ABSTRACT
Government policies internationally have resulted in the increasing deprivatisation of teachers’ work. If teachers are the most significant change agents in the school, then understanding their work and lives and what influences these in contexts of challenge and change over a 30 or 40-year career is key to ensuring their on-going commitment and quality. For some time it has been claimed that the emphasis on corporate management, which many reforms illustrated in the examples have resulted, in a sea change in the nature of professionalism. In 1996, it was claimed that each teacher must be a professional who clearly meets corporate goals, manages a range of students well and documents their achievements and problems for public accountability purposes. Consequently, trust between the teaching profession, unions and educational bureaucracies erodes as they increasingly operate in a climate of surveillance and with a contradictory set of assumptions about the nature of teachers’ work, and how that work is recognised and rewarded.
