Analyzing Governmentalized Teachers’ Engagement in Professional Development through Exogenous and Endogenous Perspectives

• In Event: Teacher Agency, Well-Being, and Equity: Professional Development and Leadership in Diverse Contexts

Proposal

Within the regime of neoliberal governmentality, the OECD has closely aligned teaching quality with human capital through its PISA program. This alignment has generated a technique of data governance, enabling governments to exercise a strategy of steering-at-a-distance. This is particularly evident in the use of performance management, where performativity produces motivated subjects committed to enhancing their teaching competencies through professional development. At the same time, teachers are positioned as accountable subjects, bearing responsibility not only for students’ learning outcomes but also for national economic futures.
While these external mechanisms—rooted in human capital discourse and performativity—play a significant role in shaping teachers’ self-knowledge and practices of self-care, such an exogenous approach risks underestimating the role of internal impulses, particularly teaching commitment, in influencing teachers’ professional development. An endogenous perspective can thus offer a more nuanced understanding of how governmentalized teachers are crafted.
In light of these exogenous and endogenous approaches, this section invites papers engaging with the following themes:
A. PISA and human capital discourse
B. Data governance and education policy
C. Performativity and motivated subjects
D. Responsible subjects and teacher professional development
E. Teaching commitment and self-improvement
F. Any topics related to neoliberal governmentality

Authors

• Tien-Hui Chiang, the World Congress of Comparative Education Societies

• Thomas S Popkewitz, Uinversity of Wisconsin-Madison