2014 Volume 23 Pages 124-134
Nowadays, the privatization of education is progressing in Japan. Many parents are only concerned about their own children; therefore, many teachers have difficulty interacting with parents, especially when reacting to parents’ complaints. This places teachers in a difficult and uncertain situation in terms both of their roles, that is to say their professionality, and their position, that is, their professionalism. For that reason, teacher professionality and teacher professionalism need to be reconsidered in order to reconstruct them to address this issue.
Therefore, in this paper, I intend to clarify the content of teacher professionality in the context of teachers’ relationships with parents, and how such professionality develops the teachers’ professionalism.
First, I examine the theory of the organization of private interests, which assumes that teachers hold their position based on the collective trust of parents. This theory has often been criticized, and in response has been revised with a focus on parent participation in education as a key element of the organization of private interests.
However, this theory does not explicitly address how to reconstruct teacher professionality in their relationships with parents. Therefore, to clarify the exact nature of teacher professionality in the context of parent participation, I examine other theories, on the “democratic professionalism” of teachers, teacher professionality in democratic education, parents’ participation in their children’s schools, and the role of teachers in encouraging the establishment of common interests among parents.
Through this paper, I identify three elements of teacher professionality fostering parent participation, namely, expressing professional opinions to parents, prompting parents to engage in dialogue with one another, and prompting parents to form common interests. In addition, I show that inquiry into teacher professionality in the context of parent participation is a necessary precondition for restructuring teachers’ professionalism.
