ABSTRACT
The term ‘teacher professionalism’ is generally used in one of two ways in the literature. First, it may be taken to be something that society and the state in particular should grant teachers so that they can get on with their work unhindered by government interference. This is the sense in which Hargreaves uses it in his description of the deprofessionalization of teachers since the late 1970s, when neoliberal reforms began to erode teachers’ autonomy of judgment and conditions of work (Hargreaves 2003: 11; see also Apple 1986; Ball 2008; Beck 2008). This voice is present too in Goodson and Hargreaves’ seven principles of postmodern professionalism, the first of which is ‘Increased opportunity and responsibility to exercise discretionary judgement’ (1996: 21). Hyslop-Margison and Sears continue the argument, concluding that the role of teachers in administrating public education, establishing curricular objectives and instructional design is threatened by accountability measures, such as instrumental objectives, standardized testing, and evidence-based practice (2010: 2). This exogenous view of teacher autonomy assumes that the development of a professional approach is dependent on the conferral of autonomous status to teachers by the public in general and the state in particular: without this space teachers are reduced to implementers of a curriculum designed elsewhere, and hampered in the task of elaborating their own vision of good professional practice.
