A personal review of performativity culture in teaching work

Abstract

This paper is an experience report whose objective is to discuss the recontextualization of performativity in teaching practice through the meanings of performance excellence, stimulating competition and enhancing the performance of teachers. To support our analysis, we use Stephen Ball's (2012, 2005; 2002) studies on education reforms and the search for performativity, beyond the Policy Cycle, which understands that the policy formulation and implementation phases are not watertight or linear, since political processes are reinterpreted by the subjects involved in politics. For this incursion we present, in general lines, a theoretical discussion about the performativity and the profile of the educators. Next, we present the experience report and the reflections on it. And, finally, the final considerations in which we argue that during the analysis of lived experience, the discourse of quality in the search for homogeneity and efficacy of teaching was configured as a discursive policy and a performance mechanism. And as a result we realize that this discourse influenced the diffusion of a fixed identity of teachers that was subjected to reformism and associated to the sense of quality, efficiency, adaptation, flexibility and innovation.

Keywords: Performativity. Curriculum. Teaching work.