Page 18 - Beyond Methods

6 Conceptualizing teaching acts language that goes with other terms that are used to characterize
teaching: job, work, career, occupation, and profession. For Hansen,
• a job is an activity that provides sustenance or survival. It com- prises highly repetitive tasks that are not defined and developed by those performing them.
• vocation goes well beyond sustenance and survival; it guarantees personal autonomy and personal significance.
• workmayensurepersonalautonomyandcanthereforeyieldgen- uine personal meaning but, unlike vocation, it need not imply being of service to others.
• a career describes a long-term involvement in a particular activ- ity but differs from vocation in similar ways that job and work do, that is, it need not provide personal fulfillment, a sense of identity, nor a public service.
• an occupation is an endeavor harbored within a society’s eco- nomic, social, and political system, but persons can have occu- pations that do not entail a sense of calling in the same way vo- cations do.
• a profession broadens the idea of an occupation by emphasizing the expertise and the social contribution that persons in an occu- pation render to society. However, profession differs from voca- tion in two important ways. First, persons can conduct them- selves professionally but not regard the work as a calling, and can derive their sense of identity and personal fulfillment elsewhere. Second, perks such as public recognition and rewards normally associated with professions run counter to personal and moral dimensions of vocations.
Hansen believes that it is the language of vocation that “brings us closer to what many teachers do, and why they do it, than does the language of job, work, occupation or profession” (ibid., p. 8).
As these terms clearly show, “the doing of teaching” defies clas- sification. The goal of teaching, however, seems to be rather obvious. Teaching is aimed at creating optimal conditions for desired learn- ing to take place in as short a time as possible. Even such a seem- ingly simple statement hides a troublesome correlation: a cause- effect relationship between teaching and learning. That is, the statement is based on the assumption that teaching actually causes learning to occur. Does it, really? We know by experiential knowl- edge that teaching does not have to automatically lead to learning; conversely, learning can very well take place in the absence of teach-