Glossary »  participative professionalism

a democratic model of professionalism in which teachers exercise agency, co-lead innovation and work with others collegially

Learn more from the EFFeCT paper:

"This is about to how teachers carry out their role as teachers and theideas and models of practice and relationshipsthat areexpressed in their professional practice. The debate about teacher professionalism is a continuing one and orbits around ‘the simple question of whether the role of the teacher is that of some kind of technician who simply “delivers” the curriculum or as a professional who helps to create it… in a process that is creative, critical and active’ (Frost 2006: 20).

Participative professionalism describes a participatory or democratic model of professionalism in which teachers exercise agency, co-lead innovation and work with others collegially. This model does not see the teacher as a technician or implementer of technicist cases of good practice. Teachers are seen as pro-active mobilisers and creators of knowledge and interpreters of local, regional and national educational policy: they are co-leaders of change, engaging in teacher leadership and ‘distributed leadership for equity and learning’ (Woods and Roberts 2015)."