Redefining professionalism: Romanian secondary education teachers and the private tutoring system

Abstract

This study is an attempt to outline and to account for the professional identity and practice of the Romanian teachers since the beginning of the 1990s. An increasingly austere economy as well as profoundly altered social conditions and a number of educational reforms resulted in a marked diminution of the teacher's social and professional status. One of their principle strategies to offset this steady tendency has been to invest ever more time and effort in private tutoring. Their aim is thus to retrieve their lost authority and to counterbalance recent education policy changes. Supplementary private tutoring has grown into a parallel system of education that displays features commonly associated with the very notion of professionalism: technical culture, a commitment to service ethic, and autonomy in planning and implementing their practice. Furthermore, supplementary private tutoring helps Romanian teachers to secure advantages that are otherwise denied to them: it is rather as private tutors than as professionals that they enjoy a relatively respectable social status, economic rewards, and even political influence.