Teacher Professionalism, Embodiment, and Surveillance: An Autoethnographic Study
Abstract
This autoethnographic study entails using my own situated knowledge and experience as a white bisexual secondary school teacher from a low socioeconomic background as a basis for data generation and analysis. Attention is given to examining the current enforcement of specific norms governing behavioural and physical conduct, and the role these norms play in constructing and reinforcing hierarchical structures of identity related to race, gender, socioeconomic status and sexuality. The main question the study explores is: How does the performativity and performance of educator “professionalism” contribute to constructing/reinforcing hierarchies of identity with respect to gender, sexuality, social class and race? This study explores the idea that “professionalism” as a concept within educational institutions serves as a regulatory regime that is dictated and informed by a cisgender, white, heterosexual, male perspective, and it further examines my own experiences of such regulatory conditions.