The teacher as designer, scientist and technician: Positioning private school teachers in China as post-performative teachers

This paper utilises the concepts of “post-performativity” and “the post-performative teacher” to explore the private school context in China. It does this by drawing on in-depth interviews with Chinese language teachers and utilising metaphor analysis to highlight three recurring teacher identities that collectively constitute a post-performative teacher identity. The identities are teacher as designer, teacher as scientist, and teacher as technician. In so doing, this paper offers emerging evidence of how teachers in private schools negotiate the dual demands of accountability and commitment to the teaching profession. The identity positions of designer, scientist and technician could be used by researchers for developing the concepts of “post-performativity” and “the post-performative teacher” in future research. In particular, the paper argues that the concepts of “post-performativity” and “the post-performative teacher” have academic currency in non-public, non-Anglophone education contexts, and may be indicative of a more general post-performative condition that requires further investigation. Copyright © 2024 Educational Review.