ABSTRACT
In the last half dozen years, an educational reform movement has emerged in the United States with the goal of professionalizing teachers. The Holmes Group and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards are two of the organizations currently leading this movement, which draws on such diverse groups as colleges of education, teacher unions, and educationally oriented foundations. Within the movement, there is widespread agreement around three basic propositions:
• teaching in the US is not structured as a professional occupation (i.e., teachers exercise a limited role in educational decision making, work in relative isolation from each other, lack the opportunity to develop and transmit an appropriate knowledge base, and suffer from inadequate status);
• quality education cannot exist without a professionalized teaching force and therefore;
• any effort to improve education must include a component that promotes the professionalization of teaching.
