Teacher professionalization as the cultivation of a pedagogical register of responses: responsivity, ethos, and tact

This article reconceptualizes teacher professionalization as the cultivation of a pedagogical register of responses grounded in pedagogical ethos and realized through pedagogical tact. Drawing on phenomenological accounts of corporeality and responsivity, it argues that professional teaching cannot be understood solely in terms of competencies, techniques, or diagnostic expertise. Rather, professionalism emerges in teachers’ capacity to perceive and respond to the contingent and often unpredictable claims that arise in pedagogical encounters. To explore this process, the article discusses phenomenological vignette work as a methodological and professionalizing practice. Through the analysis of two classroom vignettes, it illustrates how different pedagogical responses shape opportunities for participation, recognition, and vulnerability. Vignette work is understood as an education of perception that slows down habitual interpretations and makes visible the bodily, relational, and atmospheric dimensions of classroom life. The article argues that teacher professionalization involves the cultivation of attentiveness, practical reflexivity, and responsive judgment. It can thereby contribute to the differentiation of a pedagogical register of responses through which teachers learn to perceive otherwise, perceive more, and respond tactfully to the uncertainty, vulnerability, and alterity inherent in educational encounters.