In education, talk of “the teaching profession” and “educational professionals” is commonplace. Teaching also belongs to the category of profession according to the United Nations’ International Standard Classification of Occupations International. Yet all are keenly aware that teachers do not enjoy the social prestige, generous salaries and flexible working conditions typical of professions like medicine, law, and dentistry. There may be legitimate debates over the relative social or economic importance of different occupations and whether certain fields of work receive the appreciation they deserve. The fact remains, however, that being a “professional” is a legal designation. For whatever reason, in all of Canada except for Ontario, as in most other countries in the world, teachers are not professionals in the eyes of the law. Why, then, do people in the field of education continue to speak as if teachers were professionals? Is “professional” used in some non-legal sense, perhaps as a figurative turn of phrase? Or is describing teachers as professionals a way of asserting that teachers deserve to be recognized by society as true professionals and teachers should have the right to regulate themselves in the ways that legally recognized professions do? To answer these questions, one has to go beyond dictionary definitions of “professional” and explore the meaning of the term as it applies to teachers and the work they do helping young people learn and develop in schools.
