Restructuring teachers' labour process : the case of Greece

Abstract

This paper focuses on teachers’ labour process in upper secondary education in Greece in the 1980s, as this was restructured by the introduction of prescribed curricula. The adopted theoretical approach is critical to the labour process theory approach and its development of the proletarianisation thesis. The labour process theory, we argue, studies teachers’ labour process by focusing on the introduction of standardised curricula which, as is argued, result in teachers’ proletarianisation, that is to say teachers’ autonomy is restricted and they are not able to exercise any control on their labour process. We argue that labour process theory does not conceive teachers’ labour process as a production process and consequently does not take into consideration the relations in production. Hence, we argue, that teachers’ labour process is shaped, apart from the curriculum, by the parameter ‘students’ and, more specifically, by ‘students’ cultural capital’ and habitus towards knowledge.