Shifting Codes: Trainee Teachers Emerging Concepts of Professionalism

In 2009 the General Teaching Council for England (GTCE, 2009) produced a revised professional Code of Conduct and Practice (CoCP), which set out the expectations of conduct and practice 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 after the start of their teacher training and as a consequence governed by the code and are expected to satisfy its requirements.The individual statements of the CoCP were presented to a group of around 200 trainee teachers at the very beginning of a one-year full-time graduate initial teacher education course in England. The trainee teachers were asked to make projected efficacy judgements for being able to fulfil the demands on the statements once they had finished their training and had been appointed to 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 trainees’ efficacy judgements were subjected to exploratory factor analysis to form a model for the way in which they visualised the nature of professionalism associated with being a teacher.The results indicated that for the forty statements of the CoCP, the trainee teachers thought that they would wholly or substantially fulfil the expectations of the vast majority of the statements, and the trainees rated their own professional competences much more highly than those of current teachers in the profession. The trainees projected self-efficacy was highest in relation to honesty, integrity and wellbeing of children, and lowest in relation their relationships with teachers, parents and the wider school community. The trainees rated teachers relatively poorly in issues associated with consulting with parents and listening to pupils.