The Greek Government has recently introduced a series of measures concerning the management of the teaching staff and education executives, considering them as key factors for the implementation of changes envisaged. The government promotes policies  according both to special guidelines and programmes emanated from the European Union (E.U.), e.g.,  the European Framework of Qualifications (E. C, 2009) and the Lisbon Strategy, and to general discourses, promoted by transnational organizations, e.g., , OECD’s Skills Strategy.

This paper focuses on  policies indicating that the Greek authorities, responding to international discourses, prioritize the management of education and the development of professional skills for teachers and education executives, thus purporting to cover the functional needs of the education system, and, simultaneously, to regulate the professional development of teachers and education executives. These priorities in turn affect other changes in the educational field and, as documented by many studies (e.g. Alexiadou 2011), impact upon school practices, the professionalism of teachers and the structure and content of knowledge (Ball, 2010).

Two independent research studies form the background of this work, trying to explore comparatively the initial education of teachers and their training when selected to serve as education executives. We look at the consequences of these processes on education and, furthermore, on the subjectivities and the professionalism of different categories of education professionals. As a first step, we focus on the selection procedures and training of the education executives, emerging from the core of the teaching staff. We consider them to be crucial in shaping the educational process and, decisively, the content of knowledge, since, according to the official texts, executives will implement and assess the new policies, aiming to harmonize to E.U. directives and policies.

This collaboration seeks a creative cooperation of two theories that can function complementarily or antagonistically. We employ Bernstein’s theory of pedagogic discourse (1990, 2000) and more specifically his notions of introjection and projection, used to describe the orientation of pedagogical texts and subjects towards the inner, i.e., towards a system of symbolic meanings articulated within the academic field, or towards the outer, i.e., towards specific functional meanings, utilized in contexts of work and life.  At the same time, to explore forms of power and discourses behind the administrative models and the forms of subjectivities promoted, we draw from the theory of Foucault (1988) the notion of governmentality, which as the intersection between the technologies of power and the technologies of the self, attempts an “ascending” analysis of power; i.e., an analysis of the evolution of the minimal mechanisms of power to ever broadening and generalizing practices. This twofold choice is justified by our goal to investigate procedures of education, training and selection as discursive practices shaping “legitimate” ways of thought, consciousness, desire and action, and helping to consolidate discourses (Foucault, 2001).

Hence, our basic research question: how policies, deriving from dominant international discourses, identified at the selection procedures and the training materials for the executives of education, affect the construction of professional identities and subjectivities of teachers/executives of education. 

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