ABSTRACT

The work of teachers is often understood primarily in relation to student learning rather than as a form of labour for the worker in question. While such a focus is understandable, it can fail to recognize the relationship between conditions of work and the character or nature of that work. In this article, we engage with the issue of teachers’ work and workload, presenting interview data from 31 teachers across the state of NSW, Australia. Locating these data within a devolved public education policy context, we argue that increased accountability primarily through paperwork and reporting requirements are operating to re-shape and re-define what it means to be a teacher, and what teachers “do”. Such demands are reported to have created a substantial workload increase across the board in our sample, leading to a perceived need for teachers to undertake “triage” in their work, leaving some – if not all – activities ultimately incomplete. We explore these tensions in the data and raise questions about the forms of labour teachers currently undertake in schools; why they do so; and whether such work is either desirable or sustainable.

摘要

教师的工作通常主要被理解为与学生学习有关，而不是作为相关工作者的一种劳动形式。虽然这样的关注是可以理解的，但它可能无法认识到工作条件与该工作的特征或性质之间的关系。在本文中，我们探讨了教师的工作和工作量问题，展示了来自澳大利亚新南威尔士州 31 位教师的访谈数据。将这些数据置于权力下放的公共教育政策背景下，我们认为，主要通过文书工作和报告要求加强问责制正在重塑和重新定义教师的意义，以及教师“做什么”。据报道，在我们的样本中，此类需求导致整体工作量大幅增加，导致教师认为需要在他们的工作中进行“分类”，从而使一些（如果不是全部）活动最终无法完成。我们探讨了数据中的这些紧张关系，并对目前在学校从事的劳动教师的形式提出了疑问；他们为什么这样做；以及此类工作是否可取或可持续。