Bold , Rude and Risky :

Educational professionalism is the focal point of the Scottish Standard for Chartered Teacher (CT). Published by the Scottish Government in 2002 and revised in 2009, the Chartered Teacher Standard sets forth specific national objectives for advanced teacher accomplishment beyond initial teacher certification (known in Scotland as the Standard for Full Registration), and guarantees professional recognition and enhanced salary for those teachers who attain the Standard. The ‘Charter’ designation is titularly unique, although its process and rationale are comparable to teacher advancement initiatives elsewhere (DfES 2006, NBTS 2007, TA 2009). The CT initiative has become an important avenue for continuing professional development, mostly delivered through university-based programmes designed to help teachers achieve the CT Standard. It embeds the potential to strengthen not only teaching practice, but also education systems more generally through the teacher leadership exercised by CT teachers, and through the informal emergence of networks of CT teacher leaders. Many CT principles such as systematic professional enquiry, collaboration, social justice and teacher leadership reflect major directions of effective teaching being promoted in recent literature on teacher education (Cochran-Smith et al. 2008; Darling-Hammond 2007; O’Donoghue and Whitehead 2008). However while there may be enormous potential for the CT initiative, it is argued in this paper that there remain certain silences, gaps, and even some timidity in its existing form. To encourage the professionalism among teachers that can lead education creatively into the complexities of the coming decades, this discussion suggests a system-wide effort to support the CT movement to become more bold, rude, and risky.