Chapter: II.
Education as a Profession
John Dewey noted education as a profession in remarks made in relation
to the National Education Association and the American Association of
University Professors. He once compared the AAUP to the American Bar
Association and the American Medical Association thinking that the
professoriate would become a self governing profession. (John Dewey,
“The American Association of University Professors Introductory
Address,” Science, Vol. 41, no 1048 (Jan. 29, 1915), 150.)
One of the original goals of the National Education
Association as stated in its first annual meeting was “ To create and
permanently establish a teacher’s profession by methods usually adopted
by other professions.” (Zalman Richards, “History of the National
Education Association of the United States, Its Organizations and
Functions, A Historical Sketch “ (The National Education Association,
1892, 24.)
It is interesting to note that despite the long history of professional
organizations for educators and for the professoriate educators are more prone to
recognize themselves as professional educators at the preschool,
elementary and secondary levels of education than in higher education. At
the level of higher education, educators typically identify themselves
first and foremost as members of academic disciplines other than
education. Ask an 11th grade math teacher, “what do you do for
a living?” and the answer will be “I’m a teacher.” Ask the same question
of a college professor and the response will most likely be “sociologist”
or “economist.” This trend in the self-identification of post-secondary
educators exposes the general insensitivity toward the profession of
teaching, and a lack of awareness of the ethical obligations attached to
teaching. At the level of higher education there appears to be a general
insensitivity or low level of awareness or concern about the professional
responsibilities of educators and this has its ramifications in the
subsequent low level of sensitivity to the ethical considerations related
to conducting research with humans in the role of learners.
The under-emphasis on teaching among the members of the
American professoriate is also apparent in the desirability of “teaching”
jobs with as little teaching as possible. The higher the “prestige” of a
college or university, the lower the teaching load. Indeed, in
emphasizing publication and research, and by “raising the bar” for tenure
and promotion, administrations around the country have tacitly
acknowledged that effective teaching is secondary (perhaps tertiary) to
research and professional service in an academic discipline. And rare indeed is the professor
promoted solely on the basis of effective teaching. Too many in the
post-secondary education view teaching as the necessary evil of their
jobs, and as an unfortunate duty which robs them of time for research and
publication.
This is not to argue that scholarship is not important for
effective teaching. One simply cannot be an effective post-secondary
educator in any academic discipline without actively participating in the
contemporary arenas of scholarship. Being an effective scholar is a
necessary condition of good teaching, but it is not a sufficient condition
of effective pedagogy.
Too many individuals in higher education have simply
forgotten what they knew back in sixth grade: education is a profession.
They recognize it with those who teach in elementary and secondary
education, but fail to see it in higher education. Why? Is it because
there are too many people in higher education that do not identify
themselves as educators? Perhaps. What is more certain is the fact that
most college professors are not quick to describe themselves as
professional educators, preferring a discipline related descriptor
instead, such as “sociologist”, “chemist”, or “engineer.” Even the term
“professor” evokes not a teacher in a classroom, but an expert in a
lecture hall “professing” what they know.
The rather wide spread absence of educators to identify themselves as
professional educators is only explained as a reflection of the failure of
a number of institutions to communicate this that starts with the faculty of educational
institutions and their rather lax regard for the notion of professionalism
and all that would entail and extends to the graduate programs , even
those for future teachers, and their remarkable failure to address some
fundamental notions, socially constructed to be sure, but definite notions
of what being a professional is about and the incumbent set of
responsibilities that are part of that identity and membership in that
group. In the academy there is much more than lip service paid to
the notion of academic freedom and the rights and prerogatives of
educators and faculty but scarce attention to the responsibilities and
duties they attach to the members of the profession.
Where responsibilities and duties are
much more often addressed is in the context of employer-employee relations
and the basic duties of the teacher as employee and the terms of contracts
and collective bargaining agreements. The persistence of many of the
problems related to teaching faced by professional educators at all levels
and in particular in higher education can be identified as resulting from
a failure of educators to accept their identity as professional educators
and their collective responsibilities. Educational institution will
not respond to the expression of individual educators but must respond to
the collective for it is the collective that is responsible for
accomplishing the mission of the institution. It is a bit
paradoxical that individual educators may be able to successfully address
and remedy many of their problems only by admitting to an identity as a
professional educator, taking on additional responsibilities in order to
arrive as a member of a collective that will act to effectuate those
remedies: taking on or becoming aware of more responsibilities leads to a
more manageable way in which to fulfill all responsibilities..
Given the degree to
which those in higher education fail to recognize or accommodate to
education as a profession there is need to further set out how it is so
that it is a separate profession and how this is acknowledged to some
degree in language and practice. To establish that teaching is a
profession separate from but fully the equal to the academic discipline as
a profession there is a need to set out some evidence of this.
When baccalaureate
degree recipients announce their intention to go on into graduate studies
they are often asked in what discipline or academic area they will study.
After answering “sociology” or “physics” or “philosophy” they will more
often than not be asked what they intend to do once having achieved the
doctorate in that discipline. Often, but not always, the answer is
“teach”. It is not assumed that becoming the holder of a doctorate and
becoming an entrant into the profession of the academic discipline will
necessarily mean that the professional will teach. Teaching is neither
a necessary nor a sufficient condition to be a physicist or sociologist or anthropologist or
philosopher. Being a physicist or sociologist or
anthropologist or philosopher is neither a necessary nor a sufficient
condition to teach. Natural and social scientists can be and are employed
outside educational institutions and employed to continue their activities
as scientists. So too can those who have earned advanced degrees in
Literature or Philosophy find employment outside of the academy whereby
they can continue their studies and other activities within their academic
discipline.
When a graduate
student or doctoral candidate or doctorate holder applies for a position
in an educational institution that reflects a choice not to pursue some
other form of employment that would be either to some degree supportive of
their being a practitioner and active member of their academic discipline
or else not at all directly supportive. It happens that educational
institutions, particularly in higher education, are quite supportive of
academicians continuing on with their academic profession. Indeed, most
educational institution would expect academicians to continue on with
activities within their academic discipline and most, if not all, require
such continued participation in an academic discipline. The doctorate in philosophy or
Ph.D. which is required for entry into most academic professions and in
nearly all cases into the professoriate was originally a teaching degree.
From the latin verb docere (or “to teach”) comes the word “doctor.” So
while educational institutions are most supportive of research and
publication within the academic disciplines they are not the only means by
which academic professionals might support themselves.
The point to be made
is that within educational institutions it has always been the case, little acknowledged recently, that
the activities within the academic discipline were in addition to and not,
wherever possible, instead of the activities of an educator. The
unfortunate situation has developed and become too common in which many
enter into the professoriate hoping to arrive at a point at which they do
little, if any, teaching and a great deal of research and publication.
With many luminaries
in the academic disciplines having achieved such a position it became the
desideratum of many entering into the academy. This has hurt the
profession of education that so many of its members enter it nearly blind to its
nature and obligations.
What is the source of
this low level of recognition for the professional educational
responsibilities of professors, let alone the ethical considerations
associated with pedagogical research? Part of the problem stems from the
drive for prestige among faculty members. Publishing books can make you
famous, and can open up better-paying jobs at ever more prestigious
universities. Teaching simply cannot provide these things.
One of the central goals
of this work is to lead post-secondary educators to recognize the unique
nature of their positions. A college professor is at once a member of two
professions: their specific discipline and of the profession of education
itself. This dual membership has significant implications. While
the duties of the respective professions do sometimes conflict,
these occasional conflicts are not as significant as the fact that it
presents a set of dual responsibilities for the educator. But among the
American professoriate, individuals too often neglect the duties and
responsibilities of one profession in seeking the fulfillment of those in
another. The demands on the time of faculty imposed by the massing of
responsibilities leads finite beings with finite time not only to prioritize their
interests, but often to neglect some responsibilities for the sake of
fulfilling others that are perceived as more pressing or at least more
apparent to one or the other of the two communities than others appear to
be. The responsibilities to remain a member in good standing with one’s
professional academic discipline are set out by its members and have become both
well entrenched through time and well transmitted through a variety of
means. The instructional staff write books, subscribe to journals,
attend conferences, and talk with others about what it means to be a
member in good standing of their respective academic disciplines.
The fulfillment of
obligations in order to remain a member in good standing of the profession
of education are not so well known. Untenured faculty do have their
classes observed by senior faculty, and students are asked to evaluate
certain courses. The drive to assess courses continues, but it what it
means to be a “good teacher” remains vague at best in most institutions of
higher education or at its worst equated to being a good scholar. Individual examples abound of
those who “profess” to be members of the profession of education by virtue
of their occupation, but who acknowledge few, if any, of the requirements
of membership at all. This is a situation demonstrating that the
professional standards of education have been diffused, and that the
profession has no easily identified core practitioners who set the
standard as educators per se. Nor are such standards generally
recognized, accepted and promulgated, with members being held accountable
to it as criterion for continuing membership (if not for distinction) as
members of the profession of education.
Some members of the
faculty are beginning to realize what being a member of the profession of
education might entail. In higher education the recent appearance and
rapid expansion of Centers for Teaching and Learning (CETL) and the
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) are reflections of that
realization. These are welcome developments, for it demonstrates the
desire on the part of faculty and administrations to “take teaching
seriously,” but much more remains to be done. Most of these efforts
lack an effective presentation of the foundational conceptual framework
upon which and within which the discussions can take place of what it
means to teach and to teach well and to teach even better. Only
with and within a full narrative of the meaning of education and the role of an
educator can a discussion of the responsibilities of educators become a
productive and effective discourse.
Unfortunately, too many
members of the academy who identify themselves primarily as researchers
and scholars in their academic discipline, see their teaching duties as a
distraction or worse yet, as an onerous duty within the institution of
their employment. This attitude would reflect an orientation and set of
values that leads to a devaluing or ignoring of the responsibilities of
the profession of education on the part of faculty members.
What are those
responsibilities that accrue to members of profession of education? To
answer that a general understanding of what constitutes a profession is in
order. With that understanding in place then the discussion of
professional responsibilities can proceed to elucidate the professional
responsibilities that are entailed by membership in the profession. It
will be advanced that within the profession of education such
responsibilities include that of conducting pedagogic experimentation as
well as formal research and publication in pedagogy.
Education is a profession
and it is such at all levels of formal instruction and in all types of
educational institutions. What makes it a profession? Those who share in
common activities and associate with one another constitute a profession
when joining its ranks entails the fulfillment of criteria that involve
academic preparation, training and certification and the identification
with and assumption of responsibilities to that association. This
description is fulfilled in the case of education through the educational
requirements placed upon educators at all levels and through their
licensing and review and evaluation processes, and the variety of ways in
which educators associate and communicate among themselves. Also
important are the standards, expectations and duties of professionals, as
well as the responsibilities and obligations that accrue to members of the
profession. Some are explicated in terms related to specific employment
and others in terms related to specific professional organizations.
To be a member of a
profession, there are certain basic criteria which must be met. As
Michael Bayles argues in Professional Ethics, while
there is no agreement regarding a singular definition of the term
“profession,” there are certain general features which “are necessary for
an occupation to be a profession.” (Bayles, 1981; p. 7) These common
features involve intensive training and intellectual preparation. This
training and preparation are then prepared to provide services which are
important in the maintenance and development of society. The professional
is typically licensed or certified, or is required to meet specific
educational requirements.
In contributing to the
greater social good, and because of the standards set by the profession
itself, professionals are granted an extraordinary amount of autonomy to
make judgments within their profession. Indeed, as Bayles points out, the
general public expects professionals to make judgments. Professionals are
paid to make judgments. But, as Bayles observes, “[i]f professionals did
not exercise their judgment in these aspects, we would have little reason
to hire them” (Bayles, 1981, p. 8).
Is post-secondary
education a profession? The basic criteria of a profession are easily met
in the field of education. What follows is a cursory examination of the
criteria for a profession and how they are met by post secondary educators. As we will
argue later on, many of the ethical issues in the context of pedagogical
experimentation can only be understood within the context of the
professional responsibilities.
The professional post-secondary
educator must:
1. Be educated or prepared for
entry into the profession: expert knowledge
There are academic credentials
required to be hired or certified as an educator. And while college
educators are not typically required to be certified by government
institutions, part of the accreditation process for graduate schools
involves verifying that graduates are adequately prepared for post
secondary teaching.
The preparation for membership
into the profession of post secondary education starts with college, where
students are required to meet certain standards to gain entry into the
profession. It culminates with the offer of employment from an
institution of learning, and also involves certification, tenure, and
promotion decisions. College instructors are not “certified” per se; but
for the most part, they are required to possess advanced graduate degrees
or extensive professional experience, and, increasingly, both. There is a
type of certification or credentialing as professional educators that does
take place that is the equivalent of a licensing. It is as clear as it is
common that educators at the pre school level and from levels K to 12 are
credentialed and must pass any one or more of a number of credentialing or
licensing examinations as well as a process of review and evaluation for
their appointments, promotions and tenure. Post secondary educators are
no less subject to a process of review and evaluation although they do not
receive a license or special credential to teach in a college or
university. As already noted candidates for membership in a faculty of a
post secondary educational institution are required to have received some
formal recognition of their academic preparation for teaching in the form
of a degree. Beyond the degree indicating their proficiency in some
academic discipline faculty they are expected to demonstrate their
competency to teach and are given a number of years during which their
knowledge of the subject matter and their proficiency in teaching it to
others is to be observed by peers. Peer mentoring and faculty development
programs are available for faculty seeking to further perfect their skills
and improve upon the efficacy of their instruction both during and beyond
this period. In an institution of higher education the granting of
reappointments and tenure are the functional equivalent of the
credentialing or licensing of an educator as an educator.
2. Apply for membership
Individuals become members of
the profession of education through the voluntary application for
employment as an educator. Beyond this application are those made for
enrollment and induction into professional associations such as the
American Association of University Professors.
3. Profess that they are
members, and pledge to abide by the ethical and professional standards set
by the community
One declares that one is an
educator or teacher when asked about the profession or vocation or type of
employment. Also, each member of the profession recognizes that all
educators are bound by standards of personal and professional conduct.
And this is one of the most important aspects of the status of
profession. Like it or not, professional post-secondary educators must
not only fulfill their obligations as instructors but as members of the
profession of education they are held to higher standards with regards to
their personal and professional activities. Teachers in general are seen
as moral exemplars and role models by society.
4. Engage in the activities of
the profession
In some way, at some level, at
any institution, the post-secondary educator engages in the activities of
instruction of others, be it through direct instruction, tutoring,
mentoring, curriculum development, peer observations, or active engagement
in the scholarship of teaching and learning The mentoring of new faculty
is a crucially important facet of post-secondary education.
5. Maintain status in the
profession
A member of the education
profession teaches and remains an educator as long as providing for the
instruction of others in some manner and continues to meet the standards
and requirements instituted by the profession itself.
6. Submit to evaluation as a
member of the profession: to maintain status or be elevated within or
removed from such: Autonomy of the profession
Professional educators are
evaluated by their supervisors or peers over some appreciable period of
time in order to establish their qualifications for certification or
membership and for promotion. Effective teaching is, more often than not,
recognized as a factor in tenure and promotion decisions. Society
grants the profession the right to oversee its own membership and to
police itself and remove members as it sees fit due to the special
knowledge held by the professionals and their value to society.
7. Contribute toward the
maintenance of the profession
Educators support educational
enterprises aimed at the support of members of the profession. They join
professional societies and subscribe to professional journals and attend
professional meetings and conferences. They also mentor junior faculty,
and where applicable, introduce interns and teaching and grading
assistants to the profession itself.
8. Forward the progress of the
profession: contribution to society
Educators contribute to the
progress of their profession by disseminating what they have learned, and
can serve to make other educators better at what they do through repeating
the success or avoiding the failures at instruction of their colleagues in
the profession. Collectively educators set the standards to be observed
by members and make note when they are not so observed. This is done with
respect for Academic Freedom which is also an expression of the collective
right of the profession. These rights are recognized by the general
society so that the potential values added to society by the profession
can be realized. Education contributes by increasing the
intellectual resources of society and providing for that which is needed
for social cohesion and progress.
In his work on professional ethics ,Michael D. Bayles identifies teaching
as a profession as it satisfies what he considers as the principle
features for a profession
Three Necessary features of a profession
- Extensive training
- Significant intellectual component
- Provision of important service to society
Three Common features
- certification or licensing –officially or
unofficially, formal or informal
- organization of members-
- autonomy--Michael D. Bayles,
Professional Ethics , Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Inc., 1981.
p. 3.
He then distinguishes two types or categories of professions: Consulting
and Scholarly.
The criteria for the consulting professions are:
-
individual clients
-
Provision of a service related to basic values [of
society]
-
Monopoly or near monopoly
-
Self regulation---Michael D. Bayles,
Professional Ethics , Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Inc.,
1981. p. 3
Bayles offers the following as examples of
professions in this category: doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants,
architects, clergy, stock brokers, realtors, social workers, pharmacists.
The second category, the scholarly professions,
appear to be so in as much as they are salaried professions that do not
involve service to individual clients. Bayles offers the following
as examples of these: teachers, scientists, non-consulting engineers,
journalists, technicians.
It should be fairly obvious that educators do have individual clients or
students and that the profession does satisfy the criteria for a
consulting profession in all respects. That teachers often have
multiple clients is no different than with lawyers and doctors and the
other consulting professions. Teachers do not serve large wholes or
groups. They teach either single individual learners as tutors or
rather discrete and small groups but they relate to each learner on an
individual basis for instruction and assessment and individualized aid. So
Bayles has set out the criteria for his classification but then has
proceeded to categorize teaching with facile reasoning as scholarly and
not consulting when in fact there are forms of teaching that fit into both
categories and some forms of teaching that fit into both.
Finally, in addressing the notion that the view that education is a
profession might be something that is culturally located, there is
recognition by no less a world wide body as the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization that it is so:
Teaching in higher education is a
profession: it is a form of public service that requires of higher
education personnel expert knowledge and specialized skills acquired and
maintained through rigorous and lifelong study and research; it also
calls for a sense of personal and institutional responsibility for the
education and welfare of students and of the community at large and for
a commitment to high professional standards in scholarship and research.
---United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),
Recommendation
concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel,
11
November 1997,
http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13144&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
Identification with
being a professional Educator
As argued above, there are some members of the profession who
teach at the level of higher education who do not readily identify
themselves as being professional educators. However, even those who are
reluctant to accept their dual professional identity do acknowledge that
they are professional educators in a number of ways that bear mentioning.
College faculty are quick to resist efforts to influence
their selection of texts, teaching devices, methodologies and
instructional design claiming, and rightly so. It has long been the
prerogative of individual faculty members to make such decisions as they
see fit in the context of promoting the efficacy of instruction. They
make such judgments considering their experiences, the learners they are
dealing with, their own teaching styles and the context in which they are
offering instruction. They assert that it is their right to make such
decisions as they are experienced in providing for instruction. They
assert their prerogatives and invoke what they believe to be their
"rights". In so doing they rely on the implicit, and at times explicit,
claim of their professionalism. This is an acceptance of their membership
in the profession of education for they invoke their right to make
decisions regarding pedagogy and not their academic discipline when they
speak about matters related to pedagogy.
As professional
educators, faculty members are subject to strict codes of conduct and
ethical standards in the classroom. The American Association of
University Professors has a number of policy statements and activities and
even a Code of Professional Ethics that relate to members of the
professoriate as educators and scholars. The following is excerpted from the AAUP
“Statement on Professional Ethics:”
“Professors,
guided by a deep conviction of the worth and dignity of the
advancement of knowledge, recognize the special responsibilities placed
upon them. Their primary responsibility to their subject is to
seek and to state the truth as they see it. To this end professors
devote their energies to developing and improving their scholarly
competence. They accept the obligation to exercise critical
self-discipline and judgment in using, extending, and transmitting
knowledge…
As teachers, professors encourage the free pursuit of
learning in their students. They hold before them the best
scholarly and ethical standards of their discipline.
Professors demonstrate respect for students as individuals and adhere to
their proper roles as intellectual guides and counselors. Professors
make every reasonable effort to foster honest academic conduct and to
ensure that their evaluations of students reflect each student’s true
merit. They respect the confidential nature of the relationship between
professor and student. They avoid any exploitation,
harassment, or discriminatory treatment of students. They acknowledge
significant academic or scholarly assistance from them. They
protect their academic freedom…
…As citizens engaged in a profession that depends upon
freedom for its health and integrity, professors have a particular
obligation to promote conditions of free inquiry and to further public
understanding of academic freedom.”
As members of an academic institution, professors seek above all to be
effective teachers and scholars…
In Teaching with Integrity: the Ethics of Higher Education
Practice, Bruce Macfarlane rightly demonstrates that many academics
are hesitant about identifying themselves as “professional educators.”
According to Macfarlane, professors worried about the increasing
“corporatization” of post-secondary education, where students are
“clients,” and education is a “product,” often hesitate in seeing
themselves as educational professionals. (Macfarlane, 1981; p. 8).
The reasons for the hesitance are many, and might include the
emphasis on academic (versus pedagogical) training in graduate schools, a
conception of teaching as a hindrance to scholarly research, and a desire
on the part of college professors to distinguish themselves from primary
and secondary educators. These unfortunate trends and misconceptions are
rarely debated publicly, and it is difficult to establish the degree to
which they contribute to the self-conceptions of post-secondary
educators.
Indeed, there is a tension between the dual role of the college professor
as both scholar and educator within the context of the AAUP Statement on
Professional ethics itself. On the one hand, a professor’s “primary
responsibility” is to seek and state the truth. On the other hand,
professors should seek “above all to be effective teachers and scholars,”
maintaining freedom of inquiry. The conflict is seen in the "above
all" and "primary" and in the "teacher" and "scholar". The
activities of "seeking the truth" and "stating the truth" should not be
separated for the members of the professoriate but each of those
activities can not be primary at the same time. Many members of the
professoriate place seeking the truth and stating in through publications
as primary and enough of their colleagues on the faculty accept it as so
to make it an acceptable paradigm.
Issues of academic freedom are hotly contested in
academia. As Macfarlane argues, one of the greatest fears among members
of the professoriate is the erosion in professional and intellectual
autonomy. The freedom of professors to research and publish according to
their individual interests and expertise has long been the foundation of
free and open academic inquiry. This is perhaps the most significant
factor in a professor’s choice to identify themselves as a “biologist” or
a “philosopher” rather than a “teacher.” A discipline-oriented
self-identification emphasizes the creative inquiry that drives scholarly
research; a profession-oriented self-identification emphasizes the duties
and obligations of the “job” of teaching.
Macfarlane claims that the rejection of the
profession-oriented self-identification of college professors is grounded
in the fact that “[t]he room for professional discretion has been slowly
eroded by a a range of interrelated changes in higher
education…[including] consumerism, modularization of the curriculum, the
casualization of academic labour, government control, and `new
managerialism`.” (Marcfalane, 2004; p. 13. Yet Macfarlane sees this
trend towards the rejection of post-secondary education as `profession’ as
unfortunate one, primarily because it leads to a weakened emphasis on the
general ethical obligations of all professional educators. And perhaps
more significantly, it tends to marginalize the practices and concerns of
those educators who “take teaching seriously.”
Yet in this midst of this scholar/teacher dichotomy, there
are several misconceptions. First and foremost, it is simply wrong to
claim that the “professionalization” of post-secondary educators will lead
to an erosion of academic freedom. In fact, the authors believe that
academic freedom is only possible within the context of fulfilling
professional duties and obligations. It is by meeting their professional
responsibilities as educators that scholars can enjoy the benefits of free
academic inquiry. Also, it is important to note that it is the
professional obligations of teaching that often drives creative academic
inquiry.
When faculty of colleges and universities assert some claim
under the overarching concept of "Academic Freedom" they are often making
a claim that relates to themselves as educators and related to matters of
pedagogy and their position and standing amongst educators as they are to
make such claims as members of an academic discipline. Indeed, we argue
that the concept of “academic freedom,” while typically finding its
application in protecting the research and publication interests of the
professoriate, finds its true foundation in the classroom. While tenure
and other protections of academic freedom do play an important role in
protecting faculty members who publish controversial papers, these
protections are at their height in the classroom, protecting the rights
and duties of faculty members in the process of fulfilling their
professional obligations as educators.
As we have argued above, good teaching demands effective
scholarly research, both in the discipline being taught and
in the
pedagogic effectiveness of the teaching methods being used. Effective
teaching can, in many disciplines, lead to more fruitful avenues of
research. Resisting the term “educator” causes the individual member of
the instructional staff (Lecturer, Instructor, Professor) to both undercut
their performance in the classroom and to disregard the mutual dependence
of teaching and scholarship. The responsibilities of faculty members, as
professional educators, are the basis for those unique academic freedoms
and rights that faculty enjoy. And while rights can be waived, responsibilities
cannot. The research that is protected by the
right to academic freedom is so protected so that the members of the
profession of education can fulfill their responsibility to gather the
knowledge and get closer to the "truth" that is their duty to teach and
communicate to others.
If faculty members refuse to acknowledge their
responsibilities, or take them too lightly, they undermine the basis for
the assertion of their rights, privileges and academic freedom. These
positive attributes of the role of educator exist in order to facilitate
the exercise and fulfillment of the responsibilities of educators: to
develop and transmit knowledge and basic intellectual skills as best they
can. Again appealing to Dewey’s conception of education as “growth,”
education involves not just the intellectual growth of learners, but also
the professional growth of the teachers. Fulfilling these requirements
entails continuity of growth and inquiry into becoming a better and better
teacher, i.e., to teach, to teach well and to teach even better.
This work now turns to describing the various models operative in the
thinking of professional educators when they imagine their relationship to
their students. This is important because decisions are made as to
how educators are to behave towards their students more often based on
these models than they are based on genuine ethical principles and models
based upon such principles.
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@copyright 2004 by S. Kincaid and P. Pecorino