During the last two decades education turned out to be one of the central interests of national governments. Education is seen as an important lever for not only the social, cultural and economic development of a country, but also for the personal and professional development of its population (e.g. Vandenberghe, 2004). Therefore, educational quality, and more specific teacher quality, have become significant policy issues (e.g. Masschelein & Simons, 2008; Furlong, Cochran-Smith & Brennan, 2009). This striving of policy makers to further educational quality is being translated in several steering mechanisms (e.g. Kelchtermans, 2004). In many countries governments for example impose standards on education, such as specific goals to be reached by the students or sets of competences beginning teachers should have at their disposal. Since 2006, ‘basic competences' are articulated in the new Decree on teacher education in Flanders, Belgium. The basic competences of the beginning teacher are derived from the ‘professional profile of the teacher’ described in the Decree, defining the knowledge, skills and attitudes of the trained teacher. The Decree and the regulations that go with it explicitly present the ‘professional profile’ as an ideal, a standard and a frame of reference for teachers, schools and teacher trainers (Department of Education, 2008).

Based on the Actor-Network-Theory of Bruno Latour (2005), this study treats the professional profile of the teacher as “a (seemingly) certain, cold, unproblematic black box: a sentence that is devoid of any trace of ownership, construction, time and place; a fact.” (Latour, 1987: 22-23) Indeed, the evident use of the professional profile in educational policy and teacher training seems to indicate that a kind of black-boxing and stabilization have taken place; issues related to ownership, background, interests and time and space seem to be moved to the background and become invisible. As a consequence, the discussion about ‘good education’ and ‘good teachers’ is to a large extent a discussion within the framework of the professional profile and basic competencies. The use of the professional profile and basic competencies could be compared to our everyday use of the computer: it is taken for granted and using it strengthens its case. A deficiency, however, can cause the computer to break down and turn it into an assemblage of many components (e.g. the hard disk, the memory, the software…). In a similar way, our analysis of the professional profile of the teacher aims at destabilization; it wants to short-circuit and open up the black box by making visible the components of and relations in the assemblage. Leading research questions in reopening this black box are: What ‘actants’, including texts, organizations, persons, procedures, techniques…, are part of the assemblage and how do they relate (or mediate(?)? Which stabilization mechanisms are at work in the assemblage?

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