Dangers of managerialism

Education authorities must guard vigilantly against the use of standards as a tool to reduce and limit the teaching profession to what can be audited and measured. Standards should not militate against the use of diverse approaches, simplify complexities of practice, or ignore the profoundly social and contextual dimensions of teaching (Darling-Hammond, 2001). When standards are used as top-down, ‘managerialistic’ measure, rather than as a profession-owned instrument, they can constrain teaching practice and result in superficial compliance, rather than meaningful pedagogic changes.