Professional exclusion: The messy reality of teacher misbehaviour

Abstract

This paper presents findings from a documentary analysis of a prohibition order of a teacher charged with misconduct and disciplined by the Teaching Agency, an executive agency within the Department for Education in England. As a public document, it provides evidence of the often clandestine phenomenon of teacher misbehaviour; as the discourse of professional exclusion, it provides evidence of the mechanisms of control exerted by professional regulation and decentralised measures of performativity. While the Teaching Agency position teacher misbehaviour as a purely deviant and individualistic act, the analysis of this case is facilitated by a model that considers the contextual factors such as the organisation, professional standards and public trust. The paper concludes by highlighting the messy reality of teacher misbehaviour that embraces notions of both organisational deviance and organisational resistance that is often ignored by the discourse of professional exclusion