Teacher quality, teacher effectiveness and the diminishing returns of current education policy expressions

This paper engages with an overt policy storyline, namely that the effective classroom teaching practice(s) of quality teachers not only corrects for but overcomes post-Fordist capital insecurities. Increasingly considered the sole and only solid foundations needed to enhance student achievement as preparation for twenty-first century economic intricacies, notions of teacher quality and teacher effectiveness specifically target classroom instruction as the encounter of influence ripe for change singling out teacher education for policy action. In using aspects of critical theory, the paper explores how contemporary education policy discourse treats notions of teacher quality and teacher effectiveness. The paper situates its argument within a critical framework, bordered by the reference points of “governmentalization” and a “logic(s) of practice”. In doing so, the paper canvasses the two major discourses of reform in education policy, highlighting the dominant influence of technocratic conceptions of “the teacher” and their role in a nation’s economy. An upshot is the resultant attenuation of complexity in matters related to teacher quality, teacher effectiveness, student achievement and the part they all play in a new world of economic instability.