Teacher, lecturer or labourer? Performance management issues in education

Mather, Kim; Seifert, Roger

Abstract

Education management has increasingly been dominated by the norms and requirements of general management ideologies that focus on performance controls and target achievements. Under this regime, solving the labour problem - relatively low productivity - has taken precedence over all other forms of management. In pursuit of this objective senior managers have employed more and more Taylor-like initiatives, including close supervision of task content and its execution. As a result the professionals have resisted collectively and formally through unions, informally in the common rooms and individually through grievance, absenteeism, increased instrumentalism and dull compliance in the job. The application of tighter controls over performance turns these workers into waged labour, displacing any notions of professional self-regulation and undermining collegial high trust relations and educational autonomy that these professionals might reasonably expect. © 2011 British Educational Leadership, Management & Administration Society (BELMAS).

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2011
• Journal: Management in Education
• Print ISSN: 0892-0206
• Electronic ISSN: 1741-9883
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 25
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 26-31
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0892020610388060
• Keywords: performance management, labour problem, public sector modernisation, Taylorism, further education
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/965834
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0892020610388060