Personal Blogs

My new PDP Analyses.

Source:
H851 Practice Guide 7, Reviewing and Improving your Teaching, The Open University, 1998, p.31.
Adapted with Technology-related skills and competencies for e-learning professionals by Robin Mason (October 2009)
Adapted with CMALT Core Competences and the LSN Framework of E-learning Competences(November 2009)

My CMALT/PDP core competences can be found here.

Thanks, Eugene

My description of a Learning Technologist can be found here.

Thanks Eugene

Warrior wants to make a distinction between the word profession and professional. In my opinion, before reading the paper, a professional is the one who executes a profession.

Let’s see where this paper takes me.

Perkin (1985) endorses Sockets (1985) definition that the word professional defines: a dignified occupation with an element of intellectual training or large mental expertise.
Hoyle (1985) concurs, but mentions the fact that each professional will have distinctive characteristics that distinguish their occupation from another.

Warrior continues and mentions the fact that the organizational context of the word profession is important: as it is distinctively different from the individualised context of

being a professional

The 6 common traits to a profession by Millerson:
1. A skill based on theoretical knowledge

2. Intellectual training and education

3. The testing of competence

4. Closure of the profession by restrictive organisation

5. A code of conduct

6. An altruistic service in the affairs of others.”

(Millerson, 1964 cited in Perkin, 1985:14)

The Lindop Claims of being a professional:

1. Exclusivity

2. To do something special for society

3. Profess to certain socially useful skills and competencies

4. Practise according to standards that are publicly acknowledged

5. Enjoy privilege and responsibility in the offering of a service to

the public

6. Exercise personal judgement

7. Protect the public by guaranteeing certain minimum standards

of competence

8. Conduct and merit recognition by way of payment and status.”

(Lindop, 1982:157)

Those two terms might have overlap. Furthermore the duality of the terms highlights the clear link between the intrinsic responsibilities of individual members of a profession to one another, as well as the extrinsic responsibility of the profession to the public (Lindop, 1982).

The Teaching Profession
Education is a service and Perkin (1985) suggests that: “a service which combines knowledge with practice.” The client demands not only theoretical knowledge but also procedural skills. Professions do not exist without clients, so students are an important component in the teaching profession. This provides further evidence of how education is contextualised as a profession.

Warrior quotes Perkin (1985) and argues that professions require organization. Universities and other institutions are in general well structured: a competent staff, career development, teaching content. However, Brown et al. (2002) suggests that some institutions lack structure or organization. The diversity in the profession of teaching is often acknowledged, e.g. difference between primary, secondary and university, differences between union bodies, differences in the use of resources.
Furthermore, the profession is limited by its ability to accept and acknowledge the various ways individuals enter the profession. In a primary or secondary school qualified teacher status is an essential requirement, whereas in higher education there is an expectation that lecturers have a specialist level of knowledge, but not necessarily a detailed understanding of the theories and practice of teaching. In the latter, experience alone has been deemed a suitable criterion upon which to teach. Do these different ways of ‘qualifying’ and entering teaching constitute professional practice?

This section has thus tried to summarise some of the pertinent issues relating to the differences between the teaching profession and what it constitutes to be a professional teacher. In essence, the societal values associated with the commonalties of the profession, compared to the personal values and working practices that an individual brings to the job.

Quality
Carr (1989) argues that without quality the essence of professionalism is lost.
QAA (2001): “The first is the appropriateness of standards set by an institution and second is the effectiveness of teaching and learning support in providing opportunities for students to achieve those standards.”
=> OFSTED (benchmarking, self-assessment documents and performance indicators)

However, it would appear that the essence of what quality means is perhaps being diluted though imposing such rigid and bureaucratic frameworks (Floud, 2001). It is simply not possible to identify professional, educational values from quantifying and collating materials in module boxes or through aspect groups. Such evidence only provides an ‘instant’ view, fails to show any progression of the individual in terms of their own professional development and proposes that individuals willingly accept institutional values and do not question or modify practices, statutes or legislation as professionals should (Ryan, 2001).

The term professional can be easily adopted, but requires a high degree of commitment and time in order to be maintained.

It is therefore important that departments offer the most beneficial type of support in terms of professional staff development, balancing pedagogical and conceptual opportunities: maintaining and developing not only content knowledge but pedagogical skills as well.

Another method of professional development is staff appraisal, whereby an individual will discuss

progress with a more experienced colleague and forward plan what they want to achieve within a

certain time scale. Often this will be formalised and recorded in a written format, but kept

confidential. The benefit is that the process should highlight areas of individual weakness and ways

that these can be addressed.