A critical autoethnographic study of the experience of the older secondary school teacher in England: a socio-political and emotional model of their Body without Organs

Abstract

This research explores the lives of ‘older’ secondary teachers as they inhabit an educational landscape that has changed significantly during their careers. It employs a postmodern critical autoethnographic methodology as a vehicle through which to examine their experiences, as professionals who now exist in a neoliberal, marketised model of education, where they have been commodified. The work focuses on how their experiences of education have moulded their values and identities and provides empirical evidence showing that maintaining these fundamentals is challenged and compromised in the educational landscape that they work in. There are imperatives for this study. The UK population is ageing, and people will be forced to work for longer in the future. However, professional challenges that older teachers face are driving them out of the profession prematurely. This is at a time of crisis in education, where there is a failure to recruit and retain teachers, so arresting the exodus of older teachers would partly address the significant, long-standing recruitment issue. The evidence demonstrates that older teachers experience a loss of voice and agency. They are subjected to performative regimes, that measure that which is readily measurable, in an education system that has a functionalist agenda, with an economic purpose. This regime quells their creative desires and limits their opportunities to collaborate and to share their significant knowledge and experience. Older teachers are not afforded the same promotion and developmental opportunities as younger teachers and are subject to ageist stereotypical assumptions about their continued ability to function at a high level in teaching. This is despite their will to continue to develop and seek new opportunities. The evidence demonstrates that they do not feel professionally valued, despite the wealth of experience that they have to offer, and the research reveals their voices and the significant emotional impact of this on them. Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari (2013a, b) and my empirical evidence, I construct a socio-political model of the older teachers’ “Body without Organs”. This Vitruvian Teacher model incorporates aspects of their professional lives that sustain them, together with those that significantly challenge them. The critical narrative that emanates from the research gives rise to suggestions for sustaining these teachers in fulfilling careers.