Abstract
Improving professionalism and teachers' professional image is beginning to figure highly on the educational policy agenda of a number of countries facing teacher shortages. This article probes and questions the language of education and educators and reasons that so much focus has been placed on expectations of teachers and teacher development that the very language of education and professional development has, paradoxically, become a significant factor in their poor status. It reasons that teachers can be recipients of disparaging ‘discourses of derision’. This personal viewpoint has been written from an Australian college teacher's perspective.