Teachers' Feeling Valued: The Impact of Professional Treatment as Knowledge Workers

• In Event: Local to Global: Influence and Impact of Educational Research in the Public Interest

Abstract

This paper uses the research describing the characteristics of knowledge worker (professional benchmarks, professional discretion, room for promotion, and workplace conditions) and relates it to the societal value of the teaching profession. New questions on the 2018 TALIS survey allow us to test unaddressed notions of professional capital from our 2013 analysis, such as the degree of teachers’ autonomy in the classroom (professional discretion) as well as newly measured workplace conditions of collegial trust and satisfaction with salary and benefits. The weighted, fixed effects logistic regression analyses test the relationship between teachers’ perceptions of societal value of teaching and their reported possession of knowledge-worker traits. This study supports commonalities of professional work treatment that sustains teachers across 48 countries globally.

Authors

• Heather E. Price, Loyola University Chicago

• Kristen Weatherby, Institute of Education - London