I jagten på den gode lærer: Om læreruddannelsens professionsrettethed

According to law, the teacher-training programme in Denmark must comply with the teaching pro-fession. At first it seems obvious that so it has to be. But on second thoughts, it is not quite as obvi-ous: What does complying with teaching profession imply? Working at a college of education, I often hear students complain about too much theory - too much academic work and thinking. Instead, they ask for more teaching practice. And „my‟ students are not the only ones that make that complain and wish. Head teachers of the schools, politicians, and others, are making the same demand. The problem as I see it is that the demand for more prac-tice will fail to ensure a critical perspective; it is important but not enough to be trained to do what teachers already do in schools! Looking at it another way, we find strong demands for building up a more professional and oc-cupational attitude in teaching at primary schools. A lot of research into teacher professionalism is carried on, and an increasing number of people take an interest in it. The Danish Union of Teachers raises ethical questions of teacher professionalism and wants to professionalize the teachers; lectur-ers at colleges of education, and others, try to identify and develop professionalism, and so on. The common point of view is that we have to educate teachers as professionals. In order to explore the meaning of professionalism, I have reproduced or retold the story of the professions in sociologic perspective. The main conclusions of this research are that professionalism is closely connected to the modernization of society, and that professionalism in today‟s world of globalisation is about „cosmopolitism‟. It is also part of the conclusion that professionalism is a matter of authority, expert knowledge, impartiality, independence and exclusion - and nowadays in a worldwide perspective. In Denmark is it quite common to talk about a certain „Danish model‟ for educating teachers. The teacher-training model in Denmark basically implies a connection between three sides of teacher education; vocational studies (school subjects), studies of pedagogy and education, and teaching practice. Trying to find out whether professionalism is an appropriate objective for the teaching pro-fession or not, I analyzed this model in two steps. First, I considered the relation between theory and practice in the model, and then I considered the interdisciplinary content of the model. The demand for professionalism includes a lot of problems and complications, and I find the strategy of profes-sionalism too exclusive to be appropriate and compliable with teaching in schools. The result of the research in this report is that teaching and teacher education neither can be re-duced to a matter of „more‟ practicum in the field of teaching nor „just‟ a matter of professionalism; teaching and teacher education has to be considered as a third position. Therefore we need to rethink the critical dimension of educating teachers. In conclusion then, I find it an advantage if we educate teachers on the basis of a narrative philosophy and a critical hermeneutics. In narrative and critical hermeneutic thinking, the point is a „comprehensive tension‟ between „what is already there‟ and „imagination and opportunities‟: In teacher education indeed, we must make sure that empirical links are made to the actual world of teaching in schools and, at the same time, insist on our imagi-nations of a better school, a better society and a better life. By cultivating this tension, the critical dimension will appear in a poetic way.
On the basis of this narrative way of thinking – and still trying to find out what complying with teaching profession means – I tried to disentangle the knowledge of teaching. I found three perspec-tives of interest in a critical hermeneutic point of view; a profession-sociological perspective, a re-flective perspective, and a practical-poetic perspective. By applying these perspectives, various new demands appears at the college of education; the educational studies has to be based on empirical findings of the teaching profession; new design-practices has to be developed, e.g. practices based on knowledge about how to create schools and education; there is a need for more interdisciplinary thinking, e.g. negotiations between a various numbers of interests; and demands for an increased focus on general didactics rather than still more specific focuses on still more specific parts of chil-dren, childhood, teaching, didactics and so on. Complying with teacher profession, the teacher edu-cation has to deal with and centre on these perspectives and demands. The humble and simple answer to the main question of this report might be, that we would be better of just searching for the good teacher, rather than focusing too much on professionalism in schools and in teacher education.