In this talk I will share
with you research studies from across the globe, from New York to Australia,
from Sweden to South Africa that report findings in relation to the
intensification and (re)framing of teachers’ work practices within neoliberal
and neoconservative reforms. I want to explore the critical questions 1) IS
TEACHING NEARER TO POETRY THAN PHYSICS? and 2) If so, what type of INSPECTION
OF TEACHING would be more appropriate than the
TELEOLOGY OF CERTAINTY required nowadays by New Quality Technocratic Management (Lynch,
Grummell and Devine, 2012)? I want to critically
question this TELEOLOGY OF CERTAINTY as it is embedded in the language of all policy reforms published by the state since the start
of the world economic crisis in 2008. Professor Timothy Snyder, a professor of
history at Yale University, explains teleology as a portrayal of the present as
a step toward a future that we already know, one of expanding globalisation,
deepening rational thinking and scientific certitude with the prospect of glorious
prosperity for all (Snyder, 2017,
p.119). However holding a mirror to history should beg us to be far more
cautious – we need to remember that the fall of democracy in Europe
in the last century into fascism, communism and authoritarianism in the 1920s,
30s and 40s also offered teleologies - narratives of time all promising some
type of inevitable utopia. For example, when the teleology of communism was
shattered a quarter century ago, it appears that we drew the wrong conclusions…our
new politics of inevitability and end of history have resulted in a type of self-induced
intellectual coma….stifling the way we do politics in the 21st
century…we have learned to say unquestioningly that there is ‘no alternative’
to the basic order of things as they stand at this moment in time.