A comparative analysis of primary teacher professionalism in England and Finland

Teachers’ Perceptions of Professionalism and Professional Development: A Case Study in Greece

“…as well as other researchers (Bredeson, 2002;Hargreaves, 2001;Webb et al, 2004) have also found that teachers have reported the continuing learning as the most important factor of their professionalism. The teachers of our sample mentioned that they invested their personal time for research and further development in order to keep up with the professional demands and responsibilities.…”

“…The collaboration with colleagues appears as a powerful force within the teaching profession, which has effects on teachers' professionalism and professional development. Webb et al (2004) have argued that teachers through collaboration gain numerous advantages such as moral support, sharing workloads, eliminating duplication and increasing a collective confidence regarding innovations. Such a description of collaboration forges teachers' sense of professional development and consequently affects their conception of professionalism (p. 94).…”

“…Teachers' professionalism is also closely related to educational policy reforms, which can either diminish teachers' professionalism, when they have been poorly managed and ignored teachers' vocational needs (Day & Gu, 2007), or redefine teachers' professionalism and augment the culture of collaboration, which enhance teachers' professional learning and moral support (D. Hargreaves, 1994;Webb et al, 2004). It seems therefore that it is important for government policies and reforms to take into account teachers' voices and needs in order not only to implement the changes but also to effectively support teachers' work and reassert their sense of professionalism into their working environment.…”

“…These three occupations framed the key traits of a professional occupation that distinguish them from all the others (Hilton & Southgate, 2007;Webb et al, 2004;Whitty, 2008). However, as Whitty (2008) specifically points out, "more recent sociological perspectives on professionalism have rejected such normative notions of what it means to be a professional" (p. 32).…”

Comparing OECD educational models through the prism of PISA

“…Teachers were in particular being put in charge of developing the curriculum. The increased heterogeneity of students' knowledge requires on their part conducting more social work and can explain the fact that the number of tutored students has grown considerably in over a decade (Webb & alii, 2004 This potential hardly depends, if at all, on specific academic competencies effectively developed by the educational systems, or it does very early into the school curriculum. It depends on the low rate of early school failure and, correlative to that, on the success of initial teaching.…”