The National Discussion: Consultation as a Policy Tool
This project examines classroom teachers’ engagement in the recently launched National Discussion, ‘Let’s Talk Scottish Education’ (Scottish Government, 2022). Consultation is often positioned as a mechanism for democratic policymaking during reform. While it offers a structure through which teachers can share their views, it does not guarantee that their voices will be heard or that they will have influence. The overarching objective of this project is to critically analyse the National Discussion as a process for involving teachers in policymaking. It explores the assumption that ‘voice’ leads to influence and identifies factors that enable and restrict teacher agency in education reform.
Public consultations are not new to Scottish education, but the scale, ambition, profile and public reach of the National Discussion was significant. It invited anyone interested in the future of Scottish education to have a say about its direction, offering a ‘collective chance to pause, to reflect and contribute to a future vision for Scottish education’ (Campbell & Harris, 2022). Individuals were invited to participate in a number of ways, and attempts were made to make the process inclusive and accessible.
Title of Project: Teacher engagement in the National Discussion: an exploration of consultation as a form of democratic policymaking in Scotland
Principal Investigator: Dr Anna Beck, University of Glasgow
Co-Investigator: Dr Denise Mifsud, University of Bath
Research Assistant: Dr Frances Breslin Davda, University of Glasgow
Teacher engagement in national policy formation
In Scottish education, and indeed across the globe, there is increasing awareness of the need to include those who are often unheard in education policy spaces, and this includes classroom teachers (Muir, 2022; Scottish Government, 2022). Despite awareness that engaging teachers in policy formation is crucial for teacher buy-in and the development of ownership (OECD, 2021), there is a distinct lack of empirical research on how this works as a process.
The dominant research on teacher engagement with policy considers teachers’ roles in enacting policy at school-level (e.g., Ball, Maguire & Braun, 2012), but the role that teachers can play in influencing national level policy is largely unexplored. This research seeks to address these substantial gaps.
Is policy-making in Scotland different?
It is often said that there is something different about policymaking in Scotland. The creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 marked the beginning of a ‘participative’ approach to policy-making that was ‘accessible’, ‘open’ and ‘responsive’ (Scottish Office, 1998, p. 3). Almost thirty years later, this narrative continue and there remains an assumption that policymaking in Scottish education is democratic, inclusive and consensual.
The National Discussion certainly fits into this narrative with its mantra “every voice matters”. However, concerns about the authenticity of claims around democracy, inclusion and consensus have been raised, with some suggesting that they contain an element of ‘mythology’ (Humes, 2020). This is not to say that they are untrue, but that what is aspirational is mistakenly believed to be reality simply because we tell ourselves that it exists.
Teachers’ Voices and ‘Teacher Agency’
In the National Discussion, it could be said that ‘voice’ was simultaneously proposed as a democratic tool for participation and as a strategic policy mechanism to build consensus. However, ‘voice’ has been shown to be a problematic concept. There can be an assumption that ‘voice’ will inform action, but we argue that this requires an alignment between ‘voice’ and ‘agency’ – the ability to shape one’s own environment – an important concept in this research.
Agency is something that teachers achieve (Priestley, Biesta & Robinson, 2016) through an interplay of individual capacity, contextual factors and social and material conditions, influenced also by previous experiences and future aspirations. Merely providing a space for participation does not necessarily lead to agency in education reform. Given the growing narrative around teacher voice, it is crucial that we explore how classroom teachers feel about the extent to which they can influence national educational change through existing channels.
We apply Laura Lundy’s (2007) model of participation to explore classroom teachers’ experiences and stakeholders’ perspectives of each element during the National Discussion. To provide a holistic view of participation, we draw on Priestley et al.’s (2016) teacher agency model to determine the extent to which teachers believe that expressing their views can affect change.
We conceptualise participation as non-participation as well as active participation. We therefore seek the views of those who have not participated as well as those who have.
What we hope to find out…
The ultimate aim of the project is to gain a critical view of teacher participation in Scottish education policymaking from the perspective of teachers themselves and to understand this within the broader context of education reform. If we are serious about hearing the voices of teachers, there are three fundamental questions that we need to ask them:
- What are their experiences of engaging, or not-engaging, in national policy formation?
- To what extent are existing practices effective?
- What needs to change?