Introduction to PART 2 :
THE MORAL BASIS OF PROFESSIONALISM
We noted in the introduction to this book that there are many pressures on the teaching profession to account for itself, not the least in the form of assessments undertaken by external boards (Shulman, 1987). What should be assessed and what is the worth of the outcome? It is commonplace to look at the cognitive abilities of teachers, but much of teachers knowledge is tacit -and hard to recover. It is not only knowing, once articulated, that characterizes the profession; it is also constituted by the kind of people teachers are and the nature of their professional commitments. Sockett (1993) argues that honesty, telling the truth, courage, care, fair play and wisdom are the virtues which constitute teaching. David Hansen in this chapter notes that teaching as a practice and calling is more than a job. It has to do with intellectual and moral growth responsive to students, colleagues and parents. But how does teachers' commitment get a chance in practice, threatened, as it is, by public control and pressures and everyday constraints?
In this part of the book we look at the moral framework of teachers' work and how it can be recovered and used to develop the profession. At the outset Philip Jackson (in this volume) says: "don't we all from time to time loose sight of the deeper significance of our action?". He notes that the moral dimensions of the profession are buried in everyday practice and need to be recovered. The research he would like to see would be a form of recovery of the "transformative" potential of teaching. This potential depends on the virtues teachers bring to the work - what David Hansen below calls a vocation in which teachers perform public service but are not subservient to the public. They follow the calling of teaching which is constituted by a commitment to human flourishing and tradition as a living source of liberation from utilitarian thinking. How is this service given day to day? What do we know of it? Gunnel Colnerud notes that teachers are seldom required to justify their decisions or explicate the dilemmas that face them. Researchers might contribute to this process of recovery by helping teachers develop a discourse about what Chris Clark calls "constitutive questions" - which are at the heart of the learning community. Central to such a discourse is judgement which Kirsti Klette suggests forms a moral framework in which teachers could develop a language of practice in which the diversity of views that teachers have might provoke a better understanding of the dilemmas they face. Aslaug Kristiansen also says that there is a need for dialogue about the unexpected, not only amongst teachers but with students as well; echoing the importance of the student voice we noted in the introduction. The work of Pertti Kanansen and colleagues shows us how research can illuminate the ethical frameworks that underlie teacher judgments and illustrates the role teachers can play in the recovery of moral frameworks. As they say "The findings of our study can stimulate teachers and student teachers to discuss moral dilemmas in teaching"; which brings us back to the pressures to justify professional conduct and the importance of the moral framework and its recovery.
The great challenge to the profession, as Philip Jackson will suggest, is to see the professional consequences of taking the moral nature of teaching seriously. How can this be achieved? He calls for research into the moral complexity of teachers work - into how teachers deal with the moral dilemmas that confront them. He asks for autobiographical and reportorial work which narrates and analyses the way life goes on. There are many existing accounts which could be re-analyzed, perhaps more critically, and new accounts are needed as demands on teachers change. Pertti Kansanen provides us with just such an account of the difficulties Finish teaches face in trying to be fair to the many cultures in the school. Their work provides us with a keen sense of the agonies of cultural difference as they surface in the common school. The role of the researcher is critical in this process. Agony and dilemma can be easily silenced if the researcher uses the research process to prescribe a way of acting in the classroom rather than documenting what actually happens there. Such research has only the appearance of report and narrative. This is the danger that Gunnel Colnerud and her colleagues point to. Such research has the effect of stifling debate and pretending that there are no agonies to be faced. The silenced agonies do not go away; they resurface in the lives of teachers and students alike as they struggle with the difficult judgements that perforce have to be made.
How well does the trend to state curriculum policies as learning outcomes reflect the dilemmas that teachers face. Those outcomes which put the best face possible on the educational process may lead to exaggerated expectations and may embody in themselves contradictions and glaring omissions. In short these political documents need to be taken for what they are - expressions of the institution of schooling whose import teachers need to assess critically. As David Hansen suggests, it is one thing to be responsive to public concerns and another to be subservient to them. He imagines a profession capable of being critical of the tasks set for it by the political process. To do this he says the profession must respect its traditions which embody the virtues needed to be a teacher. The nature of these virtues and their role in the work that teachers do need to become objects of research. Such an agenda will act as a corrective for the drift in educational policy to technologically based norms with their fantasies of control promised by models taken from the world of business.
Lists of outcomes of school may indeed hide more than they than reveal in an effort to put a brave face on the dilemmas of schooling. The irony is that what is hidden, if faced, would be instructional and valuable to policy and to school reform. Teachers have a vital role to play in this process of recovering the moral nature of teaching and its dilemmas. Failure to document the dilemmas that face teaches and to recognize the virtues that are needed to confront those dilemmas may be tragic. The virtues which comprise the practice of teaching and their role in the way life is lead in schools must be documented and reflected upon. It is to understanding the nature of such a goal for research and to considering the means to achieve it that we now turn as we contemplate the moral nature of teaching and its significance for professionalism.