Professional Standards for 21st Century Teachers

Professional standards and professionalism today is a much talked about word in education, as compared to professionalization and profession, professionalism as a concept is a recent phenomenon. But since it is linked to the concept of profession and professionalization, it will be useful to understand first the concepts of profession and professionalization, professionalism and how it is to be acquired should be a focus of every teacher education program. Despite the significant role professionalism plays there is a lack of a universally accepted definition of professionalism in teacher education programs and the purpose of the present study is to discuss how professional standards and teacher professionalism is defined in scholarly debates in 21st century and the definitions of professionalism, criteria of professionalism, the characteristics of a professional teacher and the status of teacher professionalism will be discussed from different perspectives. The present study will offer an operational definition of teacher professionalism and an integrative approach about multiple interpretations of teacher professionalism in a sociological, political, educational, etc. context. In light of multiple approaches, it will be concluded that professional standards and teacher professionalism means meeting certain standards in education and it is related to 21st century proficiency.