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From new to nuanced: (Re)Considering educator professionalism and its impacts

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Abstract

While debates rage on regarding various approaches to educational change and improvement, there is no doubt recent decades have been marked by a shift in how these approaches are conceptualized and enacted. In the last 20 or so years many nations have applied neo-liberal principles of competition, profit, and efficiency to the public sector and to education more specifically. Beyond dramatically reshaping policies and practice, so too have they changed the very nature of what it means to be an educator. In particular, the field has seen a move from what some consider more traditional or occupational forms of professionalism to new or organizational professionalism. As a result, many argue, educators have experienced diminished efficacy, commitment, and professionalism. And yet, and as I argue in this piece, in our rush to condemn such practices, we may miss some important opportunities to shift and perhaps expand our understanding of professionalism and its effect on educational change.

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Notes

  1. Neo-Liberalism is an approach to policy making or political philosophy. In particular, it emphasizes free trade and markets and with it the privatization of public goods and services. Neo-liberalism promotes free choice over collective or social democratic process, framing such an emphasis as a moral imperative (Hursh 2007). In this way, personal responsibility becomes the root of all success or failure—society cannot be blamed for an individual’s poor choices. Since the 1980s, neo-liberalism has become a hallmark of U.S. domestic policy across multiple sectors and shows few signs of abating (Piazza 2017).

  2. While variability exists how the term professionalism is understood and used in the field of education (Evans 2008; Sachs 2016), I use professionalism here to mean how educators’ roles are defined, organized and controlled (Evetts 2011).

  3. Neo or New Taylorism reflects a resurgence by education reformers to identify and control all aspects of the learning environment via mechanisms such as evaluation, scripted curriculum and standardized testing to produce maximum “efficiency” (Au 2011).

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  1. Department of Educational Leadership (Unit 3093), Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut, 249 Glenbrook Road, Storrs, CT, 06269, USA

    Jennie Miles Weiner

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Weiner, J.M. From new to nuanced: (Re)Considering educator professionalism and its impacts. J Educ Change 21, 443–454 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-020-09371-6

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