Deskilling

Deskilling refers to the process by which educators lose their dynamic roles as curriculum workers when they no longer are allowed to create or modify curriculum. Instead, they must deliver tightly controlled, packaged, fragmented, and “teacher-proof” curricular content such as commercially produced worksheets, scripted questions, and prepackaged units. Although deskilling chiefly refers to the work experiences of teachers, this [Page 284]phenomenon has ramifications for learners and schools as deskilling ultimately discourages reflective practice, arts integration, multidisciplinary curriculum, creativity, intuition, and critical thinking. Deskilling has become a crucial issue in curriculum studies because it leads to the suppression of teachers' intellectual and moral responsibilities.

The theory of deskilling emanates from Harry Braverman's book, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, published in 1974. Braverman maintained that modern production and standardization in capitalist societies changed work from a craft to atomistic, unskilled tasks. This thesis also emphasizes workers' isolation from production and management's escalating control of workers. A decade later, critical and feminist curriculum theorists made parallel arguments by focusing on teaching as a labor process in which centralization, efficiency, and isolation have severe repercussions for the teaching profession.

Scholars assert that deskilling has meant devaluing of teachers' academic expertise and denigration of the moral dimensions of teaching that encompass caring, nurturing, and attention to children's developmental or emotional needs. Other concerns are that as teachers deliver curriculum rather than use their academic and pedagogical expertise, they will in fact lose some skills. Or teachers may be hired because they do not have strong knowledge and skills because they can be paid low salaries and will be compliant—readily following scripted curriculum and feeling dependent on the state or administration to give them curriculum. Moreover, teachers may accept their deskilled roles as the discourse of corporatism and managerialism becomes legitimized.

Scholars explain that several factors have contributed to deskilling. First, highly publicized political attacks on schooling have led to tighter, more rigid state control of education via standardized and high-stakes testing, centralized curriculum decisions, and teaching evaluated only on the basis of behavior outcomes and test results. Business also has influenced education by demanding academic standards favored by industry to further support a market economy, promoting tracking of students into either college or worker preparation, and commercializing of education through the selling of curriculum packages, achievement tests, and required television shows. Once more, corporate discourse predisposed parents to think of themselves as consumers who regard teachers as employees rather than as professionals.

A major factor in explaining how deskilling occurs is intensification. The concept of intensification describes the work conditions of teachers in contemporary schooling as affected by increased regulation. Intensification involves teachers' experiencing of expanded workloads that include manifold administrative tasks, reduction of genuine collegial opportunities, declining quality of life, and pressure placed on themselves and by others to meet managerial goals. In addition, high-stakes testing increases teachers' stress by punishing low performance rather than providing more resources to help teachers to work more successfully. Because of intensification, there is little time for creative curriculum making, and teachers need to rely on outside experts to prepare the curriculum.

...