Política para la competitividad regional

Previous sections have shown the complications of migration and migrant decision making. Part of these processes are the incentives that the UK Government offers to address shortages of teachers in mathematics, both by recognising this as a shortage area that receives extra points at Tier 2 under the 2008 Migration Act for migrants from outside Europe and by offering bursaries to all home students (which includes all EU migrants). A similar combination of shortage and migration has led to changes in other highly industrialised countries and elsewhere, as Vandeyar et al’s study of South African migrant teachers (Vandeyar et al, 2014) makes clear. These responses to teacher shortages have led to global competition for teachers and a subsequent diversification of teacher workforces, which has resulted in the expansion of research (from, for example, the experiences of modern language teachers [Kostogriz and Peeler, 2004]) to the diversity of the wider teaching workforce. This section draws upon this recent research and, by considering the implications of research in Canada and Scotland, shows its relevance to the teaching workforce in England and the migrant teachers in this study.

In both Canada and Scotland, as in England, the teaching workforce is dominated by nationals of the country itself and, research in the province of Manitoba has identified multiple levels of systemic discrimination resulting from the visible difference of migrant teachers in a provincial teaching force that is ‘still predominantly White, monolingual, and Canadian born’ (Schmidt, 2010:245). This structure normalises discourses and constructs expectations for what Puwar refers to as the somatic norm of

Chapter 2: Literature Review

spaces:

Some bodies are deemed as having the right to belong, while others are marked out as trespassers, who are, in accordance with how both spaces and bodies are imagined (politically, historically and conceptually), circumscribed as being ‘out of place’.

(Puwar, 2004:8) This leads to a construction of difference as deficit (Yosso, 2005) in a way that can make finding work difficult for individual teachers, and, in times of financial austerity, make services for internationally educated teachers (IET) vulnerable. Having worked

with colleagues at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education to provide services for

migrant teachers, Antoinette Gagne noted that ‘from 2012 to 2015 many of the services were either entirely cut or seriously reduced’ (Schmidt and Gagne, 2015:303). Critical race theory, and its use of convergence theory, usefully identifies the dynamic of these changes:

Interest convergence stresses that racial equality and equity for people of color will be pursued and advanced when they converge with the interests, needs, expectations and ideologies of Whites

(Milner IV, 2008:333) Despite research in Canada (Ryan et al, 2009) and Australia (Santoro, 2015) arguing for the importance of a teaching workforce that reflects the growing diversity of the pupil population, the majority of teachers remain white and monolingual. It is nonetheless importance to note that shortages, particularly of mathematics teachers, represent a convergence of interest that can result in mathematics departments (and mathematics PGCE courses) being superdiverse in ways not experienced in other curriculum areas.

As well as displaying a commitment to social justice shared by this study, a critical race studies perspective has sought to challenge normative discourses through the use of the counter narrative:

Chapter 2: Literature Review

contribute to the knowledge base of those often pushed to the margins in education

Milner IV and Howard (2013:542) Cho (2010) chose this perspective to document her research into the experiences of internationally educated teacher candidates who were engaged, in a way very similar to the PGCE students of this study, in a Bachelor of Education programme designed to prepare them for the Ontario provincial board. These stories demonstrate, in a way that resonates with Vertovec’s description of the complications of superdiversity, the very different ways in which individuals can be othered to ‘reveal the complexities through which they must navigate’ (Cho, 2010: 11). The importance of counter stories in challenging normativities, by illuminating the micro-experience of migrant teachers, is shown very clearly in the classroom experience of a Scottish refugee teacher:

He could remember the pupils asking him ‘what subjects are you going to take us in?’ When he answered it was English Language, the class burst into laughter. They shouted ‘What! You will end up learning English from us’.

(Smyth and Kum, 2010:515) As well as showing the symbolic power of L1 (monolingual) speakers discussed by Cho (2010), this counter narrative demonstrates the potentially devastating personal and professional effects of racist belittling and infantilisation (Puwar, 2004) that can be endured by migrant teachers of colour.

The narrative research of Janusch (2015) recounts the travails of four IETs in finding permanent positions as teachers in the province of Alberta, amongst whom is Driada, a white Ukrainian woman. These stories show the effects of visible difference, such as accent, on finding a permanent teaching position and, in Driada’s case, the complications of being white but not from a historically established migration country in Alberta. This demonstrates both the importance of aspects of critical race theory for understanding social justice issues for all migrant teachers and a need to review the binary construction of black and white. Superdiversity requires a detailed

Chapter 2: Literature Review

consideration of the way in which the category ‘white’ is defined:

The boundaries that are drawn around the terrain of whiteness (and of colour), despite the assumed rigidity of these criteria of difference, must be viewed as decentred and permeable, thus permitting a challenge to the binary categorisation.

(McDowell, 2005:98) The importance of Driada’s accent as a sign of visible difference (which signals a sort of whiteness that is not Canadian) is a good example of the importance of intersectionality in defining whiteness, which has become particularly important in the UK in the context of the arrival of free-moving white Eastern Europeans subsequent to the expansion of the EU in 2004. Questioning the categorisation and boundaries of whiteness in this way challenges the invisibilities of the somatic norm and:

[E]nables us to see White people as a racialised group which benefits from the hidden and neutral conceptions of being White and benefit from the invisible operations of Whiteness

(Lander, 2014:102) Lander shows the usefulness of critical race theory, drawn from the work of US scholars, in the consideration of the assumptions and power of whiteness in the English education system. This discussion affects all migrant teachers and usefully moves the discussion of diversity forward, to include the arrival of migrants from Eastern Europe and elsewhere as described in this chapter. It frames both public policy and interactions in all areas of the school where migrant teachers of mathematics experience challenges related to the curriculum and classroom practices.

2.5.3 DIFFERENT MATHEMATICS CURRICULA AND DIFFERENT