Towards Professional Wisdom by Cecelia Clegg

Author:Cecelia Clegg [Clegg, Cecelia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Social Work
ISBN: 9781317008910
Google: tQmgCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-02-24T06:01:21+00:00

Concluding Remarks

To see anything like an Aristotelian approach required for understanding teachers’ professional identities and teachers’ emotions, one must, of course, have become dissatisfied with other, current, approaches. I hope to have given readers reason to be dissatisfied with some such approaches. Consider finally again the story of Runner Fan. A constructivist analysis of his reaction would focus on the putative conflict between his personal and professional identities – with both being seen as ‘voices’ in a chorus of multiple constructed identities. A narrowly construed cognitive approach would see him as having become overpowered by the emotion of fear as a non-cognitive thrust. A postmodern approach would consider him to be an unfortunate actor in ubiquitous power relationships.

In contrast, an Aristotelian analysis of the story would focus on the teacher’s self rather than his identity (let alone identities) – and on possible emotional dissonances within that single self. It would look for the beliefs and judgements underlying Fan’s fear and his lack of emotion with regard to his students. It would subject these emotions to moral scrutiny with the aid of phronesis – notably not phronesis as mere intuitive artistry, but as an intellectual virtue guided by general moral truths as well as situation-specific observations (Kristjánsson, 2007, ch. 11; see also Carr, 2000, 167). Aristotelians would seek congruence between professional and personal values, and not hesitate to pass judgement on the moral rightness or wrongness of emotional reactions. Rather than understanding teaching as a unique practice with its own independent set of norms and rules, Aristotelians would generally be ready to concur with Campbell’s view – provocative as it may seem in our fractured times – that professional morality is nothing but the extension of everyday morality into the nuances of professional practice (Campbell, 2003, 12).

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