Locating post-16 professionalism: public spaces as dissenting spaces

Abstract

Locating post-16 professionalism explores the ways in which teachers engaged in digitally mediated communicationin the UK and the USA -incidentally articulate their professional selves during an extended exchange about an aspect of government policy that mattered to them. Drawing on a theoretical framework derived from participatory democracy, the study is mindful of how citizens use public spaces to express support or opposition to government policies. Through extended and intense discussion, the teachers involved who legitimately defines and participation in what practices justifiably bestows professional status? The paper is intent on questioning the location of professionalism rather than its definition. This spatial dimension is central to the argument that unfolds. Teacher professionalism is most frequently positioned the within the classroom; a space that once offered scope for strategic compliance. More recently the classroom has become an even more diminutive space enabling teachers to do little more than survive through tactical resistance. My argument is that teacher professionalism may also be located in other spaces; spaces that allow teachers to transcend the scripted pedagogies of the classroom. In these other spaces teacher professionalism is located within open critique, defiance and dissent which allow teachers to extend their pedagogic focus and explore dimensions of professionalism that matter to them: what it means, how and by whom it is conferred.