The teacher, literature and the Mediterranean

Abstract

The idea of the teacher today is heavily influenced by performance-based approaches in teacher education and professional development (NCATE, 2008; European Commission, 2005; Darling Hammond & Bransford, 2005). This approach is generally driven by the need to set standards for teacher performance and establish specific competences that a good teacher should have. The trend towards a competence approach in fixing characteristics for the teacher has been criticised for its underlying technocratic rationality. Teachers cannot be solely defined in terms of what they are expected to do within schools and classrooms. This reductively conceives them as simply needing the skills to teach without having the ability to contextualise their teaching within wider historical, social and cultural realities. Furthermore, setting fixed predetermined teacher competences as templates for measuring their ability to teach seriously undermines teachers’ participation in the development of their profession. This approach conceives them only in terms of what they are rather than who they are or can be. [Excerpt from the Introduction]