Disruptive moments and normative professionalism: An exploration of the (im)possibilities of a provocative pedagogy to stimulate the development of normative professionalism

Our concern is with the increasing influence of instrumentality in education
at the expense of personhood formation. In our contribution we focus on
normative professionalisation, an approach to professionalisation that
brings together instrumentality, value orientation and morality. In our
contribution, the focus is on normative professionalisation of (future)
teachers. In our theoretical framework, we combine the dialogical self theory
(DST) with its method of self confrontation (SCM) in a provocative research
instrument. With this instrument, respondents in our research are challenged
to reflect on so-called ‘disruptive moments’ as motors for their professional
development. We present two case studies situated in The Netherlands: one
of a young women in her last year of teacher training, and one of a team of
teacher trainers. Respondents evaluate the process positively, in particular
because the process does justice to their personal and professional biography.
In addition they appreciate their involvement in the analysis of the data. Our
conclusion is that the adapted SCM is a promising instrument to stimulate
the process of normative professionalisation.