The role of professional judgment in the local inspection of schools: a study of six local education authorities

Abstract

Over the last five years, professional judgment ‐‐ as it relates to education and schooling ‐‐ has become increasingly politicized and problematic: politicized because of the structures of public accountability that now surround it; problematic because of the unresolved tensions between these structures and the ways in which professionals have traditionally exercised their judgment. This paper offers an analysis of these unresolved tensions as they relate to the changing role of a particular professional group and is based on evidence gathered by the authors in the course of an ESRC‐funded programme of research. Our starting point is the situation of local education authority (LEA) advisers/inspectors in a time of transition. That situation has tended to be characterized in terms of a general shift from advice to inspection and a more specific shift from implicit criteria for judgment to explicit criteria for judgment. However, the evidence we have gathered from interviewing over 70 LEA advisers/inspectors across six LEAs leads us to conclude that preoccupation with the surface features of the implicit/criteria issue can lead to a caricaturing of the nature of professional judgment. The production of public lists of criteria is, we argue, driven primarily by social and political considerations, and we need to look beyond these if we are to resolve the tensions around local inspection. The working of professional judgment, as perceived by those who exercise it, is the prime focus of this enquiry. There is, we argue, a strong tacit component to professional judgment that cannot be circumscribed by the simple expedient of making explicit the criteria by which it is supposed to operate. No framework can eradicate the unpredictability and diversity of professional judgment without also spiriting away the very process of judgment itself. The local inspection of schools ‐‐ whether conducted by the LEA or others ‐‐ should, we conclude, be based on a much clearer understanding of what constitutes professional judgment and has, therefore, to confront theoretical and practical issues that are rarely explored seriously within the current policy debates.

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