Since three decades, the teaching profession and teacher professionalism have been challenged along two related dimensions:

On one side, European and national education policies, guided by education system performance and local school effectiveness have generated new forms of regulation (through market competition, accountability, numbers (Normand, 2011; Ozga & al., 2011; Ozga, 2013; Carvalho, 2014), (Maroy, 2012) which have contributed to redefining institutional expectations towards schools and teachers as well as to redefining their professional ecology  (Abbott, 1988). Boundaries between professionals are redefined, relationships are changing and tensions are emerging due to an accentuated differentiation of their regimes of action and principles of legitimacy (Dupriez et Malet, 2013) ; Dutercq & van Zanten, 2002; Seldon & Levin, 2013; ;

On the other side, tools and devices through which these new education policies and modes of regulation are implemented have led to extremely varied uses, welcoming conditions, and types of adhesion or opposition, reactions (misunderstanding, indifference, rejection, etc.), due not only to policy variations and implementations but also to pre-existing patterns of professionalism and some meanings given by actors to these policies (Coburn, 2006; Day et Smethem, 2009).

However, from the teachers’ perspective, these changes represent high stakes because of their impact on curricula and teaching practices. Teachers are split between, on one side, managerialism which serves as a reference for enacted policies (Gunter & al. , 2016), based on the inclusion in a collective project, the search for effectiveness and accountability based on indicators, and, on the other side, a professionalism based on practical autonomy, peer regulation, with a weak part left to external control (Gewirtz, Mahony, Hextall et Cribb, 2008).

These evolutions are not the same from one country to another: European and international trends in the search for performance are translated in different ways along specific educative traditions and teachers’ professional standards (for example these standards are focused on the excellence of disciplines or on pedagogical skills) (Goodson, Lindblad, 2011; Lawn, Normand, 2014). Teachers are also differently adjusted to the strength, effectivity and consequences of the assessment of their work through varied implementations of these new policies.

However, at European scale, we can make the assumption that different forms of a new professionalism emerge, with  different adjustments in countries to diverse forms of accountability and responsibility (Easley II et Tulowitzki, 2016; Lawn & Grek, 2012; Maroy, 2015 ; Normand, 2012, 2016a,b). If the “traditional” model of an “autonomous”  (not accountable) teacher in the classroom is often challenged, there are plural ways characterizing professionalism : some of them search to maintain and renew the collective professionalism of teachers (Evetts, 2008) whereas others give value to the “model of reflexive practitioner” emphasizing collective and reflexive expertise among teachers, the last ones promote the “effective teacher” capable of applying teaching techniques linked to evidence-based research  (Evetts, 2008; Furlong & al., 2013).

This whole set of statements and relativizing assumptions invite us to question the end or the renewal of models of teacher professionalism which, despite some divergences, served as a reference to the teaching profession in Europe and worldwide. From this perspective, we can question, beyond national variations in autonomy and teacher professionalism, if there are structural changes, e.g. a more general decline of the professional coordination and regulation of teachers’ work on behalf of managerial, post-bureaucratic, and/or market regulation. This problematic raises the issue of the evolution of teacher professionalism and also the assumption of a potential (but non-inescapable) decline of a certain professional model characterized by a form of work organization not only for teachers but also for other professions (Freidson, 2001 ; Evetts, 2008).

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