Pedagogical change and professional courage

The Palgrave Handbook of Teacher Education Research has been updated with a new chapter from Dr Rupert Knight.  

The new chapter on pedagogical change and professional courage exposes the tensions of teacher professionalism.

Abstract

Education in many countries increasingly exists in an environment of competition, measurement, and comparison. As well as emphasizing external accountability, this landscape may offer schools, in theory, a degree of autonomy. School-level innovation, however, implies a degree of courage on the part of teachers if it involves stepping away from the safety of a conception of professionalism centered on compliance with externally measured standards. This chapter explores the complex interplay of pedagogical change and teacher professionalism. Drawing on the example of a school undergoing a year of pedagogical innovation, the complexity and ambiguity of teachers’ responses to an inspiring, but challenging, period of school-level change are revealed. Tensions around professional confidence, collegiality, and accountability in response to pedagogical change are discussed. The case is made in particular for the necessity of a strong collective response to the challenges of unlearning deeply ingrained practices and, above all, reconciling school-led change with external scrutiny. These tensions are related to competing forms of managerial and democratic professionalism. It is suggested that the enactment of pedagogical change that is not externally mandated, but rather school led and “courageous,” can potentially challenge, as well as enhance, teacher professionalism. The notion of the limits of professionalism being exposed in various forms is introduced as a way of explaining the potentially detrimental aspects of this process.

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