Constructing Teachers’ Professional Identities – Learning from 7 Jurisdictions
collaborative strategy. As it is organised by school, about half of the teachers who responded to the survey agreed that most of their teacher leadership was through their official role, compared to only 22% who said their leadership activities fell outside the specifications of their role, suggesting that teamwork is seen as a key part of the role and is not viewed as some form of additional work. Nearly 70% of surveyed teachers suggested that they were given leadership responsibilities within their school. Very few feel involved with the national decision-making process despite Unions being seen to form a valuable part of teacher voice within the system. Teachers are reported to have high levels of autonomy, mixed with a long and established tradition of teamwork in order to decide upon teaching methods. 82% said they mostly decide themselves and/or with some input from colleagues on the schemes of learning they used in their class, 44% for schemes of learning used locally and 27% for schemes of learning used nationally. This would seem to confirm that teachers do collaborate on school issues, though less on regional and national teaching schemes, suggesting teamwork is quite localised. Areas where teachers do not feel that they are given sufficient control include pay, management systems in their school and the ways in which they are assessed. Teachers negotiate salaries with principals within their school, so teacher earnings are slightly above OECD salary averages at the start, but slightly below the average at the top of the scale. A lack of consistent appraisal and feedback regarding teacher assessment has been attributed to the perceived low status of the profession within the jurisdiction. A flat organisational structure between teachers and principals has also been cited as a problem in that it has caused an unclear relationship between teachers and principals. Teachers report that they do not feel they are presented with good enough conditions to carry out quality teaching. Leadership was identified as a key means of addressing this - by teaching leaders to be more aware of how to help members of staff and by providing conditions and support that allow them to teach to the best of their ability.
83