Chapter 2: Teaching as a Profession: National Cultural Logics

In this chapter, we compare and contrast the comparative standing of lower secondary teachers (i.e., level 2 of the International Standard Classification of Education [ISCED]) (UNESCO-UIS, 2012) in these eight nations, focusing on three main aspects: their current salary, status, and workload. In order to provide a basic overview of these nations and regions, we are constrained by the available data, which reflects predominant sociological and educational conceptions of “profession.” In selecting possible indicators, we have chosen to focus on salary, status, and workload (e.g., autonomy), as these indicators are traditionally used to measure professional status. Yet, even these indicators show the problems with trying to characterize teaching in terms of traditional professions across nations. We also note that alternative indicators of mass professional impact (i.e., the level of social-emotional well-being among children) have not been institutionalized in the modern global systems of testing (LeTendre, 2017). We highlight the point that Tahirsylaj et al. (2021) have advanced, that these international data collection systems in and of themselves create an “identity” for teachers.