Teacher Professional Standards: A Policy Strategy to Control, Regulate or Enhance the Teaching Profession?

Abstract

The idea of standards for the teaching profession has been circulating in education policy discourses and public debates in Australia, the UK, the USA since the mid 1990s. The rise of education policies in support of professional teaching standards needs to be seen in the light of broader public sector reforms which have sought to contribute to increased efficiency and effectiveness of bureaucracies through systems of performance management of staff, increased demands for public accountability, and increased regulation by central government. Such policy processes need to be seen in the light of government priorities which, as Mahony and Hextall observe, have been preoccupied with debates about standards which have centred on, “how these terms are defined, second, by whom, and third, on how improvement of effectiveness is to be achieved” (2000, p. 8). This chapter is organized around three questions: i. what discourses inform the standards debate and the development of teacher professional standards? ii. What are some emerging issues relating to teacher professional standards? and iii. What alternative strategies could the teaching profession itself use to seize the agenda towards a profession led strategy?