–2,54n1, 246; see also New Zealand Teach First Norway (TFN) 42, 49, 63–66, 68–76, 246 Teach For America (TFA) 3, 7, 9n2, 36, 42, 51, 79; establishment/evolution of 14–29; and EGRT 203, 213; and leadership 245–6, 253–4, 260; mission/ operations 3–5; research on 20–21; resistance to 274; and Teach For Australia 172, and Teach For Bangladesh 121, 123, 127; and Teach For Lebanon 97, 109; and ‘Teaching as Leadership’ framework 18, 150, 152; see also Kopp, Wendy; Relay Graduate School of Education Teach For Australia (TFAustralia) 42, 51–2, 157, 158–9, 274; see also Australia Teach For Austria (TFAustria) 49, 221, 224–5, 227, 229, 231–40 Teach For Bangladesh (TFB) 7, 48–49, 117, 124, 127, 246, 269 Teach For Bulgaria (TFBulgaria) 224–5, 228–9, 231–40 Teach For Canada 273 Teach For China 42, 48, 204, 209, 210; see also Exceptional Graduates as Rural Teachers (EGRT) Teach For Lebanon (TFL) 7, 42, 51, 97, 99, 111–112, 269; and deficit model 103–5; and employment perspectives of graduates 105–107; and founding of 101–3; and method 100–101; and selection 107–9; and training 109–110 Teach For Spain see Empieza por Educar Teach South Africa 47, 53, 79–92, 273 teacher: attrition 170; effectiveness 17, 172; recruitment xv, 4, 23, 39, 81, 82, 203, 217, 271; shortage(s) 16, 19, 82, 269; supply 222; and temporary (daike jiaoshi) 25, 203; training (see teacher education); quality 8, 22, 46 teacher education: and assessment of 159, 180; and criticism of 65, 71; and community-engaged 53; and contexts of 80–83, 158–9, 164, 172, 203; and curriculum and 158, 162, 165, 166,

168–171; and employment-based pathways 157–158, 160–62, 166–70, 173; and fast-track/alternative pathways 5, 119, 184, 267; and funding for 130; and Free Pre-Service Teacher Education Program 203; and future of 53, 184, 273; and higher education/ schools of education 52, 82, 159, 195; and initial preparation 23, 52, 180–81, 203, 274; and privatisation of 7–8, 69, 72–73, 75–76, 82, 183; and professionalism and 184; and regulations of 70; and Teach For All and 48–50, 66, 73, 164, 167; and Teach For America and 16, 20–21 teacher educators 53, 82, 157, 161, 271; and Teach For Australia 158, 164–73 Teacher Training Agency (TTA) 23 teaching hours 227, 231, 237 territorialisations 149, 152, 172; see also policy mutation theory of change: and Teach For All 13, 38–41, 46, 243–44, 250, 253–56, 260–61, 270; and Teach For America 4–5, 23, 27, 38; and Teach For Lebanon 103, 106 university see higher education US Agency for International Development 102 union(s): and headteachers 27 see also National Association of Head Teachers venture capital see capital venture philanthropy see philanthropy Villanueva Beard, Elisa 19 Wales 7, 23–25, 179–85, 193–5, 196n1 War for Talent 22, 27; see also McKinsey welfare 85, 89; and state 63, 98, 100 Wigdortz, Brett 22, 24, 27, 79, 80; launch of TFAll 5, 13, 36–37 World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) 41, 148 World Bank 40, 41, 85, 96, 103, 138 Zuckerberg, Mark 141