In this chapter we elaborate a hermeneutical perspective on professionalism and professional development in the wide range of professions and vocational trainings, which fall under the concern of a University of Applied Sciences (UAS). In a joint research programme of the HU UAS and Utrecht University we aim to unveil and make visible that professionals are continuously making interpretations simply by doing their jobs. Unavoidably, with these interpretations, subjectivity and normativity comes along, setting a moral agenda in the respective professional fields. We show how the more conceptual and philosophical reflections in the humanities at the Academia, is brought in interaction with professional development, vocational education and practice-oriented research at UAS. After this we walk through a number of recently completed or still ongoing research projects in the wide range of professionals in religious education (RE) via general and vocational education to non-educational professions. We end up with six developments or ‘movements’ that are taking place and that can be useful for a better understanding of complexity in vocational education and professions as such, and the imperative for change that is given by this.
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In this presentation, we offer a conceptual analysis on the notion of Moral Authorship and explore in what ways the notion is promising in the field of Teaching and Education. We compare Moral Authorship with other notions, namely ‘normative professionalism’, ‘the good professional’, ‘reflective professionalism', ‘professional autonomy’, ‘professional responsibility’ and ‘moral craftmanship’. The comparison shows that each concept has a particular focus and use in practice. The notion of Moral Authorship seems promising in at least two ways: the association with authorship leads to a renewed attitude towards professional agency, and it can combine (the most) promising aspects of other concepts. Paper presented at the AME 2017 Conference
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In literature, co-teaching is mostly defined as an instrumental and pedagogical means delivered by collaborating special and regular teachers, from which students with and without special educational needs benefit in regular schools. The importance of a shared vision on the part of members of co-teaching teams as to what they consider as good education for students is not mentioned in definitions of co-teaching. The authors argue that sense-making by reflection about what can be considered as good education – good teaching and good learning – is essential when co-teachers want to understand or change their practice or relationship with their partner. We reviewed 17 articles about co-teaching teams’ professional development and identified that challenges to co-teachers’ professionalisation mostly were directed to interpersonal and normative aspects of development in co-teaching teams. We elaborate on five distinguished movements that can bring about change in teacher professionalism. These movements correspond to the challenges retrieved from the literature review and can be used to contribute to move toward a new perspective on professionalism of co-teachers. A contemporary definition of co-teaching is proposed because former definitions do not suffice to express the value of constructing a shared vision on good teaching and learning. We argue that team-reflection is the missing link in terms of enhancing normative professionalism of co-teaching teams and recommend that further research should be conducted to value team-reflection as a means to overcome challenges of co-teaching teams.
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