Every profession has
its own special knowledge. Developing and recognizing
that knowledge is key to any strategy for moving
toward professionalism.
By Stéphane Martineau
The creation of the Ontario
College of Teachers is a milestone in the development
of teaching as a profession. It is part of a broader
movement occurring in many western nations, among
them the United States and France.
This move
toward professionalism reflects the many changes in
our society and the hard questions being asked about
the changes needed in education systems to provide
young people with instruction and education for the
next century.
What is a
Profession?
The term
profession covers a whole range of activities. When
we talk about professionals, we usually think of
doctors, lawyers or engineers. These professions are
a kind of common ideal.
The literature
identifies six characteristics of professions. A
profession is an intellectual activity that requires
professional accountability. It is a learned
activity, not a mechanical one, and requires
judgement and reflection. It is not only learned, but
practical, because its aim is not theoretical
speculation and development. It is learned in part
through lengthy study, usually at a university. There
is an internal organization and cohesion among those
who practise it. And, professional activity is a
service to society.
Recognizing
Experience
Based on this
definition, teaching is a profession. It does involve
practitioner accountability and in-depth reflection,
it has a practical goal, and it is learned primarily
at university. Teachers now form an organized group
with a certain degree of cohesion and there is no
doubt that teaching is a service essential to any
society.
And yet,
teaching is far from achieving recognition as a
distinct profession; it is often termed a
quasi-profession. For this reason, there has been
talk for some years now about a move toward
professionalism – an ongoing process that is
still incomplete.
Why Make
Teaching a Profession?
The trend
toward professionalism has its contradictions, one of
which is that professionalism sometimes seems to be a
more popular objective with teacher educators than
with teachers themselves. It may be a strategy on the
part of educators in faculties of education to
achieve the recognition traditionally denied them by
the university community.
Faculties of
education are said to be "the least
disciplinarian of the disciplinarian faculties and
the least professional of the professional
faculties." Certainly, faculties of education
have not always delivered the goods and studies have
shown that most teachers are dissatisfied with their
training. Hence, in the context of teacher
educators’ quest for recognition, the move
toward teacher professionalism makes sense.
This
recognition, however, depends on the ability of
faculties to deliver training deemed satisfactory and
thus conducive to professionalism. And satisfactory
training depends on increased knowledge of the
practice of teaching in order to understand what
teachers have to learn. This leads to the question of
professional knowledge.
Knowledge
Central to Every Profession
Every
recognized profession possesses its own types of
knowledge, so that the development and recognition of
knowledge is integral to any strategy for
professionalism. These types of knowledge are not
arbitrary. Professional knowledge is advanced
(university level) and includes both a strategic
dimension (contributing to the social recognition of
a professional group) and a pragmatic dimension (the
ability to perform an activity proficiently).
Although
teaching is based on university education, it has not
achieved full recognition as a profession, in part
because it has not been able to develop a body of
professional knowledge that earns societal approval.
A number of
factors contribute to this situation: the university
structure, which distinguishes between and assigns a
hierarchy to professional training and basic
research; the way in which teachers have chosen to
associate through unions rather than professional
associations; the lack of control that practitioners
as a group have over their training; the trend toward
increased fragmentation of teaching tasks and the
emergence of specialists, with the result that
teachers have little say in how children are taught.
This list is far from exhaustive.
Developing
Pedagogical Knowledge
If the sole
objective of professionalism were to increase the
power of teacher educators or teachers themselves,
the movement has no real value. The ultimate
objective of professionalism should be to improve
education. Improving education means improving
educators. For this reason, professionalism affects
both pre-service and in-service training.
Pre-service
programs involve university education designed to
prepare students more effectively for the shock of
the classroom and to encourage them to become
specialists in the creation of learning situations.
In-service programs make teachers more aware of their
practice.
For some time
now, one preferred method for achieving these two
objectives has been the promotion of research on and
for teaching, especially in the area of experiential
knowledge. This field of research is based on the
dual hypothesis that teaching requires more than a
knowledge of the subject matter and that teachers
construct knowledge as they teach. The research
analyzes the development and nature of experiential
knowledge, which is only one of several types of
knowledge used in teaching.
Its
practitioners regard experiential knowledge as the
hallmark of their professionalism, the quality that
makes the difference between a good teacher and a bad
one. Yet it is the type of knowledge we know least
about.
Increasingly
aware that teachers possess a wealth of experiential
knowledge, researchers are trying to collect it for
use in pre-service and in-service programs. Such
research represents a departure from the usual
university practice because it calls for
collaboration between practitioners and researchers.
They have worked together on many action research
projects over the past few years (in response to
demand from the field), established joint schools
(better equipped to provide practicum placements),
and conducted co-operative research (combining
research and training).
Increasingly
Specialized Knowledge
The creation of
the Ontario College of Teachers is a milestone on the
long journey to professional recognition. To achieve
this recognition, teachers must increase their power
– as a professional group – over their own
practice and over the training of their current and
future colleagues.
But this
strategy alone is not enough. Professional
recognition entails the development of increasingly
specialized types of pedagogical knowledge. In this
process of ongoing co-operation between researchers
and teachers, practitioners’ experiential
knowledge is an invaluable asset.
Stéphane Martineau is
assistant professor at the department of sociology
and studies on equity in education at OISE/UT. He
also works for the Centre de recherche en éducation
franco-ontarienne(CREFO). He is one of the authors of
Pour une théorie de la pédagogie : Recherches
contemporaines sur le savoir des enseignants.
