2024 Volume 91 Issue 4 Pages 488-500
Todayʼs public education promotes the involvement of non-teaching professionals with diverse groups and individuals along with collaboration with various experts, resulting in a transformation of the status and structure of the teaching profession and calling for the creation of ideas about the professionalism of teachers based in the fundamental discussion of school education. The purpose of this study is to show where professionalism of teachers is heading in response to todayʼs issues, through a principled consideration of the perspectives of education and recognition.
The paper first identifies the characteristics of Axel Honnethʼs theory of recognition. Recognition can be understood in terms of three modalities: recognition in primary relationships, recognition in legal relations, and recognition in community of value. In addition, recognition is understood as an experience of lack of respect, not only when recognition is given, but also when it is not given. Specifically, this includes the deprivation of rights and dignity. In this sense, recognition occurs not only in personal relationships, but also in relations with others in general; structural injustice is latent in misrecognition. Here we see events and experiences in which recognition is involved injustice. Furthermore, Honnethʼs discussion of the democratic public sphere and education suggests that school education needs to maintain an interest in the realization of democratic will-formation and expand the possibility of creating opportunities to enrich interrelationships.
Next, based on the theory of recognition, Krassimir Stojanovʼs educational argument for recognition was developed from the perspective of human development. Based on Stojanovʼs ideas, children and young people can transcend, for example, the limits of socialization in a particular family, if the structure of interaction in schools is characterized by respect and valuing as recognition and can create rich experiences. Structures of interaction based on recognition are therefore required in schools as a fundamental resource. These schools are important places for shaping experiences towards the possibility of new self-formation.
Through these discussions, the paper identifies five characteristics toward which the professionalism of teachers today is heading. First, this professionalism of teachers is oriented toward creating educational places that foster autonomy and enrich experiences. Second, the professionalism of teachers is oriented towards engaging with structures that realize childrenʼs freedom. Third, the professionalism of teachers is explored based on professional autonomy. Fourth, this professionalism of teachers goes beyond various conflicts to realize education as human development and educational equity. Fifth is the professionalism of teachers possessed of pedagogy, which is found in the perspective of how social problems are reinterpreted in schools and understood in the context of education.
