The Postmodern Professional: Contemporary Learning Practices, Dilemmas and Perspectives

In the last two decades the teaching profession has increasingly lost autonomy and become subject to political change that has introduced a market orientation to both educational organisation and culture. The stages that the teaching profession has gone through can be characterised as: pre-professional; autonomy; collegial and the post-professional age. This book explores both the Anglo-American curriculum tradition and the central European ╘didactic-tradition╒ which have had an impact on these processes. Against this backdrop, the book provides an international overview as well as deeper insight into national and local practices. Based on ethnographic case studies each chapter makes its own unique contribution by exploring empirical data and discussing theoretical possibilities related to the common current question, namely what it means to be a professional teacher in the post-modern era of professionalism

The broad argument is that global movements in education policy have generated widely accepted discourses of performativity and educational effectiveness that have had pedagogical effects. The book attempts to deconstruct prevailing discourses and to develop an understanding of the complexity of educational politics and pedagogical and social relations.

It is argued here that the consequences can be regarded as a contribution to both professionalisation and a substantial de-professionalisation of teachers. Against this backdrop the book provides a critical wake-up call and a reminder of the need for serious debate about what kind of education is desirable for the twenty-first century and what kind of professional organisations and teachers are needed for the task.

Karen Borgnakke, dr.paed., Professor in Education, University of Copenhagen. She has undertaken research, taught and published in the fields of education and learning research. She has carried out fieldwork, developed case studies, participated in development projects and evaluation research, including projects on strategies for organisational and pedagogical innovation throughout education. She has more than twenty years experience with developing research methodology in education and learning research, including comprehensive experience with research education. Currently research project: Ethnographic studies in scholastic, profession-oriented and academic learning contexts.

Marianne Dovemark is a Professor in Education at the Department of Education and Special Education, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research interests are in educational ethnography, focusing on structural factors such as class, gender and ethnicity. She is devoted to issues of power and influence as these relate to school governance and market orientation.

Sofia Marques da Silva is anAssistant Professor at Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Porto, Portugal, and member of CIIE (Educational Research and Intervention Centre). She teaches Research Methodologies and Sociology of Education. She has been researching ethnographies on youth cultures, gender and education and lately has been involved in online and offline ethnographies with young people from border regions. She is a Co-convenor of the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) and the vice-president of the Portuguese Society of Educational Sciences (SPCE). She is deputy editor of Ethnography and Education.