The Liberalization of Teacher Employment Regimes in Europe

The future of the teaching profession is central not only to the field of education but also to the development of democratic and inclusive societies. Since the 1980s, teaching has greatly changed in terms of the status and attractiveness of the profession, labor markets, and accountability models. At the same time, the profession has become increasingly subject to global discourses and a variety of new governance mechanisms.

In The Liberalization of Teacher Employment Regimes in Europe, the authors answer two critical questions for the future of the teaching profession: How does the teaching profession (re)institutionalize itself in a globalizing world? And how does globalization affect the central mechanisms of a profession, such as its models of education and professional development, modes of recruitment, and labor markets and careers? Although these changes are global in nature, this book addresses the structural and cultural environments that shape the employment regimes of the teaching profession in the European context. Based on a multiscalar study, the book examines the reconfiguration of teachers' careers by analyzing the joint evolutions of the European Union's governance of education and teachers, and of employment regimes in two contrasting European countries (England and France). Observing different trajectories of employment liberalization in the two countries, emblematic of liberal or bureaucratic public professions, leads the authors to discuss different scenarios for the future of the teaching profession in Europe.