Standards-based professional learning and certification: by the profession, for the profession

This chapter presents a model for a standards-based professional learning and certification system, a system controlled and provided by the teaching profession itself. It is a model of a highly educated profession, capable of defining research-based standards for effective teaching, promoting the development of its members toward those standards, and providing a rigorous and respected process for recognising and certifying those who reach them. It is a model that calls for the teaching profession to be entrusted with the responsibilities of a profession; one of these is the responsibility and resources to establish its own standards-based professional learning and certification system—a system that is elaborated in this chapter. The author asserts that the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) in the United States provides a viable and rigorous model for a national certification system for teachers.