The ‘shape’ of teacher professionalism in England: Professional standards,performance management,professional development and the changes proposed in the 2010 White Paper

Teacher professionalism in England may be considered to have been shaped by the set of professional standards, and the accompanying statutory performance management system, introduced by the Labour government in 2007. More recently the coalition government's 2010 White Paper, The Importance of Teaching, announced reforms that will potentially re‐shape teacher professionalism. In this article I examine the ‘shape’ of teacher professionalism in England, as defined by the professional standards. I reveal it to be a lop‐sided shape, indicating a professionalism that focuses predominantly on teachers’ behaviour, rather than on their attitudes and their intellectuality. Presenting my conceptual analysis of professionalism, and examination of its link with professional development, I consider whether—and to what extent—teacher professionalism may in fact be shaped by government‐imposed reform. I conclude that ‘enacted’ professionalism may be quite different from ‘demanded’ professionalism, and shaping professionalism involves a complex and indecipherable process that is better understood by examining the process whereby individuals develop professionally.     

Inbound,outbound or peripheral: the impact of discourses of ‘organisational’ professionalism on becoming a teacher in English further education

This article explores constructions of teacher identities at a time of significant changes to public service professionalism. The article draws on different discourses of professionalism, contrasting ‘organisational’ and ‘occupational’ professionalism, with discourses of ‘personal’ and ‘critical’ professionalism, to explore changing meanings and enactments of teacher professionalism in the 2000s. Narratives of three novice teachers, followed over eight years, are used to consider the impact of dominant discourses of ‘organisational’ professionalism in English further education, resulting in inbound, outbound and peripheral trajectories. In response, the article considers how practitioners might engage critically with current changes, arguing that it is necessary to work with what matters to teachers, such as their relations with students, teaching and learning and subject specialism. Such work might create, at least temporarily and locally, spaces in which more favourable conditions towards socially just and enabling educational practices can be worked towards.     

Service learning: preparing teachers to understand better culturally and linguistically diverse learners

Almost a decade ago, the new subject of citizenship was created in the English National Curriculum and several universities were funded to train teachers in this new subject. This presented a rare challenge, namely how to train people to teach a subject that did not exist in schools, and in which they were unlikely to have a specialist degree. In this article we have taken the opportunity afforded by the tenth birthday of the report in which Crick recommended this curriculum reform to reflect on that experience from the perspective of teacher educators. Through reflecting on the case study of citizenship education in England we highlight several themes that are of more general interest to teacher educators. The key issues that have emerged in this case study relate to the general problems of translating central policy into classroom practice; the nature and aims of subjects in the curriculum; and the identities of teachers in secondary schools. The article illustrates how teacher educators responded to the formidable challenge of creating (or at least contributing to) a new subject and a subject community.     

Bullets or butterflies? Teaching, research and knowledge creation

This article explores current debates about the development of teaching and learning in the UK. The author examines how these debates are mirrored in discussions about teacher education and notions of professionalism and professional development. There is an account of the history of thinking about pedagogy in the UK, with a particular focus on the work of Lawrence Stenhouse and his ??teacher as researcher?? conception of curriculum and teacher development. The author argues that this is a strong and useful model for the development of pedagogy. The ??teacher as researcher?? model is offered as a framework that integrates many different perspectives. The article concludes with a discussion of the blocks and facilitators to this vision of the teacher as researcher being adopted.     

Subject and curriculum in Chile: a historical political perspective

In this article, addressing the curriculum will involve analysing and discussing the configuration of a subject, who has developed himself or herself within a historical–political context, in which a dominant culture has reproduced itself through the official curriculum. Bearing in mind such a framework, the text will follow the journey of this subject through the Latin American continent, specifically through the history of Chilean education. The aim is to understand the situated curriculum as a cultural field of power forces reproducing a subject with an ‘ideal’ education, which has been invented by a dominant power since the conquest of America, the ideals of the Modern Nation State, and was finally captured by neoliberalism and commodification of education.     

"双主体"教学观在中学数学教学中的应用

“双主体”即教师和学生都是教学的主体。作者在这一新的教学观指导下 ,旨在从探究式教学实践中探索中学数学教学改革的新途径 ,从而达到培养学生创新意识的目的。     

Critically-oriented pedagogical tact: learning about and through our compulsions as teacher educators

The work of critical teacher education centers on making sure future teachers learn to be critically-oriented practitioners. In this article, I assert that this sort of learning must first begin with the critical teacher educators themselves, and that much of the most fruitful learning manifests itself in the teacher educator’s compulsions. Drawing on a key finding from a phenomenological study that focused on cultivating pedagogical tact in teaching, I suggest that the ways in which I compulsively strategized at times limited what I could accomplish as a critically-oriented teacher educator; that each of us as teacher educators have compulsions that limit just as much as they make possible; and that our examinations of these compulsions are important for our students’ growth as critically-oriented practitioners.     

学科理解方式:教师培训的重要内容

课堂教学改革要求教师具备与传统教学不同的学科理解方式。正是教师在学科理解上的诸多局限直接遮蔽了教师的视野,禁锢了教师的认识,限制了教师的能力,并成为严重制约课堂教学改革向纵深推进的一大瓶颈。课堂教学改革向纵深推进的重要突破口就在于:将学科理解方式纳入教师培训的重要内容,首先在学科教学领域进行一场正本清源的认识运动,改变和突破教师对诸如学科的精髓和灵魂、学科的多重结构和学科的核心能力等问题的基本认识。     

Independent teaching work to cooperative teaching: A new paradigm introduced in the Portuguese educational system (1894–1895)

With this article we intend to fill a large gap that exists in the field of educational research – examining the history of teaching. We chose a critical historical moment that initiated the great labour transformation in the exercise of the teaching profession. In this context, we investigated the pedagogical benefits introduced by the Portuguese educational system by the class regime promulgated in the 19th century with the reform that introduced the class system, enacted in the nineteenth century.

This change is a landmark in the history of teaching. We tried to study what had changed in the workplace to realise the division of teaching. How did teachers relate to each other and to their work in each working system? What social links are required by each of the working systems and what implications do they have for how teachers behave? What place (role) does the teacher play in the production chain? What skills (competences) are required in their working position?

The system change that was enacted in the nineteenth century created a new division of labour that called for dynamic labour, diametrically opposed to the traditional and established practice. This curriculum revolution not only brought new demands in teaching but also had consequences in terms of professional identity. From that point forward, being a teacher no longer had the same reference, “if you know – you do it well”. This has radically changed. Being a professional in education is no longer a purely individual act involving inter-subject intervention. They now have to act inter-individually with the intention of being multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary. They have to break through subject boundaries and dualities. The professional skills required by the job in the new employment scheme launched a new challenge in learning (teacher training) and in the exercise of the profession. Reflection on the new type of qualifications is still necessary and remains to be explored. Are the educational workers aware of this?     

Teachers’ voice,power and agency: (un)professionalisation of the early years workforce

This article examines Slovak early years teachers’ concerns with conceptions of teacher professionalism. It suggests that there is a mismatch between understandings of professionalism, policy aspirations and the attitudes of teachers to their own professionalism, and that this mismatch fuels early years teachers’ sense of agency. These tensions between conceptions of professionalism, teaching practice and actual working conditions have led to a ground-up approach to self-governance within the early years teacher workforce. We analyse teachers’ discussions in an early years online forum of 12,500 members that was started and remains governed by the teachers themselves. It represents in itself a very particular attitude and response to the need to determine what it means to be a professional teacher. This analysis examines intersections of policy, quality and professionalism, and highlights considerations of power and voice, and the complexities of uncertainty and change. The article concludes with the suggestion that teacher attitudes, power and agency are impacted in unpredictable ways by the policy landscape.     

The dialogic space offered by curriculum-making in the process of learning to teach,and the creation of a progressive knowledge-led curriculum

There is widespread system response to the perceived needs of education for twenty-first century, where learning-to-learn is privileged and schools are organised to prepare young people for work. One casualty of such skills-led teaching is deep thinking about curriculum questions and the knowledge contents of teaching in relation to the needs, motivations and experiential knowledge of students. In this paper we argue for greater conceptual clarity between curriculum and pedagogy, and between the worlds of children’s experience and disciplinary knowledge, in order to deepen teachers’ understanding of the practice of teaching. The paper shows how using the conceptual tools of curriculum making is key to becoming, and developing as a teacher. This paper supports subject specialism in teaching in a manner that respects the social and cultural capital of young people and their role in knowledge creation together with the emancipatory significance of gaining epistemic access to disciplinary knowledge.     

‘Teacher as Professional’ as Metaphor: What it Highlights and What it Hides

This article is concerned with the downsides of using the language of professionalism in educational discourse. It suggests that the language of professionalization can be a powerful rhetorical device for promoting welcome and necessary changes in the field of teaching but that, in doing so, it can unintentionally misrepresent the work that teachers do. Taking as a theoretical framework Lakoff and Johnson's metaphor theory, the article argues that ‘teacher as professional’ should be seen as a metaphor of teaching on par with other metaphors familiar from the history of educational thought. What metaphors of teaching have in common, the article advances, is that they systematically highlight certain aspects of teaching while hiding others. The significance of this conclusion is twofold. Appreciating the limits of the ‘teacher as professional’ metaphor provides guidance about how to use more effectively ‘professionalism’ as a normative standard for promoting change in teaching and teacher education. Second, appreciating the metaphorical character of ‘teacher as professional’ has heuristic value in that it offers a novel explanation for the controversial trend towards conceptualising teaching in narrowly instructional terms.     

对语文教学模式改革的思辨

在新课程背景下,构建新型的语文教学模式产生了偏差,文章从学生质疑与主体地位、自读自悟与阅读教学、教学模式与操作评价三个维度进行思考与辨误。在语文教学中,突出学生的主体地位并非只是以学生提问教师为标准和标志,而是以教师与学生、学生与学生之间的对话交流、充分互动为准绳;自读自悟,应该有教师的方法指导,并且必须兼顾听说读写训练,共同构筑语文的基本能力结构,如缺其一语文能力就不完整、听说读写四者互动互促产生的系统效应就会丧失;语文教学的模式应具有多样性、差异性,其采用也必须因文制宜、因课取式、因人而异,从而高效地实现语文教学的目的。     

Micropolitical literacy: reconstructing a neglected dimension in teacher development

Teachers’ professional learning takes place in an organisational context, in which issues of power, influence, and control can play an important part. In this article, we argue that learning how to deal with these inevitable micropolitical aspects of their work lives, constitutes an important dimension in teachers’ professional development and needs to be included in any appropriate theory on teacher development. We describe this ‘political’ learning process as the development of micropolitical literacy. Although the development of micropolitical literacy may be stimulated and intensified by particular policy measures or reforms, as a learning process it starts at the very beginning of the teacher career. Using the micropolitical perspective as a theoretical framework, we will illustrate this by presenting the results of an interpretative analysis of one primary teacher's story about his first years in teaching.     

Intersections of race and sexuality in a teacher education course

This paper examines the ways that one group of US pre‐service teachers, enrolled in an alternate route teacher education class, expressed and challenged each other’s contradictory discourses about teaching for social justice. Particularly significant are the many ways that this group of students enacted subject positions around race and sexuality as various combinations of African American, White, gay, straight, lesbian, Christian, and as members of this class. Epiphanic moments about race and sexual orientation are examined to illuminate the ways that subject positions were contested, reified, or renegotiated in order to preserve a sense of community within the class. This research demonstrates the ways that social justice teacher education differentially positions people who have been historically marginalized and how it can at times reify a hierarchy of marginality.     

Problems and prospects for primary school teacher-professionalism

Groups of academics, school practitioners, L.E.A. advisers and consultants — members of the Association for the Study of Primary Education — were interviewed about how legislated change is affecting teacher (primary-school) professionalism. A range of views was expressed, though three tacit theories of teacher professionalism were found to dictate many opinions. Most people believe that professional associations and other interested bodies need to work jointly to remedy public misperceptions of teaching generally and primary school teaching especially.     

院校协作式校本课程开发与教师专业化——以香港小学常识科科学探究课为例

上世纪90年代以来,香港一直致力于教学改善。教学改善以学生的发展为终极目标,这对教帅工作的专业化提出了更高的要求。教师唯有主动地在教育实践中产生一定的有创新意义的活动,才能更好地把握教育变革的脉搏。伙伴合作式校本课程开发的主旨在于通过大学研究员与教师合作,双方共同经历思考-行动-反思的过程,以促进教师专业自主性的方式优化教学。     

Upgraded curriculum? An analysis of knowledge boundaries in teaching under the Swedish subject-based curriculum*

This article offers a contribution to the current debate about knowledge and the curriculum, especially initiated by social realist writers. The enacted Swedish subject-based curriculum for compulsory schooling is examined and is also used as a significant case with the aim of discussing practical implications of social realist claims regarding knowledge and the curriculum. Video-recorded lessons from grade six in six different Swedish schools, in combination with teacher interviews, are explored within the scope of a curriculum theory framework with the purpose of illuminating dominant patterns of knowledge boundaries and knowledge conceptions. The study shows how the Swedish subject-based curriculum frames teaching in a direction where a disciplinary knowledge conception with fixed knowledge boundaries predominates over other knowledge forms. The subject-based curriculum also appears to produce an ‘overloading’ of content, which implies that pupils’ questions and experiences are avoided and dismissed in the teaching practice.