Teacher Education Reform as Political Theater

Elena Aydarova

Description

Winner of the 2021 Outstanding Book Award presented by the Society of Professors of Education

Winner of the 2020 Critics Choice Award presented by the American Educational Studies Association (AESA)

Winner of the 2020 Outstanding Book Award presented by the Council on Anthropology and Education

Around the world, countries undertake teacher education reforms in response to international norms and assessments. Russia has been no exception. Elena Aydarova develops a unique theatrical framework to tell the story of a small group of reformers who enacted a major reform to modernize teacher education in Russia. Based on scripts circulated in global policy networks and ideologies of national development, this reform was implemented despite great opposition—but how? Drawing on extensive ethnographic material, Aydarova teases out the contradictions in this process. Teacher Education Reform as Political Theater reveals how the official story of improving education obscured dramatic and, ultimately, socially conservative changes in the purposes of schooling, the nature and perception of teachers' work, and the design of teacher education. Despite the official rhetoric, Aydarova argues, modernization reforms such as we see in the Russian context normalize social inequality and put educational systems at the service of global corporations. As similar dramas unfold around the world, this book considers how members of scholarly communities and the broader public can respond to reformers' stories of crises and urgent calls for reform on other national stages.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction

Part I. Historical Context: Sowing the Seeds of Discontent

Part II. Directing Social Change: Russian Policy Dramas

1. Actors

2. Masks and Guises

3. Dress Rehearsals and Missing Directors

4. Light and Shadows

5. Props, Scripts, and Playwrights

6. Money Matters

Epilogue

Appendix A. Summary of the Policy
Appendix B. Theoretical Foundations
Appendix C. Methodology and Data Analysis
Notes
References
Index

Sujets

• Russie
• Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques
• Russia
• Soviet Union
• USSR

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438476162
• Langue: English

Extrait

Teacher Education Reform as Political Theater
Teacher Education Reform as Political Theater
RUSSIAN POLICY DRAMAS
Elena Aydarova
Cover art: Valeriy Yaroslavtsev, Concert , 2008. Oil on canvas, 150 × 100cm. Reprinted with permission of the artist.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2019 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Aydarova, Elena, 1982– author.
Title: Teacher education reform as political theater : Russian policy dramas / Elena Aydarova.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, Albany, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018052655 | ISBN 9781438476155 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438476162 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Teachers—Training of—Russia (Federation) | Education and state—Russia (Federation) | Educational change—Russia (Federation)
Classification: LCC LB1725.R8 A93 2019 | DDC 371.102—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018052655
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Bevin and Zoya
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I Historical Context: Sowing the Seeds of Discontent
Part II Directing Social Change: Russian Policy Dramas
1. Actors
2. Masks and Guises
3. Dress Rehearsals and Missing Directors
4. Light and Shadows
5. Props, Scripts, and Playwrights
6. Money Matters
Epilogue
Appendix A. Summary of the Policy
Appendix B. Theoretical Foundations
Appendix C. Methodology and Data Analysis
Notes
References
Index
Illustrations
Figures 1. Types of institutions most commonly involved in teacher preparation in Russia 1917 to the present 2. Public service announcement in downtown Moscow, June 2011 3. Reformers’ networks 4. Diagram from the policy text 5. Diagram from the original study 6. Representations of pedagogical university applicants’ performance on the Unified State Exam in reformers’ presentations 7. Percentages of “effective” institutions among pedagogical universities based on MOE criteria 8. Portrait of a graduate 9. December 1, 2013—A day of protests against educational reforms across Russian cities
Tables 1. Policy words and their English and Russian counterparts 2. Comparison between pedagogical and medical universities in the number of students with a Unified State Exam average score higher than 70 3. Teachers’ labor functions according to the new professional standards 4. Comparison of the McKinsey report suggestions for improving teacher quality and the Concept of Teacher Education Modernization measures 5. Summary of grants awarded to project participants in 2014
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments are like family albums. Allow me to share my family album with you.
First and foremost, I am endlessly grateful to every faculty member, student, administrator, policymaker, and educational researcher I met through my wanderings across the Russian Federation and the world. I can’t name many of you, but you should know that without your tender care at times of confusion, rejection, suspicion, and doubt, I would never have come this far. If my project has not lived up to your expectations, please, forgive me.
No words can express my gratitude to many mentors who offered guidance during my work on this book. First, I am thankful to Lynn Paine, Michael Sedlak, Avner Segall, Alaina Lemon, and Chantal Tetreault for advice and generous readings of the earlier versions of this work. I owe an enormous intellectual debt to Suzanne Wilson, who first suggested that I look at teacher education reform as a form of theater. Without the support of David Post and David Berliner, this book would not have seen the light of the day. I am grateful to those who guided me through the earlier stages of this research project—Kyle Greenwalt, Peter Youngs, Aaron Bodle, and Todd Drummond. I thank many others for powerful conversations that pushed my thinking—Kathy Anderson-Levitt, Cynthia Dillard, Lesley Bartlett, Radhika Gorur, Iveta Silova, David Phillips, Francine Menashy, Kristine Phillips, Amy Stambach, Francine Vavrus, Nancy Kendall, Johnny Saldaña, Meg Gardinier, Eugene Matusov, Ana Marjanovic-Shane, and Tatyana Tsyrlina-Spady. Much helpful support came from mentoring opportunities created by the New Scholars Committee at the Comparative and International Education Society and the Council of Anthropology and Education of the American Anthropological Association.
I am thankful to Sheila Marquardt and Joshua Olmsted for opening their home to me when I needed to get away and write. I also owe huge thanks to Ricky Greenwell and Patrick Carriere at Minnesota State University for the crash course on theater they provided to a weary scholar in search of a better-fitting theoretical framework.
I would never have been able to go through all the research trips, analysis, and writing without the support of my spouse, Bevin Roue. Thank you for holding down the fort when I was roaming the earth and for taking so many burdens on yourself when I needed it most. I am also grateful to my family in Russia and Ukraine, who collected policy documents, forwarded newspaper articles, and debated politics with me throughout my research. Without my family’s help, this project would never have come to fruition.
This project was made possible through a Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship and generous funding from Michigan State University’s College of Education.
Some of the work for this book took place at the University of Illinois Summer Slavic Lab. I am thankful for the helpful guidance of librarians at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, particularly Joe Lenkart, who many times helped me fish out obscure but tremendously valuable Russian sources across many different libraries and hidden nooks of the internet.
Special words of gratitude go to my editor at State University of New York Press, Rebecca Colesworthy, for her support and guidance. I am also thankful to the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript, who provided generous and helpful suggestions for revision.
I take full responsibility for any errors that this text may contain.
Introduction
On a sunny day in May of 2012, I made my way to one of the top teacher preparation institutions in Russia—Ognensk State Pedagogical University. 1 Located in a historic downtown area, OSPU occupied a block of ornate buildings inherited from Russia’s imperial past. I was there for an education conference that brought together teacher educators, principals, teachers, and educational researchers from around the country. Marble statues, oil paintings, and red carpets adorning the interior of the main administration building where the conference took place impressed visitors with the institution’s status as one of the oldest pedagogical universities in the country. Balloons hanging along the hallways created a festive atmosphere; professionally designed posters and banners informed participants about the main developments in Russian education. As I walked to the opening plenary, I watched men and women shaking hands, embracing, kissing each other on both cheeks, and laughing about how much they had changed since they last saw one another.
With velvet seats facing a stage draped in dark pleated curtains, the large plenary auditorium resembled a theater. Half of the seats were reserved for esteemed visitors: university rectors, school principals, members of the Scientific Council, and others. In the balconies above the auditorium sat students who appeared to be in awe of what they saw in front of them. Large TV screens displayed announcements, graduation pictures, and images of books published by OSPU’s professors. Music from old Soviet school films played in the background. Forty-five minutes after the scheduled start, someone stood up, motioning others to follow suit in order to greet the governor.
The governor’s speech was short. He noted that it was important to carry out the tasks set by the country’s leaders. Even though education was a conservative field, it had to be reformed to initiate change in other sectors of the economy and society. With that, the governor called for implementation of Our New School, a policy issued in 2010, stating that it served as “the starting point for the modernization of the nation’s education.” The governor also congratulated the university on its two-hundred-year anniversary and praised it for supplying high-quality teachers for the city’s schools, saying that half of the city’s sixty thousand teachers were graduates of the university.
The irony of the governor’s speech was that Our New School argued for a complete elimination of pedagogical universities—a point that concerned many in the educational community. In the plenaries and sessions that followed, organizers and speakers from OSPU emphasized the need for participants to consider the points laid out in the conference resolution. The four-page document distribu