ABSTRACT
This chapter describes New Public Management and discusses how it has created a “new professional,” and how shifts in the political economy and the policy context have led to a tendency toward deprofessionalization. A “new professionalism” is being constructed in all professions and in most countries. While it is enacted differently depending on local contexts, the struggles and dilemmas of the British, Chilean, Australian, Indian, and US teachers, principals, and professors are strikingly similar, as are the neoliberal policies these countries have implemented since the 1980s. Flexible organizations in a choice environment mean that teachers, administrators, and students will be more mobile, leading to less stability and a weakening of professional expertise and organizational capacity. In education, a new generation of teachers and administrators is being socialized into a very different workplace with a different conception of teaching and leading.
