Action: professionals learning to labour

Abstract

This chapter suggests that the combination of the ‘uncommon’ knowledges for and about the curriculum and teacher readies both for schools as businesses, where data on pupil outcomes has come to dominate the design and delivery of the curriculum and pedagogy for a segregated marketplace. Core to this has been a shift in accountability away from collegiality and peer review towards data-determined performance measurement as competent teaching. Teachers and teaching are now directly implicated in the construction and maintenance of sectarian divides based on uncommon knowledges. The chapter explores these trends using Hannah Arendt's identification of labour, work, and action. It first outlines her ideas before critically engaging with the notion and realities of performance accountability.