Decolonising Teacher Professionalism: Foregrounding the Perspectives of Teachers in the Global South

The paper aims to provide a decolonial critique of dominant global agendas concerning teacher professionalism and to propose new understanding based on the perceptions of a sample of teachers based in Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Rwanda and Tanzania. The paper commences by setting out dominant conceptions of teacher professionalism as they appear in the global literature. The paper then uses Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s (2013) three dimensions of coloniality, namely, the coloniality of power, of knowledge and of being, as a framework for
considering the colonial legacy on teacher professionalism and setting out the teachers’ ideas concerning the barriers and affordances to their professionalism. This provides a basis for outlining the teachers’ perspectives on how teacher professionalism may be conceptualised, which is discussed in relation to global conceptions. The main arguments advanced in the paper are that a decolonial lens is helpful for contextualising the perspectives of teachers in the global South; the lived experiences and material conditions of these teachers are often neglected in dominant discourses; it is important to situate the perspectives of teachers in an understanding of local contexts and realities; and, that in contrast to deficit discourses that predominate in the global literature, there is much that can be learned about teacher professionalism from teachers in the global South.