# President's Message: August/September 1999
David C. Nunan, President of TESOL, 1999-2000, asks, "What is a profession, and what is meant by professionalism?"

TESOL Matters Vol. 9 No. 4 (August/September 1999)

David C. Nunan, President of TESOL, 1999-2000

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 defend the use of these terms in relation to our work as ESOL teachers.

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 two-part piece, I explore these questions in relation to education in general and TESOL in particular. In Part 1 I establish some criteria for deciding whether an area of activity qualifies as a profession. In Part 2, in the October/November issue of TM, I'll raise some questions and suggest some caveats in relation to the criteria.

By looking at other occupations that call themselves professions, we can begin to identify criteria for determining whether or not our field can legitimately be called a profession.

I think that we need to take at least four criteria into account: (a) the existence of advanced education and training, (b) the establishment of standards of practice and certification, (c) an agreed theoretical and empirical base, and (d) 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.

1. Advanced 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 advanced 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 unqualified airline pilot. Only desperation would drive us to seek a tooth extraction from someone who has had no dental training.

   How about TESOL? In the past 20 years, there has been an explosion in the availability of formal programs of study offering both undergraduate- and graduate-level education and training to potential and practicing ESOL teachers, and thousands of individuals have completed these courses.

   Despite this availability, however, thousands of individuals around the world who have no formal education and training in TESOL practice as ESOL teachers. In fact, at some language schools in different parts of the world, the only employment criterion is fluency in English. Not only do their employees lack TESOL qualifications, but they have no teaching qualifications at all.

2. Standards of Practice and Certification
   

   Another defining characteristic of a profession is a set of standards of practice developed and promulgated by the profession. These standards are usually tied to some form of certification or licence to practice. In some cases, this licencing is under the direct control of the profession. In other cases, in which governments determine who should have a licence to practice, the profession has a significant influence over the process, usually through a professional association. For example, in the United States, the American Medical Association has an important say in who should be allowed to work as medical practitioners. In Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Society of Accountants creates and administers the examination that decides who is allowed to practice as an accountant.

   In TESOL, standards of practice and certification vary widely. Most countries have some form of certification for teachers, although this is rarely TESOL specific. Further, in most countries where some form of teaching certification is required, this process is controlled by governments and educational bureaucracies, not by professional teaching associations.

   In terms of institutional accreditation, the situation also varies widely. In numerous countries, there is no professional or governmental control over language schools. In such countries, nothing can stop individuals who see language as a marketable commodity from opening their own schools, hiring and underpaying unqualified teachers, and using illegally copied materials. I am familiar with one such school that doesn't even pay its teachers. Native speakers of English hired as "teachers" are sent on to the streets to recruit their own students to the school. Their "salary" takes the form of a percentage of the students' fees.

3. A Disciplinary Base
   

   A third defining characteristic of a profession is the existence of a disciplinary base. This theoretical and empirical basis is what distinguishes some professions from trades and crafts. Educator Lee Shulman (1988) suggests that what distinguishes disciplines from one another "is the manner in which they formulate their questions, how they define the content of their domains and organize that content conceptually, and the principles of discovery and verification that constitute the ground rules for creating and testing knowledge in their fields" (p. 5).

   Freeman (1998), in commenting on Shulman's characterization, has this to say:

   Each discipline has its community, the group of practitioners who accept the rules of the game. What makes a person a chemist or a literary critic is the fact that he or she plays by the rules -- what Shulman calls "the principles of regularity and canons of evidence," -- of the community such that his or her ideas fit within the discipline of that field of inquiry. These paradigms, which Shulman refers to as "principles of regularity and canons of evidence" and I call the rules of the game of particular disciplines, are not static. They, too, shift with time, according to dominant meanings and values. (p. 9)

   A challenge for education in general, and TESOL in particular, is to define, refine, and articulate its disciplinary basis. Education is a hybrid, drawing on a range of disciplines such as psychology and sociology. In addition to these, TESOL is influenced by linguistics (both theoretical and applied), psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, cognitive science, and numerous other disciplines. Partly because of this, we don't have a shared set of rules of the game. In fact, we don't even come close.

4. Advocacy/Influence
   

   The fourth and final criterion is that of advocacy. Most professions have professional associations, and a key function of such associations is to act as advocates for the profession. They do this by attempting to influence legislators, either to create legislation that is seen to be advantageous to the profession or to oppose legislation that is seen as inimical to the profession. In the United States, the various health professions played an important role in blocking the passage of President Bill Clinton's health care reform bills. In California, a wide range of educational associations, including TESOL and the National Association for Bilingual Education, had less success in opposing the discriminatory Unz Initiative, an initiative designed to severely limit the provision of bilingual education in that state.

In this article, I have looked at four key criteria for determining whether an occupation or area of work qualifies as a profession. In Part 2, I'll examine some of the problematic aspects of these criteria as well as look more specifically at how the criteria for TESOL as a profession are shaping the work of TESOL the association.

References

Shulman, L. (1988). The disciplines of inquiry in education: An overview. In R. Jager (Ed.), Complementary methods of research in education. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

Freeman, D. (1998). Doing teacher-research: From inquiry to understanding. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.

David C. Nunan, President of TESOL, 1999-2000