Reclaiming professionalism for geography education: Defending our own territory

In a world where governments increasingly attempt to impose regulation on all professional activities, this paper advocates that professional standards for teachers be developed ‘by the profession for the profession’. Foucauldian archaeology is applied to two teacher standards documents recently published in Australia, one developed at national governmental level and the other by geography teachers through their professional associations. The excavation reveals that both students and geography teachers themselves are better served when teachers assert their own definition of professionalism and thus reclaim their professional territory, rather than being compliant with generic governmental agendas. Whilst we use Australia as an illustrative example, our findings are applicable to all other countries where governments attempt to impose external professional standards on the teaching profession.

在一个政府越来越试图对所有职业活动进行监管的世界里，本文主张教师的职业标准应由“教师职业群体为自身职业”来制定。福柯式的考古学方法被应用于澳大利亚最近发布的两份教师标准文件，一份是由国家政府层面制定的，另一份是由地理教师通过其专业协会制定的。这种剖析揭示出，当教师坚持自己对专业性的定义，从而收复自己的职业领地，而不是顺从一般性的政府议程时，学生和地理教师自身都会得到更好的服务。虽然我们以澳大利亚作为一个例证，但我们的研究结果适用于所有其他政府试图对教师职业强加外部职业标准的国家。