In this contribution, I would like to present my doctoral thesis that I recently finished (December 2014). During the past seven years, I studied a particular 'thing' that's been very active in specific practices within the field of teacher education. It is called 'the Flemish teacher's professional profile' and lists 10 competences that define a good teacher. As teacher standards have become an ubiquitous matter in (teacher) education in many countries nowadays – ubiquitous in that sense that their appearance has become so familiar and self-evident that it seems to be indisputable – in this research, we looked for a way to challenge the routinized way of addressing this ubiquity. Therefore, we do not start from what these profiles are (the content) or what they are there for (the goal). Instead, we focus on how they come to work and by means of which mechanisms they appear as a factual matter. For that reason, we adopt a fully localized – that is: a fully materialized – approach, following what happens when a particular standard – in casu: the Flemish teacher’s profile and core competences for the teacher (Ministry of the Flemish Community, 2006) – comes to work in particular settings. What we look for, is where and how, in these particular settings, reference is being made to the teacher’s profile and the core competences, and how, by so doing, they become important and meaningful. Building on Bruno Latour’s ethnographic analyses and the methodological principles of actor-network theory, we call this a study of the teacher's profile 'in action'.

Ceulemans, C. (2014). The teacher’s profile as black box: an analysis of educational standards at work [unpublished doctoral thesis]. University of Antwerp/Catholic University of Leuven. Ceulemans, C., Simons, M., & Struyf, E. (2012). Professional standards for teachers: how do they ‘work’? An experiment in tracing standardisation in-the-making in teacher education. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 20(1), 29-47. Ceulemans, C., Simons, M., & Struyf, E. (2014). What, if anything, do standards do in education? Topological registrations of standardizing work in teacher education? European Educational Research Journal 13(1), 73-88. Latour, B. (1987). Science in action. How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (2010). The making of law. An ethnography of the Conseil d’Etat. Cambridge/Malden: Polity Press. Ministry of the Flemish Community, Department of Education and Training (2006). Decree on Teacher Education in Flanders. Brussels: Information and Documentation Section.