ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the issue of teacher disempowerment within a centralized education system. It investigates the mechanisms of educational governance and cultural logics which, when situated in a climate of policy hyperactivity, contribute to teachers experiencing feelings of powerlessness. The chapter draws on data from ethnographic interviews carried out with teachers working in Thailand's education system, from which two notable concepts, jìt win-yaan kroo (the teacher's spirit) and pôo bang-káp ban-chaa (the commander-supervisor) surfaced. The idea of the teacher's spirit, which is traditional and central to conceptualizations of Thai teachership, idealizes the “good” teacher as dutiful, dedicated, and sacrificial. The formal commander-supervisor role, which describes bureaucratic work relations between supervisors and subordinates, necessitates compliance and positions teachers as the least powerful stakeholder in educational governance. Compounded by the effects of policy hyperactivity, these constructions work to produce the figure of the powerless teacher as an expected and enacted subjectivity. Examining these mechanisms using Peter Jackson's (2004) notion of the “regime of images” reveals how these concepts prevail and continue to reproduce such uneven power relations. Ultimately, this reinforces the figure of the “tiny teacher” who “runs after policy,” in turn contributing to a system that individualizes and overwhelms teachers while also discouraging mobilization and resistance. This has crucial implications for current teachers' motivation to remain in the profession, as well as for future teachers who may be discouraged from entering teaching upon learning about its “reality.” It also raises important questions for existing and future policy efforts to “engage” and “empower” teachers, foregrounding the need for education reforms that are more sensitive to the demands of practice and the classroom contexts where they will be enacted.
