The Professionalization of Doctors as a Model for Teachers and National Board Certification

• In Event: 1184 - Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 04. Professions

Abstract

Current efforts to “professionalize” teaching arise from the perception on the part of external stakeholders that teaching is not functioning at the high level of quality associated with professions such as medicine (Carnegie Task Force on Teaching as a Profession, 1986; National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983). The desire to “fix” teaching has led to creating a credential, National Board Certification (NBC), that is likened to what doctors must achieve to reach higher levels of professional status within medicine. But, stakeholders do not intend to raise the professional status of teachers; they are more interested in raising quality. They believe that this can be accomplished by earning a credential that resembles credentials that exist in medicine. This believe is misguided. They misunderstand the process that medicine underwent to achieve professional dominance and how taking control of their area of work led to legitimacy and the perception of quality. Once doctors achieved control and legitimacy, they were able to define what quality means within medicine. That process is what allowed professional medical credentials to have power and meaning. Teachers have been unable to accomplish that through NBC. This paper traces the history of medicine in the US from the late colonial era to the early twentieth century to demonstrate how regular physicians were able to take control of their profession and achieve professional status. Using medicine as a case for comparison demonstrates that NBC is a credential of undetermined and inconsistent status that cannot improve teaching because its meaning is contested. Instead of being a professionalizing credential, NBC is a tool of accountability.

Author

• Mildred Enid Rey, University of Chicago