Care and Professional Identity

Introduction

This entry will highlight teacher professional identity in the context of policy trends toward neoliberal forms of accountability and transparency presented as “professional” practice. It will explore some of the tensions present between these neoliberal techniques (such as quality standards and performance measurement) and [alternative] values on which teacher professional identities often rest. Specifically, the entry will explore concepts of care and relationality that are often entwined, yet overlooked, in teacher professional identity. This will foreground discussion of some ways that professional identity is both performed and measured differently depending on diverse sets of personal, practice, political, and policy values and consequences.

Many argue that the origins of the neoliberal policy framework are dated back to the 1980s UK government of Margaret Thatcher. Neoliberal economic, education, and political thinking privileges the private sector over the public...