The paper focuses on the effects on teachers’ work of new forms of regulation, as examples of ideas and political technologies that travel globally and steer specific national forms of teacher professionalism. We explore the macro-processes of policy steering and their effects on professional identities and practices. We highlight the ways in which OECD’s knowledge-based regulation tools (KBRTs) attempt to promote orthodox professional practice and increased standardisation of professional formation. Three main elements of KBRTs are (Pons & Van Zanten 2007): (i) they reflect particular ‘world visions’ that represent the agenda setting capacities of particular interests (ii) they represent a particular and politically oriented set of beliefs concerning legitimate policy in a given domain, (iii) they represent a wide and growing network of actors. (Jacobssen 2008). We draw on the history of OECD’s PISA to concentrate to recently inaugurated TALIS. We clarify the ways in which these instruments alter the logic of education governance (Carvahlo & al. 2009, 2012). In our sections we analyse the influence and interests of OECD, theories of professionalism and work and cases of Finland and England.