Local concepts of teacher professionalism: Evidence from rural Sierra Leone

Abstract

Teacher professionalism has become a key focus of education policy worldwide, however, there is no common understanding of what a ‘professional’ teacher means. Existing studies rely mostly on the experiences of teachers in high income, industrialised and predominantly Western contexts, while teachers’ experiences in the Global South are rarely addressed. This paper aims to contribute to this discussion examining perceptions of teacher professionalism at the national and local level in Sierra Leone. The study draws on a longitudinal mixed-methods study, incorporating both survey and ethnographic fieldwork in one of the poorest rural districts of northern Sierra Leone. The analysis revealed a disconnect between the neoliberal concepts found in the national policies and understanding of professionalism at the grassroots level that is focused on extended social roles of teachers within communities. It problematizes the uncritical application of global Western-based concepts to other contexts and shows an urgent need of an open dialogue on teacher professionalism that would include multiple views and perspectives.

Introduction

Teacher professionalism has become a key focus of education policy worldwide (Goodwin, 2021). It is widely assumed that high-quality education requires qualified and professional teachers. At the same time there is no common understanding of what a ‘professional’ teacher means. A large body of literature discusses the nature of teacher professionalism focussing on various aspects such as subject knowledge and certification, autonomy, and control over work and existing professional standards (Cameron, 2020; Conolly and Hughes-Stanton, 2020; Machin, 2018; Whitty, 2008). Furlong and Barton (2000) argued that one of the important elements of teachers’ professionalism is ‘expert knowledge and specialized skills, acquired and maintained through rigorous and continuing studies’ (ibid:19). Other studies in this field prioritise such aspects of professionalism as expert knowledge acquired through professional training along with the ability to maintain positive relationships with students and colleagues (Borko, 2004; Cameron, 2020; Evans, 2008). However, while these debates on teacher professionalism examine different aspects of the phenomenon, they rely mostly on the experiences of teachers in high income, industrialised and predominantly Western contexts, while teachers’ experiences in the Global South are rarely addressed (Tikly et al., 2024). At the same time existing studies from the Global South document significant differences between teaching and teachers’ experiences in different parts of the world (Bashir et al., 2018). This paper aims to contribute to this discussion examining perceptions of teacher professionalism at the national and local level in Sierra Leone. This country has a long history of educational disruption due to a brutal civil war (1990–2002) a devastating Ebola epidemic (2014–2016) and the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021), however in recent the years the government has made serious efforts to ensure the access to free and quality education to all children (Samonova et al., 2021).

The paper follows the ideas of the decolonial school of thoughts arguing that the promotion of Western-based concepts of professionalism as universal ones is an expression of coloniality of power. In contrast to colonialism, which is understood as political and economic relations of dominance of one nation over another, coloniality is long-standing patterns of power that emerge as a result of colonialism but define culture, labour, intersubjective relations and knowledge production (Maldonado-Torres, 2007: 243). Coloniality does not disappear after the formal end of the colonial regime but continues to reinforce a basic and universal social classification of the population through inferiorization of non-Western societies (Quijano, 2000). As an analytic category coloniality helps to critically interrogate how regimes of knowledge and political actions are produced and reinforced (Fúnez-Flores, 2023). Decolonial theory assists to examine social discourses and practices that frame our understanding of the world and define thinkable and doable, including practices and discourses in education. A true decolonisation, in this sense, means the deconstruction of Western-centric concepts and paradigms, and recognition of plurality of perspectives and systems of knowledge (Gordon, 2023; Mignolo, 2007). It does not undermine the existence of Western-based systems but rather proposes horizontal dialogues across the world and calls for the acknowledgement of ‘multiple and diverse ways of knowing and understanding the world’ (Naylor et al., 2018: 199).

Educational policies and practices in this regard can be seen as a contested field of meanings, and concepts, and educational realities today are still highly influenced by Eurocentrism as a ‘civilising project’ (Joseph Mbembe, 2016). As Tikly et al. (2024) mention key features of modern education systems in the Global South can be traced back to the colonial times when school system was a part of a larger colonising project aimed to render ‘the colonized economically useful and politically docile’ (Rodney, 1973: 71). These traces are clearly visible, for example, in the imposed use of colonial languages in education which reinforces the epistemological and ontological deprivation and the refusal to recognise non-western knowledge and practices as important and worthy (Meneses, 2018). Moreover, the imposition of Western-centric ideas about education and the role of teachers are often reinforced through the means of development assistance (Crossley et al., 2017; Tikly and Barrett 2013). Such international institutions as the World Bank actively promote their neoliberal instrumentalist view on education as a tool of economic growth (Devine et al., 2021; Lewis and Holloway, 2019) and frame teacher profession within the logic of market (Ball, 2003). Decolonisation in this context would mean deconstruction of the universalism of these concepts and exploring the multiplicity of locally grounded voices from the field. Several studies show that school education has often different meanings in West Africa, whereas such understandings combine both pre-colonial traditions of secret knowledge and alien Western-based concepts of achievements and managerial professionalism (Shepler 2014; Tikly et al., 2024). As Brown (Brown, 2003) mentions, these is a necessity of a nuanced approach that would acknowledge teachers’ and students’ multiple locations and experiences and recognise the role of situated knowledge within the educational systems.

This paper aims to contribute to this discussion and examines perceptions of teacher professionalism at the local and national levels. It demonstrates tensions between local and (neoliberal) international concepts and calls for dialogues between local, national and international actors. The paper starts with the methodological section, followed by the analysis of the national official educational documents and continues with the analysis of the locally grounded perspectives gathered during the qualitative field work in Northern Sierra Leone.

Methods

The paper draws on a longitudinal mixed-methods study of gender relations, schooling, and well-being of primary school children in one of the poorest rural districts of northern Sierra Leone (Devine et al., 2021). The district (approximate population of 530,000) is extremely rural: only 6.3% of households have access to electricity (compared to 22.7% nationally) (GDL, 2022). Most families undertake agricultural work, with other sources of livelihood being petty trading, gold and chromite mining. The study aimed to examine the factors that support children´s literacy in primary schools. Although teacher professionalism was not the main focus of the study per se, both qualitative and quantitative components of the study included questions on teachers’ working conditions and perceptions of a professional teacher. The study comprises annual quantitative surveys of children, teachers, and school principals in 100 communities, alongside in-depth ethnographic work in four case study communities to provide contextual understanding of socio-cultural dynamics underpinning families’ everyday lives (Devine et al., 2021). The target group of the study were children that were enrolled in class 1 in 2018 along with their class teachers and school principals. This paper focuses on the results of surveys conducted annually with class teachers (100) and principals (100) over the period of 3 years (2018–2021): baseline surveys were conducted in November 2018 and wave 1 was completed in May/June 2019. Wave 2 was planned for May/June 2020; however, it was postponed and completed in November 2020 due to school closures arising from the Covid-19 pandemic. Post-test 3 took place in May/June 2021. In addition, during the school closure period in 2020 a short phone survey with school principals was conducted with 68 of the 100 principals.

The qualitative component of study took place in 4 primary schools. The data was collected during four field trips: once in 2019, twice in 2020 (in February–March before the pandemic and in November after the schools reopened) and once in 2021. In each case study location, we conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews and group discussions with teachers, principals, students, members of school management committees, parents of children enrolled in schools and other community members, along with classroom observations. In total, over 300 interviews were conducted. We worked with national research assistants/ interpreters who also acted as cultural mediators for us and who facilitated both language and cultural translation.

In addition, we analysed key national policies related to education such as the National Education Plan and policies related to teacher training and teacher management issued by the Sierra Leonean Teaching Commission. Both interview data and national policies were analysed using a method of thematic analysis which helps to identify and interpret themes or key patterns in qualitative data (Braun and Clarke, 2012). It is recognised as a good tool to identify patterns within and across data and is often used for the analysis of lived experience and people’s worldviews (Boyatzis, 1998).

The research followed the ethical procedures approved by the University human ethics research committee as well as by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Social Welfare of Sierra Leone. Before the start of the research all research participants (including children) were informed about its purpose and their right to opt out. Pseudonyms are used throughout the paper.

Teacher professionalism in educational policies in Sierra Leone

Western style education in Sierra Leone has a long and uneven history. In the 19th century, the country was considered the Athens of West Africa as it had the first secondary schools in the region, established as early as 1787. The foundation of Fourah Bay College in the first half of the 19th century, which was the first university in West Africa, contributed to this fame. Despite these early developments most of the population remained excluded from education. According to the earliest data available, from 1971, Sierra Leone had a Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in primary school of 35% (UNESCO, 2020). Structural austerity measures and a severe economic crisis in the 1980s along with the decade-long Civil War (1991–2002) led to further degradation of the educational landscape. When peace was restored, the government declared education as a national priority and in the 2000s and 2010s the government introduced a range of reforms aiming to increase school enrolment and quality of education. In recent years, education has become a key issue on the political agenda (see Kamara, 2020). The Free Quality School Education Program was launched in 2018 which aimed to abolish school fees in government approved primary and junior secondary schools and provide students with free school materials. In April 2023 a new Basic and Secondary Education Act guaranteed 13 years free education from 1 year in pre-primary school to the end of secondary school. These policy changes are also reflected in the increase of school enrolment rates and the number of schools: between 2018 and 2022 the school enrolment rate increased by 69 % (GoSL, 2023).

The section aims to explore the concept of teacher professionalism that is embedded in these education reforms. Recent Medium Term National Development Plan stresses that education is crucial for the economic and social development as well as for the increase of international competitiveness of the country at the international arena and the latest Education Sector Plan (2022–2026) argues that quality teaching is crucial for such improvements. Quality teaching, in turn, is conceptualised as comprising two main components: strong instructional core based on a standard-based curriculum that is developmentally and gender appropriate and high-quality learning materials and excellent educators or ‘respected professionals’ that could deliver these instructions and support students’ development (GoSL, 2021). In this way the (re)definition of the teacher profession to enable transformation of current teachers into such ‘respected professionals’ as they were perceived in the past (Bolten, 2015) is a key part of the educational reforms in Sierra Leone.

As a part of this reforming process was established a Teacher Service Commission (TSC) with the aim to ‘restore hope and dignity to the teaching profession’ (SLTSL, 2017: 6). One of the major tasks of the TSC is to ‘determine who are teachers and determine criteria for the registration and licensing of teachers’ (SLTSL, 2020a: 4). In the policy documents of the commission professionalism is often equated with professional training. The teacher registration policy document claims that a professional teacher is a ‘person who possesses the requisite academic and professional qualifications’ and ‘is motivated to meet the standards’ defined by the Ministry of Education (SLTSL, 2020a:5). The Code of Conduct for teachers has similar ideas stressing that apart from refraining from any type of violence and demonstrating good morals teachers should ‘display effectiveness and efficiency in professional service delivery’ (SLTSL, 2019: 5).

The documents review shows that all recent educational policies make a big emphasis on policies on the improvement of the initial teacher training and continuous professional development of teachers. With financial and technical support of the EU, World Bank, UNICEF, and DfiD the Teacher Service Commission developed a career pathway for teachers along with a list of standards that teachers at different career stages should fulfil. In total the list comprises 5 core standards and 189 sub-standards starting from the ability to demonstrate understanding of the national philosophy of Sierra Leone, to the ability to use a variety of teaching methods in class. The ability to meet these standards should be regularly evaluated internally and externally. The Education Sector Plan argues that monitoring of schools should be regarded as one of the key priorities within the educational system (GoSL, 2021) and TSC calls for the promotion of a ‘culture of accountability’ across the teaching force (SLTSC, 2020b: 24) and provides sample templates for regular teacher appraisal equating increased accountability with the improved monitoring and supervision.

In this way, the national policy documents conceptualise teacher professionalism as a set of knowledge and skills that are acquired through professional training and can be measured using standardised evaluation methods. On the one hand, such stress of the need of professional training and desire to improve teacher performance is directly linked to the current problems in the education sector. While Sierra Leone shows impressive successes in the increase of school enrolment and number of schools, the education sector still suffers from systemic shortages, including the lack of qualified teachers: according to the latest School Census in 2022 only 62% of all teachers in Sierra Leone are qualified for the level they were teaching (GoSL, 2023). Thus, one can argue that this strive to improve teacher qualifications that is observed in the policy documents is grounded in the urgent need of trained teachers.

On the other hand, the review of the documents shows that professionalisation of teaching is framed within the paradigm of increased standardisation and effective teaching is equated with the ability to meet professional standards defined by the government authorities. This stress on standardisation and the necessity of regular monitoring that should measure teachers’ performance lies within the general conception of neoliberal professionalism in education. This is not a surprise as organisations that promote this neoliberal approach (e.g. the World Bank) are highly involved in the policy formulation and implementation through funding of the educational sector and financial and technical support of policy development (MBSSE, MTHE, 2022).

The ideology of neoliberalism is embedded in many fields and education is not an exception (Dei, 2019). A large number of studies showed that neoliberal ideas of market-driven policy have greatly influenced educational discourses around the world (Avis, 2005; Ball, 2003; Connolly and Hughes-Stanton, 2020; Lynch et al., 2012). As several scholars argue teacher professionalism under the neoliberal paradigm comprises such elements as standardisation of teaching practices, managerial control, competition, and an increased focus on assessment (Ball, 2003; Evetts, 2009; Lynch et al., 2012; Sahlberg, 2012). While this approach to teacher professionalism has been criticised for decreasing of teacher’s autonomy and power (Avis, 2005; Ball, 2003; Moore and Clarke, 2016; Tsang and Qin, 2020), it is widely embedded in educational policies both in the Global North and Global South and is often promoted by influential international organisations such as the World Bank and OECD (Sugrue et al., 2022; Codd, 2005; Schleicher, 2017; World Bank, 2018). These organisations call for an improvement in teachers’ effectiveness through increased monitoring and focus on a standardised curriculum, introduction of professional standards, improvement of pre-service teacher education and continuous professional development (World Bank, 2021).

As we have shown above, Sierra Leonean policy documents with their focus on the improvement of teacher training and the introduction of standardised teaching monitoring reflect these ideas (see also Sugrue et al., 2022). New teaching standards and the increased focus on monitoring allow the government not only to determine what is taught in terms of curriculum but also in which manner this curriculum is taught. The new career development policy makes a specific focus on teachers’ ability to follow the teaching practices determined by the set of predefined standards. Thus, these policies strive to improve the control over the classroom practices and place teachers within the strict framework of standards and regulations. Professionalism in this case is defined not only through the degree and skills acquisition but also the ability to follow the standards and guidelines developed by the government actors.

Teachers’ lives in rural Sierra Leone

While national policies and plans strive to improve qualifications of teachers and refer to the international discourse on quality education as increased standardisation and monitoring of teaching practices, local concepts of teaching are grounded in the current realities of the lack of qualified teachers. The recent school census showed that in the research area a third of primary school teachers are untrained (GoSL, 2023). The roots of this problem can be traced back to the austerity measures introduced by the World Bank in the 1980th, the Civil War (1991–2002) as well as to the high number of trained teachers who leave the profession due to the low payment and bad working conditions (see Banya, 2015; Bolten, 2015). Such unqualified teachers cannot be placed on the government payroll and thus do not receive a salary. In most schools, they are supported by redistribution of the government subsidies for schools and/or fees paid by parents, which means that in many cases schooling is still associated with additional costs despite the official abolition of school fees (Samonova et al., 2021). Such financial support is often limited and unqualified teachers have to combine their teaching with other types of work such as farming or mining, which leads to teacher absenteeism (Allen and McDermott, 2018).

Our quantitative survey of 100 schools in the Tonkolili district illustrates the spectrum of problems. The baseline survey in 2018 showed that only 43% of teachers were qualified and 70% teachers were not paid by the government. In 2021 we observed a similar picture with about 51 % of teachers qualified to teach and 76 % of teachers not receiving a salary from the government. These numbers also show that sometimes even qualified teachers are not paid because they work in schools that are not approved by the government or due to bureaucratic delays in payroll updates. We observed such a situation, while conducting qualitative fieldwork in Taroko village in spring 2019: most of the teachers in this school were qualified but none of them received their salary as they were waiting for their data to be transferred into the government system. The transfer was completed in late 2019 meaning that teachers had been teaching without salaries for more than 7 months.

Comments on the experiences of unqualified teachers in school were the most common answers to open ended survey questions. For example, here is one of the comments added to the survey in 2018 baseline by an unapproved teacher:

As a teacher, teaching for the past four years, I have been teaching without payment so I'm asking the government … to render their humble support to this school for better learning.

Similar comments consistently appear in all waves of the survey.

Qualitative fieldwork allowed us to look closely at this problem and examine teachers´ motivations to work without payment. Mirroring the data from across our sample of 100 schools, all of our case study schools had unqualified teachers. Ervel, who dropped out from grade 3 of junior secondary school, explains his decision to start teaching in a local school with his desire to help the community:

I like teaching that is why I came to the teaching field. When I came there, I saw that the community had so many challenges due to a shortage of teachers. So, I thought it fit to devote myself to be a teacher in the community. Even when I knew that I would not be paid, but because I want my community to grow, I decided to join the teaching field.

Ervel moved to Mabonoma village in 2019. In the quote above he refers to acute staff shortages that the primary school in this village suffered in the academic year of 2018–2019: there were only three teachers and a principal to teach 6 regular classes and one school preparatory class for younger children. Over 3 years, the principal was able to recruit more teachers, including Ervel. However, almost all of these new teachers were unqualified, and by the end of the 2020–2021 academic year there were 7 unqualified and 2 qualified teachers in the school. Other teachers had a similar view on their job. As Marie, who had been working as an unqualified teacher for more than 10 years, explains:

Well first and foremost is the courage God has given me because it has been 11 years now in the classroom without any salary and all the time, I pay transport fare to come to school and from school. For if you don’t have passion and love for the classroom, you won’t be able to endure such [life].

Interestingly, while Marie started as an unqualified teacher, in the course of her career she managed to complete a distance certification programme. However, she remained excluded from the payroll due to some errors in the database of teachers: according to her, her date of birth and name were entered incorrectly, thus making it impossible for her to receive a salary.

It should also be noted that these teachers have to work in highly unfavourable learning environments characterised by the lack of basic infrastructure and shortage of learning materials. School overcrowding and shortages of desks and benches have also been consistently mentioned in open comments to surveys in all waves of data collection. Our baseline survey conducted in 2018 shows that less than half of the 100 schools were built as cement structures, 34% were of mud bricks, while 16% were a combination of mud, sticks and bamboo. In the worst-case, schools have to operate without a building at all as it happened with one the case study schools that has been functioning without a school building since 2017. The previous school building was destroyed by a storm and since then the school has been using various spaces in the village to accommodate students. In 2020 the owner of the house used by the school asked them to vacate his property, thus lessons took place ‘under the mango tree’ as one of the school teachers mentioned in the interview. A new school building was due to be finished in Summer 2020—however, the construction was postponed because of the pandemic and in late 2021 the building was still not completed.

Local images of teacher professionalism

The word professionalism is rarely used in discussions with teachers and local communities. In contrast, most of the respondents talk about ‘good’ teaching, however, the analysis reveals that being ‘good’ also means to have skills and knowledge that can be associated with a certain type of professionalism, which is largely grounded in the social domain of teachers’ activities. This kind of professionalism is deeply situated within the local social networks where teachers are seen as key contact persons for both parents and children.

The realities of overcrowded schools and low salaries or total lack of payment highly influence local perceptions of teachers. Conversation with parents and community elders showed that they were well aware of the difficult situation of teachers in their villages and highly appreciative of their willingness to teach children receiving very limited compensation. One of the elders mentions:

It’s clear that without them [teachers], this school is nothing; it will just be an ordinary structure (building). Moreover, we are very grateful for these our volunteered brothers, they are doing everything within their best to impact knowledge in our children.

Although community members and teachers acknowledge significant challenges that teachers face in their work, they expect that both qualified and unqualified teachers act in the same ‘good’ way in class. Such professional actions range from being punctual to the ability to encourage students and provide them with necessary knowledge. As Mr Kabbia, who is the principal in the school explains that a good teacher is ‘someone who is punctual in school and ready to do the work’. This quote reflects the attitudes of community members towards unqualified teachers: within the context where many unqualified teachers have to work on farms/ in mines to feed their families and are often absent from school or come late to work (see also Allen and McDermott, 2018), this readiness to make certain sacrifices and stay in school despite the lack of payment is highly valued among the heads of schools and students, and is considered one of the most important features of a good teacher.

Unsurprisingly ‘teaching’ is seen as one of the most important tasks of teachers, and thus their professionalism is co-defined through their ability to enable children to ‘understand the topic’. Interestingly, in the discussions on good teaching practices nobody mentions the necessity to have specialised knowledge that one can acquire through college education only. Rather, they tend to focus on the general ability to transmit basic knowledge to children. Teachers in their interviews often refer to practical skills such as the ability to prepare lesson notes, while children often speak about the ability of teachers to encourage students to learn and to provide them with sufficient support during their studies.

However, this teaching domain is only a part of the complex local constructions of professionalism and teachers’ support is not limited to the academic context but is widely understood as social and emotional support as well. Teachers and principals are actively involved in community life outside the formal educational setting. The baseline survey with school principals from the year 2018 shows that 73 % of principals have additional roles in their communities such as assistance with administration of village development committees and self-help groups, having a role in mosque/ church and providing children sport training and private tuition.

In qualitative interviews children often refer to practical support their teachers provide them in everyday life. Many teachers share food with children who cannot afford to buy lunch and sometimes distribute pens and other writing materials to their students. In the context of the endemic poverty within the communities, these actions are very welcomed among students and many teachers see this kind of support to children as an essential element of their roles. Marie, in her reflection on what makes a good teacher argues that:

A good teacher teaches the children well, he would not flog children in class, to teach your children and any problem in class you have to solve that problem as a teacher, if a child is not feeling well and you have the money or medicine you give to the child, if some of the children do not come with lunch if you have the money give them lunch to go and eat.

Teachers are also widely seen as role models who promote good behaviour both in terms of social interactions and social practices. Santigie, an unqualified teacher from Mabonoma argues that:

A good teacher is an ideal teacher that serves as a role model to students, and the one that comes to school early. A good teacher will not smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol.

Teachers also serve as an important link between school and (mostly uneducated) parents. Parents often rely on the authority of teachers and ask them to talk to children about their (mis)behaviour. Such regular communication with parents is seen as an important element of teachers’ work. Amadu, a teacher from Mabonoma school, discusses with parents not only students’ achievements but also everyday challenges:

Regularly, I normally visit homes on social day (Friday) when most of the parents are around. I explain the challenges their children are facing in the access of food. Some parents have understood, but still there are some that haven’t.

Speaking about the ‘access to food’ Amadu refers to the fact that many students come hungry to school and/or do not have money to buy lunch. In his conversations with parents Amadu tries to explain to them the importance of regular meals for children and the negative impact of hunger on children’s capacities to study. Within the context of endemic poverty and chronic lack of food, these are not easy discussions; however, Amadu still tries to find compromises between hunger, poverty, and childcare, and supports parents in their rethinking of eating practices at home.

His colleagues from other schools also see such engagement with parents as an essential part of the teaching profession. As Mabinty from Naytikiwo explains, she regularly discusses with parents various kinds of problems that children face:

Well in the community I do not have much to do, only that if some kids have problems, some will come to me and in return, I will go to their parents to make sure we find a solution for the child.

Through such communication teachers also promote the value of education among parents. As most parents living in research sites are illiterate (literacy rates in this district lies about 40% (NDPBA, 2020)) and have a limited understanding of school affairs, teachers see it as an element of their duty to inform parents about successes of their children and encourage them to provide the best support for their children’s education that they can. One of the most common topics in conversation with parents is the amount of work that children have to perform in households:

Well, in that area, I mostly encourage them. I mostly advise their parents not to overburden the girl child with works like laundering, fetching wood, and all the other works that are to be done by parents before leaving home for mining. If that is done, the child will not concentrate on teaching in class; because she will be busy thinking of what she will have to do after school.

As Ervel mentions in this quote, children (and especially girls) often have to perform a significant amount of work before and after school, which may have a negative impact on children’s ability to do homework. Many teachers actively intervene and discuss children’s workload during school-parent meetings and individually.

In this way teachers’ roles go beyond the transmission of subject knowledge in classrooms and cover a wide range of social spheres. This social domain of teachers’ professionalism was especially visible during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Sierra Leone schools were closed on the 31st of March 2020 and reopened in October 2020, which meant that students missed the third term of the 2019–2020 academic year and first months of the 2020–2021 school year. In contrast to many other countries, Sierra Leone did not have any online teaching for primary schools during this period due to the lack of infrastructure and limited Internet access, especially in rural areas. In interviews conducted during the school closure period and soon after the school reopening many teachers argue that this inability to do their job during the school closure had a serious negative impact on their psychological well-being. Mr Kabbia, a principal from Mabonoma school shared his worries in a phone interview conducted in June 2020:

Sitting at home for over 2 months is not easy. I am used to going to the school and organizing how the school should run, teaching and helping my teachers in any difficult circumstances but for now I haven’t had the chance to do so. Even though I received my monthly salary but performing my duties as a head teacher is my main priority, sitting at home without doing anything hurts.

This narrative of the pain that was caused by ‘doing nothing’ is also present in teachers’ interviews conducted after the school reopening in October 2020. Adama, a teacher from Taroko explains how ‘sitting at home’ during the school closures hurt her:

I didn’t feel good, I felt confused, because to just sit down for five to six months was not an easy thing, I am used to being in school with the children.

Interestingly, ‘doing nothing’ in this context means ‘not teaching’ rather than not having any job at all. Our interviews show that during the school closure most teachers worked in agriculture or trade to support their families. Adama, for example, ran a petty trade business and Mr Kabbia worked on his farm. However, both did not consider this work as a ‘proper’ job and felt deeply unhappy about the inability to practise their ‘real’ profession. This anxiety about the inability to teach is shared by both qualified and unqualified teachers as both groups see teaching as their main duty in communities and have built their identities around this role.

Lockdowns and social distancing measures not only affected teachers’ abilities to perform their duties at school, but also negatively impacted on their abilities to act as authorities in terms of education and child-rearing practices. As mentioned above teachers regularly visit children’s families to check children’s well-being and health, which became impossible due to the lockdowns. Such visits are useful both in terms of early prevention of child maltreatment and providing advice on children’s health and nutrition to parents and teachers’ inability to fulfil this important task is often seen by them as a failure to children. While the survey conducted soon after the school reopening in November 2020 shows that about 75 % of teachers had phone contact with some parents during the school closure period, in qualitative interviews teachers stated that this type of contact was insufficient to fulfil their duties fully.

Interestingly, while the school closure led to some stress among teachers in their inability to fulfil their main task of educating children and providing support and advice to parents in the questions of child-rearing, it did not affect the social position of teachers as educated persons in the community.

The only thing we all join the community and the other people to sensitise, telling people to sit in one place, especially the children, telling them about the sick, that we don’t want anyone to contract the sickness, that their lives matters to us, we were not sitting down at our homes, but we go around sensitising them, so that they will all know how to prevent from the deadly diseases.

In the quote above, Adama identifies teachers as awareness raisers during the pandemic. In all 4 case study communities, teachers took part in such sensitisation campaigns. Teachers saw such participation in community life as a logical continuation of their role as authorities in child-rearing and education and were willing to exercise their authority and educate people about COVID and promote public health measures. In turn, communities were willing to accept this new role of teachers, which was based on their perception of teachers as educated people independently of their ‘real’ qualification.

Discussion

The previous sections have shown that recent educational policies in Sierra Leone imply a certain conception of teacher professionalism that lies within the neoliberal traditions with its strong focus on standardised curriculum, monitoring, and managerial control (Ball, 2003; Conolly et al., 2018). While the increased focus on teacher training and improvement of quality of teaching is directly linked with the current urgent needs in qualified teachers, the overall neoliberal focus rather reflects international discourses on education as a key to economic growth and international competitiveness than local concepts of teaching. This extension of Western-based discourses on education can be seen as an expression of coloniality of power that reinforces the domination of Western countries at the global arena (Dei, 2019).

As several scholars have noticed, neoliberalism is not only economic and political but also a cultural ideology (Harvey, 2008; Luke, 2010). Its foundations lay within the Western capitalistic and colonial paradigm of knowledge that promotes Western ways of teaching and learning as the only possible (Dei, 2019). This neoliberal Western-based paradigm is largely based on the progressivist ideas of scientific knowledge that can be quantitatively measured and simultaneously excludes all other systems of knowledge from the agenda. Such focus leads to the dominance of data gathered during the standardised monitoring over the teacher agency and creativity (Ball, 2015). Teachers, in this way, are ‘externally imposed performativity demands’ (Beck, 2009: 128). Thus, neoliberal educational agenda promotes universalised and standardised unity which is defined through external narrow concepts of knowledge and pedagogy (Dei, 2019). Education is seen as universal practice based on one correct understanding of the nature of teaching as providing students with standardised subject knowledge.

Decolonisation of such an agenda would mean the inclusion of alternative voices, worldviews, and knowledge concepts. This study showed that local concepts of professionalism can serve as such an alternative worldview providing another dimension to the discussion on teaching and learning in the Global South. In contrast to the national policies that prioritise professional training, standardised classroom practices and continuous monitoring of teacher performance, these local concepts largely focus on the social domain of teaching that goes beyond mere classroom practices. Teachers are placed within the complex network of social relations that defines their horizon of action and their expectations towards themselves and other participants of the educational process. Local concepts of professionalism include such aspects as support and encouragement of students both in and outside the school, taking a leading role in the promotion of education in local communities and serving as authorities in child-rearing questions. Our data from the times of the COVID-19 pandemic clearly demonstrate that the inability to fulfil these social roles were the major sources of teachers’ anxiety during the school closure period. At the same time, trust between teachers and the community allowed teachers to retain their social status and play leading roles in the pandemic sensitisation of their communities.

Teachers’ knowledge still plays a significant role in the construction of the good teacher image; however, the concept of knowledge is framed differently. While within the neoliberal agenda knowledge is understood as a set of skills that are acquired during the professional training and can be monitored and measured through a set of standardised criteria, local knowledge is seen as a general competence of educated people to make judgements about the world and promote best practices within their local community.

In this way, our study shows that the concept of teacher professionalism and the underlying concepts of knowledge and social status are defined differently within the local and international discourses. At the same time, international agenda of neoliberal professionalism with its universalist ideas of homogenous and standardised educational systems refuses to acknowledge the existence of alternative realities, which in turn, leads to the reinforcement of the domination of the neoliberal Western-centred paradigm in education.

Conclusions

This paper examines the concepts of teacher professionalism in Sierra Leone. The analysis revealed a disconnect between the concepts found in the national policies that can be placed within the global discourse of neoliberal education and understanding of professionalism at the grassroots level that is focused on extended social roles of teachers within communities. From the decolonial perspective such hegemony of global discourses on the Sierra Leonean educational agenda can be interpreted as an element of coloniality of power that imposes Western understanding of teaching and learning practices. While the increased stress on teacher professionalisation and standardisation can be directly linked with the current educational crisis in the country, the analysis of the local concepts shows that such narrowing of teachers’ role undermine other aspects of teaching professionalism that are an integral part of social life in local communities. Thus, this study problematizes the uncritical application of global Western-based concepts to other contexts and shows an urgent need of an open dialogue on teacher professionalism that would include multiple views and perspectives.