ABSTRACT
As in all other professions, the practices and social status of teaching are shaped by the social, economic, and political conditions of a given era. As a result, each era gives rise to its own unique teacher typology. Hence, to deepen our understanding of the new type of teacher imposed by the neoliberal project, it is essential to know the historical background of the issue. This new teacher is not ‘normal’, ‘natural’ or ‘universal’—it is constructed. And a teaching practice different from the Exam-Oriented Technician is possible. This paper considers the changing teacher typology in Turkey over four historical political stages. The ‘revolutionary teacher’/the idealist-socialist teacher type of the 1980s and 1990s has been replaced by the current ‘teacher as technician’ who enforces the neoconservative, religious, Islamicising policies of the AKP government within a neoliberalised, marketised education system.
