The ‘Double-Edged Sword’ of Teacher Professionalism: Fusing Expertise and Democratic Conceptions to Rebuild Public Trust

• In Event: Beyond Lortie: New sociological perspectives on professions and their application to teaching

Abstract

This paper explores current predicaments of public mistrust in teaching by analyzing the complexities inherent in teacher professionalism. It demonstrates how tensions between public legitimacy and trust stem from two opposing views of professionalism that shape conflicting ideals of teaching: an expertise-based model, which sees teachers as expert clinicians, and a democratic professionalism that views them as democratic educationalists. Instead of resolving these conflicts, I propose considering how they might be combined, providing a more practical basis for rethinking professionalism in teaching.

I review scholarship on professionalism in teaching and teacher education (TE), drawing on several theoretical perspectives. To analyze the expert clinician ideal, I rely on the sociology of professions and professional knowledge, employing Abbott’s (1988) framework on expert labor and Bernstein’s (2000) concept of recontextualization to demonstrate how disciplinary knowledge shapes educational practice. For the democratic educationalist ideal, I turn to philosophy and anthropology of education, engaging Biesta’s (2017) notion of democratic professionality, the concept of funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992), and the democratization of teacher knowledge (Zeichner et al., 2015). I also draw on Brint’s (1996) distinction between technical and moral dimensions of professionalism. Situating this analysis, I review historical policy responses to public mistrust in teaching (Gunter et al., 2016; Tolofari, 2005) and TE (Cochran-Smith, 2016, 2021).
The analysis highlights three core features of teaching defined differently by these ideals.

(1) Purposes of teaching: In the expert clinician ideal, teaching centers on providing learning opportunities to shape students’ cognition in subject knowledge (Author, 2008), requiring teachers to diagnose and address defined learning problems within a shared professional framework (Author, 2008). The democratic educationalist ideal conceives teaching as a value-laden practice rooted in deliberations with students and community members over contested social purposes, demanding judgment about what is educationally desirable (Biesta, 2009; Labaree, 2017).

(2) Teacher professional authority: The expert clinician’s authority rests on diagnostic and treatment classification systems that translate observations into recognized needs and prescribe responses, aligning practice with shared professional knowledge (Dreeben, 2005). The democratic educationalist ideal grounds authority in dialogical relationships where teachers, students, and communities jointly define educational purposes, overcoming externally validated standards (Sachs, 2003).

(3) Teacher judgment and learning: The expert clinician ideal anchors judgment and learning in disciplinary knowledge transformed through recontextualization (Bernstein, 2000), selectively shaping it to serve diagnostic practice and reinforce professional coherence and legitimacy (Hordern, 2016). The democratic educationalist perspective situates teacher learning within praxis and collaborative knowledge construction, emphasizing critical reflection (Biesta, 2019) and insights drawn from local contexts and community-based funds of knowledge (Zeichner et al., 2015).

These analyses expose the double-edged sword of teacher professionalism. While teaching requires public legitimacy rooted in shared knowledge and evidence of meeting societal expectations, these can clash with the relational trust built through dialogic community engagement, which involves non-experts in educational decision-making. I suggest conceptualizing teaching as a space where professional and democratic discourses are fused through shared languages and practices that integrate disciplinary foundations with teachers’ situated, value-laden judgments, supporting deliberations that enrich teaching practice.

Author

• Ayelet Becher, The Open University of Israel