Teacher professionalism: why are we still talking about it?

It is now more than 10 years after the publication of the monograph, The Activist Teaching Profession, which, at the time, could be described as a call to action for the teaching profession. I reflect here on how far has the profession progressed in responding to that call to action. The idea of a ‘call to action’ could be seen to born out of industrial rather than professional discourses: 10 years ago different factors were shaping teachers’ professional practice and identity and a call to action was a metaphor and a strategy to mobilize teachers. In this paper, I identify the factors that are still influencing and shaping the teaching profession and argue that different times require different responses and that current thinking and debates around teacher professionalism circulate around professional learning. In this paper, I argue that the time for an industrial approach to the teaching profession has passed. I make the case for systems, schools and teachers to be more research active with teachers’ practices validated and supported through research.     

What is Plan B? Using Foucault's archaeology to enhance policy analysis

Many governments in Western democracies conduct the work of leading their societies forward through policy generation and implementation. Despite government attempts at extensive negotiation, collaboration and debate, the general populace in these same countries frequently express feelings of disempowerment and undue pressure to be compliant, often leading to disengagement. Here we outline Plan B: a process for examining how policies that emerge from good intentions are frequently interpreted as burdensome or irrelevant by those on whom they have an impact. Using a case study of professional standards for teachers in Australia, we describe how we distilled Foucault's notions of archaeology into a research approach centring on the creation of ‘polyhedrons of intelligibility’ as an alternative approach by which both policy-makers and those affected by their policies may understand how their respective causes are supported and adversely affected.     

Observation of teaching and learning: teacher development or micropolitics and neo-Fordism

Ethnographic research in a further education college (College X) between 2000 and 2005 was designed to uncover the impact of the Common Inspection Framework (the inspection framework for all post-16 non-higher education and training) on the Observation of Teaching and Learning (OTL) process within the college. Such research indicated that the assumption of narrow pedagogies by observers of teaching, in line with the expectations of the college observation policy, had minimised the effectiveness of the process because it caused OTL to become neo-Fordist and micropolitical in nature rather than a means for lecturer development. This was the product of top-down policy and procedure within College X, but also an over-controlling local Learning and Skills Council (LSC) and Ofsted inspection framework which limited the extent to which senior managers were able to accommodate different learning contexts within the OTL process. The clear implication of research in College X was that improvements in teaching and learning require inspection and observation processes to focus on subject-specific pedagogy and professional values rather than bureaucratic procedures and narrow pedagogies.     

广西高职高专院校教师专业化相关理论与特点研究

专业分工促进了专业化,教师的专业发展带来了教师专业化,形成了教师的专业化标准：专业知识与技能应用、职业伦理、专业自主、专业联盟。在这些标准下,广西高职高专院校教师专业化的特点应当主要体现在：面向地方、面向企业、工具性语言的应用和民族心理资源的影响等诸多方面。     

Appropriating professionalism: restructuring the official knowledge base of England’s ‘modernised’ teaching profession

The present paper examines efforts by government and government agencies in England to prescribe and control the knowledge base of a teaching profession that has, under successive New Labour administrations since 1997, been subjected to ‘modernisation’. A theoretical framework drawn from aspects of the work of Basil Bernstein, and of Rob Moore and Lynn Jones, is drawn upon to examine in some detail one key aspect of this ongoing process of governmental appropriation of professionalism: the specification by the Training and Development Agency for Schools of new ‘standards’ for both initial teacher training and teachers’ subsequent career progression. It is argued that although this enterprise represents itself as a species of purely common‐sense reform, it is in fact a mode of competency training that is rooted in selective appropriation of elements of post‐fordist management theory and a loose form of behaviourist psychology. The capacity of this training discourse to suppress awareness of its own presuppositions and of alternative or competing conceptions of professions and professionalism is explored.     

美国教师专业主义述评

教师专业主义是对美国教师专业发展中传统的工会主义与科层主义的驳斥,荟萃着教师的知识与能力、权利与职责、理想与精神、地位与功能,表征着教师工作的高质量、高标准以及社会对教师的高度认可。美国教师专业主义经历了四个发展阶段:前专业主义时期\"被限制的专业主义\"、自主专业主义时期\"被许可的专业主义\"、新专业主义时期\"同伴合作的专业主义\"和后现代专业主义时期\"多元共生的专业主义\"。展望未来,以专业伦理为核心的教师专业主义将成为美国教师专业发展中的主流取向。     

民主与教育学——论一种新的教师专业发展观

在相当长的历史时期内,与民主相适应的教育学主要是一种专业教育学。这种专业教育学既是适应现代性情境的一套有效的沟通与组织技艺,又与那种与官僚体制结合的群众民主(旁观式民主)相依存。然而值得注意的是,民主情境中的教育学不仅仅是专业教育学,民主本身也并非必然要求教师或教师职业进一步专业化。事实上,杜威的民主教育学就试图重构不同教育学之间的关系,以不可见的民间教育学取代传统上可见的专业教育学。当然,这种取代只有在作为一种全新的制度教育学的参与式民主的基础之上才有可能真正实现。     

教师专业发展的内涵与历史发展

通过对教师专业化、教师专业发展、教师专业性等相关概念的内在逻辑关系及其发展演变的梳理,关于教师专业发展内涵的各种诠释以及它们之间的历史转承,可以得到清晰的重构。教师专业发展是对教师专业化理路加以扬弃的选择,而教师专业性的诉求则是教师专业发展的内在依据和根本动力。教师专业发展的持续开展也有助于提升教师专业化的程度。     

专业化:教师教育的理念与策略

20世纪80年代以来,教师专业化成为世界各国广泛关注的热点之一。在这一背景下,明确教师职业的专业性,进行以专业化为核心理念和策略的改革,成为教师教育发展的潮流与趋势。本文拟从教师专业化理论的演进过程及教师专业化的核心与内涵,反思当前我国教师教育发展的现状和问题,探讨我国教师教育改革的宏观应然走向。     

国际教师专业标准改革的新趋势

2009年以来,各国纷纷推出教师专业标准新举措:引入专业性向测试、更新教师资格证书、融合教学实践途径。审视这一领域的最新发展趋势,有利于反思教师教育的可能空间,定位教师专业化的未来路径。     

试论教育学的发展与教师专业成长定位的演进

教师作为教育活动的实施者,其存在的价值与教育学的价值是一致的,可以说,教师是教育学实现其价值的中介。因此,教师作为教育学的直接受益者,其自身的专业成长除受制于社会和教育的发展要求外,教育学的发展也是影响其专业成长定位的一个重要因素。     

中小学教师资格制度：问题与出路

教师专业化是现代教育发展的必然结果,是进一步完善教师资格制度的主要依据。作为教师专业化的重要维度,教师资格制度对于优化教师队伍、提高教师综合素养、促进教师专业发展具有极为重要而深远的意义。但是,随着教师专业化时代的到来,目前我国中小学教师资格制度在专业知识、专业技能、专业情意的规定上还存有诸多隐忧,无以满足教师专业化发展的时代诉求。为此,确立非师范生教育理论知识的课程标准或学分要求、规定教育实习的时间及其评价标准、实行教师资格定期认证制度、就成为完善教师资格制度,促进教师专业化发展的必由路径。     

Teacher educators’ constructions of professionalism: a case study

This article addresses an under-researched area of teacher education by analysing teacher educators’ constructions of their professionalism and the constituent professional resources and senses of identity on which that professionalism draws. The research is an embedded case study of 36 teacher educators in two Schools of Education in England, using questionnaires and interviews. The study is framed by a broadly sociological concern with the (re)production of social patterns and relations through teacher education. The findings show that three modes of professionalism were constructed by educators within the sample group, with each deploying professional resources and senses of identity in varying ways to position individuals as credible and legitimate practitioners within the field of teacher education. The paper argues that professionalism may well be influenced by the complex interrelationships among individual biography, institutional setting, and national imperatives for teacher education.     

Teacher education futures: compliance,critique, or compromise? A UK perspective

The construct of the ‘good teacher’ has teacher knowledge as a fundamental component; but teacher knowledge is contested. Policy makers offer one version, articulated through such documents as Teachers’ Standards. However, it might be argued that this version of teacher knowledge, largely defined by national curriculum and assessment demands, does not constitute the whole of what teacher knowledge might encompass. Using a card sort research approach, this article explores what teachers say about teacher knowledge, and the implications this might have for the future of teacher education. How might the development of ‘good teachers’ be impacted in the light of these findings?     

'A democracy tempered by the rate of exchange': Audit culture and the sell-out of progressive writing curriculum

In this article, the authors draw on the concept of 'audit culture' to examine the political and professional implications for teachers emerging from contemporary, commercially distributed, writing programmes. They argue that, in adapting what began as a progressive understanding of children's writing and teacher professionalism for commercial distribution, fundamental values and concerns have been lost. Drawing on the work of James Britton, the authors assert that the market ideologies of audit culture have turned the idea of teacher professionalism on its head, naming the professional not as the teacher who continually develops her/his expertise through intellectual inquiry into the lives, strengths and needs of the children in the classroom but, rather, as the teacher who submits her/himself to constant measures of fidelity to a particlar programme, and to documentation of practices, supervision and correction. The authors argue for a return to the values of Jimmy Britton: commitment to the promotion of play, social engagmentment, freedom of thought and intellectual and emotional experimentation.