Reclaiming the Agenda of Teacher Professionalism: An Australian experience1

Abstract

In response to wide ranging social and political conditions a variety of school reform and teacher professional development activities have been implemented across Australia with the view of revitalising teacher professionalism. In this paper I argue that during the late 1980s and early 1990s award restructuring and school reform have provided the political and professional conditions to facilitate the development of a public debate regarding teacher professionalism and its enactment within educational institutions and bureaucracies. Furthermore, these activities provide the opportunity for teachers collectively to be active in reclaiming the agenda of what counts as teacher professionalism. In this paper I use the experience of two national Australian projects The National Schools Network and the Innovative Links Between Schools and Universities project as exemplars of how teachers, both individually and collectively, have been active in the project of reclaiming the agenda for teacher professionalism in Australia.