Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson, University of Akureyri, Northern Iceland

Teachers' Work and Theories of Professionalism: Conceptualizing a New Approach

Presentation at the Annual Convention of the American Educational Research Association, New York, April 8–12, 1996

The presentation is part of work aimed at developing a research framework based on the work of sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and Andrew Abbott. This work has two main goals:

a. to push further the theories of Bourdieu and Abbott as to find evidence for such standpoints that relate to field-specific expertization against general theories about professionalism and professionalization, and

b. to design a study of changes in teachers' work and the discourse on teaching in Iceland in the last one third of the 20th century.

This presentation is aimed at a discussion of a conceptual approach to study teaching as expertise and how I can use this framework to study changes in teachers' work in Iceland.

Modern societies seem to depend more and more on the work and the knowledge of individuals and groups that consider themselves to be professions and are considered professions by others as well. Sociologists, historians, and other scholars of society have become interested in understanding this phenomena. They have studied professionalism and professionalization. In short, most authors of the classic work of the professions try to understand the general phenomenon. Further, most authors assume that professions grow through a series of stages in a process called professionalization.

Recent work on the professions challenges the classic work. For instance, Magali Sarfatti Larson (1990) suggests to replace a general theory of professions with a focus on expert knowledge: "it is less productive to work towards a general theory of professions than it is to think of questions which go beyond the professions and address the larger and more important theme of construction and social consequences of expert knowledge" (25).

It has also been suggested to understand professionalism as discourse. For instance, Larson (1990) argues that it is "the production of 'learned discourse' and its implications for the professional phenomenon" which must be considered in how that discourse legitimizes expert knowledge (25).

In a recent paper, I have used Larson's insights and connected them with the work of Bourdieu. I pointed out that teachers and other education "professionals" in Iceland in the 1970s and 1980s employed reform discourse as if it were natural and took the idea of evolutionary progress for granted. By using Bourdieu's work, the notion of professionalism is shifted from an evolution towards a trajectory that has its own logic in each case where an occupation develops a learned discourse. Following Bourdieu, I suggested to see professionalism as a social strategy of intellectuals who believe that being a profession involves cultural capital convertible into economic or symbolic capital capable of increasing the status of the profession in society (Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson 1993a).

Bourdieu's remarks on theories of professionalism go along those lines. According to him (in Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992), professionalism is "a folk concept that has been smuggled into scientific language ..." (242). The concept has become "real" as it "grasps at once a mental category and a social category, socially produced only by superseding all kinds of economic, social, and ethnic differences and contradictions which make the 'profession' of 'lawyer,' for instance, a space of competition and struggle" (243). Bourdieu suggests to look at professions and "professional" and expert work as a "structured space of social forces and struggles" (243), a social field in which there is a competition for what counts as capital.

Professionalism has indeed become the main way to institutionalize expertise in industrialized countries. Abbott has extensively studied professionalism, for instance in his 1988-book, The System of Professon. An Essay of the Division of Expert Labor. He uses concepts that are useful to understand how the Bourdieuean metaphors of space and capital can be used to understand professionalization. He suggests to look at the expertization of work and struggles over jurisdictions of expert work to understand the "professionalization" of a given group. He points out that "professions" (i.e., what members of such professional groups and others normally call professions) develop when jurisdictions become vacant; groups of expert workers can convert their work and knowledge into a currency. They can present their expert work as different from other expert work. In turn they can claim an expert status besides other expert groups (occupations, professions). Abbott argues that abstract knowledge systems is the most important currency of competition between professions. This is the same basic idea as Bourdieu's: expert labor must be converted into symbolic capital to assume the expert status in society.

The theories that I have briefly outlined contrast with traditional professionalization theories that suggest professionalization as an evolutionary trend (e.g., Hoyle 1980/1969, Parsons 1954/1939, Wilensky 1964). Abbott (1988, 17) has analyzed five basic assumptions hidden in the concept of professionalization as he has synthesized it from the classic work on the professions. First, these theories see change as unidirectional; professions evolve to a given form. Second, each profession has its own independent evolution; that is, the classic theories place little emphasis on how the professionalization of one profession impacts another profession's evolution. Third, the social structure and cultural claims of professions are analyzed, not the work the professions perform or the expertise that distinguishes them from others. Fourth, professions are, more or less, seen as homogeneous units. Fifth, the classic theories do not focus on the possibility that professionalization processes might change with time; they tend not to see the history of themselves as theoretical discourse. Abbott (1988, 17–18) notes that this is a summary; no theory, no author has made exactly these points. For instance, one of the chief professionalization theorists, Larson, has challenged point number five (e.g., 1977, 1990). However, Abbott contends that this summary is fairly accurate.

Abbott (1988) has discussed why scholars of the professions have focused on the organizational patterns of the professions, rather than the actual work they perform. He argues that because "professions like medicine and architecture seemed more similar in organization pattern than in actual work made organizational pattern the focus of analysis" (1). He continues that this focus on pattern has "implied ... a search for its origin and led to the idea of a common process of development ... " (1). To account for the fact that not all occupations may receive professional status, the concept of semi-professions has been invented (e.g., Etzioni 1969).

Abbott (1988) argues that the chief sociological question about the professions should concern how societies structure work and expertise–rather than on organizational patterns or the division of labor in general. He asks why societies "place expertise in people rather than things or rules" (323). One of the tentative explanations includes the observation that "knowledge is too extensive for part-time work" (323). Questions like, when do we use experts and for what?, are more important than to find a universal definition of professional work. (Among other works in a similar vain is the work of Eliot Freidson, e.g., 1986).

To study what constitutes teachers' kind of expertise, theoretically and practically, is more interesting than to focus on their meant powerlessness–as theories of organizational patterns and theories of semi-professions tend to do. The expertization of teachers' work may indeed never lead to a professional status comparable with architecture, law or medicine. Still teachers' work is expert work to be analyzed as such.

Therefore I am interested in conceptions that can help to understand the changes in teachers' work in Iceland during, say, the last 25 to 30 years; that is, roughly the period of most comprehensive reform efforts since public education was made mandatory in 1908. I am interested in how the work and the mission of teachers has changed in the last one third of the twentieth century as well as in how teachers' expertise differs from others' expertise.

In this presentation, I first conceptualize how the concepts of profession and its main derivatives, professionalism and professionalization, can be replaced by notions such as expertise, discursive themes, legitimating principles, and capital. Abbott's work is particularly helpful in developing the sociological framework where I can focus on teachers' work as field-specific expertise. I also use cognitive psychologial theories to throw light on the character of teachers' knowledge and work–that is, expertise–and how that knowledge and work is convertable into symbolic capital. Lastly I discuss the design of a study of changes in the work of Icelandic teachers since the late 1960s.

Abbott (1988) claims that a knowledge system and its degree of abstraction are the ultimate currency of competition between professions (9). If this is true, professionalism, understood in terms of what constitutes abstract knowledge, is a matter of how knowledge is constructed rather than a matter of the quantity of factual information.

Abbott (1988) points out that there has been a rising amount and complexity of professional knowledge (177). Under such circumstances, abstraction becomes more and more important to make sense of the specific facts and methods (179). Comprehensive abstract systems of knowledge also last longer than mere collections of facts and methods.

Abbott (1988) explains two types of abstraction (102–103). One abstraction emphasizes lack of content: "abstract" refers to many subjects interchangeably. Another abstraction emphasizes positive formalism: "that knowledge is abstract which elaborates its subject in many layers of increasingly formalized discourse" (102). These two types of abstraction are often the same; formalization is a route to the abolition of particular content. Such an extreme systematization of knowledge is a likely consequence of a serious competition for jurisdiction (110). Expert action without formalization is perceived as craft knowlegde, not professional knowledge (103). Therefore professions need to formalize so that their members do no appear unprofessional. Formalization also helps to make the abstractions durable.

Science has become the fundamental ground for legitimizing professions and professional work. Bledstein (1976) has identified the move from a reliance on the character of the professional to a reliance on science. Science stands for logic and rigor in diagnosis, and it "implies extensive academic research, based on the highest standards of rationality" (Abbott 1988, 189). Thus, scientific knowledge has replaced mystical codes as a legitimizing theme. This shift is related to the rise of universities (Abbott 1988, 195ff) which are the main sites for the production of knowledge, not least abstract knowledge alhough the formalization may occur elsewhere as well, notably in the professional organizations.

But how abstract is abstract enough to be professional? As Abbott (1988, 316) points out, it depends on the particular social and historical content what can become legitimated. Earlier I mentioned that it has been suggested by Larson (1990) and myself to see professionalism as discourse. Abbott's definition of durable abstractions relates to my definitions of historically and socially constructed legitimating principles (Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson 1991, 1993a, 1993b). By legitimating principles I refer to discursive themes and practices that fall into patterns of such principles that are durable in character. These partly emptied-of-content assertions and systems of abstractions in the Abbottian sense seem to me to be discursive themes that constitute legitimating principles.

A profession can sustain a jurisdiction partly by the power and prestige of its academic knowledge. This prestige, according to Abbott (1988) "reflects the public's mistaken belief that abstract professional knowledge is continuous with practical professional knowledge, and hence that prestigious abstract knowledge implies effective professional work" (53–54). Thus, the practical use of academic knowledge is symbolic. Abstract knowledge is cultural capital, convertible into symbolic capital. Abbott argues:

"As custodian of professional knowledge in its most abstract from, this academic center is uniquely situated to claim new jurisdictions. But the claims it makes are cognitive only. They cannot become recognized jurisdictions without concrete social claims and legitimating responses. Interprofessional competition, that is, takes place before public audiences" (58)

Abbott's observations of how abstraction has occurred among various professional groups is compatable with seeing professionalization as the social strategies of epistemic individuals (see Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson 1993a). Abbott focuses on what he calls jurisdiction and how the boundaries of certain abstractions of expert knowledge (i.e., legitimating principles) vary according to time and place.

Abbott (1988) points to the actual cognitive strategies to create jurisdictions. For instance, industrial disturbances are reduced to a collection of individual behavior disorders. Those who have studied behavioral disorders of individuals in modern societies from the viewpoint of psychiatry believe they have the best answers; therefore such disorders should fall under the jurisdiction of psychiatry. Another example is that urban planning is reduced to a problem of design; that is, architects believe they possess the proper expertise to design cities. Thus urban planning falls under the jurisdiction of architecture (98–99).

At the same time as these strategies are cognitive, they are social strategies of epistemic individuals. By epistemic individuals, I refer to the way of seeing individual persons as occupying spaces in structural relations where they are defined in relation to each other and where they are shaping as well as shaped by the trajectory of events (see, e.g., Bourdieu 1988; Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson 1993b). Individuals and groups have come to believe that the knowledge that they possess is essential for the work they wish to have a jurisdiction over. They employ their expertise, their knowledge, often as an abstract system, as discursive themes convertible into symbolic capital. By such a strategy, which is a social process as much as a cognitive process, the group (the profession) creates a learned discourse that simultaneously is legitimized within the group and fought for jurisdiction. But in turn the professions are created by this discourse. As Abbott (1988) points out: "professions both create their work and are created by it" (316). This assertion is a Bourdieuean-looking assertion. Bourdieu emphasizes how epistemic individuals simultaneously produce social strategies and are produced by them (e.g., Bourdieu 1984, 171; 1989, 44).

Abbott and Bourdieu use space metaphors which I have adopted. To briefly sum up: Expert work and knowledge as abstractions appear and can be analyzed as discursive themes convertible into symbolic capital. If these abstractions are durable, they constitute legitimating principles in the discourse. If there are changes in the work structure, it depends on the strategies of a group if it is able to use knowledge and practices (discursive themes) to claim jurisdiction over the type of work in question (that is, work in a vacant space). According to Bourdieu, such battles take place in a social field where epistemic individuals struggle over what (work, knowlegde) can count as capital.

In the 1970s and 1980s, teacher leaders and other educational reformers in Iceland created a space for expertise in matters of curriculum development, teacher education, and other out-of-classroom activities in education. They created a field of educational reform in which they assumed (informal) jurisdiction over these tasks. This field is not uncontested as I discuss elsewhere (Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson 1991, chapter 7; 1993a; at this conference).

But can the work of teachers be considered as expertise, convertible into symbolic capital? What capitalizes teachers' work? What do teachers in Iceland think themselves about this?

I am designing a study where these questions are the central questions Before I discuss my study interests in more detail I wish to look at what could be the content of the expert knowledge of teachers. Rather than speculate too much in beforehand about how Icelandic teachers think, I use a 1995-article, entitled "A Prototype View of Expert Teaching," by Robert J. Sternberg and Joseph A. Horvath to show how knowledge about teachers' work can be integrated with the Abbottian-Bourdieuean approach.

Sternberg and Horvath (1995) provide a frame to analyze teachers' knowledge. They define what they call a prototype view of expert teaching. They ground their observations in psychological understandings of how, first, experts differ from nonexperts and, second, people think about expertise as they encounter it in real-world settings. They acknowledge that there exist no well-defined standards that all experts meet and no nonexperts meet. Yet there are similarities and resemblances that allow prototypes to be discussed (9).

Prototype-centered categories, according to Sternberg and Horvath (1995), differ from other categories in three aspects (10). First, different members may resemble different features of the category prototype. There might be twelve categories, but no individual meets more than ten of them. Second, there are crucial factors that determine if, for instance, a thing is a musical instrument. Others factors, such as shape, have no bearing if the thing is made of material not suited to provide a proper sound. Similarily, an individual is not a teacher unless he or she thinks in a certain way about her teacher-student relationship. Third, the features that make up a category prototype may occur together in category members at a level greater than chance. Maybe expert teachers can be found to have a certain sense of humor. Yet a teacher who does not have that sense of humor may still be an expert teacher.

Based on research how teachers' knowledge might differ from other types of expert knowledge, Sternberg and Horvath (1995) have divided the content of the teacher expert prototype into three domains: knowledge, efficiency in problem solving, and insight (10).

By knowledge, Sternberg and Horvath (1995) believe that experts bring their knowledge more effectively to solve problems within their area of expertise than do novices or experts in other areas. Lee Shulman has identified types of knowledge that expert teachers tend to have. He divides teacher knowledge into three areas: First, expert teachers have content knowledge; that is, of the subject matter they are dealing with. Second, expert teachers have pedagogical knowledge; that is, knowledge of how to motivate students, how to manage groups in classroom settings, how to administer tests, and so forth. Third, expert teachers have pedagogical content knowledge; that is, knowledge of how to teach what is specific to what is being taught. For instance, the expert knows when and how is best to teach children the crucial concepts to understand mathematical operations (Shulman 1987; cited by Sternberg and Horvath 1995, 11).

Several aspects of teachers' work lie within the domain of knowledge, for instance, the organization of lesson plans and course syllabi. Novice teachers tend to have less complex, less connected planning structures than experienced teachers who are capable of integrating the knowledge of content to be taught with knowledge of teaching methods. Expert teachers are more likely to anticipate problems and obstacles, for example student misconceptions (Borko and Livingston 1989; cited by Sternberg and Horvath 1995, 11). Sternberg and Horvath also emphasize the importance of "knowledge of the social and political context in which teaching occurs" for expert teachers (11). They need knowledge of research, and they need knowledge of how to "package" curricular innovations (11). The ability of the expert to teach new courses in new contexts is also crucial (12). As far as I am concerned, these aspects I have mentioned in this paragraph combine the three areas defined by Shulman (1987).

By efficiency in problem solving, Sternberg and Horvath (1995) argue that experts are able to solve problems more efficiently than novices. The experts do better in less time and with less apparent effort (12). The experts have developed their cognitive skills to deal with their work. This applies both to problems they have dealt with before and "new" problems. The expert teacher spends relatively little effort in monitoring classroom events. They possess certain types of cognitive skills that have become automatic, but they also possess higher order, executive processes. Expert teachers seek new problems to deal with: "whereas novices and experienced nonexperts seek to reduce problems to fit available methods, true experts seek progressively to complicate the picture, continually working on the leading edge of their own knowledge and skill" (13). Experts, in other words, not only are efficient in solving routine problems, but in finding what has not been considered a problem. That way, they become not only more efficient in their own lesson planning or classroom management but contribute to better education in general.

By insight, Sternberg and Horvath (1995) mean that experts are more likely than novices to arrive at creative solutions. Experts often redefine the problem, using their insights that have developed through their experience (13–14). For example, an expert teacher is more likely than a novice to distinguish between the lines of classroom discussions that will enhance the instructional or other educational goals (14).

Although I have described the way that Sternberg and Horvath (1995) differentiate between experts and nonexperts, I am not going to search for the expert teacher. As they argue, the prototype view–in the absence of strict standards for what is an expert–is capable of acknowledging a diversity among teachers who can be considered experts (14). For instance, the prototypical expert in an elementary school may differ systematically from the secondary school teacher (15). Sternberg and Horvath do warn against "creeping relativism" (14); not everything goes. They emphasize the importance of reflection, and that teachers work on the edge of their knowledge and skill (15).

Knowledge can be employed as a strategy if it is defined and, at best, formalized. Thus knowledge must be conceptualized so that it could become a currency in the professionalism debate.

Commonly, teachers' knowledge has not been understood in abstract or formalized terms. But researchers of teaching have begun to conceptualize the character of teachers' knowledge and other skills. Shulman's division of teachers' knowledge into the areas of subject matter, pedagogical, and pedagogical content knowledge seem to me to be able to serve as abstractions that could count as capital. In Iceland, abstractions such as Shulman's are not well known. And although this division of teachers' knowledge would become a common capital of teachers in Iceland, the public might still need time to accept its value.

Further, teachers' efficiency in problem solving and insights, to use the Sternberg and Horvath approach, is an even more difficult conceptualization than the division of knowledge à la Shulman. These concepts concern the process of teaching, and process is not suited to be explained as an abstract entity. Likely it is more difficult to transform process into capital than it is to transform factual themes. This leads to the question if there is a greater importance of the process in teachers' work than in the work of other expert labor groups. Further, the process of teaching has not been ritualized as much as, for instance, law or medicine. It is difficult to make such a process appear durable.

So is it possible that teachers' expertise differs from other types of expertise exactly on the point that it is "fuzzy" and difficult to make it appear as durable abstractions? If teaching (that is, the work of teachers) is properly conceptualized, can teachers have an impact on public discourse? Can a discussion of the expert teacher become symbolic capital? What else is needed for teachers to create a space, claim a jurisdiction, convince others that no one else can do teaching as well as they do? In other words: Are knowledge, efficiency in problem solving, and insight cognitive and social strategies that teachers can employ?

These questions are not easy. But they are asked because they are worth asking. The Abbottian focus on the actual work of the experts and the framework that I have developed in which knowledge and practices are seen as discursive themes seems suited to study such field-specific expertise as teaching.

In next section I discuss the ideas of how to approach comprehensive research of teachers' work in Iceland. This is an initial discussion intended as a call for comments. The actual design of the research has barely begun yet because of the busy-ness of (university) teaching.

When designing a study of teaching in Iceland I approach it with some pre-conceptions concerning what has changed in teachers' work and knowledge. The most important pre-conceptions can be arranged into two groups.

First, teachers' work in Iceland has changed more rapidly since the 1960s than in any other period of the same length. These changes concern societal demands. There are now many more schools at all school levels and a longer school day, especially for rural children, than it was in the late 1960s. There are different demands from homes where mothers now commonly work outside the home, at least part of the day. These changes also concern demands that relate to a changed curriculum and new evaluation perspectives. A case in point is the development of documents called skólanámskrá (school curriculum or a school syllabus) that is now expected to be written in each elementary school.

Second, entering the teaching job is more difficult than it was when I entered it in 1975 after my graduation from the gymnasium. In those days, there was not a clear distinction between certified and uncertified teachers as it is today. This was changed with a law in 1986. Now we even have a special term for an uncertified instructor, leiðbeinandi, which has a connotation of being a youth-camp leader, a personal trainer, or a tour guide. I also believe that it is far more difficult, in terms of work demands, for a gymnasium graduate to enter a teaching job now than it was 20 years ago, or even 10 to 15 years ago. The gymnasium graduate is also behind the teacher graduate in the number of years they have studied. In the early 1970s, they both had four years of secondary education; now the elementary school teacher graduate has three years of university education in addition.

I find it important to understand teachers' perception of those issues. I stress that I am interested in how teachers see the changes and how they have conceptualized them. I am interested in what teachers believe is important in their work as it is now, compared to the situation in the 1960s and the early 1970s.

In an initial study I intend to experiment with in-depth interviews of a historical and ethnographical character. I will choose 20–25 teachers who are interested in discussing the past as well as the future. Possibly I will gather a small group of teachers to discuss the issues that emerge. Gloria Ladson-Billings (1995) has given an account of the importance of teachers together being "able to make sense of their own and their colleague's practices" (473). I have thought about whether to set any requirements as if these teachers must be "good" teachers, but I have not reached any conclusions. I will choose teachers who began to teach before 1970 or 1975. I will focus on teachers in elementary schools, but my interests are not at all limited to their work. And when I talk about teachers, I usually refer to teachers in elementary and secondary schools and indeed to teacher educators as well because I believe most teacher educators consider themselves teachers rather than professors.

The reason for interviewing teachers is what Abbott has observed: expertise in modern society rests in people rather than rules. Additionally, the Sternberg and Horvath notions of efficiency in problem solving and insight are, I believe, not abstract enough to gain an understanding of them except by in-depth inquiries.

From these interviews, I will construct the trajectories of these teachers. I will focus on how teachers employ certain themes and practices, how they perceive the changes in what they are doing and how they are thinking about their work. From these trajectories, I intend to use the similarities and resemblances to conceptualize an account of changes in teachers' work and work conditions. Simultaneously with working on the teachers' trajectories, I will study documents and written accounts of teaching as well as the curriculum materials.

From these two types of sources, interviews and written materials, I will conceptualize an account of teachers' work that can be tested and debated at conferences and in-service education workshops. How important are factors that resemble efficiency in problem solving and insight in the Sternberg and Horvath approach? How important is the process of teaching, compared with "hard" knowledge? How do teachers deal with change? What are the external factors (discursive conditions) and how do teachers perceive them? What are the patterns of legitimating principles that appear in these accounts?

This study is a continuation of my study of how educational reformers expertized themselves. In my reports of that study, I said that I did not know if teaching had become professionalized or expertized (Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson 1991, chapter 7; 1993a). Yet between the lines one might have read that I thought it had not. I now believe that such a conclusion would not be entirely correct; teachers' work has become expertized in some respects. Then my earlier hinting-at is wrong, or it has simply become clearer and clearer in the 1990s that teaching has changed. The study may throw light on when the most important changes have occurred (that is, in the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s). Hopefully I will be here in two or three years to tell you about how the study goes ...

The larger societal questions will also be dealt with: If teaching is different now from what it was in the 1960s, can the public perception of it be altered? In spite of the fact that professional images to not change suddenly, as Abbott (1988, 61) points out? Is teachers' work forcing a jurisdiction upon vacant spaces?

The study is also a part of the legitimation process in what I described on Monday (Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson, at this conference): teachers' expertise can only be studied as teachers' expertise; not as techniques in applying subject matters to schools.

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Wilensky, Harold L. 1964. "The Professionalization of Everyone?" The American Journal of Sociology 70, pp. 137–158.

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I thank the Icelandic Science Council for a grant in 1994 which enabled the initial preparation of this study.