ABSTRACT
There are three kinds of obstacle to the teaching profession assuming more responsibility for its own education and training:
● the determination of governments to retain and extend their control over teachers and teaching. This has been especially evident in the conservative New-Right projects of the 1980s and early 1990s; these sentiments are reinforced by a fear of resurgent trade unionism;
● the lack of organisation and a single focus for ‘the teaching profession’; and
● the conceptual and political problems now thought to be connected with the notion of ‘profession’ and professionalism.
