Comparative Perspectives on the Changing Roles of Teachers

The results of the study suggested a much more complex picture. (Broadfoot, 1985) It found that central directions are inevitably ‘watered-down’ by the mediation of successive layers of bureaucracy en route to teachers in the classroom as well as the personal interpretation of the intention of these instructions by the many individuals involved in the chain of communication. Thus, in many ways, teachers in France were found to be freer, if they chose to be, than their English counterparts, given that the latter were subject to several additional forms of accountability. The very centralisation of the French system was found to be a protection for teachers against being held to account by parents, head teachers and the local community which was the feeling and experience of the English teachers. Yet, English teachers, by contrast, had a passionate belief in their right to professional autonomy whilst French teachers chose to embrace central control as an ideology as the basis for equality of opportunity and national cohesion. In short, French teachers could have exercised considerable professional discretion but generally chose not to since they believed in the desirability of national consistency. English teachers strove to exercise professional autonomy since this was a defining element of their professional discourse but found themselves heavily constrained by a network of both formal and informal accountability that severely constrained their capacity to exercise such professional autonomy.