Teaching as a Profession, Knowledge and Skills Requirement

In trying to proof teaching as a profession, the debate on whether teaching is a profession or not has been going on for some time. Professional workers get their training from educational institutions whose managers are teachers.

Teachers prepare practitioners for their occupations. In the past and sometime in the present, teaching has been used as a stepping-stone for other so-called prestigious professions.

Let us first digest the characteristics of a profession. A profession has as its fundamental objectives, the furtherance of the profession and service to mankind. Quality output and excellence are the essences of its existence.

There is an assertion that a profession is a vocation for which work is a thing of importance in itself and for which group dignity is the dominant factor.

However, there is another facet to the issue of professionalism. Umar states that although philanthropic in its ideals, ironically, professionalization of occupation is also a drive for economic gain.

For example, one important characteristic of a profession is the monopoly of skill it enjoys over its affairs. Once an occupation has achieved this, it often uses this monopoly to set standards for practice and in doing so restricts entry into its membership.

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Such measure tends to lower the number of professionals in the fields thereby increasing the scarcity of such professionals and the value of the profession which in turn enhances the level of remuneration to those already in.

Examples of such professions include law, engineering or medicine, etc. Now let us see whether teaching is a profession or not.

Knowledge and Skills

Teaching is defined as the art of imparting knowledge from the teacher to the learner implies that the teacher has to be knowledgeable to be able to impart knowledge. One must know the way and the direction that he would take.

This shows that teaching is an intellectual activity that requires knowledge and skills, knowledge of the subject matter, and the skill of imparting such knowledge. This is gotten from a long period of intellectual training.

Every professional requires some intellectual training. The teacher needs these qualities more than anyone else because he is central to the formation of the child’s personality and the formation of the human mind at its most impressionable age. The teacher is also central in the training and preparation of people to fit into all other professions.

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