Among the objectives that Chapter 10 seeks to achieve are these:
Students should consider whether teachers can uncritically accept district goals and practices for their classrooms, if the school system's goals and practices systematically produce unequal outcomes in different ethnic and economic classes of K-12 students. Prospective teachers are helped to explore their sources of professional authority for holding their classrooms to a higher standard than the district might support.
This chapter seeks to discuss the origins of teaching as an occupation and the extent to which that occupation has become a profession.
Students should consider whether there is a definition of a profession to which teaching or any other occupation must adhere.
Students should be able to discuss whether and how teaching is unique compared with other occupations that are called professions.
Students should be able to discuss how the profession of teaching has evolved with different historical eras, and that in the 21st century, a new view of school organization—and therefore a new view of teaching—is rapidly developing.
Finally, teachers as well as school leaders are seeing that for the diverse learning needs of children to be met, schools need to be places where teacher learning is highly valued—and that schools can be organized for such teacher learning.
