Blame avoidance and facework in teachers` collaborative decision-making

ABSTRACT

Previous studies have paid little attention to teachers` self or collegial considerations when making decisions about their students, precisely their tendency to avoid being blamed for students` failure. When a teacher is blamed for a student’s difficulties, her/his public image (‘face’) is threatened, and s/he and her/his colleagues can be expected to engage in ‘facework.’ This study examined blame attribution and facework in teachers’ discussions of struggling students and how they shaped teacher collaborative decision-making. Through discourse analysis of 187 audio-recorded discussions in placement meetings in an Israeli secondary school, the study highlights teachers` tendency to attribute blame for students` failure to others (175 blame events), mainly their students (53% of the cases). Micro-ethnographic discourse analysis found that when teachers blamed each other (17%), individual and collective face-management played a central role in their decision-making processes and outcomes. We explored the social dynamics in these discussions, using one discussion to illustrate the management of blame, related face-threat and facework, and implications for decisions. The study indicates the need for attention to blame avoidance and face issues in teacher training and PD programs and guidelines on how to manage them.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher discourse
• blaming
• facework
• teacher decision-making
• collaborative decisions

Introduction

When teachers make collaborative decisions on struggling students, the question of who is responsible for students’ difficulties is bound to emerge and shape their decisions. Attributing student failure to a teacher’s malpractice threatens her/his public image (‘face’), and s/he, as well as her/his colleagues, can be expected to engage in ‘facework’ (Goffman, 1955)—discursive moves that save face, primarily by mitigating blame (Vedder-Weiss et al., 2019). Despite the importance of face, the face-related social dynamics of teachers’ collaborative decision-making have seldom been explored. We made a move in this direction by examining Israeli secondary schools’ placement meetings. At these meetings, teachers collaboratively deliberate the academic status of individual students and make educational decisions. We explored the social dynamics in these meetings, illustrating the management of blame, related face-threat and facework, and implications for decisions made in one discussion.

This article is organised as follows. We begin by introducing the theoretical background to teacher collaborative decision making, responsibility and blame, and the concept of face and facework, highlighting the lacunas we addressed in our study. We then explain the context of Israeli placement meetings, our case study, and the discourse analysis methods we employed. In our findings section, we show the frequency of teachers’ blame avoidance and attributions across the entire data corpus before turning to a detailed microanalysis of a discussion of one student, focusing on the facework of two central participants. We discuss the connections between teachers’ blame avoidance and facework and the impact on their educational decisions and, most importantly, on their students’ educational opportunities.

Theoretical background

Teachers make daily decisions about their students. Data-based, rational, educational decision-making is increasingly advocated (Sleenhof et al., 2021; Vanlommel & Schildkamp, 2019), as is collaborative decision-making, wherein different ideologies and perspectives must be acknowledged (Bose et al., 2017). However, teachers` collaborative decisions are often based on practical wisdom (Hargreaves, 2002) rather than data or educational theories, and they do not always entail an open exchange of ideas and perspectives (Cohen Zamir et al., 2020; Sleenhof et al., 2021). While making collaborative decisions, participants’ social positioning is negotiated and thus, affects the decisions made (Verkuyten, 2000). Moreover, whereas some studies highlight teachers` attention to their students’ welfare in decision-making (Jilke & Tummers, 2018), others show that teachers’ considerations might also include other factors such as professional status (Mehan, 1996), structures, and technicalities (Oakes & Guiton, 1995), inspection (Lefstein, 2012), and parents (Cohen Zamir, 2021). The teachers are embedded in a ‘web of commitment’ (May, 1996) which provided multiple (and sometimes conflicting) commitments towards themselves, their colleagues and others. This study examined a factor that we argue is significant in shaping teachers` collaborative decision-making—teachers’ tendency to attribute blame and save and promote their public image (face) in social interactions. We examined the effect of face-dependent social dynamics on teachers` decision-making discussions.

Teachers` responsibility and blame

School life requires teachers to engage in collaborative decision-making, wherein two or more teachers discuss different decision options and select one (Keeney, 2013). Research demonstrates how socio-emotional dynamics in teacher groups shape the discourse, impacting professional learning (Louie, 2016), student labelling (Horn, 2007), and decision-making (Mehan, 1996; Verkuyten, 2000). For example, Sleenhof et al. (2021) documented decision-making meetings characterised by conflicts and heated discussions, often centred on teachers` responsibility and blame.

Teachers’ acceptance of responsibility for their students` performance has broad positive consequences (Thompson et al., 2004). However, in the face of educational challenges, teachers may hesitate to accept responsibility for students’ lack of success (Peterson et al., 2011), remove themselves from accounts about problematic students (Downey, 2015), and attribute the failure to others (Georgiou, 2008). When students do not meet expectations, teachers often attribute it to students’ ability or motivation (Downey, 2015; Peterson et al., 2011), their parents (Thompson et al., 2004; Tirri & Husu, 2002), the school, or the broader education system (Lefstein, 2012). Teachers attributing blame to factors beyond their control experience a lack of agency and are less likely to try to solve educational problems (Babichenko et al., 2021; Vedder-Weiss et al., 2018).

Scholars relate teachers’ blame attribution to the school culture: constant measurement and increasing demands for productivity, effectiveness, and accountability (Edling & Frelin, 2013; Segal, 2022). The accountability regime appears to rely mainly on external inspection, fear, and expectation of compliance (Shore & Wright, 1999). In such a climate, it is not surprising that teachers, individually and collectively, tend to avoid blame and protect each other against external blaming (Lefstein, 2012). Notwithstanding the impact of the accountability culture on teacher blame avoidance, in this study, we seek to illuminate an additional factor that has not received enough attention in the blaming literature: teacher management of personal and collective public image (face).

Teachers` face and blaming

In every social interaction, individuals take (consciously or not) a line – an expressed position on the situation and an evaluation of themselves and others regarding that situation. In so doing, they claim for themselves a positive social value—their face (Goffman, 1955). However, their face is threatened when others reject their line or evidence undermines it. To prevent loss of face, people engage in facework, defined as discursive moves that save, maintain, or repair their face and the faces of others. Facework is often unconscious and intertwined with other activities and purposes (Brown & Levinson, 1978), as well as with participants’ beliefs about or roles in an interaction. For example, Vedder-Weiss et al. (2018, 2019) demonstrated how teachers simultaneously engaged in facework and collaborative learning when they discussed their instructional problems.

Individuals often avoid being blamed because (among other reasons) it threatens their face. Without referring to the concept of face, Verkuyten (2000) and Sleenhof et al. (2021) showed how teachers’ face was threatened in student evaluation meetings. Teachers whose students struggled attempted to maintain a line conveying themselves as successful teachers. They sought to avoid being blamed for their students’ difficulties not only because they feared students, parents, and society’s criticism but also because they wanted their colleagues to think highly of them. However, these studies did not focus on the relations between blame avoidance and facework and only referred to individual processes. In contrast, we examined how blame attribution serves as facework, also referring to face`s collective aspects, i.e. how teachers work together to protect their collaborative and organisational public image from potential threats.

Research questions

Teachers` collaborative decision-making is a complicated process and is often crucial for students` academic future. Teachers` discussions and resulting decisions are shaped by socio-emotional dynamics. Previous studies have paid little attention to teachers` self or collegial considerations when making decisions about their students, specifically to their tendency to avoid being blamed for students` failure. Studies on blame avoidance have generally focused on (direct and indirect) material considerations and the accountability regime. In contrast, we examined blaming and blame avoidance as a mechanism of maintaining face and explored its effect on teachers’ collaborative decision-making. Our research questions were:

1. What are the frequencies of different blame attributions in teachers` discussions of students’ failure?

2. What are the different ways by which blame attribution serves as facework?

3. What are the implications of blaming and facework for teachers` collaborative decision-making?

Method

Context and data collection

We collected data during 2015–2016 from one public secondary school serving low- and middle-income families in a large city in southern Israel. In this school, 1,600 students are enrolled in middle-school (grades 7–9) and high-school (10–12). Their performance on standardised tests is close to average. We audio-recorded and transcribed 11 placement meetings, in which teachers deliberated each 9th-grade student, focusing on academic progress and high-school track placement. These meetings take place two or three times a year mandatory to all Israeli public schools; all class teachers, counsellors, and the (vice) principal participate. Decisions made in placement meetings (such as rejecting accelerated track requests or commencing an expelling procedure) are binding and therefore are considered high-stakes. Forty teachers and school staff participated in the recorded meetings; there were 187 discussions—a discussion per student, ranging from a few seconds to 16 minutes (3:00 minutes on average).

Analysis

We took a case-study (Stake, 1995) broad linguistic ethnographic approach to analyse the data (Rampton et al., 2007). Such an approach seeks to understand language, communication, and society through a combination of analytic techniques and various linguistic and ethnographic methods. We analysed a total of 10.5 hours of recorded data. We started by reviewing the entire corpus, carefully examining each utterance for whether it included blaming, and if so—we coded it for blamer, blamed, and blame. We further searched and logged disagreements, facework, and decisions. See Table 1 for definitions and examples of each code. The coding revealed general blaming and facework patterns. We then used detailed microanalysis of conversational dynamics and discursive choices in select sequences (Rampton, 2006).

Table 1. Codes.

Category/ Code	Definition	Example
Discussion	When teachers officially discuss a specific student
Mentioning of educational failure	Utterances where teachers referred to student’s failing scores or functioning	‘He already failed three classes … he will fail history too … and bible.’
Blaming	Attributing negative happenings to someone or something	‘It’s no surprise that she failed. She does nothing. (She) doesn’t stop talking and doesn’t take her Ritalin.’
Attributing blame to students	Utterances where teachers ascribe a student’s failure to the student—behaviour, academic abilities, or emotional condition.	‘He failed two classes … He plays with his phone, chats … not concentrated (on his studies but rather) engaged with everything (else) around him.’
Attributing blame to parent	Utterances where teachers ascribe a student’s failure to his/her parents—allowing disruptive behaviour, neglecting or over pressuring their child.	‘She (the mother) avoids her parental responsibility; she has never opened his notebook.’
Attributing blame to teachers	Utterances where teachers ascribe a student’s failure to her/his teacher’s practice, support, or attitude.	‘What did you do when you saw it (the student’s multiple failures)? Have you spoken to the parents? We make declarations but do nothing.’
Disagreement	A controversy, an exchange where teachers do not agree with each other or do not share the same opinion.	Teacher A: ‘I don’t think he’s (suitable) for Tafnit (the lower track).’ Teacher B: ‘of course he is.’

Face threat and facework are primarily implicit, and their identification involves interpreting intentionally ambiguous activities. When analysing face threat and facework, we focused on the publicly available projection of intentions and the consequences of that action. We mapped each participant`s line/s, searched for moves that may have threatened these lines, and identified participants’ responses to these threats (i.e. their facework), paying particular attention to blame attributions. Finally, we examined utterance by utterance how these led to the decisions the group made. Both writers analysed the participants’ moves, discussed differences, and shared select episodes and analysis with research colleagues, who acted as critical friends. The microanalysis of a particularly problematic student discussion allowed us to clearly demonstrate teachers’ face moves, but the exchange was not atypical. Generalizability from this one discussion and one school is, of course, not possible, but this case allows a naturalistic generalisation (Stake, 1995). In other words, it allows us to bring into focus theoretical relationships that may apply to many other teacher decision-making discussions (Eisner, 2017).

Findings

We begin by introducing general findings from the extended corpus of teachers` meetings. Given space limitations—and in the interest of presenting in-depth analysis—we demonstrate teachers` blaming and facework through detailed analyses of one discussion. We found blaming and facework in many discussions and selected this one because of its particularly rich facework and blame attribution and because it clearly demonstrates how students’ lives and their future learning are impacted by teachers and administrators facework.

Frequencies of different blame attributions in teachers` discussions of students’ failure

In 87% (n = 125) of the discussions, teachers mentioned students’ educational failure. We defined mentions of failure as any comment indicating the student’s lack of success meeting the class’s achievement level, academic conduct, or social behaviour expectations. Most comments did not explicitly refer to failing grades but mentioned a student lagging ‘way behind his friends’ or ‘not getting it and not even trying.’ In 87% (n = 109) of the discussions where teachers referred to such failure, they attributed blame—a total of 175 blaming occurrences (with some discussions including more than one attribution).

Students’ failure was most commonly attributed to students themselves—three times more often than to teachers (Table 2). When attributing blame to their students, teachers pointed to student achievement (e.g. ‘He failed the last two exams. He is a very weak student’), academic conduct (‘He’s always late for my classes. He forgets his equipment’), and social behaviour (‘She screams in the middle of the class, raising her shirt to show everyone her belly’).

Table 2. Blaming distribution.

Blame attributed to	Number of Attributions	Percentage from total number of blame attributions
The student	94	53.5
Student`s parents	34	19.4
Teachers	30	17.2
Management/inspection	7	4.1
Other	10	5.8
Total	175	100

In 19% of blame attributions, teachers attributed student’s failure to parents neglecting their children (‘There is no one to talk with at home’), allowing disruptive behaviour (‘This behaviour comes from his parents … .that’s what they convey’), or over-pressuring (‘His mother decided he’s got to get As in every subject, and it has exploded in her face’). They attributed blame to the education system or the school’s management¹ in only 4% of the cases.

The teachers attributed students’ failure to teachers and colleagues from the school staff (including counsellors, department coordinators) in 17% of the cases. In 73% of these occurrences (22 cases), the reason was lack of treatment or boundaries for the student, for example: ‘He behaves simply horribly, and he doesn’t pay any price, which is why he allows himself to keep behaving this way.’ In 12% of these occurrences (8 cases), the reason was lack of sensitivity or inability to support the student’s needs, for example: ‘She’s a good girl. Something happened in your class. She can be reached.’

We found disagreements about blame attribution in 55% of the cases where teachers were blamed. In contrast, we found disagreements in only 15% of the cases where teachers attributed blame to other factors (with zero disagreements where parents were blamed). We relate this significant difference to teachers` perception of blame as threatening their face and their resulting tendency to protect their own and each others’ faces through disagreements around blame attribution. We substantiate this claim in the following microanalysis.

Blame attribution as facework

The focal discussion, attended by 16 teachers (10 actively engaged), lasted 13 minutes and involved a 9th-grade female student, Edith Kraus (pseudonym, as are all names), who challenged many of her teachers. She often missed classes, and when she attended class, she frequently misbehaved, cursing and acting violently, impeding teachers’ instruction and other students’ learning. In what follows, we present the lines, blame attribution, and facework of two focal participants: Hani, the school counsellor, blamed the teachers for neglecting the student’s needs (Figure 1), and Malina, the student’s Bible teacher, and the junior-high-school coordinator blamed Hani and the school’s management for over-protecting the student, thus undermining the teachers’ authority (Figure 2).

Figure 1. Focal participants’ line, face threat, and facework (Hani).

Figure 2. Focal participants’ line, face threat, and facework (Malina).

Hani

Hani was a veteran counsellor, respected by her colleagues, and proud of her close connections with the school’s management. In the Israeli education system, school counsellors are teachers who also consult students and teachers mainly regarding students’ emotional needs. The counsellor is the highest psychological authority on the school staff but has no power to make organisational decisions. Her ‘web of commitments’ (May, 1996) is deeply attached to the students’ needs and the school management, and to a lesser extent, to the other teachers. A few weeks before the meeting, based on Hani’s advice, David (the vice-principal) and Edith’s homeroom teacher decided to give Edith one last chance before expelling her. They established a personal contract with Edith, according to which she would take exams in only four subjects, whilst in the other six, she would only attend class. Such a contract was not part of a formal school policy, and with one exception, it was the only time it was raised in the meetings we observed. At the beginning of the discussion, Hani reported some improvement in Edith’s behaviour and academic conduct following the contract. She then asked the teachers to write positive comments on Edith’s report card to encourage Edith`s further progress.

Throughout the discussion, Hani presented two lines, in accordance with her role as a counsellor (Figure 2): (1) a caring, effective counsellor, sensitive to students` emotional needs and able to promote even the most challenging students; (2) an influential and powerful member of the school staff community. However, Malina, the junior high coordinator and Edith’s Bible teacher, opposed Hani’s request, thus challenging her lines.

Hani asked Malina to clarify her refusal (‘What good will she [the student] get out of it?… How will it help?’), implicitly suggesting Malina was ignoring the student`s welfare. By doing so, Hani positioned herself, in contrast to Malina, as a caring educator seeking to do ‘good’ and ‘help,’ thereby maintaining her line as a caring counsellor. In response to Malina’s objection, Hani tried to convince her colleagues to write positive comments by highlighting Edith’s improvement, which also served to support her line as an effective counsellor: ‘There is class attendance that hasn’t been before … .There is test-taking that hasn’t been before.’

However, Malina undermined the claim that Edith had improved by noting she had attended only four lessons out of 16 and asking if this was ‘progress.’ Hani restated the positive aspects of Edith’s progress: ‘She used to be zero of 16 … and in between hitting … and cursing and swearing.’ Hani continued to argue for her request, establishing her line as a professional counsellor with a wider and longer perspective than the other teachers. However, Hani’s persistence heightened her opposition’s belligerence, and Malina blamed Hani for over-protecting Edith (see Figure 3: Transcript Conventions):

Figure 3. Transcript Conventions.

• (179) Hani: I’m saying my opinion as a counsellor because I have a point-of-view hmm first of all

• (180) Malina: [because] you have a point-of-view

• (181) Hani: [Triple-years]

• (182) Malina: of just [to pet and protect her]

• (183) Hani: [Triple-years](.)No, triple-years of where she was and where she is now

• (184) Malina: So we

• (185) Hani: And I must speak (.) and I’ll do what I must.

While arguing for her request, Hani reconstructed her line, providing three explanations of her stance. First, she spoke as the school’s counsellor, relying on her professional perspective (179). Second, she had a professional obligation to provide her specialist analysis even when it went against the majority opinion (185). Third, she had a three-year view of Edith’s progress (181, 183). Unlike other teachers who saw only fragments or moments, she could examine long-term processes, making her opinion superior to that of the other participants. While trying to convince her team, she also saved her face, suggesting her colleagues were taking a stance based on partial information, thereby damaging the student’s—and her—ability to succeed. However, Malina ridiculed Hani’s line as a caring, effective counsellor and implicitly blamed Hani for being unprofessional in protecting Edith (180, 182). Hani could have managed her opposition differently, for example, focusing on Edith and her needs, calling on her colleagues to cooperate for the student’s good (e.g. she could have said: ‘Let’s think together, what could help Edith’s progress right now?’) or expressing empathy about the inconvenience (e.g. ‘I understand your hindrance prizing a student that currently doesn’t function but … ’). Instead, Hani’s concern for her face led her to focus on her professionalism and experience (using the pronoun ‘I‘ five times in this short segment), impairing cooperation opportunities.

A different threat to Hani’s face came from Anna, the English language coordinator, who said: ‘In my opinion, it’s wrong (to write positive comments on Edith’s card). We mislead her. She gets an illusion the world conducts ACCORDING TO HER WISHES.’ During this lengthy discussion (more than 300 lines of transcript), this was the only utterance challenging Hani’s program by explicitly commenting on Edith’s educational needs, thereby threatening Hani`s exclusivity to understand Edith`s needs. According to Anna, by giving Edith unrealistic feedback, the school did not prepare her for the outside world. Anna`s comments could have opened an opportunity to discuss the pros and cons of Hani’s suggestion for the student, but in an atmosphere of constant blaming and face-threats, it was never picked up.

To sum up, Hani promoted her lines as an influential caring counsellor. Her opponents resisted her, blaming her for over-protecting, arguing her request hurt the teachers (and, as a side note, the student). By doing so, they undermined Hani’s lines and threatened her face. Hani worked to argue for her request while saving her face. She blamed her colleagues for neglecting the student`s welfare (positioning herself as exclusively willing to help her) and unprofessionally judging the student’s state (emphasising her own professionalism).

Malina

Malina was Edith’s Bible teacher and the junior-high-school coordinator, one of the most influential roles in the school. She was a veteran teacher, respected and appreciated by teachers, and dominated most meetings. In this discussion, Malina promoted two inter-related lines, in accordance with her teacher and coordinator roles: (1) a respected teacher and coordinator who did not allow anyone to disrespect her and her staff; (2) a powerful, influential coordinator (Figure 3).

As Edith’s teacher, Malina opposed Hani’s request to write positive comments on her card: ‘I personally cannot write her such a comment.’ She and her supporters repeatedly referred to Edith’s disrespect for teachers (16 times): ‘She tells her friends the teachers here are retarded’; ‘She will be interviewed in the newspaper and tell how she ridiculed the school’s teachers.’ They argued (five times) that accepting Hani’s program was humiliating to them and the school, for example: ‘So a student can do whatever she wants and do not get punished? It humiliates us as an academic staff ()pounding the table()’. The teachers’ apparent humiliation impaired their ability to consider Hani’s request. In response, Hani tried to reduce the threat to the teachers’ face by revising her appeal from positive comments to encouraging comments: ‘Not positive as positive. (For example, write) ‘I would love to see you more.’ In this initial stage of the discussion, Hani’s face had not been threatened yet, allowing her to consider her colleagues’ face and look for a compromise. However, this soon changed, when Malina and the other teachers ridiculed Hani and her mitigated suggestion, again threatening her face:

• (65) Marina (English language coordinator): We will celebrate your [attendance in the class].

• (66) Malina: [Listen to yourself] Hani, do you listen to yourself? This kid did not attend (class) all year. What’s ‘I love to see you?’()chuckles(), It’s funny.

• (67) ?: So she’ll attend

• (68) Malina: She won’t attend. But we make a fool of ourselves.

Malina personally and explicitly criticised Hani, addressing her by her name, and presenting her as unaware of the implications of what she had suggested (66). She could have negotiated with Hani about suitable wording for Edith’s card, but the suggestion to (apparently) prize a student who hurt her threatened her public image. Furthermore, encouraging Edith to attend more classes, when they were sure she would not, placed the teachers in a passive position and risked the school`s prestige. Therefore, with Marina’s support (65), Malina ridiculed Hani’s request (66), suggesting Hani caused them to ‘make a fool of ourselves’ (68).

Malina argued that a better solution to Edith’s problem was enforcing grade retention or expelling her from the school. But Hani uncovered Malina’s unsuccessful previous attempts to do so: ‘But you [singular] try to do it every year, and you received the school’s inspector [negative] reply.’ Hani presented Malina as incapable of delivering a decision, revealing her limited influence in Edith’s case and thus undermining her line as an influential coordinator. In turn, Malina attributed this to the close relationships between Edith’s mother and the school inspector: ‘If she (Edith) were someone else’s daughter, we would have treated her differentially,’ attributing the failure of her former (and current) attempts to handle Edith properly to the mother and the school management and thus saving her face.

Malina blamed the school management for interrupting her in performing her role and for hurting the organisation’s prestige by lowering the school’s graduation demands: ‘I think we ridicule ourselves … . We promote a child that will proceed to the end of 12 years, and she didn’t do (anything). MAYBE (she did the equivalent of) ONE YEAR.’ Doing so, Malina addressed the decision to promote Edith to 10^th grade made by the school’s principal and inspector, who did not attend the meeting, while the attending teachers could not do anything to change this decision. Hence, we suggest Malina’s statement had no practical role, but a predominantly social role—to save her face and the collective face of the team and the school. By doing so, she exhibited, what others termed, collective responsibility (May, 1996). Blaming the school management for hurting the school’s image positioned Malina as protecting the school, rehabilitating her face.

In sum, Malina reacted to Hani’s request as a threat to her face and her colleagues’ face, hindering her ability to compromise and find an alternative solution. She blamed Hani, Edith’s mother, and the school management for poorly handling Edith, interrupting her in performing her role, and damaging the school’s prestige and the teachers’ face. These blamings preserved Malina`s face as the protector of the school and staff (against external and internal threats), positioning her as an essential staff member, and led to the decision we now present.

How blaming as facework was involved in the decision the teachers made

Thirteen minutes into the discussion, the teachers asked to move on to the next student, and the lengthy discussion proceeded to its end. One of the teachers asked what she should write on Edith’s card. Malina replied with a clear-cut answer, ‘You should write her grade, of course.’ With this, the teachers moved to the next student, and the discussion about Edith ended. Thirteen minutes of an intensive discussion, aggravated disagreements, and mutual accusations ended with Malina’s answer, positioned as the obvious result (‘of course’). The teachers would write Edith’s grades on her report card without any positive or encouraging comments. And no one protested.

While we acknowledge pedagogical considerations were involved in the decision that ended this discussion, we argue the blaming and facework dynamics we presented above were also significantly involved. First, Malina`s loss of face because of her apparent inability to promote her policy (i.e. expelling Edith) required that she rehabilitate her line as an influential staff member, driving her to demonstrate her authority by preventing exceptional writing on Edith’s card. Second, Hani’s loss of face, resulting from Malina’s ridicule, undermined Hani’s status in the meeting and hence the status of the program she advocated, limiting her ability to negotiate other alternatives with the team.

This discussion could have had different outcomes. The team could have decided, for example, to accept Hani’s request and write positive or encouraging comments or reach a compromise of writing a warning note. Yet the intensive facework we have detailed prevented such outcomes.

In addition, we suggest Malina`s success in highlighting the teachers` and school`s reputation introduced another consideration to this debate: teachers‘ concern about how Hani’s plan might damage their collective face. Our analysis suggests the teachers’ engagement in blaming and facework pushed the discussion about the student’s welfare and educational needs (with the contrasting approaches presented by Hani and Anna) to a back seat. We argue that saving the team’s collective face by not praising a student who humiliated them and the school played a significant role in the final decision and consequently affected Edith’s educational path.

Discussion

Teachers` decisions in the meetings we observed may have been crucial for their students’ academic future. Yet studies show that making decisions, teachers consider other factors besides students` interests, such as their own and their interlocutor’s professional status (Mehan, 1996), structure and technicalities (Oakes & Guiton, 1995; Sleenhof et al., 2021), inspection (Edling & Frelin, 2013; Lefstein, 2012; Sugrue & Mertkan, 2017), and parents’ reactions (Cohen Zamir, 2021). Some of these considerations were apparent in our findings. However, we focused on an additional concern—teachers` face management. Among the teachers who participated in the study, their responses revealed a tendency to protect their face and their strategies in doing so, the central role of the teachers` face management in blaming processes when discussing student failure, and the relations between blaming, face, and decision-making. Uncovering the role face management played in these discussions leads to a more prosperous and fuller understanding of the teachers` collaborative decision-making and raises some thoughts on blame attribution and face research and decision-making practices. Of course, one cannot generalise from one case to another. Nevertheless, the analysis shed light on the role of facework in blame attribution and decision-making—a role that may also apply to other teacher groups.

For RQ1, our findings showed teachers in the placement meetings frequently addressed questions of blame. The participants tended to attribute students’ failure to others—not to themselves or their colleagues. The common attributions in our data—predominantly student capacity, effort, and behaviour—align with Verkuyten`s (2000) findings. Disagreements rarely emerged when students or parents were blamed, so distancing blame from the teachers helped them maintain a collegial working environment. Other studies similarly demonstrate teachers` tendency to avoid disagreements in their collective work (Louie, 2016).

Previous research has explicitly referred to (Gillborn & Youdell, 1999; Verkuyten, 2000) or demonstrated (Sleenhof et al., 2021) teachers blame avoidance. However, this research did not assess the prevalence of blame avoidance, nor did it demonstrate its consequences. As far as we know, our study is the first to address these questions, and our findings showed most of the discussions on student failure included teachers.

For RQ2, the findings showed the different ways blaming and its avoidance served as facework. Certainly, facework was not the teachers’ sole motivation. Each participant played a role in the interaction (embedded in different web of commitment): the counsellor was committed to advocating for the student, whereas the classroom teacher was concerned with classroom management. Each position advanced a different line and led to its own facework. From this perspective, we interpret Malina`s refusal to ‘prize’ a misbehaving student and Hani`s rejection of the accusations of being too soft as blame avoidance resulting from their roles and the need to protect their face. Thus, whereas the blaming literature has related blame avoidance to direct or indirect material considerations (Vasilopoulou et al., 2014; Weaver, 1986), our findings call for greater attention to non-material concerns.

Blaming also relates to facework via collective facework. Malina’s blaming of Hani, Edith’s mother, and the school management for poorly handling the case was related to her claim about the damage to the school’s prestige and the teachers’ group face (see line 68). The study of face generally refers to individual face threat and facework. However, in collaborative decision-making discussions, the group’s face is also at stake, as decisions may have implications for the group (and not only individual participants). Thus, as we showed, in such settings, teachers may engage in collective facework, by which we mean discursive moves saving or promoting the teacher team’s or school’s face.

For RQ3, we showed how teachers’ face considerations dominated the discussion and affected its result. We found similar consideration in many other discussions we observed. The teachers` intensive facework was involved in their opposition to Hani`s plan, not less and perhaps even more than pedagogical consideration. It also shaped how Hani handled her opposition. We are not suggesting these teachers did not care about their students or were bad educators. Rather, we acknowledge that facework is inherent to every social interaction. The participants’ lines represented their educational role, and their arguments were as reflective of their true beliefs as of the facework they employed. The question is whether they missed opportunities to explore others’ beliefs and suggested actions due to facework. We argue this was the case in the discussion we analysed; when facing face threat, both Hani and Malina held steadfastly to their opinions, preventing negotiation or compromise that could have better served the student.

Although we do not have evidence on the impact of the teachers’ final decision, we argue it could have had significant implications for Edith’s academic trajectory. Her contract gave her a way to cope with school’s requirements (see Archer et al., 2003), but it also distanced her from school life, from most of her teachers (especially those teaching the subjects she was not required to be tested on), tightened the school’s inspection on her, and, probably, limited her academic opportunities (Reed, 2005). The positive comments Hani advocated could have communicated to Edith that even though she studied on exceptional terms, the teachers still considered her their student and cared for her. In contrast, the decision to write grades with no comments could have communicated to Edith that she did not have the teachers’ support and had been left to her own devices. Based on what we know about Edith from the discussion we analysed, we doubt her ability to cope with this on her own.

Contribution and implications

Previous studies presented blame avoidance as the outcome of the social reality of fear of inspection and the neoliberal accountability regime (Lefstein, 2012; Thrupp, 1998). Our findings highlight another explanation for blame attribution in teacher discourse—teacher management of their individual and collective face. Moreover, while other studies have examined the role of teachers` facework in their professional development (Vedder-Weiss et al., 2019), we demonstrated its significant implications for their educational decision-making. We showed how teachers’ blame avoidance and facework pushed aside other considerations, affecting their decisions. This may have an important practical implication—teachers’ facework may directly affect their decisions and, subsequently, their students’ opportunities. Our study also adds to the literature on teachers‘ collaborative work. Previous research has focused on the role of teachers“ educational approaches (Bannister, 2015; Horn, 2007) in shaping pedagogical discussions. Our findings suggest that when examining teachers” collaborative work, we should account not only for pedagogical perspectives but also for teachers’ perspectives of themselves, their colleagues, and their school—the lines they take and the ways their faces are threatened and defended.

Based on our findings, we call for further examination of three research aspects. First, studies of teacher blame attribution dynamics should consider social considerations, specifically, teachers’ face. Second, since the local and broader culture highly impacts teachers` collaborative work, further research is needed to explore teachers` blame avoidance and facework across schools and countries. Third, we suggest further investigation of the notion of teachers’ collective face, specifically its management in teacher discussions, and its implications. Our study stopped at the decision-making stage, but future studies could continue to follow students after decisions have been made to examine the long-term effects of teachers’ facework in collaborative decision-making on their students’ well-being and educational opportunities.

Finally, since facework is essential for teacher relationships and well-being and is an integral aspect of any social interaction, we do not suggest teachers refrain from facework when they engage in collaborative decision-making. However, developing an awareness of—and openly addressing—such social dynamics can help teachers manage them to best serve their students` education. Future intervention studies can examine whether discussing such issues with teachers has implications for their decision-making and students’ progress.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation [1180/18].

Notes

1. Defined as personnel officially authorised to make organisational decisions, including school principal and vice principal, school inspector, and other district and ministry administrators.