Educational Professionalism: An Inside‐Out View

Abstract

The past two decades have witnessed numerous efforts to enhance educational professionalism, such as more stringent requirements for entry, increased autonomy, and higher pay. Yet, these types of initiatives typically target aspects of the profession external to the work of teaching. In this article, I expand the view of professionalism implicit in these reform efforts by showing how practice can also be seen as an explanatory variable that acts on professionalism. I propose a theoretical frame for understanding the complex relationships between instructional practice and professionalism, illustrating the way in which practice both shapes and is shaped by public perception of the profession and how this bears on education’s professional strength. The framework highlights key levers for improvement, less emphasized in past research, and in particular, draws attention to the way in which most professions control practice and the viability of these mechanisms in education.

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