Files
Abstract
This historical and qualitative study focuses on understanding how National Board Certification (NBC) for teachers can “professionalize” teachers. Because NBC meant different things to different parties, the conditions that led up to the development of NBC and the motivations of various players in creating and promoting it are detailed. The conditions are explained through brief histories on: the position of teachers since the advent of the American public education system in the 19th century; criticism against the education establishment that intensified with the launch of Sputnik; Sputnik as the inspiration behind A Nation at Risk, the federal report that blamed teachers for the “rising tide of mediocrity,” in U.S. schools; the Carnegie Corporation’s response, A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century, which recommended a national board for professional teaching standards that would create a certification, NBC, that would improve teacher quality by professionalizing them; the professionalization of doctors as a model for the professionalization of teachers; and finally, the experience of NBC in Chicago. In addition, the development and content of NBC are described in detail to explain how NBC demonstrated the sophistication of teaching. Because the project focused on the professionalization of teachers, 145 teachers in four schools in Chicago with large proportions of Nation Board certified Teachers (NBCTs) were interviewed. The schools included one on probation, one that was high-performing, and two that were high ranking schools. NBCTs and non-NBCTs were asked about their challenges, views of teacher quality, professionalization, and NBC. Their experiences were analyzed through the concept of legitimacy, self-determination theory, the creation of collective identity defining stories, uncertainty in teaching, favoritism, and a theory of power in schools. An additional ten interviews were conducted with administrators and other players in education. The interviews at the four schools show that NBC would not allow teachers to play a more active role in improving the school on probation, and it did not cause the teachers to attribute their success to NBC in the highest-performing school. In the remaining two schools, NBC would exacerbate divisions and conflicts among faculty and the principal to the point where NBC was no longer spoken about or promoted in order to reduce conflict. These results demonstrate that legitimacy is not a precursor to professional status and that it is not enough to make a new professional credential meaningful to those outside of a profession without considering the self-interest of the profession. This approach led to a lack of interest in NBC by both outside parties and teachers. Parties outside of education were motivated to develop NBC to “professionalize” teachers in ways that conform to sociological and lay understandings of what it means to be professionals without understanding that teachers already consider themselves professional in ways that run counter to those understandings. Theirs is a collaborative professionalism. Thus, NBC should do more than identify high performing teachers, in isolation. To be relevant to teachers, NBC should instead focus on building professional cultures of autonomous and effective teachers at the school level.