Is educational researching a profession Examining issues of professional status and developmentalism

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Is educational research(ing) a profession?Examini
ng issues of professional status and
developmentalism

• Linda Evans,
• School of Education, University of Leeds
• l.evans_at_leeds.ac.uk

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The impetus

• Questionable quality of educational research
• Interest in the sociology of the professions
• professionalism
• professionality
• Donald McIntyre (1996 BERA presidential address)
• How helpful and how necessary is it for at least
  some of us to see ourselves as professional
  educational researchers?

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Professionalism, professionality and professions
concepts and substance

• What defines a profession?
• McIntyre professionalism
• expertise
• extensive knowledge
• creative intelligence
• a degree of perfectionism
• Professionalism as occupational/social control
• Professionalism as a service level agreement
• Professionalism incorporates homogeneity

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My interpretation of professionalism

• Homogeneity is elusive
• underpinned by the diversity of individuality
• Professionalism is the plural of individuals
  professionalities
• professionality writ large
• Hoyle (1970s) distinguished between
  professionalism and professionality
• professionalism status-related
• professionality relates to individual
  practitioners skills, knowledge, procedures,
  attitudes
• extended-restricted professionality continuum

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Restricted and Extended Professionals(adapted
from Hoyle, 1975)

• restricted professionals
• adopt an intuitive approach to practice
• use skills derived from practical experience
• do not reflect on or analyse their practice
• are unintellectual in outlook and attitudes
• avoid change and are set in their ways

• extended professionals
• adopt a rational approach to practice
• use skills developed from both theory and
  practice
• are reflective and analytical practitioners
• adopt intellectual approaches to the job
• experiment with and welcome new ideas

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My definitions

• Professionality is an ideologically-,
  attitudinally-, intellectually-, and
  epistemologically-based stance on the part of an
  individual, in relation to the practice of the
  profession to which s/he belongs, and which
  influences her/his professional practice.
• Professionalism is professionality-influenced
  practice that is consistent with commonly-held
  consensual delineations of a specific profession
  and that both contributes to and reflects
  perceptions of the professions purpose and
  status and the specific nature, range and levels
  of service provided by and expertise prevalent
  within the profession, as well as the ethical
  code underpinning it.

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Key components of professionalism

• What practitioners do
• How they do it
• What they know and understand
• Where and how they acquire their knowledge and
  understanding
• What kinds of attitudes they hold
• What codes of behaviour they adhere to
• What purpose(s) they perform
• What quality of service they provide
• The level of consistency incorporated into the
  above

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Key components of professionalism
subjective professionalism
functional component
intellectual component
attitudinal component
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The intellectual component of professionalism
What do practitioners know and understand?
What does the professional knowledge base
comprise? Are there specialist areas? Are there
minimum (general) practitioner
knowledge requirements?
What is the basis of practitioners knowledge?

• Common sense and experience?
• Research and/or scholarship?
• In which disciplines/subjects?
• What depth?
• What width?
• Contextual differences?

To what extent do practitioners apply reason to
decision making?
Is practice underpinned by rationality,
intuition or a mediation of the two?
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The attitudinal component of professionalism
How do practitioners perceive things (issues,
situations, people, activity, etc.)? How do they
perceive their own profession and its purpose?
What perceptions do practitioners hold? What
perceptions do they not hold? How
widespread/consensual are specific
perceptions? Are there any key/core perceptions?
How do practitioners evaluate things (issues,
situations, people, activity, etc.)? How do they
evaluate their own profession and its purpose?
What values do practitioners hold? How
widespread/consensual are these values? Are
there any key/core values?
What is the basis of practitioners
motivation? What factors influence motivation?
How motivated are practitioners? What motivates
them?
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The functional component of professionalism
What processes do practitioners apply to their
practice?
gathering data? examining? analysing? disseminatin
g? writing/composing written material? learning? c
ollegiality?
What procedures do practitioners apply to their
practice? What hierarchical procedures operate
within the workforce? What stratification exists
within the workforce?
practitioners modes of communicating and
interacting? mode(s) of meeting
contractual requirements? How are responsibility
and authority distributed? What layers of
practice exist?
What is the nature of practitioners output? How
much do practitioners produce? (or do?) What
(if any) productive yardsticks guide them?
What do practitioners do at work their remit
and responsibilities? Is the workload determined
by the clock set hours? Is workload determined
by the task in response to need?
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Is educational research(ing) a profession?

• On the basis of homogeneity consistency of
  excellent practice and service no, educational
  research is not a profession
• underpinned by a diversity reflecting
  individuals professionality orientations
• quality of research produced is variable
• much of it is low quality

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Extended and Restricted Educational
Researcher Professionality
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Is educational research(ing) a profession?

• The concept of a profession is changing.
• the professionalization of everyone (Williams)
• Profession is no longer an exclusive label.
• Therefore, educational research(ing) may be
  considered a profession.

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From professionalism to developmentalism

• Developmentalism
• a commitment to (self)-develop(ment)
• professional development
• a new basis for evaluating occupations
• How developmentalist a culture is manifested?
• How developmentalist are individual
  practitioners?
• a new criterion for professional quality

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Features of developmentalism

• Practitioners with strong developmentalist
  attitudes will typically
• be analytical
• be self-critical
• manifest perfectionist tendencies
• lie towards the extended end of the
  professionality continuum.

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Educational research(ing) a non-developmentalist
profession?

• For the most part
• no evident commitment to CPD compared with other
  professions
• social work
• pharmacy
• teaching
• medicine
• ostensible CPD
• no culture of developmentalism
• riding a bicycle culture
• There are individual exceptions to this.