Teachers’ Professionalism, Trust, and Autonomy

This entry examines what the words “professional” and “professionalism” mean as applied to teachers and the extent to which teachers are recognized as professionals.

The term “professional” can be used in a value-neutral sense to designate a person who earns a living in a given occupation or has obtained a license to practice in a field requiring specific expertise. The term can also be applied in a normative sense to connote that the work of some person, or group of persons, measures up to high standards and, therefore, that such persons ought to be trusted to work autonomously. Because the term is used in these two different ways, we can say, without an air of paradox, that someone works unprofessionally even though we acknowledge that he or she is a professional.

When the word “professional” is applied collectively to all members of an occupation, it is commonly used in the normative sense, connoting trust and autonomy; additionally, a third characteristic is also implied, namely,...