Welcome to the InfoSci Platform
Performativity in Practice: An Actor-Network Account of Professional Teaching Standards

Performativity in Practice: An Actor-Network Account of Professional Teaching Standards

Dianne Mulcahy
Copyright: © 2013 |Pages: 16
ISBN13: 9781466621664|ISBN10: 1466621664|EISBN13: 9781466621671
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-2166-4.ch001
Cite Chapter Cite Chapter

MLA

Mulcahy, Dianne. "Performativity in Practice: An Actor-Network Account of Professional Teaching Standards." Social and Professional Applications of Actor-Network Theory for Technology Development, edited by Arthur Tatnall, IGI Global, 2013, pp. 1-16. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-2166-4.ch001

APA

Mulcahy, D. (2013). Performativity in Practice: An Actor-Network Account of Professional Teaching Standards. In A. Tatnall (Ed.), Social and Professional Applications of Actor-Network Theory for Technology Development (pp. 1-16). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-2166-4.ch001

Chicago

Mulcahy, Dianne. "Performativity in Practice: An Actor-Network Account of Professional Teaching Standards." In Social and Professional Applications of Actor-Network Theory for Technology Development, edited by Arthur Tatnall, 1-16. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2013. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-2166-4.ch001

Export Reference

Mendeley
Favorite

Abstract

In the context of neo-liberal education policy reform, professional teaching standards have become one of the main means of managing improvements to school teaching and assuring its quality. Using the methodology of material semiotics in association with video case data of classroom teaching (in this case, school geography teachers) and their students, the author treats a set of standards in action, towards conducting an ontological inquiry. Bringing the performative perspective of actor-network theory to bear not only is sociality taken into account but also materiality. This paper argues that standards are best understood as shifting assemblies of practice whose nature defines and enacts teacher identity and teacher professional knowledge differently in different locations. The conclusion is drawn that while teaching standards ‘clot’ and can serve to standardise practices of teaching, they are not stable entities. The variable ontology that they manifest challenges the managerialist impulses that tend to drive standards work in education. Altogether, the paper seeks to augment existing accounts of standards within the field of the sociology of science (Bowker & Star, 1999; Star, 2010; Timmermans & Berg, 2003; Timmermans & Epstein, 2010) and contribute to its subfield, the sociology of standards.

Request Access

You do not own this content. Please login to recommend this title to your institution's librarian or purchase it from the IGI Global bookstore.