Teachers, Professional Status of

Mark B. Ginsburg

In various historical and societal contexts, teaching has been considered a profession—or not—as the result of a historical process in which teachers have experienced professionalization, deprofessionalization, or proletarianization. This entry discusses the professional status of teachers from functionalist and conflict perspectives. From a functionalist perspective, professionalism is tied directly to a positive “social fact”: that there are professions (prototypically medicine and law), non-professions, and “semi-professions.” In this view, professionals are differentiated from workers in other occupations because they (a) perform an essential service or task; (b) engage in mental versus manual work; (c) function based on an ideal of service; (d) gain their expertise and values through extensive preservice education; (e) operate with autonomy in the workplace; (f) have colleagues (versus nonprofessionals) in control of selection, training, and advancement in the field; and (g) receive a high level of remuneration. Social scientists and educators, based in a variety of societal ...

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