ABSTRACT

Teaching is a craft and it is best learnt as an apprentice observing a master craftsman or woman. Teaching as a craft, a vocation, a highly skilled form of work, as facilitation, as coaching, as guidance, as delivery of preconceived knowledge have all played out in the literature and discourse. Michael Gove settled on the word ‘craft’ and in doing so he problematises the notion of what teachers are, what they do and how they learn and continue to learn. Children are commodities. Teachers are factory workers. The issue of performativity questions the notion of professionalism. If teachers are to be professional, they need the autonomy to define their own terms of reference and qualities of control, professional behaviour and accountability. In a neoliberal context, teachers are not professionals but are, instead, performers. However, the nature of the performance is not determined by the community of professionals who define the standards of the profession.