ERIC Number: EJ825356
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2009-Jan
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0142-5692
EISSN: N/A
Appropriating Professionalism: Restructuring the Official Knowledge Base of England's "Modernised" Teaching Profession
Beck, John
British Journal of Sociology of Education, v30 n1 p3-14 Jan 2009
The present paper examines efforts by government and government agencies in England to prescribe and control the knowledge base of a teaching profession that has, under successive New Labour administrations since 1997, been subjected to "modernisation". A theoretical framework drawn from aspects of the work of Basil Bernstein, and of Rob Moore and Lynn Jones, is drawn upon to examine in some detail one key aspect of this ongoing process of governmental appropriation of professionalism: the specification by the Training and Development Agency for Schools of new "standards" for both initial teacher training and teachers' subsequent career progression. It is argued that although this enterprise represents itself as a species of purely common-sense reform, it is in fact a mode of competency training that is rooted in selective appropriation of elements of post-fordist management theory and a loose form of behaviourist psychology. The capacity of this training discourse to suppress awareness of its own presuppositions and of alternative or competing conceptions of professions and professionalism is explored. (Contains 8 notes.)
Descriptors: Teaching (Occupation), Educational Change, Foreign Countries, Public Agencies, Educational Policy, Knowledge Base for Teaching, National Standards, Standard Setting, Government Role, Preservice Teacher Education, Professional Development, Professional Autonomy, Educational Philosophy, Organizational Theories, Politics of Education, Competency Based Teacher Education, Accountability, Educational History
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United Kingdom (England)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A