ABSTRACT
The professionalization of teaching has become one of the self-evident prerequisites in Anglo-American academic discussion on school improvement. Two US reports from 1986 (The Nation Prepared and Tomorrow’s Teacher) have been especially influential in constructing the almost unanimous conviction that teaching should be regarded more as classic professional work, like that of the physician, for example (see Darling-Hammond, 1990; Labaree, 1992). In Britain, even formerly critical scholars are arguing for the reassertion of professionalization as an effective weapon against Conservative education policy (Avis, 1994; Montane, 1994). Although it is clearly accepted by the mainstream, some scholars have questioned the self-evident rhetoric of the good intentions of professionalism (see, for example, Burbules & Densmore, 1991; Glazer, 1991; Noddings, 1990; Popkewitz, 1987, 1991; Sykes, 1987; Weiler, 1988).
