Towards a UCU Concept of Professionalism

Dan TaubmanSenior National Education Official

UCU

The Starting Points

• that professionalism among education workers service is under serious attack

from a culture of managerialism a lack of respect for the expertise, views and commitment of

professional staff the imposition of ever-increasing workloads

• A clear Govt policy around de-regulation and de-professionalisation

• An absence of institutional arrangements supporting the development, defence and recognition of UCU members’ professionalism

• UCU needs for its own clearly-articulated, persuasive version of professionalism that would underpin UCU’s campaigns, organising and recruitment and industrial relations strategies

• A professionalism that meets UCU members ‘r aspirations and their activities.

Aims of a UCU concept of professionalism * To establish a common understanding and ownership of a basic concept of professionalism running across all UCU members.

* To have a concept of professionalism that is bottom up and arises from lived experiences and knowledge of UCU members but is developed within and informed by current social and political realities.

* To develop a professionalism that recognises, values and supports what UCU members do and their ability to reflect on and improve their practice * To provide the basic build blocks from for further elaborations around the particular circumstances and issues for particular sections of UCU membership

* To present analysis of the ways that education has become infected by managerialism, commodification and marketisation, and how these processes are internalised and hollow out professionalism making education institutions ripe for marketisation and privatisation

* Defend and campaign for true education values

Why professionalism now?

• The growth of new professionalisms especially in the public sector

• State’s use of professionalism to regulate and control centrally set targets and the emergence of audit culture

• Reduction of professional autonomy and perversion of the ‘professional mandate’ combined with increasing state intervention in the details of the content and curriculum of education

• Govt. attacks on the public sector from 1980s onwards with accusations of professionals abusing their autonomy with the state more assertive in outlining what the outcomes of teaching and learning should be

• Increasing marketisation and privatisation with education being seen as a commodity to be bought and sold. Leads to the emergence of ‘New Labour managerial professionalism and quasi or bureaucratic markets.

• Growing impact of performativity

Why professionalism now contd?

• Impact of economic crisis and professional status may be more important if pay falls

• General sense of personal insecurity and a loss of meaning in what individuals do, and what is important in what they do. So ‘re-orientation pedagogical and scholarly activity to measurable performance outcomes’.

• Ideological attacks on the public sector and education

• Professionals become reinvented as units of whose performance and productivity are constantly being audited so these can be enhanced

• Market increasingly setting moral and ethical cultures within institutions with producers and consumers instead of lecturers and students

• Technological changes and the opening up of knowledge and expertise

Definitions of professionalism

• A definable group of workers usually dealing with ‘complex and unpredictable situations;

• Extended and systematic preparation with an intellectual component taught in an institutional setting that upholds quality and competence of the profession

• A body of specialist knowledge and expertise including the use of skills based on theoretical and applied knowledge;

• The use of skills based on theoretical and applied knowledge, in accordance with the professional values and ethics that provide the state and the public with the means through which accountability is exercised;

• Through this accountability, the profession and the professionals are accorded trust and freedom from unnecessary state micro-management and interference

• Allows some professional autonomy

Definitions of professionalism contd

• Updating and extension of the specialist knowledge and skills through CPD

• A set of values and ethics pertaining to the exercise of the knowledge ande

expertise

• A code of professional conduct orientated to the ‘public good’ and an

expectation of the professions’ members to observe norms or codes of conduct;

• Emphasis on service ahead of personal reward; an expectation that the professions’ members will demonstrate a high level of personal integrity;

• Control of entry into their ranks.

Much of this is contested as are the various concepts of professionalism

A UCU concept of professionalism and professional identity

Based around 3 sets of writings: Judyth Sachs on democratic professionalism and ‘activist’ professional identity: Stephen Ball on ‘performativity, marketisation and privatisation and professionalism: and Ingrid Lunt on modern professional values and ethics

Democratic Professionalism: a series of propositions

• UCU members drawn from a wide variety of backgrounds, employment, roles and motivations.

• Demonstrate dedication, enthusiasm, expertise and deep knowledge and expertise around all aspects of teaching and learning, research and supporting these activates

• Respond to the personal and cultural experiences of the different students and provide activities and structures of intellectual, social and emotional support to help learners to move forward in their learning

• They form communities of practice that can acknowledge new knowledge, changing circumstances and new learners

Values underpinning democratic professionalism

These are not new values but exiting values reformed and reframed and sittingalongside long established education values. These values become the basis of building a new relationship of trust betweeneducation professionals and students, colleagues and the state. Trust is then earned and deserved

• Competence: Reframed as an understanding of competence whichaccepts the provisional and contested nature of knowledge and thereforecompetence. Professionals need to learn from experience and update their competences and ensure that their knowledge, skills and understanding are up to date.

• Respect: an ability to listen, to help and to empower; to attempt to achieve greaterequality and mutual understanding and give validity to student/learner views

• Integrity: a self-awareness and a realisation of one’s own values, prejudices,beliefs, limitations and fallibility.

• Responsibility: an acceptance of dilemmas inherent in professional work and the increased complexity of the current and future professional-student relationships.

Values contd

These new values set alongside the long established education values with implications for professional practice. Start of set a reformed ethical code which are used as a basis for the trust in to education professionals by the public and the state.

Trust is earned and deserved

An accompanying professional identity: the ‘activist identity’

• Develops from ’the open flow of ideas, regardless of their popularity which enable people to be as fully informed as possible’ – rests on notions of academic freedom .

• Built around belief in individual and collective capacity of people to create possibilities and opportunities for resolving individual and collective problems and issues.

• Uses critical reflection and analysis to evaluate ideas, problems and policies. Concerned for the welfare of others and "the common good"

.

Professional identity contd

• Based on a subject deep knowledge and a self-motivation to develop this knowledge. Based on skills around self-development, aligned to an active awareness and understanding of the ethical impact of their work within wider social and political contexts.

• Is about autonomous decision making in the knowledge and understanding that this is exercised according to professional. These standards created with the active involvement of professional practitioners

• Includes the professional being creative and innovative and working with value and respecting and behaving in a reciprocal manner with other professionals

Professional identity contd

• Develops alongside and from communities of practice to develop which are based in wider contexts - historical, social, cultural, and institutional and with specific reference to resources and constraints.

• Communities of practice need to be sustained through active engagement, discussion and debate to share meanings about creating the conditions and opportunities for democratic professional practice.

• Communities of practice and an activist identity exist alongside one another. They reinforce and support each other.

• Recognition that professional practice is situated in the wider contexts. This is also a recognition of the complexity, contradictions and sheer messiness of education and learning practice.

• Recognises the multiplicity of professionalisms and identities that many UCU members have.

Professionalism and UCU strategies

1. In campaigning work: So UCU campaigns for education not just as UCU members, and education workers but as education professionals.

2. In recruitment and organising: we recruit colleagues to a professional organisation as well as a trade union

3. In Industrial relations: we campaign and fight for pay and conditions of services commensurate to professional status

WHAT ELSE?

Continuing Questions• Is a single concept of professionalism, embracing all members, feasible?

• Where is it deficient, unclear, changes and just plain wrong?

• What are the key elements in any alternative UCU definition of the professionalism?

• Is it too focused on teaching roles? How do we take account of the different professional needs and aspirations of our members?

• Are there models and experiences from other professions on which we could usefully draw, particularly professional bodies with which UCU members are already involved (nursing, medicine, law, engineering etc)?

• Is what the paper discusses around multiple professionalism correct?

Continuing Questions contd

• How do we balance professional autonomy and legitimate demands for accountability?

• Does the discussion paper represent a concept of professionalism that UCU and its members can own? Does it have legs?

• What structures (professional bodies and regulatory regimes), if any, should we be advocating in order to ensure that we can defend and promote our professionalism effectively?

• Should we be considering mechanisms for controlling to some degree or other entrance to the profession and the award of qualifications and accreditation?

• What is the proper role of UCU in this project?

• If UCU accept this concept of professionalism, how can it use it and for what?