Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop an instrument which would measure the level of professionalism attained by public school teachers. The development of such an instrument is based upon the assumption that there are degrees of professionalism rather than a simple dichotomy between the professional and the nonprofessional. Procedures: A review of the literature revealed that the characteristics of a profession are of two basic types. First are those characteristics which are part of the structure of the occupation including such things as formal education and entrance requirements, the formation of a professional organization and the adopting of a code of ethics. The second type is attitudinal. These attributes of professionalism reflect the way in which the practitioners view their work. If the occupation has met the structural prerequisites of a profession, the approach taken in practice determines the level of professionalism reached. In order to determine the extent to which the approach taken by public school teachers toward their work approximates the professional model, the researcher developed an initial pool of 104 items for a Teacher Attitude Scale based upon the following six attitudinal attributes of a profession:

1. The use of the professional organization as a major reference. 2 . Involvement of the individual in the professional culture.
2. A belief in service to the public . 4 . A belief in the right to self -regulation.
3. A sense of calling to the field.
4. A belief in autonomy. The initial pool of items was submitted to three professionally trained teachers who were provided full definitions of each attribute above and were asked to match each item with the attribute it was intended to measure. The work of this group indicated that the six attributes should be collapsed into three. Thus, use of the professional organization as a major reference and involvement in the professional culture were combine . A belief in service to the public and a sense of calling to the field were combined and autonomy was combined with a belief in the right to self-regulation. A second panel examined the items for clarity and unnecessary duplication. This process resulted in the selection of sixty (60) items, twenty designed to measure each of the three combined attributes. The sixty item Teacher Attitude Scale was then sent to a total of 500 randomly selected teachers in eight different county school systems in Maryland. The statistical analysis was based upon 408 usable responses or just over an eighty percent return. Twenty-two items were selected for use on a field test version of the Teacher Attitude Scale. Responses from 100 randomly selected teachers in Cecil County, Maryland, resulted in the selection of nineteen items for the final instrument. Findings: The research indicates that there are two factors contributing to the professionalism of public school teachers which can be measured through the use of a self-report instrument. These factors relate to the use of the professional organization as a major reference and a belief in commitment to the profession including a sense of calling to the field. Implications: The score a subject obtains on the instrument developed through this study should be considered an attitude score . In general, the interpretation of an attitude score on a summated- rating scale cannot be made independently of the distribution of scores of some defined group. This should present no problem since the purpose of using the instrument is to place the attitude of each subject in relation to the attitudes of other subjects. Scores on summated rating scales can be interpreted in this relative sense . In terms of further research, the purpose will be to compare the mean change in attitude scores as a result of introducing some experimental variable. A study of the teachers exhibiting the more professional attitudes, according to the instrument, may reveal training and/or organizational differences which relate to this professionalism. Administrators and teacher educators could then encourage the use of those training techniques which enhance professionalism.