Introduction to PART 1 :
PERSPECTIVES ON THE PRACTICE OF TEACHERS
While teachers may seek to satisfy public expectations by pointing to their knowledge base, moral judgement and autonomous decision as guarantees for good teaching, they are also influenced by tensions, dilemmas and problems to do with their professional status such as the constraints of formal organizational structures and individual value judgements and with disparities in power structures related to gender, race and social class (Combe et al.,1996). Especially in educational systems, these tensions tend to predominate, because compulsory school attendance and hierarchical or hidden control of the school administration or public expectations tend not to allow professional autonomy (Terhart, 1998). As Oevermann (1996, p. 181) notes, because of these problems "there are almost insurmountable barriers" in the quest for teacher professionalism and autonomy.
Ewald Terhart, in this chapter, points to several such unsolved problems of professional development in the German school system. He highlights the fact, that after the first and second phase of teacher education no further development is obligatory for a teachers with tenure. Programs for teacher development which come from outside the profession run into the problem that professional development depends on self-initiation or self-cultivation. The outside pressures for teacher development can frame or support development but do not constitute a system for professional development because any imposed system collides with demands for professional autonomy.
"Self-development" and "self cultivation" or "Bildung" (Hopmann et al., 1995, Westbury, 1995) are concepts, that are seen in close relationship to professional development. Bildung implies more than simply the self-development in the absence of a surrounding culture. Awareness of the cultural framework is a prerequisite for Bildung - the educational process in which is formed a person's wisdom and culture. In order to develop wisdom and culture a person must see that there is a moral duty, and have an ethical conviction. The "Self" is not an island to itself, but develops in a specific culture with its socializing forces. We can see, for example, in what follows how the surrounding culture influences Bildung, by looking at differences in teacher professionalism in West and East Germany. In this chapter philosophical problems of self-development related to teacher professionalism are raised but not resolved. Later on aspects of self-development will be discussed by Karl-Oswald Bauer, and Andrea Peter which lead to models for professional development.
Another dilemma that Ewald Terhart points to is the need for development directed by goals or a telos. He suggests that developmental stages must be part of a normative model which includes cognitive, moral and practical dimensions. These presuppositions delimit the nature of professional development and innovation in the educational field and suggest the frame of action.
Jean Rudduck and Max van Manen explicate this frame and its normative elements. For example, they suggest that teachers consider students as expert witnesses to their learning and to their affective needs. Teachers need to understand the non-cognitive elements of student learning processes: the tacit dimensions of their codes, commitments and affects. Jean Rudduck suggests teachers listen to what students have to say about learning which is often hidden in what they say. Max van Manen, following this line, suggests that students are lively witnesses to the lived meaning of school life which is highly relational as Marianne Horstkemper points out. She suggests that the feminine perspective in teaching takes into account this relational aspect and has the potential to give rise to more humane and inclusive teaching. However, she notes that this potential is often sacrificed in the competition for careers between males and females in teaching. Instead of women plunging into self-destroying struggles to alter power relations in the work place, she argues for attention to be given to what the female is able to bring to perspectives on the profession as a whole.