Disruptive moments and normative professionalism: An exploration of the (im)possibilities of a provocative pedagogy to stimulate the development of normative professionalism

Abstract

Our concern is with the increasing influence of instrumentality in education at the expense of personhood formation. In our contribution we focus on normative professionalisation, an approach to professionalisation that brings together instrumentality, value orientation and morality. In our contribution, the focus is on normative professionalisation of (future) teachers. In our theoretical framework, we combine the dialogical self theory (DST) with its method of self confrontation (SCM) in a provocative research instrument. With this instrument, respondents in our research are challenged to reflect on so-called ‘disruptive moments’ as motors for their professional development. We present two case studies situated in The Netherlands: one of a young women in her last year of teacher training, and one of a team of teacher trainers. Respondents evaluate the process positively, in particular because the process does justice to their personal and professional biography. In addition they appreciate their involvement in the analysis of the data. Our conclusion is that the adapted SCM is a promising instrument to stimulate the process of normative professionalisation.