The Production of Australian Professional Development Policy Texts as a Site of Contest - The Case of the Federal Quality Teacher Programme

Oct 15, 2026

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This paper examines how teacher professional development is framed within the Australian Government Quality Teacher Programme (AGQTP) policy text and related predecessor documents. It infers the production practices behind these policies by identifying tensions that support both complex, contested and contested notions of professional development. Using Bourdieu’s field theory, the study explains how policy fields mutually shape one another. It argues the texts simultaneously promote progressive social democratic and neoliberal economistic approaches to teacher learning.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Teacher professional development and policy contestation

Globalisation, accountability, and managerial pressures

Bourdieuian approach: fields and cross-field effects

A Bourdieuian Approach: Fields, Habitus, Capitals

The Production of Australian Professional Development Policy Texts as a Site of Contest: The Case of the Federal Quality Teacher Programme Ian Hardy Charles Sturt University Abstract This paper reveals how the provision of teacher professional development is conceptualised within the Australian Government Quality Teacher Programme (AGQTP) policy text and its predecessors, and uses these texts to infer the nature of the production practices associated with the development of these policies. The paper argues that multiple tensions within these texts gesture towards support for complex and contested approaches to professional development during the policy production process. To make sense of this contestation, the paper draws suggestively upon Bourdieu’s field theory, which conceptualises the social world as consisting of social spaces or “fields”, and extensions of his theory, which reveal fields as exerting considerable influence upon one another. The paper argues that “Quality Teacher Programme” texts infer support for more progressive, social democratic approaches to the provision of teacher professional development within the educational policy field, as well as more economistic and neoliberal approaches. Introduction The provision of teacher professional development, or “PD” as it is typically described in Australian education, is currently constructed as a crucial element of school reform policies, where schooling and its quality are seen as central to the economic competitiveness of the nation. However, federal government policy texts do not frame PD provision in a uniform manner, instead revealing contestation over the purposes of teacher learning, and the ways in which such learning should be enacted. This paper draws on the Australian federal government policy ensemble primarily responsible for PD provision, typically described as the Quality Teacher Programme, and uses these The Australian Educational Researcher, Volume 36, Number 1, April 2009 •73 IAN HARDY policy texts to infer the nature of the contestation which attended the production of these policy texts. These texts include the latest iteration of this initiative, the Australian Government Quality Teacher Programme: Client Guidelines 2005-2009 (AGQTP), and its predecessor policy texts – Quality Teacher Programme Client Guidelines 2000-2002 (QTP) and Commonwealth Quality Teacher Programme: Updated Client Guidelines, 2003 (CQTP). In part, the contestation associated with the production of these policies reflects abroader context characterised by a general questioning of teacher professionalism. Such questioning is evident in the increased push for teacher accountability, and technical approaches to teacher appraisal (Grundy & Robison, 2004) . These regulatory practices in education are also a result of governments’ concerns about how to respond to globalisation. Teacher learning policies, as with public policies in general, both promote and are a product of globalisation processes and global flows of information. These processes are supported by bodies such as the United Nations, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), World Bank, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), all of which affect nation states and may be construed as examples of a nascent global policy community (Henry, Lingard, Taylor,& Rizvi, 2001) . The influence of and emphasis upon neoliberal, economistic and management-oriented approaches in such supra-national bodies has affected the nature of global flows of information within nation states, all of which engage in processes of policy borrowing (Henry et al. , 2001) . Consequently, public-sector policy production practices reflect the influence of neoliberal and managerial pressures upon governments. However, and at the same time, it is also acknowledged that those influenced by globlisation, including governments, are not simply pa

FAQs

How does the paper describe teacher professional development within AGQTP policy texts?

It shows that teacher professional development is conceptualised through the Australian Government Quality Teacher Programme policy text and its predecessor documents, revealing contested purposes for teacher learning and how it should be enacted.

What framework does the paper use to interpret policy contestation?

The paper draws on Bourdieu’s field theory and related ideas about how fields influence one another, including “cross-field effects,” to explain the nature of policy production practices.

What competing approaches does the paper say the “Quality Teacher Programme” texts support?

The paper argues that the texts infer support for more progressive, social democratic approaches as well as more economistic, neoliberal approaches to providing professional development.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Elsa