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Teaching Profession in Different Cultures in the Epoch of Globalization
Language: English
For structural-functionalism, different contributions of occupations to social operation constitute a social stratification in which professionals occupy its top ranking so that they legitimately acquire a great degree of social rewards. However, its trait-led approach fails to take the dynamic nature of social development into account and, in turn, this weakness legitimizes the idea of professionalization developed by interactionists. Consequently, professional development is viewed as a gateway of improving teaching professional status. For Marxists, proletarians will be the final and universal social class so that teachers need to conduct industrial actions in order to protect their interests.
While interactionists and Marxists come to enrich professional theories, professional authority tends to be misinterpreted as a source of inequity so that the relation between power and function hasn’t been carefully examined. Although the institutionalized perspective addresses the linkage between function and independent operation, the influence of social culture on teaching profession is largely neglected. Furthermore, as the state has changed its role constantly in the era of globalization, generally shifting from the domain of social equity to the realm of international competitiveness, performativity has been taken as the yardstick to evaluate the social contribution of teachers. This axiom highlights the interactive relation between social cultures and globalization, which extensively regulates the development of teaching profession. In order to clarify the theoretical debate of teaching professionals, it is the time to explore the interplay between power, selfishness, function, culture and globalization.