Western Sydney University, 102086: Teaching as a Profession Essay

This essay delves into the multifaceted challenges inherent in the teaching profession, providing a comprehensive analysis of the difficulties teachers encounter in contemporary educational settings. The essay begins by establishing teaching as a profession, emphasizing the commitment, ethics, and dedication required. It then explores the evolution of the teaching profession and its critical role in secondary socialization, highlighting the importance of teachers in shaping young minds. The core of the essay focuses on the challenges teachers face, including integrating 21st-century learning skills, addressing student addiction to digital distractions, and managing classroom dynamics. The essay connects these challenges to pedagogical approaches, curriculum design, and assessment strategies, emphasizing the need for teachers to adapt to evolving student needs and technological advancements. Furthermore, it addresses issues like communication with peers, identifying appropriate teaching models, and managing limited resources and curriculum overload. The essay also discusses the importance of curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment, which form the foundation of the educational system and the ways the teacher communicates to the students. Overall, the essay underscores the complexities of teaching and the necessity for teachers to possess in-depth knowledge, positive attitudes, and effective classroom management skills to navigate these challenges effectively.

Running Head: TEACHING AS A PROFESSION
Teaching as a Profession
Name of Student
Name of University
Author Note

1TEACHING AS A PROFESSION
The term profession is often used in a quite generic manner while referring to the trade or
vocation that a person is in. The term profession is derived from the word ‘profiteor’ which
means to profess something (Koellner & Jacobs, 2015). The connotation here in this context is
that professional is someone who has the ability to commit to a certain work and then follow that
commitment through with the help of some ethics and rules the person follows the duty that he
has chosen and that is his profession. In this teaching is also a profession that requires time,
effort, dedication and for doing the work a teacher is well remunerated. Teaching as profession
developed when the need for the new generation to learn new things in order to develop in
society and develop their mind, a teacher helps in learning new things and help the new
generation learn things that will help in a professional manner and also help them develop their
mental capabilities (Cochran-Smith et al., 2015). School is the place of secondary socialization.
The reason behind this is because the teachers teach the student what is required or what is age
appropriate. When a child is born into a family, the family becomes the source of primary
socialization and the school is the place where they spend the most of their time after their house
so the school becomes the place of secondary socialization, this is the reason that teaching is
such an important profession. This essay will analyze the challenges that teachers face and the
will associate it with the theories of pedagogy, curriculum and assessment.
The profession of teaching is both rewarding and challenging. The profession demands
in-depth knowledge of a subject matter, curriculum and standards. The teacher needs to be
enthusiastic, needs to have an attitude that is positive and caring and the classroom should be a
free place where the students can freely communicate with the teacher and should not feel any
constrain while asking any query to the question (Jonassen & Hung, 2015). The teacher needs to
know a lot of classroom management so that there is no chaos inside the class.

2TEACHING AS A PROFESSION
There plenty of challenges a teacher face, one of the major challenges that they face is
that integrating the curriculum of the school with the 21st century learning skills. It is the 21st
century and the teachers have to realize that the way they taught before will no longer be relevant
as the students are a lot more technologically savvy and the know about a lot of things because of
the exposure that they have to digital world. The internet informs the people about a lot of things
and in the 21st century even the kids have access to the internet and they learn about a lot of good
and bad things from the internet, the teacher needs to keep this in mind while teaching and this
becomes a big problem as the teacher is not only teaching the students about the curriculum and
the syllabus but also added information from the internet, the teachers need to make the students
aware of the things that are good and correctly represented in the internet and the things that are
bad and incorrect (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2016). The teacher has the added responsibility of
making sure the students do not learn anything that is too much for them to handle.
The second major challenge that the teacher’s face is the also related to the digital world
and the challenges that comes along with it. The students are usually addicted to video games,
social media applications and other digital things, because of this addiction the attention span of
the students becomes very less. They hardly have the ability to go through one lesson let alone
listen to a 40 minutes long lecture. The teacher needs to develop special ways through which
they can keep the attention of the class for 40 minutes or however long a class. The students will
get bored if the teacher only talks for the whole time. This is where the challenge lays, teachers
previously only used to lecture their classes and that will no longer work as the students hardly
pay attention to lectures. New techniques have to be thought of by the teacher, techniques such
as showing video lectures or doing more practical things to learn a lesson rather than staying

3TEACHING AS A PROFESSION
inside the class and talking it about, the teacher could also take the students to field trip as that
will keep them motivated and they will stay eager to learn about new things.
Another challenge that the teacher face is communicating with the peers, teaching is
lonely profession although they spend the entire day with classroom filled with children but the
teachers hardly have the time to talk to each other (Terhart, 2013). This can feel a lot isolating,
the teachers take continuous classes and there is hardly any free time hence the teachers do not
get any time to talk to anyone, this might come as a challenge to a lot of people who are new the
profession but eventually people get used to it and this might not seem very easy to adjust to but
the job is fulfilling and that helps them deal with the other minor problems that comes along the
way.
A teacher might want to surf new ideas from the internet and they might be able to find a
lot of ideas that can be implemented in the class but the problem is that there are too many ideas
that are available on the internet and it is a challenge to choose which one is the most appropriate
for the class that is being taught by the teacher (Haerens et al., 2013). Identifying the perfect
model that can be implemented to one particular classroom is very difficult as there are a lot if
students in one class and all of them have a different personality type, choosing a model that will
encompass the needs of all the students is a complicated task, to the teacher this will come as a
major challenge to the teacher but she or he will eventually overcome it.
One of the toughest challenges that the teacher has to face is that in a classroom there are
a lot of students who need a lot of care and attention and the resources that are available to do
that is very less (Liebtag, 2013). This can be a major source of challenge; the teacher might not
always have the available resources to do that, she/he might want to do it but the problem is that

4TEACHING AS A PROFESSION
the infrastructure does not support that. This is one of ten biggest challenges faced by the
teacher.
Another major challenge that the teacher needs to deal with is the overload of the
curriculum, the teacher needs to teach the student almost 10 to 12 subjects, sometimes it
becomes a burden for the teacher because she/he has to develop a curriculum that is suited to the
children and also she/he cannot go overboard with the teaching otherwise the students might be
not be able to understand what is being taught (Lei et al., 2016). The teacher will face a
curriculum overboard as there are a lot of things that have to taught and very less time to do it,
this might come a big challenge but the teacher will have to deal with as the curriculum is always
more and there is always a time constraint
The teacher might have to face a scarcity of time, the teacher might not be able to
accommodate everything within the given time as there is a lot that has to be done and there is a
very less time (Petersen et al., 2013). The teacher not only teach the student the lessons that are
there in the curriculum but also the they need to give extra attention to the students that do not
understand the concepts clearly, those students needs to paid more attention as they might not get
everything that is taught in the class, hence the teacher needs to manage time in an effective way
(Jones, Youngs & Frank, 2013). The time constraint will come as a big source of challenge to the
teacher and they might feel overburdened.
The teacher communicates to the student through three message systems which are
curriculum, pedagogy and educational system (www.nap.edu.au, 2019). The knowledge that
every society considers educationally valuable is shaped with the help of power, time, control
and place. Additionally there is the nature of knowledge. Curriculum is the basis on which the
education system in schools stands (www.australiancurriculum.edu.au, 2019). The Australian

5TEACHING AS A PROFESSION
Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority stress the importance of curriculum. The
curriculum is of prime importance, the students need to follow a guideline around which their
education will go. The curriculum is what guides the student to do the things that are required in
order to have a certain type of mental development (Sharma et al., 2013). The curriculum is
designed by the teacher and the aim should be that ever class should follow that particular
curriculum as it is dependent on the needs of the student that comprises a particular class.
The second important that form the basis of the education is assessment. Assessment is
very essential when it comes to the education system. The students are imparted a lot of
knowledge throughout the entire school life so it is essential that every student is taught about the
things that are necessary for their personal or professional development (O’Brennan, Bradshaw
& Furlong, 2014). To test whether the knowledge that is imparted is understood by the student,
the teacher needs to assess their knowledge periodically. The teacher needs to make sure that the
students are learning everything that is required by them to learn. The teacher needs to asses
everything that is taught to them, there needs to periodic evaluation of their knowledge and this
is one of the most necessary things about teaching. Assessment is recommended by all the
curriculums in all the countries.
Third and the most important basis of the educational system is pedagogy. Pedagogy is
referred to as the way a particular teaches a story. There a lot of different students in a classroom
and all of them have different needs, in order to cater to the needs of all the students in a class a
particular pedagogy is developed by the teacher, one that will help with all the students in the
entire classroom (de Freitas et al., 2013). An effective pedagogy is important is important
because the all the students in a classroom does not have the same mental capabilities, some of
them have the ability to digest a lot of news and the others might not, so the students who are

6TEACHING AS A PROFESSION
slow needs to be taught with special care inside the classroom, there needs to special attention
that is given to them given so that they do not lack behind in a class, in order to help all the
children inside a classroom the teacher need to develop a pedagogy that will help the entire class
and not only some students, the teacher should not be biased towards any of the students that are
in the class (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2015). The students’ needs to feel listened to in the classroom
and they should be feeling left out because of anything that is going on in the class.
By the help of these three mediums of communication namely the pedagogy, curriculum
and assessment, the teacher communicates to the students. These are the means through which
teaching as a job is carried out; hence it is a profession like any other profession that deals with a
certain goal fulfillment which in this case is imparting knowledge to the students. They have a
goal, they have to follow certain pedagogies and they have a national curriculum and they take
tests like the naplan. Therefore teaching is a profession like any other profession and it is not a
semi-profession, it is a full time profession.
This essay concludes that there are a lot of constraints that a teacher face and a lot of
challenges that they face but teaching as a profession is very fulfilling and rewarding hence they
might not take it as a challenge they have to deal with a lot of problems like time constraints,
dearth of resources, overload of curriculum among others. The major ways that the teacher
communicated with the students are assessment, pedagogy, curriculum and assessment.

7TEACHING AS A PROFESSION
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