Control and professional development: are teachers being deskilled or reskilled within the context of decentralization?

"Many researchers have identified a process they call 'deskilling', which they use to describe the daily experience of teachers who have been gradually losing control of their own labour within 'low-trust' workplaces. Conversely, other scholars have found that under similar conditions, some teachers have their own ways of dealing with it which leads them towards a process of 'reskilling'. This study is an attempt to explore the actual teachers' perceptions towards their daily practice within the context of educational decentralization, a neglected area of research which needs to be further discussed and explored. This paper uses data gathered from seven schools in Guangdong Province, China as a case study to show that educational decentralization in China not only results in teachers being deskilled because indirect control is still being maintained, but also provides a small number of teachers with a competitive working environment to reskill their pedagogical techniques and educational knowledge, and to pursue good practices in teaching under the pressure of competition. All in all, educational decentralization provides a context in which teachers can experience either deprofessionalization (deskilling) or reprofessionalization (reskilling)."