Teacher specialization is a type of professional specialization, which refers to the process that a teacher grows into an excellent education professional through lifelong professional training, professional autonomy, professional ethics and gradual improvement of his own teaching quality, that is, a person's professional development process from "ordinary people" to "educators". That is, teachers "become a member of the teaching profession and play a more and more mature role in teaching."

Specialization is usually used to refer to the process in which a semi-professional keeps reaching the standard of a complete professional. Related to the two dimensions of the concept of professional occupation, the concept of teacher professionalization also has two dimensions: the improvement of status and the improvement of practice. The former, as a system to satisfy a professional occupation, is then a process to demand status, which focuses on the extent to which teachers can obtain status as a professional occupation. The latter, as a process of improving the quality of services provided by improving the knowledge and ability of practitioners, focuses on how much professional knowledge and technology teachers use when implementing educational behavior. The former generally includes improving academic qualifications and establishing self-management groups, while the latter's specialization is actually equal to the professional development of teachers. For the development of teacher professionalization, researchers have different understandings of it because of their different perspectives.