The Salesian Educator as a Professional
What makes a Salesian educator a
professional?
What makes a professional a Salesian
educator?
Maria
Theresa H. Alvarez
The teaching profession shares core
values and practices that are vital to the dignity and integrity of any
profession and yet in various facets of the so-called “life of a teacher”,
there are attributes that are unique. Anybody can be a teacher but not everyone
can be an educator. A teacher is someone who was given the responsibility of
guiding the learners achieve a set of competencies, understand concepts, and
demonstrate attainment of skills. An educator is one who transforms lives
through the integrative process of learning – mastering the “what”, applying
the “how”, and fulfilling the duties and values that entail the “why”. In the same
way that anybody who opts to pursue a baccalaureate degree undergoes that
process of professionalization but not everyone can claim the status of being a
professional. Profession pertains to the occupation, professionalization is the
process leading to the practice of a profession and professional is the person
who exhibits the moral qualities relevant to the socio-cultural context within
which the profession is practiced and where professionalism is governed by a
set of standards.
The terms professionalization and
professionalism are often used interchangeably but they are two different
things, very far from the notion of being two sides of the same coin. Professionalization
is associated with entry requirements, licensing practices, national certification
for teachers, and the like and professionalism with the particular expertise,
authority, and autonomy of teachers “to determine their work conditions and
their effectiveness as teachers” (Orntein and Levine, 1997). Professionalism
entails not only teacher’s obligation to educate the young but also a
recognition by others – within and outside the profession – of the teacher’s
right to decide his or her tasks in the classroom. Teaching, like other
professions, embodies “a set of shared norms, values, taken-for granted
assumptions and a sense of mission that frame the patterns of the members’ work
activities (Okano and Tsuchiya, 1999). Teacher professionalism describes points
along a continuum representing the extent to which members of an occupation
share a common body of knowledge and use shared standards of practice in
exercising that knowledge on behalf of clients. It incorporates conditions of
specialized knowledge, collective self-regulation, special attention to the
unique needs of clients, autonomous performance and a large dose of
responsibility for client welfare (Darling-Hammond, 1990).
Hoyle (1980) portrays
professionalism as the quality of one’s practice. That is, the behaviors
exhibited by a professional teacher are what identify a teacher’s
professionalism. Similarly, Hurst and Reding (2000) associate specific
behaviors with teacher professionalism. The focus of professionalism is on the
quality of a person's professional practice. Professionalization is concerned
with the status of the occupation. “Many are called, yet, very few are
chosen.” Each one of us who make the classroom
our world were professionalized but are we all professional?
Professionalization can land you a job but professionalism would help you build
a life-long career. Paraphrasing the words of Robert Frost - those
who took the less traveled road are the ones who really made the difference.
Teachers
are those persons officially assigned responsibility for educating the young so
that they can participate in their culture; hence the teacher has an important
role in equipping students with skills that will enable them to think, reason,
and manipulate ideas (Ryan and Cooper, 1998). Societal expectations of teachers
include not only tasks that are identifiable and measurable but also duties
that are less clearly defined. Pincoffs (1973) has referred to the more easily
measured tasks as “determinate”, describing the less measurable tasks as
“indeterminate”. Whether or not they defined as standards – and regardless of
the governance level at which any standard might be articulated – societies maintain
certain curricular expectations. But societies expect their students to achieve
other harder-to-define competencies [aside from the subject-defined determinate
work] (Kubow and Fossum, 2007).
Needless
to say, the professional teacher faces a lot more responsibilities and even
more serious accountabilities as compared with other professions. Students
would often wonder why there are so many rules to follow in the classroom, why
teachers impose so many formatting styles, criteria for proper behavior, stringent
rules and study habits, etc. But as a professional, educators are challenged to
comply with even more expectations and are required to manage accountabilities
to all the stakeholders involved in the education enterprise. A set of rules
and guidelines, disguised as ethical practices, demands that educators portray
accordingly their political, social, cultural, spiritual-moral, legal, and
personal accountabilities. Exactly when does the duties and responsibilities of
an educator culminates is an example of an indeterminate measured task.
Another
challenge of being a professional and a requirement to deserve the status of
being an educator is the commitment to a life of learning and the courage to
face the risks and overcome the threats of the 21st century. A
crucial and yet not so well-known theory in evolutionary biology called “The Red Queen Effect” indicates that to be able to survive successfully in
the ever-changing environment, organisms must be able to adapt continuously.
Failure to do so could lead to a significant decrease in fitness; eventually,
extinction. In the teaching profession, specifically in maintaining the
sustainability and relevance of being a Salesian educator, there is a great
need for teachers to become more effective and efficient, innovative and
flexible, determined and focused to be able to accompany the young towards the path
of truth. The path of truth is guided by a strong faith in Jesus, commitment to
the Sacraments, deep devotion to Mary, and a translation of the teachings of
the Catholic Church through the academic context that the educator conveys in
the classroom. This path of learning is
always the more difficult one but the challenge is how to stay on track. Indeed,
the career of a teacher has two faces – intellectual and moral, which Hugh
Sockett refers to as the moral base of teacher professionalism. A professional
teacher loves two things –learner and knowledge. A true Salesian educator has
two powerful tools – love of God and high sense of professionalism.
