Is Teaching a Profession, an Occupation, a Calling, or a Job?
“So, are they quitting because they’re fed up with their heavy-handed union bosses?” The hostility of the question took me by surprise. I was explaining to my dinner companion, a veteran lawyer, that 40% of teachers leave the field within five years, and right away he jumped to his anti-union conclusion disguised as a question.
No, I explained. Unions don’t seem to have anything to do with it; it’s most often related to working conditions: class size, discipline policies, and how much control and influence they have over their daily activities.
“It’s not money?” he asked, aggressively suspicious. Not according to surveys, I explained.
I described what I’d seen of a teacher’s daily work life. He interrupted, “How can it be a profession if you can’t take a leak when you need to?”
While that’s not a criterion that social scientists use to define a profession, my cut-to-the-chase acquaintance might be on to something.
Can teaching be a true profession if you can’t take a bathroom break when nature calls?
Certainly, teachers and their supporters want teaching to be seen as a profession. They’ve won the linguistic battle. If you Google ‘the teaching profession,’ you’ll get 153,000,000 references, while ‘teaching as an occupation’ and ‘the teaching occupation’ produce only 67,000,000.
Social scientists have no doubt about status of teaching, according to Richard Ingersoll of the University of Pennsylvania. “We do not refer to teaching as a profession. It doesn’t have the characteristics of those traditional professions like medicine, academia, dentistry, law, architecture, engineering, et cetera. It doesn’t have the pay, the status, the respect, the length of training, so from a scientific viewpoint teaching is not a profession.”
He carefully refers to teaching as an occupation, noting that it’s the largest occupation of all in the USA. And growing at a faster rate than the student population.
Jennifer Robinson, a teacher educator at Montclair State University in New Jersey, disagrees with Ingersoll. She believes our familiarity with teachers and schools breeds disrespect for teaching. “We don’t treat teaching as a Is Teaching a Profession, an Occupation, a Calling, or a Job? | Taking Note:
