Teacher Professionalism in Further and Higher Education

Challenges to Culture and Practice

Jocelyn Robson

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134322732
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Éducation
• Categoría: Éducation générale

Teachers from further and higher education are rarely considered together. This book explores the differences and similarities that exist between these groups. It provides an up-to-date account of developments and brings together arguments and debates about both groups of teachers to challenge some strongly held beliefs.

Focusing on aspects of teachers' professionalism, Jocelyn Robson considers what 'professionalism' may mean and ways in which 'professionalism' has been studied. She goes on to consider:

• professional standards, training and qualifications
• professional identities and communities
• opportunities and strategies for professional development and renewal
• key debates in the literature and the most significant policy developments
• the main challenges currently facing the teaching profession in further and higher education.

Chapter 1
Meanings of professionalism

It is paramount that whatever meaning of professionalism is circulating, its meaning is generated and owned by teachers themselves in order that it should have currency among teachers and be useful in improving their public image and social importance.

(Sachs, 2003, p. 17)

Introduction

This chapter begins with a brief examination of key sociological contributions to an understanding of professionalism in modern, industrial democracies. It is suggested that ‘profession’ is a socially constructed and contested concept, meaning different things to different people at various times. Debates about teacher professionalism, which have traditionally focused on school teachers, are explored here in relation to teachers in the post-compulsory phase of education and training. It is their perspective that informs this discussion. Three constituent ideas of professionalism (autonomy, professional knowledge and responsibility) are discussed in detail and explored in relation to the variety of contexts in which these teachers work.

Sociology and the professions

Sociologists have an interest in the activities of groups, amongst other things, and in the distribution of status and power in society, as well as in processes of social change and advancement. The professions have been studied by sociologists from a range of shifting and diverse theoretical viewpoints over a number of decades. In the 1950s, some sociologists stressed the functional importance of the professions in helping to maintain order in society. Those adopting the ‘attribute’ or ‘trait’ approach to the study of professions took to listing the key characteristics of ‘true’ professions (such as ‘autonomy’, ‘altruism’, ‘specialist knowledge’ and ‘responsibility’) and to measuring actual occupational groups against such lists. Becker (1970) identifies the origins of this approach in the work of Flexner (1915). In comparing groups according to fixed criteria, it was hoped to establish a definitive list of those occupations that might rightfully call themselves ‘professions’.

The approach was a sterile one and was widely discredited. Typically, medicine and law tended to be used as the ‘paradigm’ professions and little account was taken of differences in the nature of work amongst occupational groups, or of changes in organisation, social perception and understanding that occur over time. Almost by definition, other occupations would be found wanting. As Dingwall (1976) remarks, ‘the logical outcome of this approach is that a profession is nothing more or less than what some sociologist says it is’ (p. 332).

A shift towards a more sceptical interest in the actions and interactions of professional groups was typified by Boys in White, a famous observational study of trainee physicians by Becker et al. (1961). These investigations into the social world of medics revealed more cynicism than altruism and more concern with the power of doctors than with the social good. The new focus on interaction, on what professions actually do in everyday life and within the larger social structure, to negotiate and maintain their special position, was characterised by a refusal to accept at face value the image which professions presented of themselves. Thus Becker (1970) argued that ‘profession’ was not a neutral and scientific concept but a symbol used in many ways by different kinds of people for different reasons. The symbol itself may be divorced from the reality of professional practice. It should be seen as ‘part of the apparatus of the society we study, to be studied by noting how it is used and what role it plays in the operations of that society’ (p. 92).

Saks (1983) criticises this interactionist approach to the study of professions for its sporadic and superficial use of empirical data. In addition, he claims, partly because it characteristically dealt with individual practitioners, it failed to explore the structural conditions affecting the growth of professions or their more significant institutional features. The work of Freidson (1970) (which derived from interactionism) attempted to address such structural shortcomings in examining how the medical profession had attained its autonomy. His work became an important model for sociology of the professions in the USA (Macdonald, 1995) but has been criticised for falling into the same trap as that of the attribute theorists, professional autonomy having become, for Freidson, a fundamental criterion for identifying professions (Dingwall, 1976). In Britain, Johnson (1972) was also concerned with the power of professional groups and to the extent that his work focused on exploitative relations between the producer and consumer of professional services, he is seen as coming from a Marxist tradition.

Sociologists writing about the professions have also been influenced by Max Weber’s work, particularly his concept of social closure. According to Weber, in seeking to further their own interests, social groups (however they have originated) will attempt both to exclude others from their group and to usurp the privileges of other groups (Weber, 1978). Larson (1977), building on the work of Weber, formulated the concept of the ‘professional project’. Put simply, this term suggests that the occupational group can seek prestige through its possession and control of a body of abstract knowledge, provided there is a market or potential market for the practical application of that knowledge. In her account, professionalisation is seen as a collective and coherent attempt to translate scarce cognitive resources into social and economic rewards. As Macdonald (1995) elaborates, one aspect of the professional group’s exclusivity is cognitive exclusivity and one important means of achieving closure is credentialism. Thus, such groups certify their members in terms of the knowledge they have acquired, and try to ensure that this knowledge is difficult to obtain.

Saks (1983) comments that the neo-Weberian approach gave the opportunity for examining the historical aspects of professionalisation, and for empirical analysis of the socio-political conditions under which groups become professions. However, he claims that the promise of the neo-Weberian school has not been fulfilled since, like the neo-Marxist school, it has not consistently engaged in empirical analyses that might have provided substantiation for arguments put forward.

Professionalism as discourse

There is, however, another strand of work emerging in relation to the professions and this draws principally on the ideas of the French philosopher Foucault (1972). The view that knowledge is historically and culturally specific is fundamental to Foucault’s work. He also stresses the constructive power of language and the way language is structured into a number of discourses (Burr, 1995). According to Parker (1990), a discourse is an interrelated set of texts, a coherent system of statements that constructs an object and brings it into being. Discourses are not static (Foucault, 1972) and many can be drawn on simultaneously. They can conflict with other discourses; they support institutions and reproduce power relations (Parker, 1990). Thus, in this context, professionalism is recognised as a constitutive and regulatory ‘discourse’, a cultural and social practice for organising individuals and institutions (Seddon, 1997).

Larson (1990) articulates the notion of professionalism as discourse. As mentioned, in her earlier analysis the professional project is seen as the collective attempt by an occupational group to secure control of a body of knowledge and to ensure the translation of this resource into economic returns. If this is to happen, the state must guarantee this relationship through universities, for example, which effectively authorise and credential particular cultural resources as learned and codified discourse. Groups and individuals must then deploy these discourses to create and protect scarcity. Hierarchies will exist because, even within the discursive community itself, only some will have the authority to define what is and is not valid knowledge (Seddon, 1997).

As noted earlier, Becker (1970) described ‘profession’ as a collective symbol that (despite surface disagreements) consists of a set of ideas, or interrelated characteristics, about which there is substantial agreement. As a symbol, ‘profession’ does not describe any actual occupation; rather, it provides a way of thinking about occupations. This is similar to the suggestion by Clarke and Newman (1997) that profession operates as an occupational and organisational strategy. McCulloch et al. (2000) note that “‘profession” is a socially constructed, dynamic and contested term’. It ‘represents judgements that are specific to times and contexts’ and that ‘reflect the different stances of different people and groups in society’ (p. 6). Dingwall (1976) similarly rejects the assumption that ‘profession’ has a fixed meaning. ‘All we can do is to elaborate what it appears to mean to use the term and to list the occasions on which various elaborations are used’ (p. 335).

In this sense, discourses of professionalism can be seen to assert particular realities and priorities; at any one time, such a discourse may compete with other discourses, such as that of managerialism, for example. Several recent studies in further education have adopted a discourse analysis approach. Shain and Gleeson (1999), Clow (2001) and Robson et al. (2004) all analyse interview data from FE teacher respondents, around understandings of teacher professionalism. A discourse of professionalism will position subjects in particular ways and offer particular identities through which people come to view their relationships with the different loci of power (Clarke and Newman, 1997; Sachs, 2001).

From the postmodernist perspective, commonsense notions of ‘autonomy’ and ‘responsibility’ also come under scrutiny, since they may assume the existence of a unified ‘person’ with unproblematic agency (Burr, 1995). Similarly, the notion of a neutral and fixed body of knowledge for professionals or anyone else (rather than many different kinds of knowledge) is rejected. But such ideas do feature strongly in many accounts of teaching and they are a part of the public understanding of what it may mean to be ‘professional’. Accordingly, they form the basis of the discussion about teaching in the next section.

Teaching as a profession

Debates about teacher professionalism have tended to focus on school teaching. In recent years, however, some writers have started to explore the concept in relation to the post-compulsory sectors (e.g. Robson, 1998a; Avis, 1999; Shain and Gleeson, 1999; Light and Cox, 2001; Hodkinson, 2002).

The term ‘profession’ is widely contested, as noted already. The traditional concept (of an occupation possessing certain fixed, defining characteristics) is unhelpful and lacks credibility. The approach taken here will be akin to Becker’s (1970) in which a profession is seen as a set of ideas, or a way of thinking about occupations, rather than as a description of any one occupation itself. Though there may be broad agreement about some of the underlying ideas, these concepts are not fixed or static either and, as Furlong et al. (2000) observe, changes in the nature of knowledge, autonomy and responsibility, for example, can alter the nature of teacher professionalism itself.

In the following section, these constituent ideas are discussed from the perspective of teachers in the post-compulsory environment. The interest here lies in the persistence and change of such ideas over time and across the diverse contexts in which these teachers may find themselves.

The three concepts of professional knowledge, autonomy and responsibility are often seen as closely related:

It is because professionals face complex and unpredictable situations that they need a specialised body of knowledge; if they are to apply that knowledge, it is argued that they need the autonomy to make their own judgements. Given that they have autonomy, it is essential that they act with responsibility – collectively they need to develop appropriate professional values.

(Furlong et al., 2000, p. 5)

These three concepts form the basis of the following discussion that deals chiefly (but not exclusively) with the post-compulsory sectors of education. I will consider autonomy first.

Autonomy

Opponents of the idea that teaching should be considered a profession (or those arguing that we have recently seen a significant de-professionalisation of teachers) have often cited the lack of teacher autonomy over what should be taught. In schools, the advent of the National Curriculum in England was thought to have limited teachers’ freedom (Hoyle and John, 1995). More recently, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) has put the school curriculum online, thereby ensuring public access to what was previously known only to teachers and examiners. In the Learning and Skills Sector, the introduction of competence-based vocational programmes (following the establishment of the National Council for Vocational Qualifications (NCVQ) in 1986) is widely held to have reduced teacher autonomy (Hyland, 1992; Last and Chown, 1996; Hodkinson, 1997; Randle and Brady, 1997; Elliott, 1998; Shain and Gleeson, 1999). This debate has stirred feelings like no other and I will return to it in Chapter 2. My own view, however, is that claims about loss of autonomy amongst further education teachers, resulting from the introduction of competence-based programmes, must be tempered by an understanding of how little autonomy they have had historically, particularly in relation to the curriculum. Unlike teachers in universities, they have traditionally worked to the requirements of external examining bodies, delivering and assessing programmes designed and validated by others.

The concept of autonomy has a particular salience amongst university teachers. We have only to turn to the pages of a publication such as The Times Higher Education Supplement to notice a preoccupation with autonomy and with the related concept of academic freedom. In this context, Barnett (1990) makes a helpful distinction between institutional and individual autonomy. He notes that higher education institutions experienced a significant loss in their autonomy with the advent of funding councils, initially separate ones for universities and polytechnics. Dearlove (1997) similarly observes that there has been a shift away from allowing universities to regulate themselves, with the funding council (one for all of higher education was set up in 1992) judging both the quality of teaching (initially through teaching quality assessments (TQA), and more recently through institutional audits) and the quality of research (through the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)). Further education colleges, since incorporation in 1993, have found themselves free of local authority control only to have their funding more closely tied to the achievement of particular targets than it ever was before.

In relation to the autonomy of individual teachers, some in universities would argue that this, too, is under threat. The purpose and impact of teaching standards will be discussed in Chapter 2. In relation to the content of what is taught, although most teachers in universities are still free to decide the precise detail, within parameters, the arrival of national ‘benchmarking’ and the QAA, and its consequent attempts to describe ‘graduateness’ within particular disciplines, may represent a curtailment of personal autonomy. Of course, greater consistency in what is being taught may be desirable and, as Barnett (1990) observes, not all such interve...

Índice

• Teacher Professionalism in Further and Higher Education: Challenges to culture and practice
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Meanings of professionalism
• Chapter 2 Standards, training and qualifications
• Chapter 3 Teachers’ work
• Chapter 4 Teachers’ communities and identities
• Chapter 5 Continuing development for teachers
• Chapter 6 Encountering the future
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index