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Winchip, Emily Joy (2019) Understanding teachers’ experiences of work in marketised contexts: a scale construction approach. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.

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Abstract

The aim of this research was to study the experiences of teachers working in marketised contexts to understand the effect on their work. For-profit education management organisations are increasing their involvement in all facets of education and the influences of marketisation may be particularly evident in the growing sector of international schools. The problem addressed in this research is the difficulty understanding the experiences of teachers in marketised contexts. This may be especially difficult as teachers’ perceptions are unheard when market-based reforms are assumed to solve all issues.

The feminist critical approach to mixed-methods scale development in this research treated teachers’ experiences and perceptions as the starting point for knowledge creation. Teachers’ input was integrated at each stage of methods. The outcome was both quantitative results suitable for policy audiences and personal stories from teachers. Data was collected through interviews with teachers working in for-profit schools and a questionnaire administered to teachers working in many different types of schools. Mokken scale analysis, Rasch analysis and path analysis were used for instrument development, measurement model creation and to investigate the relationships between the constructed scales.

The findings of this study were the four main themes: Marketisation, fulfilment, buffering and control. The marketisation theme split into two scales: the pattern of experiences of business influences on teachers’ work and teachers’ perceptions of the extent to which their school is run as an EduBusiness. The fulfilment teachers feel in their work and buffering from business influences combined into a single scale. Teachers’ feelings of a lack of control over their work created the final scale.

The four constructed scales were found to all be significantly related to each other. The final path analysis predicted 68% of the variance in teachers’ feelings of a lack of control over their work based on direct predictors of the business influences on teachers’ work and teachers’ feelings of fulfilment and buffering from business influences. The indirect predictor was teachers’ perceptions of the extent to which their school was run as an EduBusiness.

The contribution of this research is understanding the patterns of the marketisation of schools and seeing that the effect on teachers is consistent for teachers in many kinds of schools, not only international or for-profit schools. The feminist critical mixed-methods approach used to integrate teachers’ perceptions with quantitative analysis open new possibilities for mixed-methods and critical analysis in the future.

Item Type:	Thesis (University of Nottingham only) (PhD)
Supervisors:	Stevenson, Howard P. Price, Sue
Keywords:	teachers’ work, marketisation, feminist critical analysis, mixed-methods, Rasch, path analysis
Subjects:	L Education > LB Theory and practice of education L Education > LC Special aspects of education > LC1 Forms of education, including self, home, alternative, private
Faculties/Schools:	UK Campuses > Faculty of Social Sciences, Law and Education > School of Education
Item ID:	56719
Depositing User:	Winchip, Emily
Date Deposited:	06 Aug 2019 09:37
Last Modified:	24 Jul 2021 04:30
URI:	https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/56719

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