From new to nuanced: (Re)Considering educator professionalism and its impacts
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From new to nuanced: (Re)Considering educator professionalism and its impacts Jennie Miles Weiner1
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract While debates rage on regarding various approaches to educational change and improvement, there is no doubt recent decades have been marked by a shift in how these approaches are conceptualized and enacted. In the last 20 or so years many nations have applied neo-liberal principles of competition, profit, and efficiency to the public sector and to education more specifically. Beyond dramatically reshaping policies and practice, so too have they changed the very nature of what it means to be an educator. In particular, the field has seen a move from what some consider more traditional or occupational forms of professionalism to new or organizational professionalism. As a result, many argue, educators have experienced diminished efficacy, commitment, and professionalism. And yet, and as I argue in this piece, in our rush to condemn such practices, we may miss some important opportunities to shift and perhaps expand our understanding of professionalism and its effect on educational change. Keywords Professionalism · Professional identity · Educational change While debates continue on the impact, efficiency, and, often, ethics of various approaches to educational change and improvement, there is no doubt that recent decades have been marked by a shift in how these approaches are conceptualized and enacted. In particular, and across multiple continents (Anderson and Herr 2015; Ball 2003; Klette 2002), many nations have applied neo-liberal1 principles of 1 Neo-Liberalism is an approach to policy making or political philosophy. In particular, it emphasizes free trade and markets and with it the privatization of public goods and services. Neo-liberalism promotes free choice over collective or social democratic process, framing such an emphasis as a moral imperative (Hursh 2007). In this way, personal responsibility becomes the root of all success or failure— society cannot be blamed for an individual’s poor choices. Since the 1980s, neo-liberalism has become a hallmark of U.S. domestic policy across multiple sectors and shows few signs of abating (Piazza 2017).
* Jennie Miles Weiner [email protected] 1
Department of Educational Leadership (Unit 3093), Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut, 249 Glenbrook Road, Storrs, CT 06269, USA
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Journal of Educational Change
competition, profit, and efficiency to the public sector (e.g., the “new managerialism” (Evans 2011; Mungal 2015), New Public Management (Hood 1995), “deliverology” (Barber et al. 2010), and to education more specifically (Anderson and Cohen 2015, 2018; Torres and Weiner 2018; Moore and Clarke 2016). For example, in the United States, the context in which I work and do most of my research, such principles have shaped federal and local policy ushering in a period of high stakes accountability (Anderson and Cohen 2015, 2018), greater inspection (Wilkins 2011) and market-based
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