Performativity and primary teacher relations

Abstract

Performativity discourse currently pervades teachers' work. It is a discourse that relies on teachers and schools instituting self-disciplinary measures to satisfy newly transparent public accountability and it operates alongside a market discourse. The introduction of the performativity discourse has affected teacher relations at three levels of professional work -with students, colleagues and local advisor/inspectors. Ethnographic research with primary teachers, which focused on their experience of Ofsted inspections in six schools over periods of up to four years, is the source of this paper. The paper argues that a humanist discourse prevalent in teacher relations with students, colleagues and advisor/inspectors has been challenged by a performativity discourse that: