Professional Responsibility for Education
Reconceptualizing Educational Practice and Institutional Structure

By reconsidering the nature of professional work, renowned scholar Douglas E. Mitchell argues for reconceptualizing educational practices and institutional structures in ways that facilitate and protect educator professional responsibility.

This book explores ways educators and their political supporters can seize the social and political power necessary to accept professional responsibility for the design of their work environment. Chapters explore how unionization, ethics, public values, political power, school reform, and trust play an important role in the essence of professional responsibility in schools, arguing that we must use organization, management, and accountability mechanisms to encourage responsible civic participation and professional action in support of public education.

This new text for graduate studies in teacher and leadership training frames a much needed analysis of where and how professional responsibility for public education is best incorporated into the work roles of teachers, administrators, and university scholars.

1. Introduction: Why this Book 2. What is Professional Work? 3. Worker Organization: Unionism and Professionalism 4. Professional Work Joins Ethics and Science to Create Vocation 5. Core Public Values Guide Professional Responsibility 6. Professionals Work in Institutions Rather than Organizations 7. Regime, Civil Society, and Professional Environments 8. Professional Paradoxes and School Reforms 9. Toward a Blueprint for Education Professionalism

Douglas E. Mitchell is Professor of the Graduate Division at the University of California, Riverside. He is past-president of both the Politics of Education Association and the Sociology of Education Association and recipient of the Stephen K. Bailey Award for research contributions to the Politics of Education.