Biesta’s discourse on teachers centers on two concepts, which are teacher professionalism and teacher agency, and suggests a virtue-based approach to teacher education. In Biesta’s discourse, teacher professionalism is investigated through in/out ...
Biesta’s discourse on teachers centers on two concepts, which are teacher professionalism and teacher agency, and suggests a virtue-based approach to teacher education. In Biesta’s discourse, teacher professionalism is investigated through in/out phase and surface/depth phase, and is finally defined as professional judgement and virtue in the Aristotelian sense. Teacher agency is a concept which aims to illuminate teacher professionalism in terms of teacher’s contextual and temporal interaction with her environment. As a way to help teachers achieve enhanced agency and make a professional judgement, Biesta argues that teachers should have access to a robust professional discourse on teaching and education which invites teachers to the question of what education is for. It is by engaging with this fundamental question of education that they become not just technical-competent teachers but good teachers. Biesta’s discourse on teachers finds its philosophical basis in the anti-metaphysical combination of Aristotle’s ethics and Dewey’s pragmatism, and thus what Biesta means by a robust professional discourse on teaching and education is likely to be narrowly conceived such that some excellent metaphysical theories and research on education are regrettably marginalized in teacher education. Biesta’s discourse on teachers contains some significant implications for the current culture of education and these can be enriched when it is reconstructed towards a more refined philosophical orientation.