Education International
Professionalism and Status in Globalised Education There has been much commentary on the emergence of the global education industry over the last few decades (Sahlberg, 2011; Ball, 2012). While much has been written on this new mode of education governance and the relationship between extra-State actors and national/sub-national governments, one of the defining features has been the focus on teachers and teaching around notions of quality and accountability. Global metrics around student performance are regularly inferred as proxies of teacher quality, and the media in various countries can use these metrics to legitimate narratives about crises in teacher quality. One manifestation of this has been the emphasis on teacher professionalisation, understood as “the knowledge, skills, and practices that teachers must have in order to be effective educators” (OECD, 2016). This policy imperative to professionalise teaching has led to the emergence of several global initiatives, metrics, and industries. While definitions of teacher professionalism are contested and vary across contexts, most definitions centre around the dimensions of: (1) a strong and complex formal knowledge base; (2) autonomy of practice; (3) responsibility to the stakeholders and communities being served; and (4) peer networks that are concerned with collaboration and collegial support (Biesta, 2016; Gutierrez, Fox, & Alexander, 2019; OECD, 2013). Teachers in many contexts have struggled to claim recognition as professionals. Instead, there has been ongoing resistance to policies designed to ‘teacher proof’ schooling through removal of trust in the professional judgement of expert practitioners that reduce it to a procedural job, rather than an intellectual profession (Connell, 2013; Mockler, 2013). The elevation of the status of teaching to a profession, with an attendant emphasis on a transfer of power over the practice to teachers, is capable of “both improving teacher quality while also enhancing teachers’ perceptions of their status, job satisfaction and efficacy” (OECD, 2013, p.26). There are calls for higher entry standards to teaching, alongside increased remuneration, autonomy, and working conditions (Dolton et al., 2018). Universal recognition of teachers as professionals in social and political spaces can address concerns over teacher quality (Teleshaliyev, 2013). Professionalising teaching is a laudable aim, particularly when overt moves to deprofessionalise teaching are evident in various contexts. Examples include actions to employ non-qualified teachers, the shift towards contract and casual employment, and the lack of rigorous and useful CPD for individual teachers. If professionalisation is central to the provision of quality education, and indeed quality teaching, for all students regardless of where they go to school or issues such as their socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, or religious affiliation, then it must be a sustainable process. However, as Ball (1994) reminds us, there are always first and 4
