Veteran teacher voices: Relational accountability and ethical professionalism in second-level education in Ireland.

Teacher professionalism has become an increasingly contested and ambiguous concept in international and national educational discourses. Policy rhetoric ostensibly aimed at increasing teacher professionalism is critiqued as in fact eroding some of its core tenets (Sachs 2016; Biesta 2015a; 2015b; Ball 2003; Hargreaves 2000). This dissertation develops a model of ethical professionalism through which teacher professionalism might be reframed so as to challenge what has been termed the deprofessionalisation of teaching. The study is located against the backdrop of accelerating change in the context of second-level education in the Republic of Ireland. Through a theoretical framework based on the work of the philosophers Adriana Cavarero (2000) and Judith Butler (2012; 2010; 2004), the study examines the teacher identity narratives of eight secondlevel teachers who each have more than 20 years’ experience. A methodology is developed which uses the ethics of recognition as a guiding concept in a narrative analysis of the lives and experiences of the participant teachers. The study makes a contribution to the national literature in the Irish context by offering a deeper understanding of the nuances and complexities of change resistance in the second-level context and by drawing attention to the teacher voices of experienced or veteran teachers, an under-researched group in the Irish context. Building on the key issues that emerged from the teacher identity narratives, the study unpacks the operation of concepts such as autonomy, accountability, power, agency, and relationality within teacher identity. By placing this analysis within the international theoretical and empirical literature, a model of teacher professionalism is developed that is rooted in an ethical educational relation. This model of ethical teacher professionalism is developed with a particular eye to the political aspect of teacher identity and the potential of such a model to challenge the dominance of external narratives of deprofessionalisation. The study makes a contribution to the international literature on teacher professionalism by suggesting a reframed model of ethical teacher professionalism which could complement and enhance existing models by drawing the Arendtian concept of the political space of action into the core of teacher professionalism.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

phd

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

National University of Ireland Maynooth

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Murray, Cliona

Language dc:language

en