The new teacher subjectivity. Construction of teachers' subjectivities at the beginning of the Preferential School Voucher's implementation in Chile

Abstract

This paper is based on 12 focus groups of primary schools' teachers as part of the qualitative research on the perceptions of directives and teachers at the beginning of the Preferential School Voucher Law's implementation (SEP is its acronym in Spanish). The authors argue that SEP is an example of a neoliberal policy that reconfigures the teachers' subjectivity. Based on theoretical tools of Foucault, Rancière, and a psycho-social approach to affective-emotional dimensions a particular reading is proposed to describe the scope of SEP as a mode of regulation, and an understanding of the relationship between educational policy and teachers' subjectivity. The teachers expressed ambivalence and anxiety facing the SEP's implementation and its orientation to modify their logics and conditions of work. Forms of resistance, submission, and a painful subjectification were identified. This analysis poses important challenges to understand the relationship between neoliberal educational policies and the teacher professionalization.