This paper results from research in New Zealand. Located in Europe's antipodes, New Zealand's systems, politics and intellectual work may appear peripheral to a European conference. However, the conference theme, "knowledge economy", is central in the New Zealand Government's current policy agenda and all sectors of the education system, including universities, are subjected to tightening processes of surveillance to ensure compliance with this direction. Accordingly, the research component of university funding is to be allocated according to the results of a Research Assessment Exercise (similar to Britain's RAE), known as the Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF). The first round of PBRF was in 2004 and all staff teaching in degree programmes, including pre-service degrees in teacher education, were required to submit Evidence Portfolios of their "research outputs" for examination and ranking. While research and publications have always been requirements for university staff in Education, teacher educators in other institutions (colleges of education and polytechnics) have not formerly been expected to undertake these tasks. Instead of formal research, before the introduction of PBRF, teacher educators were encouraged to take on consultancy work, such as curriculum design and teacher development, which did not always result in refereed publications. When informed by research and theory, such grassroots work would seem consistent with Government's "knowledge economy" discourse. Since the 1990s, many teaching qualifications have been reclassified as degree courses and have therefore come under the surveillance of degree quality assurance authorities. On the assumption that all degrees were required by law to be taught by researchers, under the PBRF, teacher educators in degree programmnes now had to become "researchers" in the sense of producers of "outputs" in quality assured publications. By interrogating the relevant legislation, I question this assumption.My project investigates the impact of PBRF on the subject Education. How has PBRF's first round influenced Education academics' individual and collective senses of professional identity? What implications might this have for the subject Education as a whole? Key policy documents were analysed and 37 teaching staff in seven of New Zealand's eight leading teacher education degrees were interviewed. With the help of brief case studies from interviews, this paper identifies contradictory expectations in the legislation and in the PBRF policy documents with respect to "who" or "what" a teacher educator in a degree programme is expected and required to "be."The work of Foucault enables me to conceptualise research and other professional activities as both enabled and constrained through PBRF's surveillance, monitoring, and regulation. Policy documents and associated regulatory systems address ("hail", or "interpellate" in Althusser's sense) those subjected to them as particular types of professional. "Who" we think we are as Education academics (our subjectivity or professional identity) is strongly influenced by who or what we are presumed, supposed, or required to be in terms of the "official identities" (subject positions) constructed for us as professionals in policy documents and bureaucratic processes. "Who" does the PBRF require researchers to be? Does this "fit" the "official" professional identities (or subject positions) previously constructed for teacher educators? And is it consistent with the ways teacher educators see themselves and their work? I shall argue that New Zealand's 1989 Education Act required university staff to be intellectuals in Said's sense - independent critics and consciences of society. I offer case studies of teacher educators whose self-identifications might "fit" this subject position, but do not meet PBRF's version of "researcher" as producer of published "outputs". By marginalizing "other" intellectual/ professional identities, and rewarding only "researcher/producers," PBRF could split theory and research from teaching's practical/ professional base. If Government is serious about a "knowledge economy" this undermines their intention.