Conspicuous practice: self-surveillance and commodification in English education

Abstract

Teachers in England have always been watched; only more recently have they been surveilled, with senior leaders, peers, students and stakeholders all collecting performance data. Yet surveillance in schools and colleges increasingly relies on watching the self, with teachers voluntarily participating in their own surveillance, making their practice visible for easy consumption by interested parties. This article builds on previous work on the surveillance of teachers to argue that this ‘conspicuous practice’ represents a convergence of surveillance and consumerism, with teachers being recreated as commodities and their own marketing agent, embodying the entrepreneurial self to maximise employability. Through social media such as Twitter and LinkedIn to exploiting open plan learning spaces, teachers engage in conspicuous practice for three main reasons: from fear, to avoid sanction; as a result of acculturation into commodified environments; as a means of routine resistance, employing the dramaturgical self for personal gain, to avoid work or re-appropriate professionalism.