Like research assessment excercises, we see the discourse on ‘evidence’ as part of a technology (Ball, 2008) through which governance agencies attempt to increase their control over the production and 'use' of knowledge. The changing nature of research, evident in the ‘squeezing out’ of ‘risky’ long term basic research (Bernstein, 2000), has been driven by policy and funding agencies' objectives. Education research, in particular, is becoming more amenable to objectives of funding agencies, especially those of the EU, to promote and monitor its policies in member states. For instance, the EU often reports on evidence-based education policy making by using ‘independent’ studies (e.g., CHEPS, undated), while the centralized coordination of the research process, the technocratic approaches to theory and methodology, the emphasis on results, raise crucial issues concerning the contribution that this kind of research can make in addressing complex educational issues. Against this background, two concerns inform our approach. First, the kind of theory and methodology that would be appropriate to deal with the increasingly complex field of ‘symbolic order’, and the role of education in reproduction and change (Bernstein, 2000, 2001). Second, starting with the view that no local site of knowledge/power can function without integrating its strategies within wider strategies, and, conversely, no universal strategies can operate unless they are anchored in local sites of power (Foucault, 2002); we are interested in studying the processes through which EU policies, interacting with national policies and international agencies, attempt to impose particular discourses and priorities upon educational institutions. Our paper presents research on EU-inspired changes in the curricula for the initial education of teachers in Greek universities. We use Bernstein’s distinction between ‘competence/performance’ pedagogic models to explore transformations in teachers’ knowledge base and identities. We also explore whether Foucault’s notion of ‘bio-power’, when translated into ‘bio-pedagogies’ and the related notion of a ‘perfection mode’ (Evans, Davies & Rich, 2008) - initially used to study teachers’ subjectivity and the body – can have wider application and relevance within the field of Teacher Education. Our theoretical choices are justified by our aim of exploring teacher education institutions as sites of symbolic control, producing dominant discursive codes, which, inscribed in the body, shape legitimate ways of thinking and of feeling, consciousness and desire (Bernstein, 2001). Hence, our main research question: What kind of choices do education departments make in recontextualising knowledge for teachers, in response to policy pressures and challenges?

Our data comes from two independent studies investigating curricular changes in University Departments of Education for primary school teachers, and for teachers of Physical Education, respectively. One crucial factor driving such curricular changes in these two kinds of Education Institutions, as with Greek Higher Education more generally, is the ‘Operational Programme for Education and Initial Vocational Training' (EPEAEK II), which disseminates EU education policy at the national level through allocation of funding. Both studies analyse the official texts produced by the relevant institutions in the process of reform, in particular their student handbooks. We understand these documents as pedagogical texts, and as public displays of institutional activity. We analyze their principles of construction, their pedagogic messages and their possible consequences for teachers’ intellectual standing and professional identities.

Our approach can inform discussion at three levels. First, the complex issues we confront in investigating institutional profiles, professional identities and teacher subjectivities in the current policy context, allow us to expose the instrumental and generalising ways of ‘evidence based’ approaches to research. Second, the observed tendency to ‘regionalization’ (Bernstein, 2000) as interdisciplinarity enables a critical discussion of the introduction of instrumentality in the use of knowledge. Third, the insight that ‘perfection modes’ are important means for inquiring not only into knowledge but also into teachers’ embodied subjectivities in the context of Physical Education, will aid the reflection on the adequacy of our theoretical resources, in respect of the demands of Teacher Education as a specific domain of research.