Educational reforms based on the premise that high-performing teachers produce high-performing students that in turn is considered necessary to create a high-performance society that is competitive in the global economy (Liew, 2012), have been launched all over the world with the ambition to strengthening teachers' professional knowledge and skills. A Swedish reform that follows that logic is the so-called Career Services for Teachers (CST) reform (Prop. 2012/13:136, 2013) which introduced a new category of teachers, the so called 'first teachers' (Alvunger, 2016), that are expected to spread their expertise to other teachers and thereby the Swedish schools quality. The logic in the reform text bears characteristics typical for global education reforms described by Ball (2003) as consisted of three embedded interrelated policy technologies; the market, managerialism and performativity. In the CST-reform, performativity is the technology that appears most clearly in relation to the teachers and to the definition of their profession, knowledge and skill. Performativity is, according to Ball (2003), a technology that regulates and defines what is of worth, quality or value through the measure of performances of individuals subjects or organizations (p. 144). The consequence is that the logic of performativity has displaced the notion of discipline as the tool for social evaluation (Locke, 2015). Performativity has thus become a regulative force containing a representation of the teacher as a neoliberal professional where individual professional development is prioritized prior to collegial development. In relation to the above we argue that the CST reform urgent questions; what is indicative for skilled professional teachers and how should these be measured or in the end can these skills enhance the quality of students and education? In this study we will elaborate on this. The paper deals with questions about how professional knowledge and skills are described and addressed in our ethnographic study of first teacher and headmasters that were responsible for the appointment of these positions. The theoretical underpinning is taken from the sociological theories (Singh, 2002; Bernstein, 2000) and policy sociological theories of performativity (Ball, 2006; Beach, 2010; Liew, 2012; Locke, 2015). With this contribution, our aim is to elaborate on the consequences of policy changes and what is considered valuable knowledge for the teacher profession and what consequences this may have for teachers' work and professional identity. The results will hopefully be of relevance for researchers, headmasters, teachers and policymakers both in Europe and other countries.

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