C- Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)
3.7 Are teachers considered professionals?
If teachers are given limited choices in exercising autonomy, it becomes difficult to determine whether they are really professionals. It is true to say that everyone involved in teaching wants it to be considered as a profession and they themselves be considered as professionals. Despite this fact, still not many of these people recognise the contribution of exercising autonomy in making teaching a profession. This is because some of them hardly possess autonomy or exercise it.
One way in which teachers’ professionalism can be analysed is by comparing it to other classical professions such as doctors and lawyers in a way that their differences and similarities are identified and analysed (Snoek, 2010). The classical professions were used as references and ideal examples. Standard characteristics were drawn from them and noted. Afterwards, the differences were used to distinguish professionals from other non-professionals by outlining their differences and similarities with other existing occupations.
This method mainly focused on identifying categories for classifying the occupations (Gewirtz et al., 2009) where the reference, classical professions, is regarded as the
‘true professions’ or archetypes and there are several typical attributes used in this method. Professional autonomy, which is applicable through the use of professional monopoly of the profession members with their own individual work (Snoek et al., 2009).
Another attribute is the control of the applicable entry requirements of a profession and constant professional development of the practising individuals. Fellow professionals and senior practitioners also have the power to monitor, evaluate and dismiss members who fail to keep up with the expected professional standards of their professions. This also includes the general ethical code. According to (Snoek, 2010), when the characteristics associated with teaching are compared to the standard attributes generated, teaching is undoubtedly not considered a profession.
This conclusion is a result of the consideration of the several attributes stated above.
First, teachers never control entrance to their profession and this is the first attribute that disqualifies them. Second, teachers lack freedom of professional establishment and are, instead, employed by the schools.
This however, excludes Scotland’s education policy as their teachers have had some influence since the early and mid-1960s when the General Teaching Council (GTC) decided to set some major foundations of the council that include teachers’ valid and active membership regulation within their own profession. According to Hamilton (2009), the director of GTC, this was seen as a strong element of growing professional status for teachers in Scotland, as it was a unique part of Scotland’s history of education. On the other hand, as observed by Whitty (2006, in Thomas, 2012), it has been argued that the very process of protecting teachers’ professional autonomy against erosion by government has made the teacher intra-community relationships more difficult to achieve. This concept of professionalism tends to accentuate an elite body of knowledge held exclusively by a single group of (qualified) practitioners.
Thomas continues that notions of sharing knowledge and practice with other (non- professional) groups may be seen as a dilution and/or threat to professionalism. The Chief Executive of the General Teaching Council of England, Carol Adams, expressed such explicit concerns in 2005 in response to the increasing number of teaching assistants in classrooms. She asked, “Could pupils, parents and the wider community become confused about the unique role and contribution of the teacher? Could a child’s right to learn be threatened by the new multi-disciplinary agenda?” (Whitty, 2006)
Over the past years, ‘new professionalism’ is a term that has been widely used to refer to the work of the members of other occupations, which cannot be fully categorised as professions. These include teachers, civil servants and social workers (Eraut, 1994, Evans, 2007, Genc, 2010). The meaning that is associated with ‘new professionalism’
may vary from one context to another and one author to another but there are general attributes that can be uniformly considered.
Several known authors (Verbiest, 2007; Snoek et al 2009), have in the past, outlined the strict output requirements levied on professionals by governments and not deliberately by the professionals. This is absolutely the case with teacher education and the teaching profession. This is because various national governments enforce strict changes through creation of various laws and professional procedures that are applicable to all schools and institutions of higher learning (Eraut, 1994, Evans, 2007).
Moreover, the need to perform assessments on professionals has gained prominence and governments are now assessing professionals in a bid to gain reasonable insights into their overall performance and professional contribution to their working environments. This has had some adverse pressure on teachers and forced them to create aims, goals, monitor children, create teaching schedules and even monitor learning more keenly (Hattie, 2009).
There are authors who emphasise the importance of a knowledge base which is of a professional nature and does not only need to be academic-related or formal like in classical professions, but can also result from relevant reflection and experience.
These make them insist that teaching is not a profession. Like Runté (1995), who further explained that teachers have all along been using, and still use, outdated and flawed professional models.
The usage of these models is argued to have steered them towards irrelevant goals.
Because of this, there is always an absolute need to set up and implement standards that can confidently be used to describe qualifications and competences of new professionals as well as expert ones (Eraut, 1994). Professionalism also entails constant improvement of personal work and the innovation of concepts, tools and methods that aim to improve current procedures (Evans, 2007).
Real professionals should always move from the conventional autonomy and authority and instead promote new and better relationship between stakeholders and fellow colleagues (Hargreaves, 1994, Whitty, 2008). This further implies that the professionals should be inclined towards constant lifelong learning and alleviate attention towards professional resources and growth.
As a result of all the discussed limitations, teachers are only left with limited choices to exercise autonomy in their work. Similarly, there are many countries which lack ethical codes applicable to teaching. This is worsened by the lack of proper guidelines governing the academic qualifications of the teaching profession. Most of the now applicable standards and codes of conduct are those that have been laid down by governments and this means that there is barely any teacher involvement in the creation of the standards as is the case in Saudi Arabia.
Several scholars in several scientific literatures have also defined teacher autonomy.
These various definitions provide varied differences that are important in explaining this concept. Amongst the many definitions realised from these publications is one I find the most agreeable. It explains that autonomy refers to the freedom that teachers have in their professional fields while doing professional work (Castle, 2004, Friedman, 1999, Pearson and Hall, 1993, Short, 1994).
It is also evident from the definitions that autonomy of teachers is not confined necessarily to the general planning and respective implementation of teaching activities. It wholly covers the general improvements of the role of teachers and the improvement in their power in standard decision-making activities that relate to the typical school environment, human resource management, both material and financial management and their overall working conditions (Friedman, 1999, Öztürk, 2011).
In order for teachers to fully and effectively perform their duties and carry out their full responsibilities, it is necessary to fairly recognize their greater powers and potential. Contrary to what should happen, the current planning and drafting of teachers’ regulations, guidelines and methods grant the teachers low levels of autonomy and power that undoubtedly undermine the greater responsibilities and jobs done by the teachers in promoting education as a whole.
Teachers have taken more significant control over their work and now fully understand their individual roles and their collective responsibilities as an entity in a school system and in this way they can better promote education processes and steer successful learning outcomes amongst their students (Ingersoll, 2007).
There are many attributes that are essential in recognising teaching as a profession and teachers who exercise autonomy is one major attribute that has to be considered in the development of teachers. Just like other classical professionals, such as doctors and lawyers, for teachers to be considered as equal professionals, they must be accorded the relevant and necessary freedom and powers of performing their professional activities (Pearson and Moomaw, 2005, Webb, 2002).
There are authors who relate autonomy of teachers to their students. For instance, Gimeno-Sacristan (2000) explains that for teachers, their autonomy is specifically restricted by the autonomy of learners who are directly or indirectly affected by the education, of which teachers are the major role players. He further explains that the autonomy of teachers should be directly linked to the commitment and responsibility of an existing educational project that is fully accepted by the entire educational community involved.
The existing limitation is considered by Contreras (1997) as the obligation that teachers have to the community and forms one of the major dimensions of the teacher responsibility as one of the dimensions. The second dimension is the professional competence, which includes the principles, skills and awareness of the consequences and meaning of our consistent pedagogical practice.
The last dimension of Contreras’s (1997) is the moral obligation, which is the fact that teachers not only have to operate within their academic achievements but also have to go and transform themselves into free and peaceful human beings in order to respond properly to the enthusiasm of learners. The ways in which teachers tackle the latter three dimensions are important for teachers to achieve different teaching perspectives and push towards exercising autonomy. According to Larrivee (2000, p. 294), a kind of thinking that allows for uncertainty and generally allows for strategic dilemmas have, in the past, been defined using terms like critical thinking, reflective thinking, critical reflection, reflective practices and reflective judgement.
Likewise, in cases where the teacher exceeds the knowledge of basic teaching and teaching practice ethics, they develop self-efficacy and ability to solve complex student-related problems and provide a mind-set for learning. Conclusively, critical intellectual concepts require that autonomy can be considered as a series of efforts and processes that, together, transform the educational realities of different communities and completely free themselves from any kind of external expression. He further suggest that teachers are capable of becoming competent in whatever activity they perform and therefore have the power to transform the current practices. Teachers are further required to take full responsibility for the areas in which they exercise their teaching skills (Larrivee, 2000).
For these reasons mentioned by Larrivee (2000), teachers are expected to know the outcomes, directions and consequences of every action they take. Even though teachers are cautious of the difficulties that they face during their teaching work, they are also not hesitant to open up new opportunities and create new environments and conditions that allow the process to go through.
In conclusion, this research considers the teachers who are exercising a degree of autonomy along with the main focus of their role as materials developers and their responsiveness to students’ needs as indicated in page 10. This concept is explored with the diverse aim of relating it to how it can be used to the adoption of teachers to exercise autonomy with other current pedagogical strategies used in teaching environments. Even though many assume that teachers can be optimally competent even without exercising autonomy, it is clear, from the discussion, that teachers still need autonomy for them to remain as competent as possible, an issue that cannot be ignored.