Education: Deprofessionalised? or Reregulated, Reorganised and Reauthorised?

THIS paper considers recent claims that education is being deprofessionalised. It argues that judgements about the deprofessionalisation, or reprofessionalisation, of education are made relative to different theories of professionalism and discusses the way different theories of professionalism encourage particular focuses on, and readings of, empirical data. The paper suggests that recent theoretical developments which see professionalism as discourse offer a way of rethinking professionalism and educational change as part of an ongoing politics of knowledge, power and social groups which plays out in relationships between state and civil society. The challenge is to see deprofessionalisation and reprofessionalisation as part of an ongoing politics of knowledge, power and social organisation, and to consider the character and parameters of preferred reprofessionalisation that might be pursued through contemporary processes of educational change.