Teachers’ Careers and Comprehensive School Closure: policy and professionalism in practice

Abstract

This paper presents tape‐recorded material obtained from ethnographic interviews conducted with two secondary school teachers in an urban working‐class school. It illustrates how their careers were made and unmade during a particular historical moment, exploring the experience of the closure of a comprehensive school in the context of falling rolls and monetarist state policy. The collapse of their (and others') vertical, horizontal and moral careers is presented. The teachers' crises of motivation are outlined, together with the practical accomplishment of transfer to other schools within the authority. In conclusion, the social class position of these teachers is explored—whether their experience pushed them ideologically and culturally closer to their students and the working class, and away from the New Right state and its policy.