ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the problems of the professionalization of knowledge as they relate to teacher education. It considers professionalization as a particular dynamic of a changing cultural consciousness among the middle class in America. The chapter discusses the role of science in interpreting institutional life. It also considers science as a means by which political agendas are incorporated into professional structures. The chapter also discusses the use of instrumental reasoning as a logic of teacher education. The combining of science with instrumental reason creates an illusion of disinterestedness and objectivity in practices that are socially constructed. The professionalization of knowledge reflects the change in the material conditions and the cultural consciousness of the middle class after the American Civil War (1865). Ideologies of professionalism make the control mechanism appear reasonable and credible in the everyday patterns of teaching. The dynamics of professionalization and the social predicament of schooling provide a way of considering the discourse of teacher education.
