Novice and experienced teachers’ views on professionalism

Abstract

This article discusses teachers’ practical knowledge and beliefs of their profession based on reflective writings of twenty Estonian teachers.Ten novice and ten experienced teachers participated in the study. They put together their professional portfolios, which among other documents included reflective writings regarding professionalism. The teachers’ writings enabled us to qualitatively analyse how they described and interpreted their teaching activities and what being a professional teacher means to them. The results showed that when speaking about the image of a professional teacher, novice teachers stressed technological teaching aspects, for instance – skills in using IT equipment. The essays by the experienced teachers included more keywords related to the development of students and stressed the teacher’s role as an educator. Both novice and experienced teachers valued the pedagogical education of teachers.