THE SKY IS THE LIMIT! De-minimalizing teacher education by stimulating collaborative professionalism

1. THE SKY IS THE LIMIT!De-minimalizing teacher educationby stimulating collaborative professionalism

2. Outline • Focus on minimum standards • Calculating strategies of students • A need for a wider professionalism of teachers • What is understood by ‘wider professionalism’ • Discussion: What opportunities and experiences do teacher educators have to stimulate this wider professionalism?

3. Minimum standards in Europe • Concerns about the quality of the teaching profession • Safeguarding and stimulating teacher quality by setting minimum standards • Connected to national tests or inspection regimes • Minimum standards have become the norm!

4. Calculating students • Test regimes and modulair curricula dominate teacher eduation • Teaching and learning to the tests • A ‘pass’ is enough. No interest in feedback • Many competing and more interesting activities • Consumer-attitide of students: ‘I need more feedback’, ‘The curriculum should cover more books’

5. Ambitious and excellent teachers • Children and society need more ambitious teachers • Teachers need a ‘wider professionalism’

6. Main question • What opportunities can be created for more challenging teacher education curricula where ‘minimalism’ (focus on minimum standards) is replaced by ‘maximalism’ (a focus on collaborative professionalism and on reaching the highest possible for each student)?

7. To answer this question? • A clearer understanding of collaborative professionalism • A clearer understanding on theories on student motivation • Examples of good practice in challenging students (e.g. honours programmes, etc.)

8. Five sociological perspectives on professionalism • Traits approach • Demands to modern ‘professionals’ • A professionalisation project • An independent logic • The idealistic and altruistic professional

9. Traits approach • Compared to classical professions and professionals: doctors, lawyers, … • Ideal characteristics: • Monopoly regulating the entrance to the profession • Ethical code and standards (exclusion from the profession) • Strong academic knowledge base • Independent • Semi-, para- or proto-professions • Critics: Idealized and historical-cultural specific characteristics

10. Modern demands to professionals • Focus on outcomes • Limited budgets (efficiency) • Transparant and steerable • Accountable • control and bureaucracy • No professional isolation – collaborative • No boundaries – multidisciplinairy • Innovative • Lifelong learning Neo-liberalism Knowledge society

11. Professionalisation project Emphasis on the development of a profession (Larson 1977, Powers 2008, Gewirtz et al 2009) • Emancipation of a profession or • Securing the quality of the profession or • Self-interest: creating a monopoly, strengthening the position in negotiations, increasing status and income Professional Association of Diving Instructors

12. A seperate logic Three logics (Freidson, 2001) • The free market • Bureaucracy • Professionalism • Special position and work of professional asks for a seperate logic and steering • Ensuring quality from within • Professional autonomy to be able to make professional decisions (Atkinson&Claxton 2000, Evetts 2009, Tonkens 2009)

13. The idealistic and altruistic professional • Power imbalance between customer and professional. Customer can’t judge the quality of the professional. • Service oriented motives of the professional: contribution to society, not income. • Professional freedom and mandate as condition and reward • Condition: deserved public trust • Instrument: quality assurance from within by professional codes, professional registers, … (Crook 2008, Lund 2008)

14. Trust as a condition Give trust • Trust versus control • Contractual trust vs. relational trust • Trust in competence • Trust in intentions: • dedication and benovelence • empathy • Role trust (through ethical codes) (Byrk&Schneider 2002, Bottery 2003, Nooteboom 2006)

15. Translated into qualities of teachers • Feeling part and being member of the profession/ professional associations • Commitment to central values and good conduct within the profession through the use of ethical codes; • Public accountability for outcomes of professional performance; • A strong academic knowledge base that underlies professional activities. • Involvement in the development of the academic and practice-based knowledge base through involvement in research • Lifelong professional development of the members of the profession; • Collaboration with colleagues and stakeholders; • Involvement in innovation of the profession; • Commitment to support both the public and the state in their understanding of educational matters; • Acceptance of the right of the state to set policies, connected to the drive of professionals to comment on the effects of such policies at the level of implementation

16. Maximizing teacher education? • How to stimulate students’ wider professionalism? • How to stimulate students to get the most out of their study, aiming for maximum learning outcomes? • What experiences do you have at your institution in supporting and challenging ambitious and excellent students?