Preparing Teachers as Democratic Professionals

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the concept of democratic professionalism and argues that it offers a way to frame teacher education so that it can contribute to more productively managing long standing tensions between public schools, minoritized communities, and teacher preparation programs, and to more closely realizing the democratic potential of public education and teacher education. This decolonial approach to teacher education that actively attempts to benefit from the expertise in local minoritized communities seeks to “disrupt” existing power and knowledge hierarchies and create the basis for new alliances between teachers, teacher unions, teacher educators, and community-based social movements in marginalized communities that are seeking an active role in transforming their own communities. The result is a new hybrid structure for teacher education programs that models the emancipatory vision that is often articulated by programs but not practiced.

KEYWORDS:

• Professionalism
• democratic
• decolonial

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. While these attempts to deregulate teacher education have allowed programs to operate that have low standards, efforts have also been made to increase the regulation of traditional college and university programs. The result has been the growth of non-college and university programs and the creation of a two-tiered system of teacher education accountability favoring the expansion of independent programs.

2. Managerial professionalism has led to further deskiliing of teachers’ work while using the rhetoric of teacher professionalism (e.g., Sachs, 2003).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ken Zeichner

Ken Zeichner is Boeing Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Washington and Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.