Revisiting Collectivism- Unionised Teachers Response to Individualism

The paper engages with contemporary debates on individualism and collectivism and argues that there is no necessary relationship between individualised management techniques and an individualised orientation to work and refutes a deterministic shift to individualism. It attempts to redress the gap in empirical evidence identified by Madsen (1997) and Towers (1997) by drawing on evidence from a large survey of schoolteachers and a qualitative study of a 'failing' school.It draws on three main themes, unionisation, appraisal and career development, to show that teachers a)join and participate in unions for collectivist reasons, b)that unions are integrally involved in apparently individualised management strategies such as appraisal and c)that teachers want their union to have a collective role in their career development