Cultivating teacher professionalism in Chinese and U.S. settings: contexts, standards, and personhood

ABSTRACT

Our global era invites research on teacher reflection that is grounded in local contexts and enriched by cross-regional collaborations. Teacher professionalism is a shared global interest that is shaped by unique cultural factors in local settings. This study examines Chinese and U.S. undergraduate teacher education student views on the criteria for and standardised measures used to assess teacher professionalism. Data analyses of participant products, specifically group rubrics and individual reflections, involved constant comparative analyses to highlight convergent and divergent themes in student conceptions of teacher professionalism within and across the U.S. and Chinese university contexts. Findings demonstrate similarities and distinctions across participant views on the professional knowledge, skills, and dispositions involved in becoming a teacher, and reveals teacher professionalism as a dialectic among contexts, standards, and persons. Context distinguishes professional practice in ways that bring meaning and relevancy to local student needs. Standards provide a shared foundation for global discourse around key elements of a profession. Maintaining a person-centred view helps ensure assessment practices keep education’s broader civic goals central. Engaging in international dialogue on the meaning of teacher professionalism across regional cultures expanded understandings of professionalism, and how it may be fostered and evaluated more effectively in teacher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Professionalism
• teacher education
• globalisation
• standards
• reflective practice

Introduction

Increasing connections across international settings invites education research that explores similarities and distinctions across regional educational aims and practices, and the role of educational policy in shaping these. In particular, teacher education needs to foster cross-regional collaborations to study contextualised perspectives, practices, and policies in relation to teacher professionalism and the role of teacher as professionals in shaping our global field. Cultural and professional perspectives play central, perhaps conflicting, roles in shaping this analytical work. It is vital to support teachers and teacher candidates in learning to integrate both in practice.

This qualitative inquiry examines teacher education student views of teacher professionalism across two distinct regions and cultures – not to generalise findings, but to understand key factors and nuances surfaced across settings, including convergent and divergent conceptions, aims, and practices. Specifically, this study examines Chinese and U.S. undergraduate education student views on the criteria for and standardised measures used to assess teacher professionalism, and the impact of such measures on teacher professional development. While this analysis contributes to efforts to create a teacher professionalism rubric for undergraduates enrolled in the U.S. teacher preparation programme, the larger aim of this inquiry is to engage with global colleagues in dialogue on this topic of shared interest. The purpose of this study is to expand understandings of the meaning of teacher professionalism across regions and cultures, and consider how professionalism may be fostered and assessed more effectively in teacher education. While the cultural contexts in this study are distinct, they are familiar to one researcher who has worked in both settings. Moreover, the three instructor-researchers’ goals converge in seeking to promote teacher professionalism with meaningful tools. This study engages across international borders in this shared work.

Theoretical perspectives

Teacher professionalism

Conceptions of professionalism are shaped by regional culture and professional standards, and the individual teacher engaging and filling the dialectic space between them. To frame this study, a definition of terms is provided. Profession may be defined as “the knowledge-based category of service occupations” that involve “tertiary education and vocational training and experience” (Evetts, 2014, p. 33). Professionals are guided by academic knowledge and grounded in a spirit of service developed through practice-based training and experience (Evetts, 2014). Professionals live in spaces bridging theory and practice. Professionalisation may be defined as “the process to achieve the status of the profession” often through standards-based education, training, and certification (Evetts, 2014, p. 34). Through the process of professionalisation, the professional is shown societal trust in their work, expected to live up to this trust, and conferred societal status.

The process of professionalisation has similarities and distinctions across specific professions. Creasy (2015) highlights that in the field of teacher education, assumptions often are made that K-12 teacher candidates will “simply become professionals as a result of completing the teacher education program” and that “professional dispositions will be automatically acquired through field experiences” (p. 23). Research on Danish and Kenyan teacher candidate professional development finds teacher professionalisation to be a highly complex process involving personal meaning-making and professional identify formation (Dahl, 2020). Such complexity invites professionals to discuss and refine continually in-field definitions of professionalism, and thereby be able to develop and refine clearer paths for processes of professionalisation.

Professionalism may be defined as committed practice to the process of becoming a professional, with accompanying standards (Freidson, 2001). Each profession conceptualises and develops a professionalism based on distinct values, moral obligations, and ethical behaviours. Professionalism is evidenced when practitioners exercise control in their work, as those who best understand its aims, processes, and outcomes (Freidson, 2001). Evetts (2014) traces the origins of the concept of professionalism to the U.S. and Britain in the early 1900s, when professions were recognised as adding civic stability through economic division of labour. By the early 1970s and 1980s, professionalism focused primarily on serving the interests of field-based practitioners, rather than clients served. By the 1990s, professionalism was reframed positively as a discourse among practitioners and those served by the profession (Evetts, 2014). By 2015 in teacher education, 22 Specialised Professional Associations (SPAs) included a “professionalism” standard, evidencing the increasingly specific criteria involved in defining professionalism across fields. Such specificity highlights the import of acquiring professional dispositions in the professionalisation process (Creasy, 2015, p. 23).

Saphire (2017) describes the foundations of teacher professionalism as teaching expertise, knowledge foundations, and cultural proficiency, and describes the fully professional teacher as supporting individual student learning and acting as a team player to improve schools as a whole. She adds that professionalism recognises multiple approaches to attaining objectives, and that “skillful practice means choosing well from one’s repertoire to match the student, the situation, or the curriculum” (p. 29). Saphire (2017) concludes that the professional teacher views diversity as an asset, and that professional development towards this aim entails a shared vision and commitment by the school, district, and regional policy. Offering a Chinese cultural perspective, Gu (2005) highlights the importance of a teacher’s intercultural experience in professional development. She concludes from research on Chinese language teachers and UK teacher educators, that intercultural experiences can cultivate in all teachers a more “balanced attitude towards tradition versus innovation”, and greater respect for the “impact of contextual and cultural factors in teaching effectiveness” (p. 20). Gu (2005) findings highlight how teacher professionalism is shaped by the regional culture, the teaching profession, and the unique teacher integrating the two.

The view that teacher professionalism is shaped by individual experiences and systematic practices is implicated in a large-scale study conducted across seven global jurisdictions that have developed comprehensive teaching policy systems, specifically the following regions: Singapore, Finland, the states of New South Wales and Victoria in Australia, the provinces of Alberta and Ontario in Canada, and the province of Shanghai in China (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017). These seven jurisdictions were selected for their policy commitment to developing high quality teachers and systems of teaching and learning, in part determined by their performance on the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). In addition to performing well on PISA, each of these systems held a high social regard for teaching, including selectivity and financial support, professional learning guided by standards and research-based preparation, system organization promoting leadership opportunities, quality teaching, and equity for all (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017). Schools exhibiting professionalism tended to capitalise on individual teacher strengths to create shared practices, thus reinforcing a shared professionalism through individual efforts and system policies (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017). Such research suggests systems that support teaching as a profession and teacher professionalism do not emerge by accident, but evolve over time through persistent individual and policy efforts.

In a Chinese context, Wong (2008) concludes from interviews with 75 teachers in the Guangdong province, that teacher professionalism is weakened by top-down reforms that result in “managerial professionalism”, rather than professionalism based on “subject knowledge and student needs … educational goals and curriculum content” (p. 278). Here again, individual “bottom-up” professional efforts matter. Lo, Lai, and Wang (2013) emphasise the importance of conferring teacher autonomy in the professional development process, so teacher professionalism is co-authored by the person-professionals working in collaboration with the state in developing standards uniquely applied in context. The authors recognise that having agency to co-author the aims and processes of teacher professionalism confers status to practitioners. This status may be viewed as a form of cultural capital forming the habitus of teacher professionalism.

Teacher professionalism as cultural capital

Cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986) is conceptualised in this paper as the socialisation processes that occur in one’s families, schools, and communities and contribute to a “continuous accumulation of abilities, materials, talents, cultural practices, inherited behaviors” (Park, Rinke, & Mawhinney, 2016, p. 649). Habitus (Grenfell, 1996) includes “ways of being/dispositions” that result from “being endowed with certain types of cultural capital” (Park et al., 2016, p. 648). This study approaches teacher professionalism as a form of cultural capital and cultural habitus. In teacher education, habitus may involve anything impacting contextualised practice, including teacher social status, experience in the classroom, or professional knowledge (Grenfell, 1996). As recognised above by Lo et al. (2013), contributing to the development or evolution of a set of professional standards entails an attained social status, conferred over time by one’s professional field. This suggests that the professional who attains such professional status also has attained a professional habitus, enriched and shaped by forms of professional cultural capital.

This framework recognises habitus as culturally and socially constructed, and teacher professionalism as cultivating a particular habitus that is experienced as cultural capital when developed and engaged meaningfully by teachers and teacher candidates. Conversely, some teachers, candidates, and students may not feel their cultures are reflected by the habitus of the learning environment or institution more broadly, as evidenced by one teacher candidate’s counter-narrative that emerged within a larger U.S.-based study on elementary science teacher preparation for underserved communities (Tolbert & Eichelberger, 2014). In this study, the candidate felt marginalised by the institution’s habitus, and drew upon her personal community’s cultural capital for sustenance, to endure the culture of the institution. The candidate received mixed program messages that teacher professionalism involves teaching for social change, yet her attempts to question inequitable power norms were not well-received or recognised. In a related study in Britain, multilingual teacher candidates’ native languages were not welcomed as funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992) to inform collegial learning, but were viewed as an obstacle to their program participation and knowledge building (Safford & Kelly, 2010).

Confirming connections among teacher professionalism, cultural capital, and cultural habitus, Dahl (2020) concluded that professional becoming for Danish and Kenyan teachers took place through social relationships with mentors and teachers, key contributors to cultural capital and cultural habitus. Moreover, Kafwa, Gaudience, and Kisaka (2015) study of teacher education in Kenya found that teacher professionalism for the 21^st century teacher is marked by creativity, innovation, and moral duty towards one’s students. Such professional traits are marked by agency and cultivated as forms of cultural capital attained through an enriched professional habitus. Yet, such creative agency can be hindered if regional systems do not confer professional status to teachers as other professionals might experience. Campbell (2019) encourages teachers to tap into their own creative resources in their professional development, yet also observes that the “conflict between individual and system problematises teacher agency in such a way that the realisation of the many restraints placed on practice may limit teachers’ sense of their professional autonomy” (p. 16). This limited sense of agency can lead to a disconnection between a teacher and one’s work, and hinder the creative process in one’s practice.

Above research demonstrates the importance for institutions of teacher education to cultivate a professional habitus that values creativity and diversity, to support the diverse individuals who enter the profession to develop a sense of professional agency. In some contexts, teachers may embrace their individual professionalism, yet feel disempowered by the regional or societal view of teaching as a profession. Research receiving survey responses from 230 third-year teachers in Ghana found a discrepancy between individual professionalism and the teaching profession as a whole. The author concluded that teachers need to “pursue an aggressive and rigorous agenda to fully professionalize their occupation” by developing “strong organizational solidarity” and taking “control of training teachers, their entry into the profession and their professional practice” (Cobbold, 2015, p. 133). A study in Sweden (Kirsten & Wermke, 2017) called for greater cooperation between local systems and teacher professional development, while paying attention to how “top-down approaches to school development effect local change” (p. 406–407). A Canadian study interviewing teachers in the provinces of Alberta and Ontario (Osmond-Johnson, 2016) found professionalism to involve a triangulated discourse among teachers, teacher associations, and broader education policy. The researchers found that teacher associations at times supported and at times challenged teacher professional agency, depending on the association’s primary mission to support the professional or the union. Such findings highlight the complex political landscape of the teaching profession and the importance of cultivating teacher agency while building political systems that support teacher professionalism.

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) offer potential for cultivating a “bottom-up” professional habitus supporting teacher agency. PLCs have served as valuable collaborative contexts for professional dialogue and innovative work, as modelled by lesson study and action research (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017). PLCs have been shown to be an effective approach to facilitate collegial learning, enhance teacher professionalism and effectiveness, and support student achievement more effectively (Jackson & Bruegmann, 2009). PLCs offer a context for discourse around the habits of the profession and the degree to which one’s culture may be recognised as a resource for learning, or not, as experienced by the candidate in the above study (Tolbert & Eichelberger, 2014). Drawing on the practice of PLCs, this study connects international teacher education faculty and students in shared dialogue to contribute to an internationally informed and shaped habitus of teacher professionalism.

Teacher education policies in the U.S. & China

Professional standards also play a central role in shaping conceptions, aims, and processes for professionalism and teacher professional development, as seen in the two contexts in this study. U.S. professional accreditation bodies play a key role in defining and recognising qualified educator preparation providers (EPPs). This process involves assessing program evidence for meeting standards for teacher preparation, including teacher professionalism. Assessment of disposition-based development can be fraught with tensions between standards and people, measurement and innovation, standardisation and contextualisation. Accreditation bodies themselves play a role in shaping the habitus of a profession and the required cultural capital to advance therein. It becomes essential to study the processes and roles of gate keeping bodies across contexts, to understand how such bodies contribute to or detract from the profession.

The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) is the professional accreditation body in the USA guiding and assessing programmes of teacher education in developing and assessing new teachers (CAEP, 2015). CAEP (2015) organisational mission is to advance “equity and excellence in educator preparation through evidence-based accreditation that assures quality and supports continuous improvement to strengthen P-12 student learning” (para. 2). CAEP’s (2018) K-6 elementary education standards for initial licensure programs highlight the knowledge, skills, and dispositional goals specific to elementary teachers, including: (1) Understanding and Addressing Each Child’s Developmental and Learning Needs, (2) Understanding and Applying Content and Curricular Knowledge for Teaching, (3) Assessing, Designing, and Planning Contexts for Learning, (4) Supporting Each Child’s Learning Using Effective Instruction, and (5) Developing as a Professional.

Teacher knowledge, skills, and dispositions are recognised as central to the process of teacher education and evaluation (Darling-Hammond & Lieberman, 2012). Teacher professionalism typically has been viewed as an aspect of teacher disposition (Creasy, 2015). Yet, research has demonstrated challenges in trying to establish standards for teacher dispositions, which are intertwined with context and individual backgrounds and beliefs (Creasy, 2015; Liu & Milman, 2013). Concerns have been raised that standards-based assessments may require, rather than inspire, dispositional growth, while the latter may lead to more authentic and sustained change over time (Mintrop & Sunderman, 2009). Poole and Wessner (2003) document their program’s efforts to draw upon InTASC standards to cultivate teacher dispositions supportive of diverse student populations. Candidates engaged in “reflection and self-assessment techniques” across courses to promote a “culture of professionalism” (p. 1). The researchers considered if and how the portfolio assessments enhanced teacher reflection, personal growth, and departmental practices. Above research demonstrates the value of and challenges met in using standards-based tools to assess teacher knowledge, skills, and dispositions, and how this process impacts teacher professionalism.

In China, teacher education and assessment has been described as following two often competing narratives for progress: modernisation and nationalisation (Li, 2012; Paine, 1992). These narratives have aligned with two approaches to teacher education discussed by Liu & Xie (2002). The authors explain that the profession-oriented model of teacher education aligns with the economic and development goals of modernisation, and focuses more on pedagogical content knowledge as central to the work of “normal” universities, or institutions of teacher education in China (Liu & Xie, 2002; Paine, 1992). In contrast, the academic-oriented model aligns with the moral and social obligations foundational to nationalisation (Liu & Xie, 2002), and focuses on the same academic curricula as non- “normal” universities. This model focuses less on the development of pedagogical content knowledge, including teacher disposition and professionalism (Paine, 1992).

In reflecting on these two aims for teacher education in China, assessment of teacher professional dispositions would seem to be more integral to modernisation and the profession-oriented model. While some Chinese researchers have encouraged modernisation and teacher education reform (Shen, 1994), other Chinese researchers have encouraged a hybrid approach merging the aims of modernisation and nationalisation (Paine & Fang, 2006). Yang (2011) encourages a blended approach that continues modern teacher education reform, while maintaining characteristics of teacher education that may be distinct to local Chinese contexts .

This study seeks to understand how Chinese and U.S. students of teacher education conceptualise teacher professionalism, and support participants in developing processes for assessing teacher professionalism. Consideration is given towards prior research highlighting the absence of criticality towards policy in Chinese academic contexts (Pan, 2009), and the recognition that critical reflection integral to the work of teacher professionalisation in the U.S. may be met with friction in Chinese settings. Conceptualisations of teacher professionalism may be shaped by the participant’s perceived ability to critique and even help develop the aims or standards they intend to meet.

Purpose

This study examines the criteria for teacher professionalism identified and assessment tools developed by undergraduate students of teacher education. This study considers the significance of global collaborations to cultivate a shared professional culture, or habitus (Grenfell, 1996; Park et al., 2016), that makes professional development more accessible to all. This study considers how teacher professionalism as cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986) may be made accessible to teacher education students of diverse backgrounds. This study serves as a qualitative inquiry that offers insights and implications for teacher preparation in China, the U.S., and globally.

Methods

This study engages international collaboration across “boundaries to develop multimodal narratives” by learning from one another’s “different epistemological and methodological approaches” and thereby, address “compelling practice and policy issues of our time” (Wells, Holme, & Scott, 2018, p. 2). The distinct Chinese and U.S. contexts offer counter-narratives (Miller, Liu, & Ball, 2020) vital to qualitative inquiry to expand perspectives and understanding over shared questions approached by different means and concluding with divergent findings.

In this study’s Chinese and U.S. teacher education contexts, course work sought to support teacher education student participants in attaining the following learning outcomes:

(1) To articulate a conceptualisation for professionalism, and how culture and stakeholders shape conceptions of teacher professionalism and professional development;

(2) To identify criteria for and develop a rubric to assess teacher professionalism, and discuss how this rubric may or may not be valid and reliable in its implementation; and

(3) To integrate cultural beliefs and professional standards by reflecting on ways in which standards support and challenge teacher professionalism and professional development.

The research questions guiding this inquiry aligned with the student learning outcomes for these curricular objectives focused on teacher professionalism:

1. How do undergraduate teacher education students in China and the U.S. conceptualise teacher professionalism? What are similarities and distinctions in these conceptions?

2. What assessment criteria do undergraduate teacher education students in China and the U.S. include in their approaches for assessing teacher professionalism?

3. How do cultural context, professional standards, and personal views shape student conceptualisation and assessment of teacher professionalism?

Data sources

Regional sites

This study’s purpose is not to compare and generalise, quantitatively, across comparable population samples, but to understand qualitatively the nature of professionalism beyond one context. As the focus of qualitative inquiry is on the “experience itself, not about its distribution in a population”, the qualitative aim of this study is to understand “the structure and character of the experience under investigation” (Polkinghorne, 2005, p. 139): teacher professionalism. In part, our site selection was based on convenience sampling, and yet also based on purposeful sampling (Merriam, 2007), in that one of the researchers initiated this inquiry at the intersection of the two regions and institutions with which she was familiar and had developed partnerships. As a current faculty member of teacher education in the U.S. site, and a previous faculty member of teacher education research in the Chinese site, each site served as familiar cultural, linguistic, and institutional context. The value of initiating research in two distinct, yet familiar regions recognises the significance of context in shaping participant experience and researcher observation of a given concept, in this case teacher professionalism. Expanding the research beyond these contexts may be possible, after developing a sense of the key factors shaping teacher professionalism, as evidenced in culturally familiar research settings.

Participants

This study involved 35 U.S. undergraduate elementary education students, enrolled in a four-year degree and two-year teacher education program in a small university campus in a largely rural state. All program participants came from towns throughout the state and planned to teach in K-6 classrooms after graduating. This study also involved 106 Chinese undergraduate teacher education students, selected through a competitive application process to participate in a one-week undergraduate teacher education summer school at a large highly-ranked urban university in China. Of total program participants, 84 were from Beijing, and 22 came from the following Municipals or provinces across China: Shanghai, Chongqing, Tianjin, Sichuan, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Hebei and Shanxi. Most of the Chinese participants planned to apply for a graduate program of teacher education research upon graduation, and very few would likely spend time as a practicing teacher in a K-12 classroom. Across both the Chinese and U.S. contexts, many program participants would be the first in their families to earn a college degree. The three instructor participants – one from the participating Chinese institution and two from the participating U.S. institution – are researchers in this study and co-authors of this paper.

Collected data

Qualitative data included (1) instructor observations and informal reflections on instructional activities and participant learning, (2) student developed rubrics for teacher professionalism, and (3) student written reflections on insights gleaned. Course time in the Chinese context involved six hours of instruction by the authors and approximately 30 hours of total summer school course time, as well as eight hours of group work to prepare for a final project. Course time devoted to the same topics in the U.S. context involved approximately six hours of classroom instruction embedded within a fieldwork course that involved approximately 30 hours total of course time, including 24 hours of field observations in local classrooms and about five hours of out of class homework and readings. Anonymous student work as data were examined after the summer school or course sessions ended.

Data analysis

Data analyses of participant products involved constant comparative analysis to highlight convergent and divergent themes (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) found in student conceptions of teacher professionalism within and across the U.S. and Chinese university contexts. Specific student work included group rubrics and reflections on key insights, and were analysed for patterned themes (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) that supported or challenged “theoretical assumptions held prior to the data gathering” (Merriam, 2007, p. 38). This analytical process involved the instructor-researcher’s review of all group rubrics and individual reflections for key themes and sub-themes, followed by the organisation and recording of these themes with their frequency in a Microsoft Word chart. Similarities and distinctions in these themes were noted across regional contexts and were discussed by the researcher-instructors. The authors developed an outline based on emergent themes and sub-themes, identified by grouping data under larger themes. In this analysis and drafting process, authors considered “discrepant data and alternative ways … of making sense of the data”, beyond already “established views”, including our own perspectives (Maxwell, 2005, p. 46). Themes not highlighted in our literature review were equally considered and documented, along with literature review themes that were found in our data.

Results

Collaboration across universities in distinct international contexts provided opportunity to recognise convergent and divergent conceptions and qualities of teacher professionalism. Data across settings evidenced participant value for professional standards in teacher education, along with their critical reflection on challenges raised by an evaluation process that may impede the development of the very qualities being assessed. Participants across contexts focused on teacher knowledge, skills, and dispositions, with key distinctions including a focus on general knowledge and knowledge of educational psychology in the Chinese context, and a focus on lesson plan development and meaningful student assessment in the U.S. context. Chinese students also highlighted the importance of emotional control/patience in teacher disposition, while U.S. students articulated the need for a social justice orientation in teacher disposition.

Professionalism rubrics

Teacher professionalism rubrics created by 10 groups of Chinese students and seven groups of U.S. students evidenced shared views on standards for teacher professionalism, while also evidencing unique perspectives on this topic. All of the groups focused on teacher knowledge, skills, and dispositions (or related terms for these concepts) as their major rubric categories.

In the Chinese context, sub-categories under teacher knowledge included subject knowledge (8 groups), pedagogical knowledge (8), knowledge about educational psychology (5), and general knowledge (9). Additional sub-categories included knowledge about culture (2 groups), students and the classroom environment (2), multidisciplinary knowledge (2), professional knowledge (2), frontiers of knowledge (2), technology (1), and educational policy (1). In the U.S. context, only one of seven groups specifically stated “knowledge” as a category, though two groups included awareness, one group included community, another relationships, and another flexibility, all of which discussed knowledge of students and their families, knowledge of the community and the culture, and how to adjust instruction to meet student needs therein. Only one group articulated the importance of knowing state requirements, including teaching standards.

In the Chinese context, sub-categories under teacher skills included communicating with students, families, and administrators (6 groups), classroom management (5), and technology integration (5). Fewer groups included lesson design (3), effective student feedback (3), and researching one’s practice (2). Having good writing skills (2) and assigning appropriate amounts of work (2) were noted by two groups. In the U.S. context, nearly all groups emphasised communicating with students, families, and administrators (7 groups), while four groups focused on organisation, including well-structured lesson plans and daily schedules (5), and being prepared to adjust one’s teaching practice in response to student needs in context (6).

Teacher disposition was an important category for group participants. Shared dispositional qualities emphasised across Chinese and U.S. student rubrics included care for students and their individual needs (8 groups and 6 groups, respectively). Chinese students emphasised emotional control/patience (6), fair treatment (5), passion for teaching (5), respect towards others (4), and a strong sense of responsibility (4). Empathy (1), justice (1), and being hard-working (1) each were mentioned once by the Chinese student groups. In contrast, U.S. students did not mention emotional control/patience, though all groups described behaviours demonstrating a passion for teaching, as well as care and respect for students and their families. The U.S. groups highlighted fairness (5), respect (5), and emphasised the importance for teachers to practice empathy (5) and social justice (5).

Student reflections

Participants across contexts reflected on the value of using their rubrics to assess teacher professionalism. A key insight gleaned through this curricular experience and articulated in participant dialogue included the reflection that standards are not unbiased but culturally shaped, and that it is particularly important for large, diverse nations, such as China and the U.S., to include as many voices as possible in the development of shared professional standards. Student discussions in China and the U.S. concluded the importance of drawing upon cultural context in developing standards-based rubrics. The Chinese and U.S. students highlighted that personal dispositions are difficult to assess, and yet the field of teacher education should continue to seek ways to develop and implement professionalism standards, meaningfully. A positive outcome for both groups included an enhanced sense of professional identity in discovering shared challenges across global settings.

Discussion

This study examines an international collaboration in identifying criteria for teacher professionalism and developing standards as an approach for cultivating and assessing teacher professional development. This study compares university student perspectives on teacher professionalism across two distinct global contexts. Commonalities and distinctions across regional student perspectives were found. Commonalities included a focus on knowledge, skills, and dispositions as central to teacher professionalism. This collaboration contributes to cultivating a shared dialogue and global habitus around teacher professionalism. Distinctions included a focus in the Chinese context on content knowledge and respect for the teacher as the knowledge holder, and a focus in the U.S. context on pedagogical knowledge and the student as the primary point of reference in learning how to best teach through differentiated instruction. Such findings highlight the importance of regarding teacher professionalism as a concept shared across regions and unique to specific locales.

Knowledge, skills, and dispositions

A shared view articulated across regional contexts was that teacher knowledge, skills, and dispositions are essential to develop and assess in meaningful teacher professional development. This finding reflects a shared professional habitus in teacher education as a global field. The finding also highlights the import of supporting the ability of teacher professional development to engagecultivate standards-based knowledge, context-based skills, and disposition-based personal development. Additionally, this study surfaced complexities involved in cultivating and assessing teacher professionalism, with student and faculty recognition that standards are culturally and socially constructed and reflect institutional and societal biases. This inquiry into professionalism across global contexts contributed to an understanding of standards across regions. Moreover, this work enhanced participant connection with a global professionalism.

Professionals are content-based and student-centered

In this study, nearly all Chinese participants emphasised content knowledge, while nearly all U.S. participants emphasised pedagogical knowledge, as foundational to their conceptions of professionalism. This distinction may be due in part to the different age groups served by each set of participants. The U.S.-based elementary teacher education program focused on elementary instruction, attending developmentally to the whole child. The Chinese-based teacher education program focused on teaching across K-12 levels, including the more content-driven levels of middle school and high school. Alternatively, the distinction across Chinese and U.S. participant perspectives may be shaped by cultural habitus (Bourdieu, 1986). A Confucian regard for learning from others, particularly scholars who have attained greater knowledge or wisdom, continues to serve as a foundation for Chinese culture and shape the culture of learning in China today (Ames & Rosemont, 1998; Liu, 2015). This habitus – a love for learning without ceasing, as described by Confucius (Ames & Rosemont, 1998) - may have influenced Chinese participant emphasis on content knowledge and knowledge in general, serving as a form of cultural capital for professional teachers in the Chinese context.

In contrast, an American cultural emphasis on empirical, experiential learning (e.g. Dewey, 1916) may have influenced the U.S. participant emphasis on the teacher’s role to engage students in an inquiry process to facilitate learning, rather than focusing primarily on the content of that learning. Inquiry is a central component to the habitus of teaching and learning, and thus, to the habitus of teacher professionalism, in U.S. teacher education contexts. Approximately half of the Chinese participants highlighted the importance of classroom management (6), integration of technology (5), and communication with students, parents, colleagues, and administrators (5), while fewer groups noted the importance of lesson planning (3) and providing students with meaningful feedback on work (3), both pedagogical in focus. In contrast, the U.S. participants held a strong focus on teaching pedagogy and preparing K-6 teachers for classroom practice.

Chinese cultural distinctions were also observed through the recognition by nearly all participating Chinese groups that professional teachers should be proficient not only in content knowledge (10), but also in general knowledge (9). This view resonates with a historical Confucian appreciation for the teacher as one who learns without ceasing (Ames & Rosemont, 1998), on all aspects of life, and not only in one’s field of professional expertise.

Future research might explore how to bridge theory and practice by integrating a greater emphasis on teacher practice in Chinese academic contexts of teacher education, and a greater focus on content knowledge in U.S. academic contexts of teacher education. China’s Ministry of Education has addressed the need to focus on practice by issuing national policies that encourage academia to focus on teacher training. One such policy is to encourage schools of teacher education to hire practitioners in adjunct-like faculty roles, while another policy is to develop an accreditation process for schools of education to gather data that evidences meeting standards in teacher preparation (Dr. Qiong Li, personal communication, 12 July 2018). The director of the teacher education research institute hosting the summer program articulated the need for schools of education to work more closely with practitioners, and noted lesson study as an example of a growing practice in China to help bridge theory and practice through PLCs in which Chinese teachers share lesson plans and receive feedback from colleagues (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017). Lesson study PLCs are a constructive context for cultivating teacher professional habitus.

Professionals love students and teaching

Groups across contexts emphasised that teacher professionalism involves valuing one’s students and the profession. U.S. participants described care for students as exhibiting flexibility, respect for students and families, and passion for one’s work. Many Chinese participants reflected that teachers are expected to exhibit emotional control and patience (6), fairness (5), responsibility (4), respect towards others (4), qualities reflective of the Confucian junzi, or excellent person (Ames & Rosemont, 1998; Zhang, 2013). Recent Chinese policy increasingly has referenced the Confucian Analects to encourage the development of a harmonious, yet diverse modern Chinese society (Feng & Newton, 2012; Zhang, 2013). Likewise, current Chinese policy focuses on teacher morality as part of the Chinese habitus for teacher professionalism. Nearly all Chinese participants highlighted the importance for teachers to exhibit professionalism by caring for their students. Yet, there was little discussion of demonstrating care by adapting one’s pedagogical practice to meet the needs of the diverse cultures, learning needs, and student backgrounds in the classroom. In contrast, most of the U.S. teachers included cultural awareness and pedagogical flexibility to adjust instruction in meeting diverse student needs – these traits were viewed as foundational to the caring professional teacher. The notion of what it means to be a caring teacher is informed by the habitus of the regional culture and its role in shaping the culture of teacher professionalism. In the U.S. context, being knowledgeable in one’s content area or about life in general was emphasised less than helping students to carve their own educational path. Such reflections continue to echo sentiments expressed by Dewey (1916). Reverberations also may be felt from 17^th and 18^th, century Europe’s Enlightenment, emphasising empiricism and individual reason.

In traditional Chinese culture, honouring authority figures has been more emphasised than student-centred teaching (Liu, 2015; Zhang, 2013). The caring teacher may be viewed as the teacher who prepares students well for life’s trials by expecting students to meet the challenges faced in the classroom. In addition to this, China’s Ministry of Education more recently aimed to implement the 2018 policy for teachers to put others before oneself with hearts considerate of the whole world, as high quality teachers (Wang, 2018, July 9). In this light, the caring teacher exercises both authority and empathy.

The above discussion highlights how a region’s cultural habitus shapes the habitus of teacher professionalism, along with professional standards and how an individual teacher merges the two into meaningful professionalism.

Assessing professionalism

This study finds teacher professionalism to be a triangulated dialogue among cultural context, professional standards, and the individual persons merging the two in teaching practice. Cultural context shapes professional practice as relevant, meaningful, and distinct in meeting the needs of the students within a given context. Professional standards provide a shared foundation critical to lift a profession into public status, while also providing a meaningful foundation for discourse across global settings. Individual teachers engage in the complex work of merging cultural context and professional standards into a meaningful professionalism. Participant reflections demonstrated awareness of complexities involved in assessing professionalism in ways that support and do not hinder teacher professional development. The participants and instructors shared a similar feeling of ambivalence in recognising ways that standards-based rubrics both supported teacher professionalism, and had the potential for marginalising or standardising the humans involved in the work of teacher education.

Moreover, standards often do not reflect the cultures of local regions, which may or may not align to the norms set by dominant cultures creating the standards. Thus, standards can silence individuals and minority groups marginalised in their experience of a cultural reality different from the standards. Such marginalisation led one teacher candidate to engage her own cultural capital to endure and survive her experience in a teacher preparation program that did not reflect this culture (Tolbert & Eichelberger, 2014). This candidate’s voice serves as a reminder that teacher education faculty must continue to question whose cultural capital is positioned as the “right” one in schools of teacher education, and to learn how to prepare those in the minority to question, diplomatically, the practices and standards reflecting one notion of right.

At the same time, this study highlights ways in which standards contribute to a broader professional habitus across global regions, and brings the profession of teaching and teacher education into public light and recognised status as a profession. Such recognition can have significant implications for professionals within the field, and the students and families they serve. The above insights raise many questions that are critical for the professional field of teaching and teacher education to consider. Standards can lead to reductionist approaches to teaching and teacher education, and yet standards provide a foundation vital for teaching to maintain its globally recognised professional status. Ideally, standards will be shaped by the professionals in the field learning from their work, and guiding others new to the practice.

Conclusion

Increasing connections across regional contexts requires education research to build cross-regional collaborations to cultivate shared studies on education’s aims, processes and policies. This cross-regional, collaborative qualitative inquiry sought to understand Chinese and U.S. undergraduate education student perspectives on the criteria for and approaches to assess teacher professionalism, and how such assessment shapes teacher professional development. This study recognises and responds to the increasing need to develop international discussions on teacher professionalism as a global concept that is conceptualised, cultivated, measured, and realised in regionally specific ways. Understanding local nuances involved in this work can not be confined to the field of international education, alone. Developing locally nuanced understandings of teacher professionalism across global settings must become integral to teacher education.

In response to this need, this study explored Chinese and U.S. teacher education student discussions, reflections, and rubrics to find similar and distinct conceptions of and approaches to cultivating teacher professionalism. This international collaboration contributes to the global habitus of teacher professionalism by exploring Chinese and U.S. teacher education students 1) conceptualisations of and 2) approaches for assessing teacher professionalism, and 3) how cultural context, professional standards, and personal views shape both of these.

Chinese and U.S. participants conceptualised teacher professionalism as involving teacher knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Chinese participants emphasised and assessed more directly teacher content knowledge, educational psychology, and emotional patience. U.S. participants emphasised and assessed more directly lesson plan development, student assessment, and having a social justice orientation in one’s disposition as a teacher. Adding to both perspectives, Kafwa et al. (2015) highlight that education systems must recognise the professional agency of teachers. Such agency enhances the creativity, innovation, and moral commitment with which teachers contribute to the profession. Merging strengths across regional contexts supports a more holistic teacher professionalism.

The purpose of this study was to expand understandings of teacher professionalism across regions and cultures, and to consider how such international collaborations may be fostered and supported more effectively in teacher education. As a broader outcome, this study highlights the uniquely important roles of cultural contexts, professional standards, and educators as people in shaping the meaning, practice, and assessment of teacher professionalism.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

L.B. Liu

Laura B. Liu, Ed.D., Assistant Professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Columbus, focuses her research and practice on diversity sustaining pedagogies, multilingual learner funds of knowledge, and glocal teacher professionalism.

J.M. Conner

Jennifer M. Conner, Ph.D., Associate Professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Columbus, focuses her research and practice on critical and digital literacies, language development, teacher assessment and program accreditation.

Q. Li

Qiong Li, Ph.D., Professor at Beijing Normal University's Center for Teacher Education Research, focuses her research and practice on teacher professional development, teacher work and lives, and teacher resilience.