Good teachers on dangerous ground: towards a new view of teacher quality and professionalism

Abstract

Ideas about what makes a good teacher are important in thinking about educational reform, and have come into focus recently. These ideas are contested and open to change. The first part of this paper traces models of the good teacher in Australia from the colonial-era good servant, through an ideal of the autonomous scholar-teacher, to contemporary lists of teacher competencies. The second part looks more closely at the incoherent but insistent way the good teacher is now defined under neoliberal governance by teacher registration authorities. The third part of the paper makes proposals for a new understanding of good teachers: based on understanding the labour process and occupational dynamics of teaching, the intellectual structure of Education studies, and the overall logic of education itself.

Keywords:

• competency
• initial teacher education (ITE)
• labour process
• neoliberalism
• professionalism
• quality
• teacher registration
• teachers

Acknowledgements

I have drawn ideas from many contributions to the 2008 ‘Good Teacher’ seminars. I acknowledge specifically the presentations by Craig Campbell, Susan Groundwater-Smith, Jo-Anne Reid, Lesley Scanlon, Terri Seddon and Tony Welch, as sources of ideas used in this paper. Though no-one is to blame for this text except me, it is an attempt at synthesis of a multi-faceted discussion, and I am grateful to all who have shared in it. My thanks particularly to the organizing group, which has included, over the past year, Di Bloomfield, Robyn Ewing, Kelly Freebody, Debra Hayes, Lesley Scanlon, Geoff Sherington, Louisa Smith, Richard Walker and Deborah Young. I am also grateful for the help of my research assistant, John Fisher.

Notes

1. Known as MCEETYA, the ministerial council on employment, education, training and youth affairs. After the abolition of the more widely representative Schools Commission, this became the major forum for Australian educational policymaking in the last two decades.