Dis/placing teacher identity: performing the ‘brutal forms of formalities’ in English Further Education

This paper analyses how teacher identity is shaped by professional standardisation and regulatory apparatuses in the context of English Further Education from a specifically spatial perspective. We focus on how these apparatuses erode teachers' sense of identity and, paradoxically, quality by establishing what anthropologist Marc Augé (1935-2023) calls “non-places”. Drawing on interview data and Augé’s spatial anthropology, we discuss how places can define, foster and erode identity and, thus, practice. Our data shows how teachers’ accounts of their changing spatial experiences reflects the transient nature of their own interpretations of how identities are shaped in these shifting contexts of “dis/placement” wherein the process of identity construction frequently places individuals in contact with another side of themselves.

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