Admin Bar Home > Stirring it up > What does it mean to be a teacher?

What does it mean to be a teacher?

Posted on 22 January 2010 - 12:24 PM

Ruminations on the notion of an ethical professional

The idea of teachers' work in the abstract is of some interest to me, and of some particular interest over the past two years is whether the implementation of the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) could help somehow to develop a particular concept I have of teachers' work.

In particular, I have a concept of a teacher as an ethical professional, and I want to ask myself what that means in practice. What would it look like or feel like to be such a person, and what would such a person be doing? How might we expect that person to operate in the classroom, staffroom, passage, and down at Pak 'n Save?

One of the ideas I am reacting to is one that says the reforms since 1989 have 'deprofessionalised' teachers' work and have reduced the function of teachers to nothing more than that of an 'assessment clerk'. This was a phrase used by late John Codd of Massey University. He was a keen proponent of the idea that the reforms have robbed teachers of the professionalism they once had.

So is the 2007 NZC just another of those reforms? Will it simply deepen the sense that teachers only 'tick the boxes'; that they are mere 'state servants' who put the whim of politicians into daily practice? Or does it provide opportunities that break open our conceptions of teachers' work? And in particular, if we have a notion of teachers' work that has a strongly ethical component, will this piece of policy reform enhance that sense of the ethical?

It may take a while to gain a sense of the ethical, because the concept some people in education will have of an 'ethical teacher' is one who does not molest children and who makes sure that his or her students 'attain the standard' in a 'safe environment' in which students can take 'academic risks' - if we're lucky!

Is that enough? Does that little description sound to you like an 'ethical professional'? Or is there much more? And does the 2007 NZC do anything for the enhancement of a teacher's ethical status as a professional? Or does it all depend on how the NZC is implemented?

So for now, I'll leave you two ideas to ponder: is there such a person as an ethical teaching professional? can the implementation of the NZC leave teachers' work better off or worse off?

Comments

No comments have been made on this post.