Situated Teacher Professionalism Understanding the Exploratory and Collaborative Aspects of Teacher’s Professionalism

The aim of this article is to contribute to understandings of teacher professionalism that address how teachers work with the dynamic interplay of everyday life as part of creating participatory possibilities for children and young people in concrete teaching situations. In doing so, the article contributes to the development of a ‘situated psychology’ with concepts that can strengthen the understanding of teacher professionalism as subjectively exploratory and collaborative. This is partly due to theoretical and political problems with dominant understandings of teacher professionalism, which fail to take account of the social complexity of everyday life in schools and are criticised for decontextualising and instrumentalising teacher professionalism, and partly to the authors’ concern with the unequal conditions of children’s participation in school learning communities. Recent research on ‘situated inequality’ points to a connection between children’s unequal possibilities to participate and manage in school and teachers’ professional conditions for working with children’s conditions to participate in school. Drawing on practice theory, a subject-scientific concept of ‘conduct of everyday life’, and Donald Schön’s theory of professionalism in practice, the article provides stepping stones for understanding teachers’ professionalism as situated in the everyday social life of the school, where teachers and pupils collaborate on differences and common tasks. The purpose is to strengthen the understanding of and conditions for teachers’ professionalism in working with children and young people’s conditions for participation in learning communities of school.