Fiona Hilferty

Theorising teacher professionalism as an enacted discourse of power

In this article I elaborate a theoretical framework for examining teacher professionalism as an enacted discourse of power. Central to this framework is an understanding of professionalism as a process that relates to the ways teachers attempt to influence the quality and character of their work. For subject teaching associations this process connects to issues of power such as teacher participation in educational policy‐making, and the advocacy of subject interests. In this article I theorise professionalism as enacted by subject teaching associations, arguing that the enacted form is shaped by changing structural, cultural and agential variables. Finally, I explore the interactive relationship between structure, culture and agency in the work of subject teaching associations, and present a working model through which enacted professionalism may be analysed and interpreted.

Contesting the Curriculum: An Examination of Professionalism as Defined and Enacted by Australian History Teachers

Abstract In this article, I present an analysis of professionalism as defined and enacted by the History Teachers’ Association of New South Wales (HTANSW). This analysis was part of a larger doctoral project (2000–2005) in which I employed critical qualitative inquiry to compare and contrast the contribution that two subject teaching associations (science and history) make to the project of teacher professionalism in Australia. My aim for this project was to explore what professionalism means in practice for a unique group of teachers: those who have made an active and fundamental commitment to their subject community by voluntarily serving on the executive committee of their subject-based professional association. In this article, I present findings from the case account of the HTANSW—an organization that operates locally as a professional teacher community and a representative organization for school-based history teachers. This case account details the manoeuvrings of an association that powerfully asserts an expansive role for history teachers as both contributors to, and critical commentators on, curriculum policy. In this article, I conceptualise the actions of this association as an enacted form of teacher professionalism. Drawing on study findings, I explicate my conception of professionalism as an enacted discourse of power and I show how this discourse is enacted in subject-specific ways.