Abstract

While efforts to regularize CPD and comply with global standards promise a more competent teacher workforce in pre-primary, primary and secondary schools, the question of a more enchanted and value-oriented CPD embedded in local cultural-linguistic life worlds remains hanging. Carefully going through the traditional philosophical terrain, since Hume and Kant, up till Heidegger, Foucault and the Neo-pragmatists, and Virtue Ethicists, the purpose of this paper is to provide a philosophical background against which Uganda’s National Teachers Policy could be conceived as more ethically-motivated. We used content analysis to examine the National Teacher Policy document alongside other local and international literature about teachers’ continuous professional development. It concludes by showing how a Levinasian perspective, though not widely known in educational circles, explains how a personally engaging and vocational professionalism could re-enchant the Ugandan teacher’s work and life.

1. Introduction

Internal Transition from Technical to Ethical Motivation: according to OECD reports, Teachers’ Continuous Professional Development (CPD), has been gaining in importance in the last decade because it was realized by policy makers that “initial teacher education is not sufficient to prepare teachers for all the challenges of their careers in the context of a global, changing society” ^{1, 2, 3, 4}. Against this background Uganda’s recent National Teachers’ Policy (2019) is relocating CPD within universities and teacher training colleges. The policy includes the establishment of the Uganda National Institute of Teacher Education (UNITE) supposed to implement the Continuous Professional Development (CPD) framework for all teachers [ ⁵, p.16].

To improve teaching practices and learning outcomes, all recognised Professional Teacher Associations and education institutions that are accredited by the UNITE shall deliver CPDs at different levels through: (a) Professional seminars, workshops and conferences, (b) Comprehensive induction and mentorship programmes, (c) Study groups, (d) Relevant educational research publications and engagement, (e) Collaborative teacher networks, (f) Active teaching and learning, (g) Offshore and local study visits, (h) Participation in professional learning communities, and (i) Undertaking projects to improve student learning, among others” [ ⁵, p.37]. Strict measures for convergence and uniformity (at the national level) are imposed in view of regularizing teacher competences and qualifications [ ⁵, pp. 8-9]. The Roles of the Universities and Other Tertiary Institutions are: (a) Train teachers in collaboration with the UNITE. (b) Undertake academic research on teacher aspects to address the challenges or gaps in the implementation of the Policy [ ⁵, p.14]. It is in line with the requirements of (b) that this paper is meant to makes sense.

Aspects of Continuing Professional Development: According to ⁶ early professional learning involves a transition of the beginner from focusing on ‘teaching as a personal performance’ to ‘a concern with student learning’. There is also a greater appreciation of one’s wider professional role, than in initial teacher training (ITT). Through early professional development, teachers develop their command of curricula, pedagogic, and assessment criteria (techne). However, later on there is a commitment to reflective practice, collegiality and lifelong learning [ ⁶, pp. 43-44].

⁶ tell us that whilst UK is not yet moving towards re-licensing of practicing teachers that is established practice in the USA and elsewhere, there is an acceptance that qualifying to teach needs to be connected to learning pathways that support continuing professional growth. On learning pathways, ⁵ stipulates that “it is the responsibility of teachers themselves, guided by their own professional body, the National Teacher Council (NTC), to take charge of their self-development by identifying the areas in which they wish to grow professionally”. Learning pathways to choose from are: i. pedagogy or teaching and learning, ii. curriculum development, iii. assessment or examinations, iv. school administration, v. scientific research or scholarly work, vi. community or pastoral roles [ ⁵, p.29]. There is, in both the UK and Uganda, a concern with promoting lifelong learning to tackle the problem of reactive and episodic CPD provisions ⁶.

The transition from a narrowed down perspective of practical-technical professionalism to a broader ethical professionalism is a key concern of this paper. It is related, not only to improvements in “teacher quality and learning outcomes in schools”, but also concerns the thorny issue of teacher professional esteem, and “improving retention and professional well-being” [ ⁶, pp. 43-44]. According to ⁷, a hybrid of excellence is inevitable in any holistic teachers policy on CPD. “Having a vision statement which is committed to enhancing the lives of all students is vitally important as one of the biggest challenges facing society today is to integrate those on the margins of society whose learning has not been sufficiently developed to give them confidence in themselves. Not only is their exclusion at the margins a waste of human potential, but their alienation poses a real threat to democracy” (p.33-34). Unless extra effort is made to include these students we will reconstitute the status quo. Both quality and equity are fundamental. Research and daily practice show us that learning is indeed possible for all of us and is not confined to the very bright or socio-economically advantaged.

Tension between global convergence and local divergence: In policy making and implementation, CPD programs are largely based, as we have shown, on comparative cross-national (global) studies. However, in order to avoid fundamentalism (unquestioning and smug approval of the status quo) ⁵ provides room for collaborative communities of teachers who can (if authentically well directed) critically think about their day-to-day activities in the light of their ‘lives as a whole’. Evidence shows, according to ⁵ document “that development of teachers is best done when teachers themselves are integrally involved in it, reflecting on their own practices; when there is a strong school-based component; and when activities are well coordinated” [ ⁵, p. 29]. The ideal of integral involvement and engagement informs the theoretical background against which we attempt to appreciate Uganda’s new policy on teachers’ CPD.

A humane conversation between the global and local must expose ideological or philosophical frameworks that undergird policies. [ ⁶, 58] write: “Phillips has warned against the production of over-generalized accounts in cross-national studies. In mapping current policy and practice from secondary sources, similarities in administrative systems come to the fore. Areas of contestation are submerged in the production of coherent texts, which have the purpose of persuading their audience of the rationality of a chosen position. Ideological frameworks may be (unintentionally) concealed in policy documents”. Against such uncritical approval of policy documents, and in favour of exposing the ideological frameworks, ⁸ has noted that the philosophical obstacles to a critical, and ethically-qualified teacher identity formation policy derives from two distinct tendencies. One derives from the tradition of analytic philosophy, and its tendency to “think atomistically about human action and to quantitatively analyse complex actions and transactions in terms of simple components” [ ⁸, p.190]. What is uncritically overshadowed by the atomistic view of the self is that the particular actions of a teacher qualitatively derive from the character of the teacher ‘as part of a larger whole’, or the teacher as a member of a social-linguistic community [ ⁸, p.190].

⁹ distinguish between the managerial and activist and provides a conceptual framework against which we attempt to understand the philosophical intricacies of Uganda’s National Teacher Policy in regard to CPD. ⁹ also identify the dominant classical modern paradigm with the managerial and the late modern one with the democratic – the former is associated with ‘simple components’ such as reform initiatives, compliance and economic efficiency, and the latter more activist in nature, emphasizing collaborative, cooperative action between teachers and other educational stakeholders' [ ⁹, p. 7]. We discuss the merits and demerits of each, as we search for a more ethically-oriented perspective for CPD.

2. The Managerial-Regulatory Paradigm

Compliance, Economic Efficiency and Disciplinary Action: The key attributes Uganda ‘government policy’ include the following (among others): (a) policies require compliance (mandatory); (b) failure to comply with the policy results in disciplinary action [ ⁵, p,30]. On the national and global levels, all “countries and economies have been encouraged to offer in-service training for their teachers on the assumption that the greater this provision, the more positive the influence on educational outcomes” ¹⁰. ⁶ tell us that, “All four parts of the UK are moving towards professional development frameworks that integrate initial teacher education, induction, and early and continuing professional learning. There is widespread recognition that initial ‘qualification’ (or accreditation) is an insufficient basis for lifelong professional learning. In Uganda, there are clear mechanisms to enforce compliance, like section: 7.5.6. “To practice in any of the three career pathways, one must possess a valid practicing certificate issued and renewed every two years by the National Teacher Council” and section: 7.5.7. “Attendance, participation and other conditions relating to CPD are key pre-requisites for one to periodically renew their practicing certificate as teachers” [ ⁵.p.37].

Economic efficiency is referred to in section 7.6 where the aim of ⁵ is spelled out in terms of improving “accountability and performance of teachers”. The text goes: “there will be mandatory teacher evaluation focusing on both teacher accountability and performance using a clear set of standard tools at all levels by respective managers and decision makers” ⁵. Among others you have performance appraisals, peer evaluations, portfolios, feedback from stakeholders including learners and parents [ ⁵, p.38]. In all four parts of the UK (England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland), ⁶ tell us that “qualified teachers are encouraged to maintain a ‘professional portfolio’ recording continuing professional learning, with moves toward e-portfolios likely. In Scotland the national framework for CPD introduced a qualification based Chartered Teacher grade in 2002; a contractual commitment to 35 hours of CPD each year for serving teachers” [ ⁶, pp. 57-8]. In Uganda, from 5th April 2019 onward, all teachers are to be “required to attend professional development courses during weekend programs and holidays to avoid teachers missing lessons on the pretext of attending CPD courses”. Apart from seminars, conferences and workshops; there will be action learning; collaborative teacher networks; study groups.

Reform initiatives: ¹¹ shows how modern states have developed to become “bureaucratic corporate states, characterized by economic planning, central management and the overall co-ordination of social activities. This includes, above all, control over interest articulation” [ ¹¹, p. 84]. This mode of control, based on norms guiding specialization in ‘learning pathways’ is the rationale behind CPD programs in Uganda and elsewhere ⁵. Three comments can thus be made in regard to the modern classical managerial professionalism:

(i) professional teachers have been instrumental in the modern nation state’s project of the socialization (civilization) of plural cultures into a global unifying supra-communal language and culture ^{12, 13}. We are talking about a Humane civil society held together to be civic virtue, rather than any deep cultural-religious loyalties. By specializing in a particular learning area, subject or level, the traditional professional teacher gains effective authority within the overall civilizing effort. The professional (supposedly) knows the ‘real interests’ of the local publics, and is thus highly esteemed as a Public Trustee. Since the project of socialization or humanization (during colonial times) has been a top-down affair, curriculum development and pedagogy were top-down (teacher-centred). Individuation was a matter of mastery of and implementation of regulations and guidelines from national or global policy documents ¹⁴. This, if not tempered with ethically-inspired professionalism would (unintentionally) lock CPD into hegemonic ideology.

(ii) as “a prospective and potential legislators to create order, to set and supervise boundaries and standards, to combat deviation” [ ¹⁵, p. 140] CPD enabled the professional to aspire for managerial status. In this sense, every teacher can be a leader, administrator or manager as long as he or she meets the standards and guidelines related to CPD. The aim is to deal with atomized individuals with “unambiguous identities and relatively inflexible role performances” [ ¹⁶, p.122].

In the Ugandan ⁵ CPD is the condition of possibility for promotional career aspirations and avoidance of sanctions due to non-compliance [ ⁵, pp. 8-9]. There is, especially in higher education, a focus by CPD (among lecturers) on the research ideal. The aspiration by a researcher and scholar to supersede his or her teachers or previous researchers by adding something new to their discoveries (though any novelty in liquid modernity tends to be so short-lived since it will soon be superseded by another invention) is not entirely misled ¹². In the biography of Eric Kendal, a Nobel Prize Winner, it is the uncertainty of research, “like one venturing into the unknown”, “the spirit of adventure”, or what Ugandan ⁵ refers to as learning to take risks’, that was followed by the excitement of creating something new ¹⁷. However, if not situated within a larger context, research merely based on a ‘logic of supersession’ can become not more than an obsessed ‘individual thrill’ [ ¹⁸, p.138]. ¹⁷ commends the ‘scientific community’ for being “infused with a marvellous sense of collegiality and common purpose”, such that despite his exciting contributions on memory storage in the brain: “I am even more proud to be part of the accomplishments of the international community of scientists that has given rise to a new science of the mind” ¹⁷. Solidaristic belonging to a larger community of learners and inquirers (past, present, and future) is more important than individual achievement.

(iii) as masters of a de-contextualised, autonomous discourse or language employed in the ‘public sphere’, modern professionals are characterized by an equally ‘autonomous’ scholarly identity ^{12, 13}. To master this discourse during CPD, one is given the right to investigate reality (researcher and scholar), to produce universal truths, and to create order (management) exclusively on the basis of the facts (on the one hand) and Kantian ‘eternal laws of reason’ on the other ¹². Between the facts and rational judgements, no truth referring to diverse historical-cultural traditions, religious dogmas, local morals and customs, or the doxa of community, that is, the opinions and beliefs of common understanding may intervene. We deal briefly with the a. the eternal laws of reason that govern management, and b. the research ideal.

In seeking an objective and competitive basis for recognition of a teacher, Uganda’s NTC seems to undermine ‘the power of the working environment’ or the context in which one necessarily or accidentally finds oneself, ‘coupled with the personal and social identity’. These are what Heidegger referred to as one’s thrownness. Reference is made by the policy makers to ‘a much stronger force in the development of teacher identity’, namely, National Education Policies” [ ⁵, Section 7.8.8]. This seems to imply, from a Kantian point of view, values that guide the teaching profession should exclusively apply in a top-down manner. Since policies reflect the convergent ‘Kantian meta-narrative’ of a ‘universal reason’, there is no need for a reference point reflecting divergent personal or communal histories or narratives. This self is no longer conceivable as a ‘concrete person’, but an abstract individual situatable and quotable and thus of significance in a particular discursive field, for example, as a specialist in school administration, specialist in curriculum development, specialist in pedagogy or biology, linguistics, comparative studies, history, sociology or philosophy, etc. [ ⁵, section 3.3]. However, in another section ⁵ mentions the importance of qualitative “teacher characteristics that are harder to measure, but which can be vital to student learning need to be more prominent in teacher preparation and employment” [ ⁵, section 4.1].

Fate and Destiny in Heidegger’s Being and Time: Now, according to Heidegger’s Being and Time, a de-historised teacher would be inauthentic. Why? Because authenticity demands a connectedness with one’s ‘Being in the world’, including one’s birth in a unique heritage, including ancestral and cultural values (Ubuntu) that give a person’s life meaning, and one’s lived experience in a particular school environment. Thus, human freedom is essentially (fated) conditioned and limited. The inauthentic self, mistakenly construes freedom as a matter of abolition of fate, that is, uniquely individual and social origins or history of a teacher. His approach is confrontational (colonial) rather than conversational ¹⁹. Through denial of the divergent, the inauthentic self hopes to attain freedom. Inability to step back from (or bracket) personal idiosyncrasies or cultural-contextual prejudices and interest amounts to compromising the ‘academic freedom’ (neutrality and integrity), the hallmark of prestige in colleges and universities worldwide ¹⁹. Through this separation from ‘lower selfhood’, the intellectual becomes master of him/herself, becomes an autonomous individual with an autonomous discourse. On the one hand, he or she liberates him/herself from the demands (pathos) of the social-cultural context, and on the other, from internal, subjective, lower bodily and emotional forces in favour of rational and serious work. Mastery is attained through suppression of subjective desires and social ties with the local community ¹². This, according to Heidegger, is inauthentic professionalism.

The authentic self, by contrast, resolutely accepts those constraints as they are, clearly accepting both the necessary and accidental nature of our ‘Being-in-the-World’, ²⁰. Further since the world which the teacher inherits is communal world (of the they), to the fate of an individual there corresponds the destiny of a people ²⁰. Future possibilities cannot be based on denial of contingency, rather, professionals must both courageously /resolutely accept ‘what they have become’ and critically reject what impedes meaningful progress. Authentic progress involves carrying over one’s inheritance into the present. According to Heidegger, teaching attains meaning if it is done in ‘anticipatory resoluteness’ for a genuine potential of a future that is finite (Being-unto-Death) ²¹. There must be within CPD programs an inculcation of the desire in the teachers (as widely informed dilettantes) to pass on information and introduce or initiate their students into the larger communion of informed voices whose roles and procedures they themselves have inherited or internalised. The teacher derives a sense of life’s purpose in seeing learners become competent participants in ‘the great conversation’ of the ancestors through ‘the great works of the past’ ¹². Disagreements with opinions therein are to be resolved, and compromises reached, during actual conversations within democratic learning environments, teachers’ collaborative networks, or interdisciplinary encounters where hermetic thinkers are charmed out of their self-enclosed practices.

These conversations do not require one to construe the NTP document as a ‘story of stories’ (meta-narrative) to function as an ‘absolute foundation’ or ‘ideal terminus’ for objectively re-presenting reality. ⁵ connects Ugandan teachers to a conversation that is global and on-going, not as passive recipients of commands, but as people of sound judgement situated in a ‘form of life’ or an ethnos of engaged participants in an ongoing conversation [ ²², p.59]. In the local context, that conversation undergoes adaptations and innovations, but still, within relevant (research and policy making) communities. In the international context, ⁶ tell us that “current policy in the UK can be seen as a hybrid of ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ versions of professionalism, which reflect the diverse traditions, assumptive worlds and collective narratives’ of the policy-making communities in the different parts of the UK.

Life-long learning, liquid modernity, incommensurability: Reforms through CPD strongly relates to ‘development’, more specifically, capacity building for teachers to “take care of dynamic realities” [ ⁵, p.5]. In its policy rationale, the ⁵ points out a number aspects of CPD which are typically transformational (instead of transactional). This resonates with the truth contained in the position of UNESCO’s Commission on Education for the Twenty-First Century ²² when it tells us that “we no longer inhabit a static and relatively predictable world like our ancestors in the last centuries”, and therefore, (in contrast with solid modernity) “It is not enough to supply each child with a store of knowledge to be drawn on from then on” ^{5, 7}. All Teachers Must Always Keep Up-To-Date with New Knowledge, skills and teaching practices through Continuous Professional Development (CPD)” [ ⁵, p.37].

Heidegger was already aware of the fluidity in modern discourses, but he thought that qualitatively meaningful and purposeful action could not be switched for quantitatively utilitarian instances of gratification of individual preferences. There is something inauthentic about a creative and innovative CPD program that goes for momentary thrills (of liquid modernity), and readily disposable bytes of info, and where “in awaiting the next new thing, the scholar or researcher has already forgotten the old one”, [ ²⁰, pp.443-4]. In liquid modernity, “we never reach a solid state of modernity where things settle in their place and reach some kind of maturity. Things move and evolve before they solidify, and accordingly we find ourselves proposing solutions to past problems, which have since evolved into something else.” ²³. This situation recalls ²⁴ complaint about current moral debate characterized by unremitting disagreements, appeal to incommensurable concepts, and absence of accepted mechanisms of dispute resolution. This leaves us, he contends, with a polarised world where judgements are made in contradictory fashion as (i) the necessary outcome of rational discourse and (ii) mere expression of desire and will. Since in the first part we said something about the rationalist paradigm, now we shall focus on voluntarist or will-bound paradigm.

Radical Social Critics, Decline of Professionalism and Free-Market Logic: A radical constructivism or relativism is the flipside of metaphysical thinking. It originates from a view (developing in the 1970s and 80s) that connected global (and state) policies as authoritarian and despotic. Seen under this lens, one will judge government policies and regulations as merely “politics clothed in more seductive and surrounded by a more pretentious and elaborate institutional apparatus”. ⁵ cannot claim to have “antecedently existing ‘right answers’ for all conceivable situations” in Ugandan schools.

Foucault, argued that every society writes its own history that legitimates its own ‘regime of truth’ (episteme), its own general politics of truth, that is, the type of discourses which it accepts and make function as true” ²⁵. Government policies, and their rational justifications, need not be seen as a faithful representation of the ‘nature of things’, but an invention behind which one discovers only ‘irrational’ and competitive and conflicted motives: the play of instinctual and impulsive desires, fears and the ‘will to appropriate’ or sheer ‘will to power’. Cabinet approvals, a radical critic would argue, are written on the stage where irrational drives (like selfish acquisitiveness and greed) compete with one another. Once grounded by ’will to power’, policies reflect a sort of market competitiveness giving free reign to competition for social prestige, and personal financial gain ²⁶. The authority of the old professional has been eroded once the role of government came to be reduced to creating frameworks for individuals and groups to pursue their respective ends ²⁶.

Closely related to this decline is the idea that if performing teachers or lecturers are provided with incentives, they will, like for entrepreneurs, boost motivation and creativity and eventually lead to the improvement of student learning and performance. Connecting CPD to incentives, or to an award of a Bachelor’s Degree and other promotions is according to radical constructivists a sham. About Randall’s The Credentials Society Hill writes: “It would seem natural that greater levels of education would provide … in-demand skills. Using data from multiple sources and time periods, (it has been demonstrated) that it is simply not the case. On the contrary, most skills needed for work are learned on the job. What greater education provides, then, is not technical skills but cultural capital that allows individuals to compete for occupational positions and power in organizations that are themselves ‘structures of power. There is a loss of faith in credentials and papers since they promote higher positions of political labour (of the same, I/we) which is the organizational process by which wealth from lower productive labour (of the other, they) is allocated. An attempt is made by the individual to give the appearance that his or her activity in the front region maintains and embodies certain standards for ‘general well-being’. Yet they may well be the voice of a narrow range of ethnic, racial, economic and political interests ²⁶.

Neo-Pragmatism, Trade Unions, Hybridization and the Critical tension: To neo-pragmatists, the pessimism and ‘air of resentment’ introduced by disciples of Foucault within the academia has led some leftist professors to think that social criticism should engage a Hegelian Romanticism that glimpses something like a ‘total revolution’. Under this lens, CPD would be neo-Marxist since, as Foucault writes, “A transformation that remains with the same mode of thought, a transformation that is only a way of adjusting the same thought more closely to the reality of things can merely be a superficial transformation” [ ²⁵, p.155]. This conclusion renders his radical anti-intellectualism to be the flipside of radical intellectualism, not a transformation, but a mere flipping of the coin from one metaphysical (de-contextualised) face to another equally metaphysical one. Neo-Pragmatists thus prefer to replace (Marxist) ‘total revolution’ with contextualist/historicist Deweyan ‘piecemeal reform’ [ ¹⁹, pp. 231-32]. Conversations within CPD teachers’ collaborative or study networks should ensure that genuine social criticism should start off from a personal situatedness a ‘historical context’ and a narrative of where one has come from, where one is, and where one could head [ ¹⁹, pp.231-32]. Piecemeal reforms, which Dewey advocated, concern themselves with issues of social justice, human rights, and dignity by concrete communities of speakers. What counts as an objective view of the world is determined by the community of speakers in the same stipulative way in which, for example, they identify certain sorts of ‘reasons’ as compelling.

Against the background of this hybridized (glocalized) conversation, neo-Pragmatism proposes something like teacher trade unions to tone down on over-philosophized discourses from ‘universal scholars’. ⁷ point out that this has been “the main form of professional learning in Japan, one of OECDs strongest performing education systems, for more than 100 years”. It is also used as “a strategy to support implementation of new curricula” [ ⁷, p.41]. Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programs, we are told, should “Facilitate the growth of strong learning communities through CPDs”, [ ⁵, p. 35]. The ⁵ document, however, does not come out clearly on the ethical dimension of these learning communes. Literature proposes professional learning communities to enable the transition ⁶ from teaching as a technical performance to an ethically-inspired and motivated role.

The Face of the Other as Hybrid of the Immanent and Transcendent: It is assumed, by the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (and other religious traditions) that the suffering and destitute are the (visible) Face of the (unapproachable) Divine. The transition to an ethically-inspired professionalism is related to learning communities, because in such, as [ ⁷, p.41] tell us: “members focus on the learning of students rather than on teaching”, and “teachers work collaboratively, and hold themselves accountable for results”. Why? Because an empathic and ethically-inspired response to disadvantaged learners is, according to ²³’s virtue ethics, rewarding in itself as a ‘love of the good’ that does not expect or demand something in return. It is a good internal to the human practice of teaching, rewarding in itself without needing to lead to promotion or pay rise ²³. As a sort of hybridiation of technical excellence and ethical responsibility, one is dealing with a dynamic view of the human life of the teacher as a whole, understood by ²³ as ‘a narrative quest’ that is both determinate (immanent) and indeterminate (transcendent).

According to [ ⁷, p.41], “Strong professional learning communities are collaborative cultures which deal with change more effectively”. Moreover, collective responsibility is a key characteristic of professional learning communities ⁷. A sense of personal mission emerges aesthetically fashioned around core values (such as Caritas) accompanied by a deep sense of personal meaning. Such ethical individualism can be an individualism in solidarity. Only within such communities can we conceive of CPD as linked to the re-enchantment of the teaching profession, in other words, to have it resonate with deep moral, religious and cultural sentiments that constitute a background from which teachers structure their lives ‘as a whole’. Making oneself unconditionally available where one would have been able to be indifferent or insensitive constitutes ‘ethical responsibility’ that is not originate from a social contract or ‘vow to be technical’ and ‘disengaged ought’ (compliance) of conventional managerial professionalism [ ²⁸, p.244]. In this model, it is not the suffering of the other that directly confronts me (face to face) and makes me personally responsible.

Government has been engaged in key curriculum reforms, and has placed stronger emphasis on gender equality within schools, incorporation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), and integration of students with special needs in the education system. Such developments require re-examination of the role of teachers, their preparation and work, ⁵. One issue to take into account in the training of an ethically responsible teacher is non-interchangeability, or the ideal that the human person is not replaceable like a part in an engine (in the atomistic sense of modern selfhood). This is because ethics puts demands on the individual’s highest uniqueness as ‘called to be close’ (proximity) to the unique destitute Other. It involves a totally ‘personal response’ that has nothing to do with character traits of the individual, his or her capacities, academic achievements and social status. The indifference and insensitivity (turning one’s face and ear away from) the suffering and cries of the girl child, the orphan, the disabled, the slow learner, the poor, of professionals (degree holding teachers and highly paid senior lecturers and professors) is, according to Levinas, a moral evil related to the privileging of techne ²⁸. Non-committal and interested in boundary drawing and careerism, professionals will attempt to escape ethical responsibility through drink, eroticism, drugs, sports, gyms, etc. [ ²⁸, p.76] whereas a hybrid of technical and ethical would give the teacher’s life as a whole, the requisite meaning and purpose. The ethical call is interruptive of a directionless historicist self-consciousness that limits the teacher’s life as whole to careerism. Its interruptive capacity and ‘unconditional motivation’ are transcendent beyond the immanent scope of conventional government policy making, yet it is what accounts for a recovery of the old vocational dimension to teaching. As far as CPD is concerned, the vocation is transcendent because it is beyond the (self-regulatory) freedom of initiative or autonomy of the individual teacher. It a recognition that transcendence is proximity (serving as a hostage to) the needy [ ²⁸, p.246]. Individualism in solidarity enables participants to “care for each other as individuals, and commit to the vision the organisation is pursuing, as well as pursuing tasks of analysis and improvement together” [ ⁷, p.41]. “Such supportive teacher work environments also tend to facilitate recruitment and retention of staff” [ ⁷, p.41]. According to ¹⁸, affirmative action has “helped humanities teachers to view themselves as their schools’ leading agents in the morally and politically inspiring campaign to correct a great historical wrong and in this way offered, or appeared to offer, an ennobling way out of the direction lessness and self-doubt that overtook their disciplines when they abandoned the tradition of secular humanism and drew themselves into the orbit of the research ideal” [ ¹⁸, p.144-46].

3. Conclusion

Covid-19 lockdowns and interruptions have signalled a ‘revaluation of all values’ (Nietsche’s expression: Unwertung aller Werte). For Levinas the revaluation of ethics construes responsibility from the perspective of the other, the second person (e.g. the girls who got pregnant during the lockdown). It is a ‘heteronomous responsibility’ to-and-for-the-other person, and it begins as the disturbance (interruption) of the order and assurance of my own being due to a visible suffering from elsewhere that call me and engages me despite myself (margre moi). It is a revaluation because it radically departs from constructing responsibility from the perspective of the first person (thinking or imaginative, poetic ego). It re-locates us within a more original community of care where we are primordially and mysteriously interconnected amongst ourselves as humans and the rest of non-human creation. This primordial and intimate interconnectedness of every singular reality with ‘all that is’ has (before European modernization) been the foundation of a professional ethic that puts service of the Other for his or her own sake, rather than autonomous rational self-construction (Kant) or civility (Hume) or power (Nietzsche) or monetary gain (capitalism). Human beings, can be re-construed to look like other entities (animals and plants) that can do good for its own sake, and not in order to gain some advantage.

References