The evolution of professionalism - Centre for Policy Studies in ...

public or even to so-called stakeholders. Contrasting the well-attended sessions
of the Select Committee in 1991 and the reasonably well-attended consultations
around the core program in 1992 and the Essential Graduation Outcomes in 1994,
similar events have come to be much more poorly attended in recent years, unless
the deliberations related to issues of specifi c local interest.
For example, by 1999 — when the School Board Boundary Commission took
to the road to explore public response to school board restructuring — turnout at
public hearings was extremely weak. By 2001 when the Southwest Regional Pilot
Evaluation Team toured the area served by the newly constituted Tri-Counties and
South Shore Regional Boards, several public meetings were so poorly attended that
panellists and senior board administration outnumbered the audience. The fl urry of
documents, virtually unchanged by consultation processes through the mid-1990s,
appears to have fatigued the public and effectively created the impression that
consultations are essentially meaningless.
The reference list shows how the Department and the union have been
playing “call and response” — the Department calls with a document and the
union responds with a critique. This has been the pattern that has replaced the
pre-1990s model, in which the Department’s defi nition of teacher professionalism
included consultation and involvement in most questions of policy, curriculum
and pedagogy. According to an NSTU offi cial, teachers and the union are now
treated, not as professional collaborators and advisors to government, but as
employees whose input into educational policy was at best no more valuable
than any other group, and at worst self-interested, backward and obstructionist.
This source went on to comment that the situation has evolved from one where
bureaucrats gave direction to the politicians, to one where politicians now give
direction to the bureaucrats; this direction amounts to a collective response to
powerful ideologically driven political lobbies.
From the point of view of one Department offi cial, the NSTU missed repeated
opportunities to enter into the policy debate by being obstructionist and by trying
to infl uence policy direction too forcefully. Department offi cials argue that the
nature of teacher professionalism must operate within the larger context of the
Department’s policy initiatives — the role of the Department is to set policy and
the role of the teachers is to implement it. In fact, one offi cial stated clearly that his
Department is responding to pressures for accountability and standards which are
“bigger than just Nova Scotia” and, echoing the words of former Education Minister
John MacEachern, the system must be made “world class” because of the nature
of globalization and economic imperatives. They contend that the union has never
really attempted to understand either the emerging economic and social context of
Canadian education or the fi scal constraints within which the Department is forced
to operate. The union dreams and schemes, but seldom does the diffi cult work of
trying to make the system work with the budget it is given. This is, naturally, a
bureaucratic response; indeed, what else could those working within the system
and administering budgets granted by political masters say?
School board offi cials also felt a change in the wind in the mid-1990s. One
offi cial commented that, up until the end of the Savage administration, there was
still a sense of dialogue and what he called “opportunities for conversation”.
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