A Model Professional? Characteristics of professionalism in trainee teachers and comparisons with the GTCE Code of Conduct and Practice

In 2009 the General Teaching Council for England (GTCE, 2009) produced a revised professional Code of Conduct and Practice (Code), which set out the expectations of standards for the 540,000 registered teachers. The code outlines eight principles that are said to reflect the core values of the teaching profession. Included among these eight principles are traditional themes relating to standard areas of teacher professionalism; namely facilitating student achievement, reflective practice and team working. Also incorporated are more moral aspects of conduct such as demonstrating honesty and integrity, and promoting equality.The forty statements of the code set out the minimum professional competence expected of all teachers employed within English primary and secondary schools. Teachers in initial teacher training (ITT) are required to register with the GTCE within 28 days of the start of their teacher training, and as a consequence, are governed by the Code and are expected to satisfy its requirements.The contents of this Code were used as a framework to explore trainee teachers’ views of professional competence both for themselves, as beginning teachers, and for teachers in the profession as a whole. The trainee teachers were asked to make projected efficacy judgements about being able to fulfil the expectation of the Code’s statements once they had finished their training and employed in their first teaching post. The trainees were asked to make similar efficacy judgements about how they thought the profession, as a whole, fulfilled the expectations of the statements. The trainee teachers were asked to make these efficacy judgements twice, once at the very beginning and once at the end of their training course. Comparisons were made between their views taken at these two key snapshots in time.The results indicate that at the beginning of their training course the trainee teachers believe that they would wholly or substantially fulfil the expectations of the vast majority of the individual statements. Trainees rated their own projected professional self-efficacy much more highly than they rated the professional efficacy of teachers currently in the profession. The trainees’ self-efficacy barely changed over the duration of the course, where, by contrast, their opinions of the teaching professional as a whole increased markedly. However, even though their views of the teaching professions became more positive they still rated themselves significantly more positively than teachers already in the professional.