THE agreement on A Teaching Profession for the 21st Century, which followed the McCrone report, is one of a number of reasons to be optimistic just now. The freeing of curriculum restrictions, the decision that inspections should be about performance not compliance, the opportunity provided by the Standards in Scotland’s Schools Act 2000 for the voice of pupils, parents and staff to be considered as important as that of national or local authority policy-makers allow us to begin to see the possibilities for creativity not the defensiveness which has characterised the profession in the past.

The agreement allows more room for professional judgment in resolving tensions between the teacher as a directed employee and as an autonomous professional leader within a community; between the teacher working for someone else with the external motivation of good pay and good conditions and the teacher conceived as professional, for whom the internally generated satisfaction of doing a good job by their own standards is more important; between the teacher as someone who works individually and the teacher as part of an effective team; between teaching as concerned with the cognitive side of children’s development and teaching as addressing the whole child.

Professions have been criticised as being hierarchical, patriarchal, only accountable to themselves, only interested in increasing members’ pay and rewards on the basis of credentials, not quality of practice. Professions can also be characterised as having an essentially moral purpose, one in which quality is determined not by rank but by performance with members of the profession having a collegial approach and a strong sense of accountability to clients.

It is this second model which teachers like to use to reflect their own practice - although, if honest, they should still recognise themselves or some of their colleagues in the first. Indeed the teachers’ deal has aspects of both - specifying duties, salaries and hours, while leaving space for local agreements and professional development.

Our concept of what it means to be a professional teacher must surely be revisited as part of the agreement. This demands a different kind of development from the type teachers have been used to. On the whole, continuing professional development provided by universities or employers has been deficit-based, episodic, uneven, technical and parochial. We will continue to need some of these technical fixes, networking opportunities and other forms of professional learning.

However, a new more dynamic model of professional practice - one in which the profession must learn to exercise judgment, not just “do what it is told”, is also required. The best aspects of the Scottish Qualification for Headship aim to empower aspiring heads in this new mode. It is also needed for the profession more widely.

In coping with the complex paradoxes and tensions of our contemporary school communities, teachers need to be given the space and resources (conceptual and professional) to exercise judgment - knowing what to do, how to do it, and why it is the right decision. Increasingly professional judgment in teaching involves the pupil and the parent as participants - it is not done to them, but with them - and not by an individual teacher working in isolation, but by a staff team.

The recent curriculum circular gives a green light to increased flexibility and local judgment, and initiatives such as new community schools envisage different models of excellence through experiment and diversity. Yet who would argue that we do not still have a very powerful centre and very strong local authorities seeking to direct what happens in schools?

The model of excellence in professional practice offered by the chartered teacher initiative looks like a good one. It, like the Standard for Headship, holds professional values, knowledge and skills in a dynamic and creative relationship. We should, however, recognise that the separation of teaching and management is conceptually and professionally flawed since all teachers are leaders in their schools, managing many complex aspects of school life. Leadership of this type requires a new, more engaging model of professionalism, managing the tensions between competing priorities in a pluralistic democratic society.

ne final set of tensions must be aired. These apply in the secondary school in particular. Is the teacher there primarily to induct young minds into the disciplined, and different, ways of viewing and interacting with the world which we call “subjects” or to offer the more general supports to learning found in best primary school practice?

Recent thinking, particularly from those outwith schools, has tended to condemn the “narrow subject focus” of much secondary teaching which is seen, particularly further down the school, as artificially fragmenting the curricular experience. Yet we must look at the world in some sort of way, and these disciplines have developed their own rigorous structures. They also provide many teachers with the source of their enthusiasm for teaching - an enthusiasm which is an indispensable quality. So there is no easy resolution here either - both sides of the argument have validity and the tension must be managed.

Teachers will have to become more independent and creative thinkers, with a range of professional skills and practices. We are already some way there. The teachers’ agreement, for all its challenges, offers further possibilities which I hope will be taken.

Danny Murphy is director of the Centre for Educational Leadership at Moray House School of Education, Edinburgh University. This is an edited extract from his keynote address to the annual conference of the Scottish Educational Research Association.