Ride With the Devil: How PISA Affects Teacher Professionalism, Subjectivity, and Teaching in the Neoliberal Age?

• In Event: Critical Examinations of Neoliberalism and Innovation in Education Policy Making

Abstract

This paper synthesizes how PISA affects teacher professionalism, subjectivities, and teaching practice against the background of the neo-liberal policy technologies. Seduced by PISA, the current teacher professionalism shifts from activism to technocratic-managerialism. The teaching practice is fraught with datafication, dataveillance, bureaucratic accountability, and deteriorating autonomy. Teachers’ subjectivities, which morph into sites of confrontation and struggle, are continually on assault. Consequently, PISA renders current education ethically disengaged and lacking courage. Further, PISA contributes to the impoverishment of teaching and authoritarian teaching characterized by standardization and atomization. Finally, to address the Parks-Eichmann paradox emanating from PISA, the authors provided alternative approaches to overcoming the constraints of neoliberalism, which encompass democratic-ethical reflection, critical pedagogy, and critical policy sociology.

Author

• Gang Zhu, East China Normal University