Complying with Neoliberal Performative Techniques in Chinese Education

Abstract

In this period where performance management has gotten to an abolishing degree of teacher quality and school viability; educational institutes, students and teachers are presently under pressure to compete for acknowledgment on the premise of evaluations, yearly audits, and ranking of tables: where teachers are now positioned as self-governing professionals with their work progressively measured against students’ performance on national and international tests. And teachers who are’ ethical subjects’ find their values have been tested by what Stephen Ball called ‘the terrors of performativity’. Further, the value placed on measuring, politicizing, and labeling teachers has caused emotional stress in transforming what it’s meant to be a teacher. The literature review results were based on one research question: Why do teachers still comply with neoliberal performative techniques? The literature search was based on the following primary keywords such as “teacher performativity,” “teacher + neoliberalism”, and “teacher + performance management”. The paper unravels that teachers are still complying with neoliberal performative techniques because it provides a stage to gain joy and social acknowledgment, which worked as a psychical motivating force persuading them to utilize them for their academic advantages.