Education systems throughout the world have undergone unparalleled change in recent years. While many factors contribute to effecting educational change, teacher professional development has increasingly been used as a policy tool to achieve these goals. As a result, unprecedented numbers of teachers are now involved in professional development activities. However, evidence from various countries has demonstrated that much professional development, including systemic initiatives, has been unsuccessful in its aims (see for example, Bolam, 2000; Boyle, While & Boyle, 2004; Bredeson, 2000; Day, 1999; Harris, 2000; Willis, 2002). Critics of such professional development have identified a variety of reasons for this failure. For example, professional development based on centrally imposed reforms has largely neglected the professional needs of individual teachers (Bredeson, 2000). Authorities other than teachers themselves have shaped the content, provision and delivery with little or no input from teachers in the decision-making (Harris, 2000). Often a ‘one size fits all’ mentality (Willis, 2002) has prevailed with teachers viewed as ‘objects to be in-serviced’ (Wideen, 1992). Professional development has often been based on a deficit model focussing on the weaknesses of teachers rather than their strengths as a starting point (Sellars & Frances, 1996). In the evaluation of the effects of teacher professional development, the contribution of universities has also come under severe criticism. The argument is that in universities theory is separated from practice (Pring, 1999), divorced from the ‘real’ world of teachers, and thus is irrelevant to the modern teacher (Nance & Fawns, 1993). Notwithstanding the criticism of the relevance of university courses for teachers, formal study towards higher educational qualifications is acknowledged as a legitimate form of teacher professional development (Solomon & Tresman, 1999). However, the importance of formal qualifications as a viable form of professional development is much less visible in the literature and seems to have assumed much less importance than other professional development initiatives. The research project reported here investigated the impacts of completing a Bachelor of Education (Teaching) degree, as a form of professional development, on practising primary teachers’ professional identity and professionalism. Gee’s (1989) notion of Discourse was used as a theoretical lens to interpret the teachers’ responses.

A two-phase sequential mixed methods approach with a nested component was used to gather the data. In the first phase, 202 primary school teacher participants completed a quantitative survey that included an open question asking them to identify the major impacts of the degree for them personally. The aim of the first phase was to develop an overall picture of teachers’ perceptions of their participation in, and completion of a degree. The statistical computer package SPSS was used to analyse the quantitative data. In the second phase, eight participants, selected from the 202 questionnaire respondents, took part in semi-structured interviews. The analysis of the interview data was informed by the principles of grounded theory. The combined analyses resulted in the development of a number of themes that represented the interpretations and understandings of the participants.

The teachers’ degree participation and completion provided a powerful form of professional development that contributed to a discursive shift in the construction of their professional identity and sense of professionalism. The findings indicated that the teachers were active agents in reconstructing their own professional identity around a degree as a central component. The teachers embodied the discourse of degreed professionals and in so doing, were forging new, more intellectual professional identities in contrast to the traditionally depicted, practical, anti-intellectual identity of the primary teacher (Alcorn, 1999). In becoming more highly educated professionals, the teachers saw themselves as more intellectual, more knowledgeable and more able to use their knowledge in practice in a variety of ways. The discursive shift in the teachers’ knowledge was more illustrative of the teacher as inquirer or reflective practitioner rather than teacher as technician or craftsperson.