To what extent is your professional identity fabricated? Can you tell whether others we engage with have fabricated identities?

The notion of ‘fabrication’ is fascinating. It is couched with corporate discourses of accountability, performance and competition (Ball, 2003) and becomes pronounced when it is made manifest through people’s activity both within and on behalf of the organisations they work for. I would suggest that these fabrications are visible in structures and language and are in some way linked to ‘cruel optimism’. According to Ball;

“Fabrications are versions of an organization (or person) which do not exist; they are not ‘outside the truth’ but neither do they render simply true or direct accounts; they are produced purposefully in order ‘to be accountable’. Truthfulness is not the point; the point is their effectiveness, both in the market or for inspection or appraisal, and in the ‘work’ they do ‘on’ and ‘in’ the organization; their transformational and disciplinary impact.” (2003, p. 224)

It concerns me that organisational expectations and externally mandated processes fabricate our identities. Who teacher are and what they believe in is being distorted through fabrication as ‘auditable commodities’. Teachers work is increasingly being defined by auditable artefacts such as planning, lesson observations, assessment results and league tables. What interests me is how our professional identities can be influenced by other forms of fabrication through engagement with ‘edupreneurs’ (edubusinesses and self-promoting individuals) and their ideas and products.

I wonder if the practices and activities of edupreneurs are subject to the same levels of scrutiny and accountability that are applied to teachers? IS their impact on schools and children, and notably teachers evaluated, and if not, why not? I am not suggesting that all these folks are unscrupulous, unregulated free-marketeers, but I am concerned about how schools and teachers identify value for money and the best learning opportunities.

Teaching is a time-impoverished profession. It seems to be in a slow-dance and deep embrace with agendas of quality, improvement, targets and comparability This is a process that at once develops heroic teachers while attempting to diffuse excellence everywhere. Teachers work hard to make education work to meet the needs of children but their work often competes with open-market cartels of ‘providers and spruikers’ peddling products from a decontextualized space. How do schools and teachers discern what and who to engage with to support their growth and hard work? The ‘market’ for professional learning seems to magnetise all and sundry and create the conditions for ‘fabrication’ for edupreneurs. Schools and teachers provide a ‘rich seam to mine’ for edupreneurs with the inclination.

Edupreneurs use terms like ‘expert’, ‘certified’, ‘demonstrator’, ‘disruptor’, ‘author’, and ‘keynote speaker’ which are terms that have become rampant in the educational vernacular. The terms alongside companies and branded products create an allure for teachers and leaders. They’re terms that leaders may be attracted as, worthy of a name-drop, worthy of following, and worthy of teacher interest, time and investment. Guarantees are articulated that the time spent can be logged and recorded with respective professional bodies as professional learning or development. Do these edupreneurs get audited for the quality of what they offer? What agreements have been struck whereby professional learning providers satisfy what awarding bodies require to make themselves accountable?

I am not suggesting that we return to a vestige of yesteryear when all decisions for professional learning and development were prescribed for us as this would seem deprofessionalising and anti-agentic. There is something powerful about choice. Perhaps the dilemma lies in the duel tensions of what organisations want and the individual wants. Stating ‘what is best for all’ to me translates as ‘we will fabricate your identity to re-purpose and re-cast your efforts to the visible output part of the system’.

It is increasingly important in such an open market for educational that we are critical and reflective consumers of what the players in this space offer. It is easy to be swayed and fabricated and susceptible to groupthink. I suppose the key question is, are teachers’ fabricated identities better for students than their authentic ones?