Teacher professionalism: why are we still talking about it?

Abstract

It is now more than 10 years after the publication of the monograph, The Activist Teaching Profession, which, at the time, could be described as a call to action for the teaching profession. I reflect here on how far has the profession progressed in responding to that call to action. The idea of a ‘call to action’ could be seen to born out of industrial rather than professional discourses: 10 years ago different factors were shaping teachers’ professional practice and identity and a call to action was a metaphor and a strategy to mobilize teachers. In this paper, I identify the factors that are still influencing and shaping the teaching profession and argue that different times require different responses and that current thinking and debates around teacher professionalism circulate around professional learning. In this paper, I argue that the time for an industrial approach to the teaching profession has passed. I make the case for systems, schools and teachers to be more research active with teachers’ practices validated and supported through research.

Keywords:

• Teacher professionalism
• teacher standards
• teacher continuing professional development
• teacher activism

Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge the comments made by John Furlong and Emily Mars on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

A version of this paper was presented as Keynote address at the ATEE conference, Anadalou University, Eskisehir, Turkey, 29 August 2012.

1. See, for example, the report recently completed by BERA RSA titled Research and the Teaching Profession – building the capacity for a self-improving education system (2014b).