ABSTRACT
This chapter is an attempt to put together various strands of the authors' work on teachers and our criticisms of existing work. Two principal directions have informed their work, a re‐examination of teacher union history, and a re‐examination of the concepts of professionalism and class as applied to teachers. In both cases the authors felt that the application of the concepts of professionalism and class analysis were inadequate, particularly where they categorized teachers as middle class professionals. The chapter tries to view teachers as being within a process of development as part of the Labour movement. It tries to redefine useful ways of seeing class and professionalism as part of this process. The chapter tries to consider what evidence exists for understanding the labour process of teaching and looks at one aspect of this process, computerization in schools.
