Americans see teachers as coaches and pastors. Britons and Australians see them as nurses and social workers
Source: Fortune ·
A survey of over 3,000 people found broad agreement that teaching is a caring relationship, even as the AI-focused school-reform debate barely shows up.
From the source
Three answers, three countries, one open-ended question: “Teaching is similar to what other occupation or activity?” We asked this question to more than 3,000 people across the United States, England and Australia between May 2025 and March 2026. Coaching was the front-runner across all three countries. But the similarities partially diverged there. Respondents in England and Australia more often compared teaching with professional roles such as nursing and social work. U.S. respondents, meanwhile, more often likened teaching to being a parent and religious roles, such as a cleric or pastor. In the three countries, however, one other idea stood out: Teaching was primarily associated with a caring relationship. We have previously examined how Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. find common ground on what makes a good teacher, despite the polarization in the country on education and many other issues. This time, we wanted to know whether people across countries had similar ideas of…