Professional Capital: A New Framework for Understanding Teacher Quality and Educational Change

• In Event: Professional Capital: A New Agenda to Transform Teaching in Every School

Abstract

Objectives and Theoretical Framework
This opening paper introduces the idea of professional capital as a framework for development and action to dramatically improve the teaching profession as a force for system transformation.
The research literature points to the power of human capital of teachers for teacher quality and improved student achievement (Don et.al 2008; Odden, 2011). Human capital in this influential policy model is understood as individual teacher characteristics and performances that can be correlated with measured student achievement. However, teachers’ social capital, understood as collective relationships and interactions among teachers, has a higher impact on student achievement than individual human capital.

The idea of professional capital notes that human and social capital, in interaction, have important implications for teacher quality. It also adds a third form of capital – decisional capital. Decisional capital is about the development and refinement over time of the quality of teachers’ judgments, capabilities and commitments, as it is practiced, challenged and stretched.

In summary, teacher quality cannot be reduced to individual human capital but must also encompass attention to social and decisional capital by fostering and creating the conditions for professional collaboration and high trust within and across schools; and by retaining effective teachers beyond three or four years so that with effective practice and mentoring, they will stretch their expertise to create a return on people’s investment of money, time and mentoring.

Data Sources
Research by Odden (2011), and Leana (2011) has established the critical importance of human and social capital respectively, but until now no one has developed a framework for integrating these ideas into a more complete approach that also includes the power of professional judgment. Strong professional capital is associated with high educational performance in jurisdictions like Finland, Singapore, Ontario and Alberta (Hargreaves and Fullan 2012; Hargreaves and Shirley 2012; McKinsey & Company, 2007; Mourshed, Chijioke, & Barber, 2010; Tucker, 2011). In these cases, well-qualified teachers are stringently prepared in university -based programs of teacher education combined with sustained practical experience that includes inquiry and reflection. They collaborate together in multiple ways to create, apply, and inquire into their practice rather than merely delivering external policies. They have strong teacher unions and professional associations who work closely with governments on improving teaching and learning and the conditions that support these outcomes. They also retain and sustain teachers through flexible career paths and supportive working conditions that enable them to develop their own strengths as they move forward through teacher leadership over time.

Scholarly and Practical Significance
Professional capital is an intellectual and strategic framework to articulate existing research in a new way and to articulate fresh research inquiries that contrast with the prevailing business capital approach to educational reform in which teacher quality is only a matter of individual skill. This paper is a call to organize our professional, strategic and political work around the generational payoffs of investing in, developing and circulating professional capital. In so doing we will begin to see dramatic payoffs in the performance of the system.

Authors

• Michael Fullan, OISE/University of Toronto

• Andrew Hargreaves, Boston College