The Professional Socialization of Teachers: from a Functional to a Creative approach

This contribution is based on the concept of re-socialization, applied to the needs of education as expressed by teachers in Italy. In the current social frame, and to face in a better manner ethnic, gender, status, lifestyle and capability differences among pupils, teachers have to challenge both the conventional culture of planning and the ways of ordinary life in the classroom. The chapter explains briefly the main phases of the traditional socialization process to the role of the teacher. It highlights that this approach can be defined as functional or conflictual, because its main characteristics are total involvement (identification of personality/professionalism; routinization of praxis; economical rationality; adaptation) or contradiction in the relationships with the institutional context; professional individualism (better expressed as isolation from others' experiences). Both approaches met the past needs of maintaining the social prestige of teachers and developing their quantitative know-how. Through a choice of teacher voices, drawn from recent qualitative enquiries among teachers, it is shown that there is an increasing, new demand for more reflective, strategic and creative socialization practices in the teaching profession, in order to sustain teachers in their daily life, to enhance their motivation and to create a gratifying vision of themselves.