Public Trust and Education: Teachers and Their Work

Abstract

The borderline between what is the responsibility of the ‘private’ (e.g. parents) and the ‘public’ (e.g. citizens) in regard to education is unclear and shifting, and so we share the Newman and Clarke (2009, p. 2) position about what they call ‘publicness’: As a way of talking about the combination of things, ideas, issues, people, relationships, practices and sites that have been made public. Such things, people, and issues get made public by a variety of means, but all of them involve processes of making visible matters of connective concern. Public issues or problems (objects) imply publics to take an interest in them (subjects) and these are connected by institutions, relationships and practices (mediums).