Journal of Education for Teaching

ISSN: 0260-7476 (Print) 1360-0540 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjet20

Towards a new professionalism: enhancing

personal and professional development in teacher
education

Birgitte Malm

To cite this article: Birgitte Malm (2009) Towards a new professionalism: enhancing personal and
professional development in teacher education, Journal of Education for Teaching, 35:1, 77-91

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02607470802587160

Published online: 22 Jan 2009.

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Journal of Education for Teaching
Vol. 35, No. 1, February 2009, 77–91

Towards a new professionalism: enhancing personal and professional

development in teacher education
Birgitte Malm*

School of Teacher Education, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden

(Received 16 June 2008; final version received 17 October 2008)

The diversity and complexity of the post-modern era places new and important
challenges on teacher education. The crucial role that personal dispositions have
for professional learning needs to be better understood and acknowledged.
Teacher training programmes need to focus more on objectives such as promoting
conflict literacy, self-awareness, empathy, leadership and collaborative skills, i.e.
taking into account not only the cognitive but also the social and emotional
aspects of human development. In this article, Swedish lecturers’ descriptions of
what they consider to be competences and qualities necessary for future teachers
constitute the starting point for a wider discussion on the decisive role of beliefs
and emotions in being and becoming a teacher. Issues raised here should be able
to contribute to a better understanding of what it means to be a teacher and,
consequently, result in improvements in the planning of teacher training
programmes.
Keywords: competences; emotions of teaching; personal development; profes-
sional development; teachers’ belief systems; teacher education; teacher training
programmes

Introduction
If we, as teacher educators, agree that new teachers are our last, best hope for changing
schools, then our course of action becomes quite clear. We must address the critical
issues of beliefs, change, and leadership in our pre-service programmes. We must find
ways of using student teaching and other field experiences to help our students develop
deeper understandings of themselves as well as of the contexts of teaching. (O’Connell
Rust 1994, 216)
What characterises a good teacher? How well do we understand and cater for the
development of the whole person (i.e. taking into account the intellectual, social and
emotional aspects of personal and professional development) when we design and
implement our teacher training programmes? In an attempt to shed light on these
important issues, research findings from a previous study will here constitute a
necessary starting point. The study comprised interviews with lecturers, senior
lecturers and others in leadership positions at a Swedish school of teacher education.
Among other questions, the participants were asked what competences they believed
to be important for future teachers and also if they considered some competences to
be more important than others. Findings from this study provide a relevant base for
a wider discussion on the nature of the challenges facing future teachers and the
necessity of teacher training programmes to recognise, support and incorporate an

*Email: gitte.malm@mah.se

ISSN 0260-7476 print/ISSN 1360-0540 online

# 2009 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/02607470802587160
http://www.informaworld.com
78 B. Malm

education of the whole person. In view of this, issues are raised concerning the
importance of teachers, competences and qualities, belief systems, and teaching as an
emotional practice.

Background: the importance of teachers

Recent research indicates that the quality of teachers and their teaching are the
most important factors for student outcomes. Teachers vary markedly in their
effectiveness, and differences in student performance are often greater within schools
than between schools (OECD 2005). The McKinsey report (Barber and Mourshed
2007, 15) emphasises the fact that ‘the main driver of the variation in student
learning in school is the teacher’ and points out that even in good school systems,
‘students that do not progress quickly during their first years at school, because they
are not exposed to teachers of sufficient calibre, stand very little chance of recovering
the lost years’. Important findings from this international report can be summarised
as follows (Barber and Mourshed 2007, 43):
(1) The quality of an educational system cannot exceed the quality of its
teachers.
(2) The only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction.
(3) Achieving universally high outcomes is only possible by putting in place
mechanisms to ensure that schools deliver high-quality instruction to every
child.
Other important findings in the McKinsey report worth mentioning are that:
N all the better school systems had integrated practicum into their teacher
training programmes (Barber and Mourshed 2007, 32);
N school leadership is second only to classroom teaching as an influence on
learning (Barber and Mourshed 2007, 32);
N salary is rarely stated to be one of the most important reasons for becoming a
teacher, however the survey also shows that unless school systems offer
salaries which are in-line with other graduate starting salaries, these same
people do not enter teaching (Barber and Mourshed 2007, 23); and
N new teachers consistently reported that the status of the profession is one of
the most important factors in their decision to become a teacher (Barber and
Mourshed 2007, 25).
On a national level, an analysis of data from the evaluation of the Swedish
compulsory school (Skolverket 2006) draws attention to the importance of the
teacher for teaching outcomes, both cognitive (achievements, skills) and emotional
(attitudes, values). In this evaluation one tries to draw attention to personal
capacities via Grade 9 students’ descriptions of what they consider to be a good
teacher. The most important aspects related to the importance of the teacher that
come to light in the study are:
N that the teacher has a teacher education and is also trained in the specific
subject he/she teaches;
N the higher the teacher evaluates their didactic competences, the better the
conditions are for students’ learning; and
 Journal of Education for Teaching 79

N the more enjoyable the teacher describes their own teaching to be, the better
the conditions are for students’ learning.
An important finding in the Swedish report is a clear correlation between the
students’ desire to learn and the teachers’ desire to teach:
Teachers’ own confidence in their methodological and didactic competence and the fact
that they enjoy teaching are factors which, irrespective of the student’s gender, socio-
economic background and level of performance, correlate positively with the students’
assessment of who is a good teacher and what characterises a good learning
environment. (Skolverket 2006, 42)
The importance of adequate teacher training is supported by the literature. Darling-
Hammond (2000, 167) contends that:
reviews of research over the past 30 years have concluded that even with the
shortcomings of current teacher education and licensing, fully prepared and certified
teachers are generally better rated and more successful with students than teachers
without this preparation.
Teachers admitted with less than full preparation were found to be ‘less able to adapt
their instruction to promote student learning and less likely to see it as their job to do
so, blaming students if their teaching is not effective’ (Darling-Hammond 2000, 167).
These teachers were rated less highly on their instructional skills by colleagues and
principals, they had a higher-than-average leaving rate and their students learnt less
in important subjects such as maths, writing and reading. In contrast, the high
achievement rate of Finnish students in international comparative studies has been
explained as being a consequence of a firm pedagogical stand within an academic
teacher education (Sjöberg and Hansén 2006, 9).
Other significant findings in the Swedish evaluation study can be summarised as
follows:
N Within the teacher group, there were different ways of defining and
experiencing tasks and the requirements of teaching.
N There was a general tendency to stress an increase in workload.
N Pedagogical collaboration, specifically between teachers within the same
subject area, does not develop in line with, or to the same extent as, other
parts of the teachers’ work.
N Opportunities for in-service training are lacking. One third of the teachers feel
they do not have the necessary competences to assist students with special
needs; nor do they feel confident working with students with different social
and cultural backgrounds.
N There are evident discrepancies between teachers and students concerning
what constitutes a pleasant and positive learning environment. Teachers tend
to regard the classroom atmosphere as being much more positive, compared
to what the students’ experience.
N Boys’ judgements of a good teacher are influenced by whether the teacher is
male or female. Boys’ assessments of male teachers are higher. Girls’
judgements of a good teacher are influenced by the teacher’s age. Girls assess
younger teachers higher.
There is an urgent need for teachers today to develop new and creative emotional
competences in order to cope with an increasingly complex, changing and diversified
80 B. Malm

school environment. Can teacher training programmes live up to these expectations?

How do teacher educators describe/define the necessary competences and qualities
they deem essential for future teachers?

Competences and qualities: reference to a previous study

In the final report of the DeSeCo research programme (OECD 2003, 2), competence is
defined as ‘the ability to successfully meet complex demands in a particular context’:
Competent performance or effective action implies the mobilization of knowledge,
cognitive and practical skills, as well as social behaviour components such as attitudes,
emotions, and values and motivations. A competence – a holistic notion – is therefore
not reducible to its cognitive dimension, and thus the terms competence and skill are not
synonymous. (Rychen 2003, 3)
In a policy paper on the quality of teachers by the Association for Teacher
Education in Europe (ATEE 2006, 7), teaching is seen as ‘a profession that entails
reflective thinking, continuing professional development, autonomy, responsibility,
creativity, research and personal judgements. Indicators that identify the quality of
teachers should reflect these values and attributes’.
One of the aims of a previous study by the author (Malm 2005) was to examine
how teacher educators and student teachers describe/define teacher competences and
if and how (through their aims, content and implementation) courses in teacher
education are directed towards the development of personal and professional
competences. Teacher educators’ descriptions of necessary competences will be
accounted for here.
Nineteen randomly chosen lecturers, senior lecturers and others in leadership
positions were interviewed. The semi-structured interviews lasted between 30–60
minutes. The participants were asked the following two questions:
(1) What competences/qualities do you consider essential for student teachers to
develop during their teacher education?
(2) Are some competences/qualities more important than others?
Content analysis resulted in 12 qualitatively different categories (here in alphabetical
order): communication skills; democratic views; developing children’s self-
confidence and personality; didactic competence; intellectual capacities; leadership
qualities; organisation of the learning environment; personal competence; social
competence; subject knowledge; teacher professionalism and teaching skills. Results
are presented here based on these two questions.

What competences/qualities do you consider essential for student teachers to develop

during their teacher education?
The majority of the answers represent different expressions related to teaching skills;
common answers were associated with commitment, showing an interest, and
openness. Leadership and organisation of the learning environment are evidently
things that have been focussed on more recently. Several teacher educators were
worried that the student teachers develop friendly relationships with the students in
school, and stress the importance of developing an adult–student relationship based
on clear leadership skills. Courses in conflict management were mentioned by the
majority of the teacher educators as being an element which student teachers found
 Journal of Education for Teaching 81

sorely lacking in their teacher training programme and which they therefore felt in
great need of.
Different forms of intellectual capacities were mentioned regarding teachers’
personal qualities. For teacher educators it was important to develop theoretical
knowledge in addition to subject knowledge, notably that which is associated with
the reflective practitioner. This can be understood as a particular expression of
teacher knowledge that is related to the goals for teacher examinations. There are
three main goals (applicable to both the basic and advanced levels) stipulated by the
Swedish National Agency for Higher Education. These are divided into the sub-
categories ‘Knowledge and understanding’, ‘Skills and capabilities’ and ‘Values and
norms’. The latter states that in order to pass the teacher examination, the student
teacher needs to be able to demonstrate:
N self-knowledge and a capacity for empathy;
N a capacity to form judgements in daily pedagogical encounters based on
scientific, societal and ethical aspects with special consideration being paid to
human rights;
N the application of a professional approach in relation to children, students
and their custodians;
N a capacity of being able to identify their own needs regarding further
knowledge and to be able to develop competence in pedagogical work.
Specific goals for teacher examinations are related to subject knowledge, personal
development, knowledge of teaching, democracy and society, IT, degree projects and
overall planning and evaluation.
Among the teacher educators, teacher professionalism is often named as a
concept, possibly also in more general terms, and is given different kinds of meaning.
Personal competence, related to self-knowledge and personal characteristics, is
mentioned by only a few. In contrast, there are several examples that can be related
to social competence, although none of the teacher educators used this concept
directly. These cases are mainly related to relationships with children and students in
school.

Are some competences/qualities more important than others?

Most teacher educators interviewed said that it was difficult sorting these
competences into any specific order as they considered them to be of equal
importance. Answers given can be included in all the categories except ‘didactic
competence’ and ‘developing children’s self-confidence and personality’. The fact
that these two categories are not included among those considered most important
can seem surprising. The qualities most frequently ranked as most important are
teaching skills, communication skills, leadership qualities and cognitive capacities.
General goals for university education include capacities for independent and
critical assessments, being able to discern, formulate and solve problems and
preparation for meeting changes in working life. In addition to basic subject
knowledge and skills, students need to develop capacities for seeking and evaluating
knowledge on a scientific level, keeping up to date with subject knowledge
developments and be able to exchange knowledge even with persons outside their
special field of knowledge. When asking for general goals for university education
82 B. Malm

that are not specifically related to subject knowledge, a surprisingly large number of
teacher educators were at a loss for words and asked for hints to help them along.
Few mention personal development and collaboration, and in this context none
mentioned social competence. It is also surprising that not one mentioned insight
into pedagogy, special needs education, didactics, psychology or methodology
(knowledge of teaching). Just as surprising was that none referred to goals such as
being able to relate scientific theories to future work tasks (goals related to degree
projects) or having a capacity for planning, executing, evaluating and developing
work with children and young adults.
Strong teacher–student relations, high expectations and a positive disciplinary
climate were stressed as important for student performance, as was classroom
leadership qualities and teaching skills. Contexts referred to several times were
related to democratic and societal goals, where gender, environmental and
intercultural questions dominate. These constitute the three main perspectives at
this school of teacher education.
Only one third of the participants mentioned having a scientific approach and
critical thought as being more part of the university’s overriding goals, than related
to specific goals within teacher examinations. Notably, when comments relating to
research were raised, they were put forward with a reasonable amount of doubt. The
assumption seems to be that research is more something that is said, than actually
happens, or that it is not something one would naturally associate with teacher
education because, as one participant said, ‘their [the student teachers’] intentions
are not to become researchers’.
Many studies stress the importance of the teacher for supporting students’
motivation for future learning and development of self-confidence. In teacher
education the aim is to educate teachers towards attaining high personal and
professional competences. Quite probably, formal competences (such as subject
knowledge and teaching techniques) are still stressed more than personal attributes,
although many studies show that students focus on other qualities (see Malm and
Löfgren 2006, 2007; Skolverket 1996, 2006). Personal capacities and qualities are
certainly of more significance today for the results of school influence, and above all,
capacities such as interpersonal/relational and emotional competences.

The belief systems of teachers

Prospective teachers’ existing knowledge and beliefs have been found to play a
crucial role in how they experience and/or envision their professional role. These
beliefs about teaching and learning which have accumulated over years of school and
life experiences have been found to be highly resistant to change (Korthagen 1993).
Richardson (1996, 105) contends that ‘if knowledge and beliefs affect teachers’
decisions and actions, their interactions with students, and their satisfaction with
their profession, then beliefs should be a focus for instruction and a target for change
during teacher education’. Hoy and Murphy (2001) assert that teacher educators
should try to assess the more subjective understandings that pre-service teachers
possess about teaching and learning and offer suggestions for various tasks that
encourage prospective teachers to understand, value, and use educational
psychology while supporting and extending their beliefs and intuitions about
teaching and learning.
 Journal of Education for Teaching 83

Previous research has found that beginner teachers are unrealistically optimistic
about their abilities (Weinstein 1989). Other studies suggest that student teachers
have little knowledge of their teaching effectiveness and often evaluate themselves
significantly higher than when rated by their co-operating teachers or university
supervisors. Wing-Mui, May-Hung and Chiao-Liang (1996, 50) interpret this as
problems in the quality and quantity of feedback provided for student teachers
during their teaching practice. They suggest that more thought should be given to the
design of both the supervision and the activity of the teaching practice.
It has been argued that beginning teachers count on experience, trial-and-error
and the ‘right’ personality to succeed and do not expect to learn much from their
formal teacher training course. This is based, to a great extent, on the fact that
student teachers are ‘insiders’ (Hoy and Murphy 2001).
They need not discover the classroom or see it with new eyes because they are
completely familiar with the territory – having spent the last dozen or so years of their
lives in similar places. In learning to be teachers, they simply return to places of their
past, complete with memories and preconceptions of days gone by, preconceptions that
often remain largely unaffected by higher education. (Pajares 1993, 46)
This view is confirmed by O’Connell Rust (1994, 215), who suspects that pre-service
education rarely engages students in examination of their deeply held beliefs.
Consequently, they ‘most probably leave our programmes with their deeply held
beliefs intact, ready to teach as they learned during their apprenticeships of
observation. If this is the case, the implications for teacher educators are significant’.
In a Swedish study by Paulin (2006) the aim was to promote a deeper
understanding of the ongoing processes of newly qualified teachers. Results show
that the teachers had difficulties understanding and handling problematic pupils,
with discipline, with relations and co-operation with colleagues and parents. She
contends that these difficulties are due to both the content of their training
programmes and their induction as beginners into school domains, where they are
left alone without the support they need. The latter has also recently been confirmed
by the McKinsey report (Barber and Mourshed 2007, 31):
Teachers develop the bulk of their instructional capability during their first years of
training and practice. In several of the school systems we studied, the evidence suggests
that the support given to teachers during this period (both in their initial training, and
the support they were given during their first years of practice) was rarely as effective as
it should have been. Research shows that in the United States many teacher education
programmes have little impact on teacher effectiveness.
Only approximately half of the countries in Europe offer new teachers any
systematic kind of support (e.g. induction, training, mentoring) in their first years of
teaching (European Commission 2007).
In England, a framework of professional standards for teachers forms part of a
wider framework of standards for the whole school workforce. This framework
defines the characteristics of teachers at each career stage and comprises three
interrelated elements:
(1) professional attributes (e.g. developing professional relationships, commu-
nication with others, understanding relevant legal documents);
(2) professional knowledge and understanding (e.g. demonstrating confidence
in subjects taught, contribute to the well-being of children and young
adults); and
84 B. Malm

(3) professional skills, which are underpinned by the above two elements and
concerned with establishing clear expectations related to the promotion of
positive attitudes to learning, discipline and safe learning environments).
Qualified teacher status (QTS) is achieved through completing initial teacher
training and demonstrating that the required standards have been met. Each set of
standards builds on the previous set, thus clarifying progression in career
development:
After the induction year, therefore, teachers would be expected to continue to meet the
core standards and to broaden and deepen their professional attributes, knowledge,
understanding and skills within that context. This principle applies at all subsequent
career stages. (Training and Development Agency for Schools 2008, 2)
It is thus of great importance that the contents of teacher-training programmes
should be developed so that they correspond more fully with the needs that newly-
qualified teachers have. This mainly involves the skills that form part of social
competence but also knowledge of the problems that pupils have and the ability to
deal with them professionally. Paulin (2006, 187) recommends the following
improvements:
Previous experiences, unconscious and latent models that students bring with them
when they start their training programmes should be rendered visible, analysed,
processed and developed in relation to theory and practice. Links between on-campus
and in-school elements in the training programmes should enhance and cross-fertilise
each other more thoroughly.
The challenge here lies in being able to ‘render visible’ previous experiences,
unconscious and latent models that students bring with them when they start their
training programmes and to work consciously and interactively with the personal and
professional processes of student development. Beliefs, values, feelings and attitudes
are all part of the emotions (Boardman 1992); they underlie and influence the ways in
which we act. However, emotion is one of the least investigated aspects of research on
teaching (Zembylas 2005). Little is known about how teachers regulate their emotions,
the relationship between teachers’ emotions and motivation and how integral
emotional experiences are in teacher development (Sutton and Wheatley 2003). One
exception to this lack of information would be the review of the literature regarding the
emotional aspects of teachers’ lives, where Sutton and Wheatley (2003, 322) found that
positive emotions comprised concepts such as love, caring, affection, satisfaction,
pride, joy and pleasure associated with teaching. Negative emotions included
frustration, anger, tiredness, stress, anxiety and helplessness.

Teaching as an emotional practice

Teaching is, as Hargreaves (1998, 835) writes, ‘an emotional practice’. This is
because emotions ‘are at the heart of teaching. They comprise its most dynamic
qualities, literally, for emotions are fundamentally about movement’. Essential to
sustaining teachers’ sense of self (that is, their senses of value and worth in their
work) are the psychic rewards of teaching, as is the power to make independent
judgements as well as exercise personal discretion, initiative and creativity through
their work. Teachers’ and pupils’ individual senses of ‘self’ seek and find definition
through communication and dialogue. We need to confront others in order to
understand and develop our own original selves (Malm 2004, 2008a). Hargreaves
 Journal of Education for Teaching 85

(1998, 845) found that the emotional bond teachers had with their students was the
central influence with regard to their choice of method, teaching context and
practice. Teachers’ emotional connections to students:
…and the social and emotional goals they wanted to achieve as they taught those
students, shaped and influenced almost everything they did, along with how they
responded to changes that affected what they did. Teachers wanted to become better so
they could help their students more effectively.
Of special and overriding significance is the care and concern the teachers have for
their students. Hargreaves contends that this emotional bond is so strong that it
affects both the content and form of teaching.
Jersild (1955) argues that emotions such as anxiety, fear, loneliness, helplessness,
meaninglessness and hostility in relation to understanding the self are prevalent in
teachers’ lives in schools and classrooms and must, therefore, be addressed as part of
teachers’ professional education. Cole (1997, 14) asserts that ‘until these issues are
addressed teachers will not be able freely and meaningfully to engage in the kind of
reflective practice and professional development that brings meaning to their own
lives and the lives of their students’.
Zembylas (2005) has explored the emotional tension between cognitive and
emotional perspectives in the lives of teachers by identifying particular emotional
regimes within school cultures. Some teachers are able to constitute their own spaces
for emotional freedom in order to make their situation tolerable or meaningful;
others are not, their emotional suffering often resulting in teacher burnout.
The anxiety about appearing incompetent to one’s colleagues and oneself
Hargreaves (1980, 142) calls ‘fundamental competence anxiety’. In addition to the
fact that there is no certain, technical knowledge base for the profession of teaching,
anxiety ‘also arises from the arbitrary imposition of expectations for teaching which
contain singular rather than multiple models of competence – expectations that may
mesh poorly with the teacher’s personal self or with the context in which the teacher
works’ (Hargreaves and Tucker 1991, 500). Anxiety is even more pertinent when
professional and personal lives become detached from one another, i.e. ‘when the
public realm of teaching performance is segregated and divorced from the private
realm of personal feeling’ (Hargreaves and Tucker 1991, 500).
According to Hargreaves and Tucker, guilt is a central preoccupation for teachers.
One significant source of depressive guilt among teachers is the commitment to goals
of care and nurturance. ‘The more important that care is to a teacher, the more
emotionally devastating is the experience of failing to provide it’ (Hargreaves and
Tucker 1991, 496). They mention this commitment as being particularly strong among
elementary teachers. To many it has motivated their choice to become teachers and is
also a major source of job satisfaction. This ethic of care (albeit in different ways) has
been shown to be prevalent among both women and men (Gilligan 1982; Nias 1989).
Hargreaves and Tucker (1991, 504) suggest the need to:
…reduce the dependence on personal care and nurturance as the prime motive of
elementary teaching in particular by extending the definition of care to embrace a moral
and social dimension as well as a personal one, and by balancing the purposes of care
with other educational purposes of equivalent importance. This should be a priority in
both initial and inservice teacher education.
Hargreaves (2001) has also examined the emotional aspects of teachers’ interactions
and relationships with their colleagues. The strongest source of negative emotion
86 B. Malm

among these teachers was conflict, seen as a problem, not an opportunity. When
teachers work together, ‘they value appreciation and acknowledgement as well as
personal support and acceptance, but tend to avoid disagreement and conflict,
whether they regard themselves as close friends or as more distant colleagues’
(Hargreaves 2001, 503). This, the author argues, significantly impedes opportunities
for improvement.
Based on a review from the literature on uncertainties in teaching, Helsing (2007)
contends that uncertainties can be viewed alternatively as a liability or an asset to
effective teaching. One common type of uncertainty is a dilemma which is common
in teaching because ‘without an agreed upon knowledge base, the profession is beset
by multiple and competing role expectations’ (Helsing 2007, 1318). She suggests that
teachers should address their uncertainties by forming relationships through
collaboration and reflective practice. This is in line with Pickering, Daly and
Pachler (2007, 270) who propose three key themes which, in combination, reflect a
broader shift towards co-constructed teacher knowledge:
(1) Shared practice (authentic exchanges about practice that lead into changes
in practice).
(2) Collaborative learning networks (co-operatively grounded; teachers draw
on their own and others’ practice-based evidence to change their and others’
practice).
(3) Scholarly reflection on practice (fusion of the theory and practice of
teaching; teaching as an intellectual activity, consuming and generating
professional knowledge through co-constructivist approaches).
To this I would be inclined to add: ‘Developing and sharing an understanding of the
moral, ethical and philosophical aspects of teaching’. These dimensions however, can
and should constitute an essential part of what Pickering, Daly and Pachler describe
as ‘shared practice’, i.e. ‘authentic exchanges’.
Teacher commitment has been found to be a crucial predictor of teachers’ work
performance, absenteeism, retention, burnout and turnover, as well as having an
important influence on students’ motivation, achievement, attitudes towards
learning and being in school (Day 2002). The level of teachers’ commitment is
considered a key factor as it heavily influences teachers’ willingness to engage in
cooperative, reflective and critical practice. Teacher commitment is one of the most
critical factors for the future success of education and schools (Crosswell and Elliot
2004). The results of their study show that ‘while teachers do articulate a
commitment to external centres (such as students) they also make significant links
to personal passions which include ideology, values and beliefs’ (Crosswell and Elliot
2004, 7). They identified six interrelated categories representing different ways that
teachers perceive, understand and conceptualise teacher commitment: as a ‘passion’
(positive emotional attachment); as an investment of time outside of contact hours
with students; as a focus on the individual needs of students; as a responsibility to
impart knowledge, attitudes, values; as ‘maintaining professional knowledge’ and as
engagement with the school community.
As Day (2000, 111) points out:
enthusiasm for teaching, learning and pupils is not something that can be sustained
without personal commitment – to the pupils who, through force of circumstance or
past experience, may not always be highly motivated, whose confidence needs to be
 Journal of Education for Teaching 87

encouraged and who need to be challenged and cared for; and to the moral purposes of
education to work for the betterment of both the individual and society as a whole.
When teachers do not feel in control of what they consider to be valued working
conditions they experience vulnerability. The basic structure in vulnerability ‘is
always one of feeling that one’s professional identity and moral integrity, as part of
being ‘‘a proper teacher’’, are questioned and that valued workplace conditions are
thereby threatened or lost’ (Kelchtermans 2005, 997). Vulnerability is not an
emotion; it is a structural condition teachers/educators find themselves in. In a
positive sense, it is this vulnerability ‘which constitutes the very possibility for the
‘‘pedagogical’’ to happen in the relationship between teachers and pupils’
(Kelchtermans 2005, 997).
The relationship of an ethical, and thus vulnerable, commitment opens up the chance
that education (literally) ‘takes place’. Such an encounter makes the teacher feel that
they are really ‘making a difference as a person’ in the student’s life. Joy, pride,
existential personal fulfilment are the emotions that go with it. So vulnerability is not
only a condition to be endured, but also to be acknowledged, cherished, and embraced.
(Kelchtermans 2005, 999)
According to Kelchtermans (2005, 995), emotions reflect the fact that deeply held
beliefs on good education are part of teachers’ self-understanding, mediated by the
professional context which encompasses dimensions of time (age, generation,
biography) and of space (the structural and working conditions).

Concluding remarks
While a framework of competency provides, for the graduate, a theory of teaching, it is
isolated from her potential practice because of its inherent and intended universality.
Context divides the preparation from the practice, the ‘graduate’ from the ‘beginning
teacher’ …A challenge for teacher education then becomes one of acknowledging the
totality of experience within each student’s biographical context, and of valuing the
knowledge of lived experience as a supplement to the theory of the competency
frameworks to inform their contextualised practice. (McLeod 2001)
In teacher education there is a need to heighten the awareness of what it means to be
a teacher, with both the personal ‘being’ and the professional ‘becoming’ as essential
and interrelated dimensions of career development. There has been a tendency to
emphasise the ‘becoming’ at the expense of what it means to ‘be’. The person the
student teacher is becomes of the utmost relevance to how they develop
professionally. Too little attention has hitherto been paid to the importance of
personal development for professional learning. Teacher education needs to focus
much more on the personal processes involved in becoming a professional teacher;
that is, teacher training programmes should comprise a well-grounded balance
between the cognitive and emotional dimensions of learning to teach.
As Karlsen (2006, 201) writes, we need teachers who ‘with courage and the will to
be substantial in their constitution as essential beings, can fill the indefinable
responsibility it entails to be human, and from which all teacher actions emanate’
(my translation). In striving towards educational sustainability, we need to engage in
the complexities of continuous improvement consistent with deep values of human
purpose (Fullan 2005). As Nussbaum (2003, 301) suggests, it is:
very urgent right now to support curricular efforts aimed at producing citizens who can
take charge of their own reasoning, who can see the different and foreign not as a threat
88 B. Malm

to be resisted, but as an invitation to explore and understand, expanding their own

minds and their capacity for citizenship.
The European Commission (2007) stresses the need to strengthen links between
teacher educators, practising teachers, the world of work and other agencies. The
fact that teachers act as role models necessitates that the profession fully reflects the
diversity of the society in which it operates. ‘Those responsible for educating teachers
(and for educating teacher educators) should possess practical experience of
classroom teaching and have attained a very high standard in the skills, attitudes
and competences demanded of teachers’ (European Commission 2007, 15).
Hansen (2007, 3) proposes that teacher training should try to operate along two
tracks: a professional, evidence-based track (‘what works’?), and an existential and
normative track (how teachers understand themselves in what they are saying and
doing). The former is concerned with pragmatic and instrumental questions in a
functional problem-solving and critical attitude. The latter is concerned with
existential and ethical questions, that which Hansen (2007, 10) refers to as a
‘wondering attitude’:
In order to be authentic and to create an authentic learning process, therefore, the
teacher must be able to ‘stand in the openness’ and strive for a community of wonder
with his (sic) students, and indeed dare to question his own philosophical assumptions
and ‘personal philosophy’ which underlie his professional knowledge, attitudes, and
skills.
If we understand authenticity as constituting a state of ‘being’ in a constant process
of ‘becoming’, that is, as a moral goal in itself (e.g. self-fulfilment as a teacher) as well
as constituting a moral means towards attaining other goals (e.g. through positive
relations with students and others), we must recognise the value that the concept of
authenticity has on an individual level as well as acknowledging its relevance in a
wider (societal) context (Malm 2008b). According to Hansen (2007, 15), the
challenge in teacher training lies in finding a balance between ‘the instrumental track
of competence and the existential track of Bildung’ (i.e. the ethical and existential
aspect of a person’s character). As Kristjansson (2000, 12) contends, ‘the sad fact is
that most teacher-training programmes fail to prepare teachers for work on moral
and interpersonal issues; as a consequence of which teachers frequently express
insecurity about how to address such issues in the classroom’.
In view of what has been argued here, dimensions in teacher education that I
believe need to be accentuated more are those which relate to:
N developing teachers’ capacities for creative and reflective thought;
N enhancing critical thinking;
N heightening teachers’ philosophical and pedagogical awareness;
N emphasising the cognitive as well as emotional aspects of teaching;
N training teachers’ capacities for empathy and interpersonal collaboration;
N developing a personal understanding of the implications of teaching perceived
as a moral and ethical profession.
Pedagogical encounters are relational encounters and the fundamental significance
of the emotions cannot be ignored. Teacher education needs to recognise this
importance and incorporate relevant aspects into their courses, for the future benefit
of all concerned. Nurturing meaningful relationships and maintaining a positive and
stimulating classroom climate are some of a teacher’s most important obligations.
 Journal of Education for Teaching 89

Genuine pedagogical encounters in supportive educational settings should be an

ideal to strive for, encompassing both the passion and the purpose of teaching.

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