Examining Teaching for Mastery as an instance of ‘hyperreal’ cross national policy borrowing

ABSTRACT

To improve education performance at home, countries cross nationally policy-borrow from jurisdictions ranked highly in international league tables. This paper examines a practical example of one such instance of policy borrowing, Teaching for Mastery (TfM). Over a six year period, interviews were conducted with teachers working in primary schools in the East Midlands region of England. The focus of these interviews was to explore informants’ experiences of enacting TfM and their analysis of the UK government’s motives for undertaking this borrowing. Applying Baudrillard’s ideas around hyperreality and image to these data indicated two key themes: 1) TfM discourses masked crucial aspects of the original policy, with the result that 2) TfM became non-relational to the original and thus hyperreal. The paper suggests strategies that might mitigate against policy becoming hyperreal and concludes that government must carefully consider its motives for engaging in the borrowing process from the outset.

KEYWORDS:

• cross national policy borrowing
• Teaching for Mastery
• hyperreality
• image
• masking
• non-relational

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the reviewers and Matt Woodford for his insightful comments around the Mastery conundrum.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available, as they contain information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.

Notes

1. Jermin (2021) outlines significant debate around the methodological efficacy of PISA and how the UK government has interpreted these data.

2. The project was conducted in accordance with the British Educational Research Association (BERA, 2018) guidelines and received favourable ethical review from the author’s university. All names are pseudonyms.

3. The UK and England are not the same policy unit. The UK government does not have power over education policy in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland which are devolved. This paper focuses on England.

4. An expert panel reported to the Education Select Committee (2023) that without fundamental reform of the recruitment, retention and professional development of specialist mathematics teachers and the high stakes focus on assessment, the Maths to 18 plan would face significant challenges.

5. In 2016, a proportion of the overall Department for Education (DfE) funding helped some schools to buy textbooks that met criteria drawn up by the DfE of which Maths - No Problem! was one (see NCETM, 2022a, no page).

6. Contact time is the amount of time teachers are allocated for teaching students during the school day. Non-contact time is the amount of time teachers are allocated for preparation, marking, lesson planning, PD and curriculum design during the school day.

7. In a 2019 report, NCETM highlighted how Ofsted had identified a link between a ‘Mastery approach’ towards mathematics teaching and ‘improved learning in mathematics in schools’ (NCETM, 2019, p. 13).

8. Ofsted inspections currently provide one of four overall judgements: Outstanding; Good; Requires Improvement; and Inadequate, with the last of these potentially resulting in a school being closed. See https://www.gov.uk/guidance/inspecting-schools-guide-for-maintained-and-academy-schools#history.

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Andrew Clapham

Andrew Clapham is an Associate Professor of Education Policy and Higher Education Academy Senior Fellow. Andrew examines the sociology of education and focuses upon how education policy plays out in different education settings. He has undertaken numerous research and evaluation projects examining education in its many guises, with an interest in informal learning, education governance, mathematics education and assessment, inspection and teacher education. Andrew works closely with policy-makers and practitioners to develop empirical evidence that informs and critiques educational policy. His research and evaluation expertise has led to him working extensively in regional, national and international settings.