Is Language Teaching a Profession?

Sydney January, 2001

David Nunan. The English Centre, University of Hong Kong

1. Introduction

On a recent flight to the United States, I was leafing through a magazine with a wide circulation, when my eye was arrested by the following headline:

“Abolishing bilingual education: a good idea”.

I read on:

Another of the myths propagated by the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association is being exploded. Many will recall the prophesies of doom circulated two years ago, when California voters approved Proposition 227.

That measure ended bilingual education, requiring the state’s more than 1 million Spanish-speaking pupils to learn and be taught in English.

“What happened in the wake of this revolutionary vote?” the article asks, and goes on to provide the following answer,

”Those students are improving in reading and in other subjects at often striking rates, according to standardized test scores,” reports the New York Times. Second-graders classified as limited in English have posted major gains in both reading and mathematics. In one California school district, Oceanside, where 25% of students (or more than 5,000) have “limited English proficiency,” average reading scores in the second grade have gone up by 20 percentage points. But in a nearby district, many of hose students were granted waivers and allowed to continue in bilingual classes, increased proficiency was less than half that of Oceanside. … Bilingual education became entrenched in poor Southwestern schools because states could use federal funds to pay for thousands of bilingual teachers and administrators. Ending what has been, in effect, a deprivation of the right of immigrant children to be educated in English, the language the will need, is a real triumph for parents over the public school bureaucracies.” (Weinberger, 2000)

So, what’s the point of this anecdote? How does it connect with the theme of my talk this morning, in which I want to explore the question of whether or not language teaching constitutes a profession? I’d like to put the anecdote to one side for a while and come back to it later.

2. Defining professionalism

In order to deal with the question of whether or not our field constitutes a profession, we need to establish what we mean when we use the term ‘profession’ itself.

Whenever I attend a regional, national, or international TESOL meeting I am struck by the use of the words profession, professional, and professionalism. Participants make constant references to the teaching profession, I attend professional development sessions, and the events themselves are imbued with the spirit of professionalism. When using the ambiguous term TESOL, it’s common to hear people drawing a distinction between TESOL the association and TESOL the profession. However, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone spelling out what they mean when they use the term.

What is a profession, and what is meant by professionalism? According to the Cobuild Dictionary, “a profession is a type of job that requires advanced education and training.” The Newbury House Dictionary defines professionalism as “the qualities of competence and integrity demonstrated by the best people in the field.” In this presentation, I would like to explore these questions in relation to education in general and TESOL in particular.

I think that we need to take at least four criteria into account in determining whether or not a particular form of paid (or under-paid) employment constitutes a profession. There are:

1. the existence of advanced education and training,

2. the establishment of standards of practice and certification,

3. an agreed theoretical and empirical base, and

4. the work of individuals within the field to act as advocates for the profession. In the rest of this piece, I elaborate on each of these criteria.

vAdvanced Education and Training

The most tangible characteristic of occupations that are traditionally thought of as professions, from medicine to law, from engineering to architecture, is that they require many years of education and training. In addition, this education and training does not end on graduation but is career long. Few of us would willingly put ourselves in the hands of an untrained airline pilot. Only desperation would drive us to seek a tooth extraction from someone who has had not updated his or her dental training for twenty years.

So, what about the field of language education? In the past 20 years, there has been an explosion in formal programs o