IPDA Hong Kong hosts webinar reconsidering teacher agency and professionalism
August 26, 2020
‘If you stand for nothing, you will fall for nothing’ – Teacher Agency and Professionalism Reconsidered. This IPDA Hong Kong webinar with Professor Gert Biesta, Centre for Public Education and Pedagogy, Maynooth University, took place on Tuesday 25th August 2020.
The work of teachers is public work: it takes place in the public domain and should, in principle, be orientated towards the public good rather than serve private interests. This not just suggests an intrinsic connection between teaching and democracy, but also makes a particular case for teaching as a profession. In my presentation I will explore the ways in which teacher professionalism has changed over the past decades, with a particular focus on the democratic dimension of teacher professionalism. I will focus on [1] the relationship between teachers and students; [b] the question of accountability; and [3] the role of knowledge, values, scholarship and research. With regard to each I will suggest that what may look like a democratisation of the teaching profession actually has turned into its opposite, which has much to do with technicist conceptions of education and with the role of measurement and data. I will conclude with some suggestions about the push backs that may be needed, and what this means for teachers’ agency.
Some questions to think about in advance of the session:
- How powerful are teachers in the contemporary educational landscape? What limits their power? What enhances their power? What prevents them from being powerful?
- How self-evident is it to suggest that the work of teachers is public work?
- Who should have a voice in deciding what education is ‘for’ and ‘about’? Should teachers have a voice in this as well? If so, what kind of voice?
About Professor Gert Biesta
I am Professor of Public Education at Maynooth University Ireland (0.4) and Visiting Professor at the University of Agder, Norway. Since April 2016 I hold the NIVOZ Professorship for Education at the University of Humanistic Studies, the Netherlands (0.2); this will finish in December 2020. Since August 2019 I am Professorial Fellow in Educational Theory and Pedagogy (0.3) at the Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh.
Before this I worked at universities in Luxembourg, Scotland (University of Stirling), England (University of Exeter; Brunel University London), and the Netherlands (Utrecht, Leiden and Groningen) and held Visiting Professorships at NLA University College, Norway, the University of Orebro, Sweden, Malardalen University, Sweden, and ArtEZ Institute of the Arts, the Netherlands.
I have a PhD from Leiden University the Netherlands (1992) and a degree in education from Leiden University and in Philosophy from Erasmus University Rotterdam. I am a former Spencer Post-Doctoral Fellow with the National Academy of Education, USA.
From 2015 until 2018 I was an associate member of the ‘Onderwijsraad’ (the Education Council of the Netherlands), the main government advisory body on education (see here for more information). Since April 2016 I am a scientific advisor of VERUS in the Netherlands.
I am currently co-editor of two book-series with Routledge: New Directions in the Philosophy of Education (with Michael A. Peters and Liz Jackson) and Theorizing Education (with Stefano Oliverio). If you are interested in publishing in any of these series please contact me.
From 1999 until 2014 I was editor-in-chief of the journal Studies in Philosophy and Education (Springer; ISSN 0039-3746). Since 2016 I am associate editor of the journal Educational Theory and since 2018 I am co-editor of the British Educational Research Journal.
