Chapter 2 The New Professionalism?
How Good Teachers Continue to Teach to Their Best and Well in Challenging Reform Contexts
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Abstract
Teacher professionalism has long been defined as being composed of a strong technical culture, service ethic, professional commitment, and autonomy. They have been regarded as the pillars which have defined teachers’ professionalism. In recent years, however, interpretations of service and autonomy have been contested, as the purposes and practices of school-based education, and teachers’ roles and accountabilities, have become subject to change as a result of the increased international policy press for functionally oriented teaching and learning, ‘value-added’ teacher effectiveness, and developments of new learning technologies which challenge the teacher as expert pedagogue and knowledge holder. This chapter will explore different, conflicting perspectives on the new meanings of professionalism. It will acknowledge that external pressures have created new conditions of service, but that, whilst such pressures influence, they do not necessarily shape how teachers’ professionalism and, in particular, their autonomy, may be enacted. Indeed, there is much evidence to suggest that these core elements of professionalism are alive and active in teachers who teach to their best and well; and that these teachers’ professionalism continues to be expressed through their individual agency, service commitment (moral purpose), resilience and collegial autonomy.