Teacher pay-for-performance policies have been introduced in many countries in order to improve the quality of the teacher workforces, which has been considered as one of the most essential determinants affecting student achievement. Based on free-market economic principles, teacher pay-for-performance aims to improve the competitiveness among teachers through competition. South Korea adopted a teacher pay-for-performance policy in 2001. Since then, the government has tried to change the rank- and seniority-centered single salary system into a performance-based payment system. Korean policymakers have tried to emulate teacher pay-for-performance in the US and UK. However, such policies cannot be exactly replicated across countries. A policy transferred across borders is transformed within the new variegated and dynamic situations. Teacher pay-for-performance policies are implemented in different ways in different contexts.
In order to explain this phenomenon, this study employs policy mobility and transformation frameworks (McCann & Ward, 2012; Peck, & Theodore, 2010, 2015). Policy mobility and transformation frameworks provide explanations of how a policy developed in a certain context moves into other contexts and is transformed into a new form of policy. Policy mobility and transformation frameworks present the theoretical and conceptual basis for a dialectical relationship between a policy and society; nevertheless, it provides very little information about how the policy actually interacts with its contexts. To investigate the process of how teacher pay-for-performance has been adopted and implemented in South Korea, therefore, there is a need to develop a more analytical and practical framework. Focusing on both policy texts and their contexts, this study investigates the processes and effects of policy mobilization and policy transformation by analyzing various types of documents related to teacher pay-for-performance, published by both proponents and opponents.
The relationship of teachers’ unions and the South Korean government, conditions of teaching, and economic changes since the Asian financial crisis are examined as contextual factors for explaining why Korean policymakers have adopted teacher pay-for-performance and how the policy has been transformed and adjusted to the unique setting of Korean society. In particular, teacher union resistance has functioned not only as an obstacle to such policies in education, but also as a driving force behind their transformation and adaptation to the South Korean context. For exposition, the transformation of teacher pay-for-performance policy can be roughly divided into five phases: introduction, institutionalization, intensification, inflation/expansion, and indigenization. In each phase, the policy has been carried out with different approaches and strategies to reach the intended goal. And also, forms and degrees of resistance have also been changed along with the change of the policy.
First, in the introduction phase, teacher pay-for-performance is introduced by the government and encounters strong opposition from opponents, especially teachers’ unions. Government officials try to negotiate with the unions to build a consensus on the need for neoliberal approach to education. Second, in the institutionalization phase, the government does not enforce the policy aggressively, but instead accommodates the demands of teachers’ unions. The open tensions between the proponents and opponents are reduced, and the government focuses on preserving the policy. Third, in an intensification phase, the neoliberal character of the teacher pay-for-performance policy is strengthened by increasing competition and government control over teachers. The government develops strategies to prevent arbitrary decisions about teachers’ performance, and to cope with challenges, such as union resistance. Opponents look for ways to fight against the strengthened policy while reducing public criticism of teachers and their collective actions. Fourth, in the inflation/expansion phase school performance payments are introduced. This contributes to diluting of resistance to the individual performance payment by expanding the focus of resistance from individual to school levels. The scope of resistance also expanded in the sense that the unions shifted the target of resistance from the MOE to the government, fighting for fixed-term teachers who are not members of teachers’ unions and building solidarity among opponents. Fifth, in the indigenization phase, the government reconfigures the pay-for-performance policy back into something resembling its original form (which had been discarded in the face of the teachers’ initial strong resistance). Indeed, the government made the policy harsher by making it possible to exclude low-performing teachers from teaching jobs, and to punish teachers who oppose performance-based bonuses with dismissal. Union opponents, however, continue to resist.