Care of the profession: teacher professionalism and learning beyond performance and compliance

Dominant policy discourses in Australia define teacher professionalism as a technical accomplishment. Within this technical framing, teacher learning is largely understood as the acquisition of skills, with teacher practice helping students meet pre-determined outcomes. Despite the dominance of such discourses, teacher professionalism and learning have not always been thought of in these reductive ways. This paper reports on an intergenerational, dialogic inquiry into the careers of 12 long-serving English teachers, presenting two cases from the project. The study used life history methods to interview retired or late career English teachers in the state of Victoria, Australia. An analysis of the interviews indicated that professional learning was vital in sustaining generative careers. Many of the professional engagement activities described by teachers in the project involved acts of stewardship or care for the teaching profession itself. The paper advances ‘care of the profession’ as a concept that makes visible the many acts of professional engagement and learning beyond individualistic and performative understandings of teaching and that invest in education as a ‘going concern’. We argue that practices constituting ‘care of the profession’ are sites for democratic participation in the teaching profession and are essential elements of a critically engaged and agentive professionalism.