Do teachers trust policy and policy makers?: between the rhetoric of policy and the reality of implementation in UK literacy policy since 2001

Ade-Ojo, Gordon (2010) Do teachers trust policy and policy makers?: between the rhetoric of policy and the reality of implementation in UK literacy policy since 2001. In: 9th Discourse, Power, Resistance Conference, 30 Mar - 1 Apr 2010, University of Greenwich, London. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

There is abundant evidence of the significance of trust as a factor in various types of relationship in education. Many of these studies have focused on the relationship between several aspects of trust like benevolence, reliability, competence, integrity, openness and respect, as well as school performance and student outcomes (Daly and Chrispeels 2004), application of trust factors as they affect our understanding of, - and practice in, educational organizations (Samier and Schmidt 2010) and the link between leadership, trust and performance of followers (Casimir, Waldman, Bartram, and Yang (2006).

What has, however, not been extensively explored is the extent to which educational practitioners trust the policies that direct their practice and, in effect, the extent to which they trust policy-makers. This study explores such a relationship. It reports the perceptions of literacy practitioners on the extent to which they trust the promise embedded in the various policies that have affected their practice since 2001. As a means of exploring the element of trust from the viewpoint of practitioners, the study employed a questionnaire which sought the views of participants on the degree of convergence between the promise of policies and the realities of practice. Data collected from the questionnaires were analysed using content analysis with preliminary conclusions subsequently drawn.

The study found that practitioners have little trust in policies and policy makers to deliver what they promise. They also revealed that the divergence between the rhetoric of policy and the reality of implementation impacts negatively on their commitment to, and level of satisfaction with, their practice.

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