Teacher as a profession of vocation: a design for the anthropology of mastery

Abstract

The article is devoted to understanding the anthropological features of the teaching profession. Despite the long history of pedagogical activity, one can state its plasticity, variability in professional content, but not in its essence. The fundamental basis of the teaching profession is its attribution to acts of vocation and recognition. Based on the methodology of social constructivism, statistical data, indicators and indices, the following has been recorded: a variety of images and models of a teacher among age and other cohorts; disproportion between the social image of a teacher in modern Russia and the real practice and models of the profession that carry out the socio-economic production of education and knowledge. The identified discrepancy allows us to speak about the need to create a concept of the teaching profession that would correspond to the rapidly changing world. As a result of the study, the most well-known and popular approaches to the analysis of recognition-vocation (religious-symbolic, rational-ethical) were identified, and it was shown that the development of a «recognition paradigm» in the study of the anthropology of pedagogical activity has great potential. By extrapolating the ideas and hermeneutic analysis of P. Ricoeur, an explication of two figures of recognition in the possible anthropology of the teacher’s skill was made: «Self-recognition of oneself as a teacher. Reflection and responsibility» and «Mutual recognition». In conclusion, it is shown that the models of a teacher as a profession-vocation (mentor, master, virtuoso) existing in the modern world are initially rooted not in the systems of social qualifications, but in the communication and reciprocity that creates the unique face of the teacher and the student

Keywords

• teacher
• profession
• vocation
• recognition
• ethics
• pedagogical activities