Education: Deprofessionalised? Or reregulated, reorganised and reauthorised

T HIS paper considers recent claims that education is being deprofession-alised. It argues that judgements about the deprofessionalisation, or repro-fessionalisation, of education are made relative to different theories of pro-fessionalism and discusses the way different theories of professionalism encourage particular focuses on, and readings of, empirical data. The paper suggests that recent theoretical developments which see professionalism as discourse offer a way of rethinking professionalism and educational change as part of an ongoing polities of knowledge, power and social groups which plays out in relationships between state and civil society. The challenge is to see deprofessionalisation and reprofessionali-sation as part of an ongoing politics of knowledge, power and social organisation, and to consider the character and parameters of preferred reprofessionalisation that might be pursued through contemporary processes of educational change. Eric Hoyle (1995), who has long advocated and researched teacher professional-ism, now argues that education is being deprofessionalised in England. Since the 1980s, he states, the energetic promotion of New Right government policies has destabilised professionalism as a by-product of their emphasis on markets, consumers, deregulation, choice and accountability. The emerging concept o