education policy analysis archives

: This article uses critical discourse analysis (CDA) to interrogate the discursive construction of Chilean university teacher educators’ professionalism in government initial teacher education policy and institutional policy enactment documents. The study examines the network of discourses — new managerialist, quality assurance, performance, functionalist professional development — producing a version of professionalism akin to organizational professionalism. Used as a form of managerial control over teacher educators’ professional practices , such professionalism exacerbates performativity while reducing professional agency opportunities and consistent professional/academic development. Ultimately, this study contributes to the necessary questioning of Chilean ITE policy reform and the need to examine its effects on university TEs’ professional lives and the professional modeling of their student teachers.


Introduction
The professionalism of university teacher educators (TEs) was traditionally tied to notions of specialist theoretical knowledge, autonomy, individual and collective responsibility (Danaher et al., 2000).However, New Public Management (NPM) hegemony in initial teacher education (ITE) policies has led to the re-evaluation of their professionalism.Over the last 40 years, NPM emphasis on quality assurance (QA) has shaped ITE policies in countries as diverse as Argentina, Brazil, Spain, England, and Canada (Gómez, 2017;Palmer, 2017;Rigas & Kuchapski, 2018;Zuluaga et al., 2017).Such a redefinition of professionalism is a well-documented phenomenon in international educational literature (Ball, 2003;Carvalho & Correia, 2018;Tseng, 2013).Still, knowledge is lacking about its impact on policy discursive constructions of Chilean university TEs' professionalism.This oversight contrasts with the widespread recognition of their crucial role in ITE policy implementation (Hinostroza-Paredes, 2019;Montenegro, 2016;Murray et al., 2019).
Already juggling teacher preparation expectations and demands, university TEs' professional lives unfold within a higher education (HE) sector, equally shaped by NPM reforms.Defined as the operational arm of neoliberalism, NPM links policy with market and managerial ideologies, where discourses of accountability and performance for HE governance prevail (Trowler, 2010).They normalize conditions for TEs' professional practices characterized by heavier workloads, precarization, increasing pressure for research outputs, and changes in organizational cultures (Vong & Yu, 2018).These discourses also intensify the binary tension between the academic and the vocational (Davey, 2013), with a perceived higher status for those TEs doing research (Ellis et al., 2012).Simultaneously, policy implementation imposes regulatory structures on university ITE departments, replacing TEs' autonomy with subtle forms of controlled professionalism more suitable for QA regimes (Murray & Mutton, 2016).They become silent implementers of reform agendas developed by others in their organizational units (Bourke et al., 2016;Cochran-Smith et al., 2018).Thus, what counts as university TEs' professionalism has changed and is changing by the influence of NPM.
Two factors make studying the policy discursive constructions of Chilean university TEs' professionalism worth investigating.Firstly, Chile became the first Latin American country to introduce a deregulated private and tuition-fee model for HE in the early 1980s (Brunner, 1993).Located in the HE sector, the market logic of neoliberalism transformed ITE provision, gradually eroded teaching profession quality and status, precarized and invisibilized TEs (Gómez & Gaete, 2019;Montenegro, 2016).Secondly, responding to public concern on quality education, governments increased program regulation from the early 2000s onwards (Fernández, 2018).Subsequently, an NPM agenda of quality audit, accountability, and measurable outcomes placed TEs under greater control (Ávalos, 2015;Lira & Fernández, 2018).However, despite policy reform affecting their professional work, they remain poorly understood and under-researched (Montenegro, 2016;Hinostroza-Paredes, 2019).Therefore, in this paper, I acknowledge their pivotal role in ITE provision by paying attention to their professionalism.Using CDA, the study aims to uncover the current constructions of university TE' professionalism in discourses at the macro (national policy) and meso (universities' policy implementation) levels.In pursuing this aim, I address the following research question: How is Chilean university teacher educators' professionalism constructed discursively by NPM-oriented policy and institutional policy implementation?
The first section of the paper maps the Chilean ITE policy context, where university TEs are situated.The second section presents definitions of professionalism, policy, and discourse.The next section introduces Fairclough's CDA model (1992, 2003) and describes the research sample and the selection procedure.The fourth section uses CDA to unveil the way discourses construct TEs' professionalism in government policy and institutional self-evaluation documents.The choice of selfevaluation reports answers the need for illustrating how universities consolidate a representation of TEs' professionalism in ITE policy implementation, congruent with accreditation standards.The fifth section explains the social practices underlying the articulation of a view of TEs' professionalism and discusses its implications.It also acknowledges the study limitations and strengths.Finally, the conclusion section summarizes CDA's main findings.

Background
Current ITE policy derives from previous policy phases in the last two decades (Fernández, 2018;Hinostroza-Paredes, 2019).Between 1997 and 2005, the first phase started when the poor quality of post-dictatorship ITE drove the launch of the Program to Strengthen Initial Teacher Education (FFID), supporting institutional projects for ITE improvement through public grants (Ávalos, 2015).A competence profile for graduate teachers, or Standards for Teaching Performance, was published in 2005 (Bourgonje & Tromp, 2011) (Placier et al., 2016).In 2014, universities became the sole ITE providers for all levels, as colleges lost approval to prepare early childhood and primary teachers (Santiago et al., 2017).
The QA policies above marked growing, but still weak, regulation that led to implementing of the System for Teacher Professional Development in 2016, signaling the state's shift from a market-based to a more control-based approach to ITE contents and outcomes (Fernández, 2018;Lira & Fernández, 2018).At present, this policy framework sets a compulsory standard-based assessment of student teachers before graduation intended to inform programs' curricular decisions; entrusts the government body, the National Agency for Accreditation (CNA), as the sole accrediting body for ITE programs; and allows only accredited universities with accredited programs to prepare teachers and access public funding (Santiago et al., 2017).In this scenario, accreditation becomes the key mechanism to ensure that universities adopt accreditation standards (Jerez et al., 2018).Consisting of a self-evaluation report and an external peer review visit followed by another report, all leading to the Agency's final decision, an accreditation process offers universities the opportunity to be recognized for delivering quality ITE provision.However, it also places the program reputation, credibility, and financial stability at risk if they fail to maintain or increase the number of accreditation years granted.Therefore, accreditation is a matter of survival today.

Professionalism, Policy, and Discourse
Professionalism is an inherently dynamic, evolving, and context-bound concept, with traditional definitions rooted in long-held normative values and identities shared by members of occupational groups to distinguish themselves from others (Evetts, 2003).These values link to ideas of responsibility, accountability, autonomy, and control, with professional status achieved by work, training, and education (Freidson, 2001;Grady et al., 2008).Today, when NPM mechanisms seem to guarantee efficient and cost-effective public services, professionalism shifts from "partnership, collegiality, discretion and trust to increasing levels of managerialism, bureaucracy, standardization, assessment, and performance review" (Evetts, 2011, p. 407).Such shift reveals a loss of the traditional professional (self) regulation, sustained on professional judgment and professional associations, and the rise of managerial control centered on competition, performance evaluation, and standardized practices (Anderson & Cohen, 2015;Carvalho & Correia, 2018).This organizational professionalism "from above" contrasts to occupational professionalism "from within" (Evetts, 2011, p. 407).
Similarly, in the education sector, the move from occupational to organizational professionalism is characterized by standardization and managerial control, replacing professional discretion and professional expertise as the traditional grounds for trust and autonomy (Evetts, 2011;Hargreaves, 1994;Osmond-Johnson, 2015).NPM creates a discourse permeated with the language of human resources while testing, inspection, and prescribed curricula codify teaching practice (Forde & McMahon, 2019).Consequently, definitions of their professionalism are far from being settled, with TEs tending to be marginalized from academia' dominant ideologies (Hall & Schulz, 2003).Such ideologies challenge university TEs, who live the contradiction between managerial demands (on teaching, research, and administrative work) and the professionalism they want to model as teachers of teachers (Connell, 2013;Hall & Schulz, 2003).
Following Foucault's governmentality (2007), professionalism can be defined as a disciplinary mechanism, through which legitimacy and control of autonomous subjects are vital in the interplay between professions and state.According to Fournier (1999), it serves to govern employees' subjectivity by exercising the appropriate conduct, using self-discipline, ethics, and regulations, to allow "the reconciliation of control and consent" that constitutes the professional as "the instrument and the subject of government, the governor and the governed" (p.285).Framed by the power relations between the subject and the state, the regulatory discourse of policy articulates professionalism.A regime of truth established by knowledge and language, policy creates the professional subjects of whom it speaks, always in flux and reflecting the dynamics of power relations and symbolic control (Apple, 1981;Ball, 1993;Maguire & Ball, 1995).Thus, professionalism is symbolic capital at stake, always contested within a context defining it (Schinckel & Noordegraaf, 2011).Its context-bound dimension explains why notions of professionalism are subtly by decisively changed by neoliberal education policies, blueprinting what it means to be a contemporary teacher, a researcher, an academic, or a university teacher educator (Ball, 2003).
On that note, policy is a legislative set of rules or guidelines for decision-making and a process to achieve specific goals (Ball, 1994).They emerge from a hardly linear and rational process of iterative interpretations, contestations, and negotiations among speaking subjects, never fully controlling the debate (Ball, 1994;Bowe et al., 1992).Ball's notion of policy as text emphasizes its multiple authorship, being created, read, filtered, and recontextualized in various settings.Moreover, it highlights "the agency side of policy work" (Ball, 1993, p. 102), where actors shape policy through "creative social action, not robotic reactivity" (Ball, 1994, p. 9).However, recognizing individual and collective agency should come with the understanding that broader structural variables strongly impact individuals' capacity to shape policy (Bell & Stevenson, 2006).Thus, policy-making processes and the discourses developing around them influence individuals' scope for agency as policy actors.
This study draws from Foucault and Fairclough's uses of discourse to analyze how ITE policy documents and university self-evaluation reports construct Chilean TEs' professionalism.The definition of discourse includes more dimensions than the text (written or spoken), such as the linguistic aspects of social practices (Gee, 2011;Johnstone, 2008).For Foucault, discourse is texts and "practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak" (1972, p. 49).According to Fairclough, discourse is "language as social practice" (1989, p. 20).It is a social process and action always in a dialectical relationship with the diverse social structures framing it, so it is shaped by them but also shapes them (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997).Thus, as "ways of representing aspects of the world . . .different discourses are different perspectives on the world" (Fairclough, 2003, p. 124).Fairclough built on Foucault's (1972) idea that discourse' transformation and rules are analyzable to develop CDA as a framework to systematically explore how "the interdiscursive work of the text materializes in its linguistic and other semiotic features" (2001, p. 240).

Fairclough's framework for CDA
The study used Fairclough's (1992Fairclough's ( , 2003) ) three-level CDA framework as the method of analysis.CDA sets a conception of discourse distinguishing texts (written or spoken), discourse practice, and social practice.Drawing heavily from Halliday's systemic functional linguistics (1985), Fairclough proposes three levels of analysis: (i) discourse as text, (ii) discourse as discursive practice, and (iii) discourse as social practice.The first level refers to the structural-grammatical features of the text.The second one is engaged with text production, distribution, and consumption.The last level consists of analyzing power and ideology scenarios external to the text but simultaneously reflected in it and reinforced by it.For Fairclough, CDA encompasses an oscillating synergy among these analytical levels, corresponding to the text description, interpretation, and explanation (Figure 1).

Explanation (social analysis)
Since discourse transmits, produces, and reinforces power; "but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart" (Foucault, 1998, p. 100), CDA uncovers how dominant discourses exercise power, constitute and transmit knowledge, and organize social institutions (Wodak, 2004).Combining linguistic and social analysis, CDA focuses on policy as text and discourse (Ball, 1993) to reveal and critique how language, social processes, and power relations shape it (Locke, 2004).Thus, CDA allows the interrogation of the discursive constructions of power, ideology, and agency embedded in policy by unveiling "how things come to be as they are, that they could be different, and therefore that they can be changed" (Hammersley, 2003, p. 110).

Sample
This study analyzed an "ensemble" (Ball, 1993) of policy and accreditation documents released by government bodies and universities between 2007 and 2016-when HE institutions and their programs became subjects of increasing regulation.Policy statement, policy guidelines, and institutional reports are the types of documents selected.After considering the scarce mention of TEs in Chilean ITE policy, I chose the government documents that greatly focus on them.Also, my choice of the corpus of analysis aimed to reveal the broad QA policy vision, embracing ITE program accreditation as crucial to ensure the education of high-quality teachers.The selection of selfevaluation reports mirrored the mixed system of private and public universities providing ITE and their diverse locations (capital and provinces) in Chile.I identified the policy documents by scanning publications on government agencies' websites.I obtained the Reports through private email communication, and I kept universities' names confidential.Within the ensemble, many more issues concerning ITE provision than just TEs were covered (i.e., curricular structure, management systems).Therefore, specific references for TEs determined extracts' inclusion.It was necessary to conduct a backup translation to ensure that extract translation truly reflected meaning.The adjustments were minimal.The documents analyzed are described below.

Analysis Textual analysis: Defining TEs' professionalism in ITE policy discourse
Text analysis identified how linguistic forms and meaning constructed TEs' professionalism across the sample documents.Central at the level of discourse as text was the description and analysis of modality (commitment to a proposition), agency (representation of actors and actions), and lexical relations (Halliday, 1985).The Standards and Guidelines are monosemic, unambiguous texts restricted to authoritative reading and one true interpretation.Interestingly, the use of the word "guidelines," softer than "standards," implying a tighter regulation, blurs the distinction between suggestion and requirement.However, in both documents, the modal auxiliary "must" and verbs in the simple present indicative form express need, obligation, and desirable qualities.For example, "The ITE department must support the professional development of its academic staff" (CNA, 2007, p. 13) and "The academic body conducts research and pedagogical innovations as part of their usual work" (MoE, 2016, p. 15).Here, modality points to "a categorical commitment of the producer to the truth of the proposition" (Fairclough, 1989, p. 129) and reinforces a textual representation of TEs' professionalism.
The Guidelines' brief section describing TEs creates an agentic image of them, with the emphasis on material process verbs-i.e."conduct," "apply," "develop," "present," "engage," "demonstrate," "update," "contribute" (MoE, 2016, p. 15).Akin to the discourse of organizational professionalism, they are doers enacting their attributes in a verifiable and sustained way.For example, "the academic body who does the teaching," "the academic body demonstrates solid mastery of the disciplinary and didactic knowledge," and "the academic body engages in permanent updating and training" (MoE, 2016, p. 15).Moreover, the transitive possessive verb "have" reifies TEs' actions into their own resources in "The academic body has relevant postgraduate training, preferably at doctoral level" and "the academic body counts with members who have up-to-date experience in the school classroom" (MoE, 2016, p. 15).Another material process relates to the institutions managing TEs' actions, observed in sentences with verbs implying getting others to do things.For example, there is a construction of the institutional role in steering TEs' professional development in "The unit must encourage and facilitate educators' engagement with postgraduate studies" and "The unit must encourage its academics' lifelong learning, their participation in research activities" (CNA, 2007, p. 13).Here, the duty to act in some way (X must do Y) is combined with managerial action words, less coercive, creating a textual pattern in which universities are 'facilitators' of TEs' actions.However, the completion of those actions is not assumed.Thus, governmental power subtly maintains the principle of universities' autonomy in a HE system where education is a market rather than a public good.
Declarative statements with causative structure, built around material process verbs, place TEs in the object position of institutional actions in the PTU Report.For instance, the university is the agent (actor) doing something (process) to TEs (goal) in "the former Academic and Quality Assurance Rector's Office has systematically organized courses, seminars, and activities directed to teachers" (2016, p. 18), and "teachers were trained [in the use of the intranet system]" (2016, p. 25).These examples suggest their passive learner role, depriving them of agency in the initiation of professional development.Conversely, the PRU Report represents TEs, and their actions in the active voice: "academics of the program have presented at national and international conferences" (2018, p. 34), and "academics develop research projects in interdisciplinary fields such as school management, interculturality, and ICT" (2018, p. 64).This Report frames them as agents, active actors of their professional and academic development.These textual elements suggest the contrasting positioning of TEs by policy implementation in public research and private teaching universities.
Lexical choices illuminate social actors' representations within the text.In the Guidelines, the lexicon links TEs' professionalism to processes of how-to-do "update" brought by the logic of "permanent" and "effective" "training" of "knowledge," and "competences" (MoE, 2016, p. 15).These words encompass a meaning of professionalism, anchored on TEs' adaptation to constant changes to function competently.Such ideal ultimately reinforces the conception that, amid the pressures of competitive managerial workplaces, survival demands a dynamic and flexible professional identity.However, none of the policy documents present a categorical view on TEs' attitudes and ethical values at the core of the profession: equity, democracy, and justice.However, the Guidelines briefly state that their practice should include aspects of national ITE standards as "inclusion, diversity, citizenship, and use of ICTs" (MoE, 2016, p. 15).Noticeable is the almost complete omission of the word "professional" in both documents, being merely used in the collocations "professional update" or "professional experience" (CNA, 2007, pp.12-13).Deliberate or not, these lexical absences may lead to assuming that there is already a shared view on TEs' attitudinal or ethical profile-or that universities are autonomous to decide about it-and TEs' professional status is undoubted.Nonetheless, the repetition of "academic" across both policy documents positions TEs firmly within the university.Further, across the Guidelines, the emphasis on the word "research" compared to the use of "teaching" in declarative statements signals a discourse in which the value of TEs' research orientation is integral to their professionalism as academics.
In both university reports, the word "teacher" appears as much as "academic" when referring to TEs.This lexical occurrence seems to relativize their representation as academics (involved in teaching, research, and service) by the government policy texts.Nevertheless, it is coherent with data from all ITE programs' accreditation processes between 2016 and 2017, indicating that most TEs only teach and are hired under fixed-term contracts (CNA, 2018).In the PRU Report, both terms' distinctive use may signal a division of roles and responsibilities in the program, differentiating the tenured academics from the non-tenured (or fixed term) teaching staff.For example: "according to the poll, teachers and academics favorably value the application of institutional statutes" (2018, p. 28), and "academics and teachers within the program participate in the Management Commission and Program Council" (2018, p. 33).Meanwhile, both words are used interchangeably in the PTU Report, suggesting no difference in meaning.For instance, "part-time tenure teachers allocate 12 chronological hours to direct teaching" (2016, p.120), and "the emphasis is upon the need for academics to introduce changes in the teaching practices" (2016, p.37).Noteworthy in this Report is the recurrence of the noun phrases "full-time tenured teacher," "part-time tenured teacher," and "fixed-term teacher," implying TEs' differentiation based on job contracts.Contrarily, the similar noun phrase "fixed-term academics" is just mentioned three times, and "hourly-paid academics" only once in the PRU Report.Such lexical absences are as relevant as included content because they often lead to ambiguity in meaning, resulting in guesses and assumptions based on commonsense (Fairclough, 1989).Since suppressing social groups in texts reflects their exclusion from discursive practices, the general omission of fixed-term and hourly-paid TEs in the PRU Report suggests that their voices remain silent during the program accreditation process in this university.

Discursive Practice: Producing and Understanding TEs' Professionalism
The second level, discourse as discursive practice, involved analyzing text production, interpretation, and transformation into a network of discourses, enabling the promotion of ideas and values about TEs' professionalism.Thus, the Standards, Guidelines, and the Reports together form a genre chain or "different genres which are regularly linked together [and] contribute to the possibility of actions, which transcends differences in space and time" (Fairclough, 2003, p. 31).They are a case of intertextuality where "a text is the absorption and transformation of another" (Kristeva, 1986, p. 37).Therefore, the Reports can be considered a response to the preceding Standards and Guidelines, with the latter being a further elaboration of the former.
Interdiscursivity, tied to intertextuality, refers to how particular discourses, styles, and genres are articulated altogether in a text (Fairclough, 2003, p. 218).It allows interrogating coexistent discourses reinforcing a particular construction of TEs' professionalism in the analyzed sample.Government, regulators, universities, and all participants across the system share the discourse of QA to align the accreditation of different ITE programs to a common national regulatory scheme.This discourse offers a clear orientation to program accountability and performance achievement while safeguarding institutional autonomy.Thus, the Guidelines set a "minimal common framework" for program achievement of "curriculum implementation, following the quality requirements by current regulations and the needs of the school system" (MoE, 2016, p. 7).It also asserts to "respect academic autonomy and value the diversity of curricular structures, according to the educational project of each university" (MoE, 2016, p. 9).Correspondingly, both Reports claim that accreditation allowed programs to "permanently consider these self-evaluation criteria to correct progressively the deficiencies identified in each process" (PRU, 2018, p. 93), and "become aware of . . .actions undoubtedly contributing to accomplishing the stated objectives and purposes" (PTU, 2016, p. 140).
Program accreditation drives performance management systems, linking QA policy aims to TEs' productivity, efficiency, and competence.Thus, they offer ways of thinking and speaking about TEs' subjectivities, which redefine the nature of their professionalism.They are an "academic body" whose suitability is established by qualifications and "by their output in the scientific, professional or educational fields" (CNA, 2007, p. 12).The Reports' answer to government policy underlines TEs' "relevant methodologies and efficient teaching" (PRU, 2018, p. 64) but also the need for "strengthening their competence in practitioner research" (PRU, 2018, p. 105), and for the institutional support to TEs' professional training to enhance their "teaching effectiveness [and] teaching for competence in the classroom" (PTU, 2016, p. 45).Programs must encourage TEs' scholarly activity, so they "develop research, apply for funding, and disseminate research findings through journals and seminar presentations" (MoE, 2016, p. 15).The PRU Report indicates institutional conformity to this guideline when asserting that "academic productivity in the program has expanded to cover a greater number of scientific areas" (2018, p. 79).
At this point, a discourse of performance emerges, entailing TEs' accountability for academic work and, most importantly, student learning.Performance evaluation systems appraise their professional efficiency, where educational processes become performance indicators and measurable outcomes representing valid information (Ball, 1999).In the Guidelines, these systems are "mechanisms for feedback and improvement, following the university-specific policies for its academic body professional development" (MoE, 2016, p. 16).The PTU Report describes them as external and internal tools: "tenured teachers' self-assessment," "semestral student evaluation of teaching [leading] to commitments to improvement," and "teacher evaluation by the Chair of the department" (2016, p. 123).The PRU Report characterized them as an "academic evaluation system . . .designed to appraise academic performance in all its core areas," "academic planning, which is a mechanism for formal control of academic performance," and a "student quantitative teaching evaluation" (2018, p. 67).In these extracts, the language of evaluation and measurement colonizes a discourse of TEs' performance that is accountable, leaves room for improvement, and controllable.As they need to provide evidence of efficiency for the system, they become subjects of performativity, "a technology, a culture and a mode of regulation that employs judgments, comparisons and displays as means of incentive, control, attrition and change based on rewards and sanctions" (Ball, 2003, p. 216).Performativity reframes their professional practice, so it is less about autonomy or collegial responsibility-terms never mentioned in the documents-and more about efficiency, output, and effectiveness.A new type of professionalism for TEs arises here, at the intersection between QA control and performance indicators, one conforming to the overarching new managerialist discourse.
Without a settled definition for professional development in HE, the term's understandings are varied, contested, and dynamic (Clegg, 2003;Crawford, 2009).By implication, it is not possible to categorically define university TEs' professional development.Although "development" can broadly be linked to deficiency and power imbalance, rendering any discourse of professional development in HE "neither innocent nor neutral" (McWilliam, 2002, p. 289).Indeed, the documents broadly mention professional development concerning TEs, and the Standards and Guidelines provide a version of it that enables a form of management control centered on performance improvement.For example, "the university implements mechanisms for the continuous support, training, and development of [their] necessary competences [and] update of their knowledge about school contexts [resulting] in specific improvements within their classroom practice" (MoE, 2016, p. 15).Here, the broader policy aim of achieving quality ITE frames a kind of professional development predominantly driven by accreditation needs.
Consequently, both Reports frame professional development as top-down and functional training, linked to improving TEs' operational knowledge for student-centered learning.Here, training "must be seen to be done-it must be demonstrated" (McWilliams, 2002, p. 296) through formal events, providing valid evidence for scrutiny.For example, "The Academic Quality Assurance Unit of the Vice Chancellor's Office has systematically organized courses, seminars, and activities aimed at teachers [such as] "the Diploma in Effective Teaching" (PTU, 2016, p. 18).Similarly, the "Vice Chancellor's Office for Undergraduate Studies organizes workshops on curriculum update, teacher development, and the adoption of new tools to support student learning" (PRU, 2018, p. 66).Such training "allows academics to strengthen their mastery of the new curriculum, giving them tools for subject planning that incorporates integrated authentic assessment" (PRU, 2018, p. 43), and improve their "evaluation strategies, teacher effectiveness, active methodologies, and competencebased work in the classroom" (PTU, 2016, p. 45).These extracts show a discursive thread of organizational professionalism, where TEs' professional development is driven from top-level academic units rather than from within their needs.In both Reports, the emphasis on trainingaimed at short-term, immediate goals in contrast to long-term, ongoing, and reflexive professional development (Richards & Farrell, 2005)-and no links to the research component of TEs' academic role suggest universities' concern with their acquisition of a technique toolkit for curriculum implementation.Without mentioning peer collaboration, knowledge sharing, and reflective practice development, the Reports represent TEs as educational technicians rather than academics.This functionalist professional development, tied to competence and skill acquisition to deliver curricular changes, discursively positions TEs as passive recipients instead of active agents of their own professional learning activities, eroding their professional agency.Still crucial for educational improvement, TE's professional development is mechanical rather than ignited by the self-directed fires of their collective or individual agency (Hinostroza-Paredes, 2019).
Although all the documents refer to TEs' participation in developing, organizing, and coordinating ITE programs, collaboration, and collegiality, concepts linked to occupational professionalism, are not mentioned.For QA purposes, what matters is contrived collegiality, with observable forms of collaboration stemming from management instead of difficult-to-control and spontaneous teacher-initiated ones (Hargreaves, 1994, p. 196).Neither their decision-making involvement relates to the notion of autonomous professional since it is a rather apparent form of managerial control.For example, there is an indication of TEs' induced type of collegial participation in the PTU Report when "summoned [emphasis added] by the department or the university, they attend courses or other events" (2016, p. 115).No mention of TEs' bottom-up collaboration suggests possible adverse conditions for enhancing collective and self-generated reflective work, which may be more salient in private teaching institutions.In the new managerialism logic, contrived collegiality is embedded in the discourse of organizational professionalism, which is a characteristic of TEs that universities should promote when pursuing the holy grail of program accreditation.

Discussion Social Practice: The Broader Ideological Context for ITE Policy
The last level of CDA is both an "explanation" and a "critique" (Fairclough, 1989, p. 113), moving beyond text structures and discursive interpretations to unpack the ideological significance of discourse.Chilean TEs are embedded in an education system shaped by neoliberal policy, dating back to Pinochet's dictatorship in the 1980s.Although subsequent democratic governments enact reforms to correct the quality and equity problems caused by the quasi-market of education, they do not dismantle it.Instead, the market-oriented ideology, which brought NPM reforms to education in the 1980s, combines with the Third Way ideology, which merging left-wing ideas with economic rationalism leads to more significant state intervention but without altering deregulation and competition logics from the second half of the1990s onward (Verger et al., 2017).A reflection of these ongoing reforms, the Standards and Guidelines represent the state effort to maintain the ideological goals of autonomy and competition in HE and increase regulation to improve ITE provision quality.Meanwhile, since competition is pivotal in a sector where public and private institutions are heavily dependent on students' fees for income (Guzmán-Valenzuela et al., 2020), universities use institutional and program accreditation as a reputation indicator to attract students in the marketplace of education.
In NPM government policy and universities' accreditation reports, the discourses of performance, QA, functionalist professional development, and organizational professionalism are tied together in a network under the umbrella of the new managerialist discourse.A core aspect of NPM, new managerialism is an ideology and a set of governing practices (Deem & Brehony, 2005), articulated through a new managerialist discourse justifying and reinforcing the power of the state and managers, usually on behalf of consumers and in detriment of employees (Trowler, 2010).In neoliberal Chile, new managerialism (as the NPM ideological arm) operates diverse strategies of governing university-based teacher education.One of them is professionalism, moving from the deprofessionalization of the teaching force during Pinochet's dictatorship to the current policyembedded discursive practices, constructing university TEs' professionalism as outcome-oriented and controllable.
Whereas the Standards clearly define the professionalism that ITE programs must model for student-teachers-i.e., knowledge and skills to "self-assess their own teaching effectiveness [or] assume responsibilities for students' wellbeing" (CNA, 2007, p. 6)-neither this document nor the Guidelines offer a similarly explicit definition of TEs' professionalism.This omission reflects TEs' instrumental but also marginal positioning in teacher education policy.Within ITE programs, a "student-centered pedagogical approach for content teaching" (PRU, 2018, p. 12) and a "competence-based approach requiring context-based learning and performance evaluation" (PTU, 2016, p. 83) emphasize such instrumental positioning.Student-centered learning has a long history rooted in the progressivist philosophy of education.Still, it intertwines with new managerialism and its pragmatic interest in students as consumers of education.Since accreditation is a measurement of quality education, facilitating their choice, universities' interest in student satisfaction and fulfilling QA standards leads to a co-opted student-centered curriculum ideology.These ideological framings underpin discourses of performance, organizational professionalism, and functionalist professional development, placing stress on teaching performance evaluation systems, operational efficiency, and skill-based training.They create a culture of performativity in which measurement and flexibility, through ongoing self-improvement, relate to multiple aspects of TEs' professional work.
With such performativity concerns being distant from the commitment to critical thinking and independent thought, cornerstones of the ideal university education, policy discourse reconfigure TEs' professionalism.The texts exclude notions such as equity, and collegiality while one Report renders invisible a particular group of TEs (the precarized ones), and the other renders them as passive.These practices establish a regime of truth about TE's professionalism conforming to organizational professionalism and impacting the construction of their identities.At the macrolevel, governmentality brings about the agenda of NPM policy reform in initial teacher education.It intersects with institutional policy implementation at the meso-level, opening up a discursive space where new understandings emerge of who a professional university TE is.A move occurs from identities focused on reflexive self-critique capacities and questioning to identities centered on skills and competences-with collegiality, responsibility, and autonomy replaced by accountability, performance, and productivity.This shift is fertile ground for governmentality to elicit, at the microlevel of individual TEs, the reconstruction of their identities, adapt and comply.Nevertheless, this is not to say that the hegemonic new managerialism approach to ITE policy implementation erases TEs' professional agency.Still, decisions about performing identity through academic and teaching work lie primarily at the individual's micro-level and are not exclusively defined by policy.With agency, they can make reflexive choices about negotiating, resisting, and even contesting policy implementation (i.e., QA demands in their classroom practices) and fulfill their main professional projects and concerns (Archer, 2000).
So, I suggest research should examine the extent to which the managerialist network of discourses circulating in university-based ITE programs influences individual and collective TEs' professional agency.It should also pay attention to different impacts that these discourses may have on private and public university TEs' (discursive) self-perception, behaviors, attitudes, and academic/professional career expectations.Further research should explore how organizational professionalism norms may inform TEs' discourses and practices to foster their students' journeys towards becoming neoliberal professional subjects.Or rather, how the possible conflict between organizational professionalism and the traditional values of occupational professionalism may underpin TEs' discursive and material efforts to nurture students' critical thinking and sense of equity and social justice.Amid the overpowering discourses of quality assurance and professional standards, where do the ethics of care and justice, pivotal in TEs' professionalism, fit?And not least, in the age of Covid-19 and social distancing, current discourses of digitalization and their impact on their professionalism are a fruitful area for future research, particularly when it comes to modeling students' teaching and learning practices.Ultimately, without a stronger focus on researching Chilean TEs-and visibilizing the complexities of their professionalism-they will likely stay peripheral to the discursive processes of ITE policy-making despite being at the core of teacher education.

Limitations and Strengths
CDA is inevitably selective, as the choice of texts is motivated by researchers' interests.Since "there is no such thing as an 'objective' analysis of a text" (Fairclough, 2003, p. 14), micro-level analysis, through interviews with TEs, for example, would have provided a broader perspective on the discursive construction of their professionalism but was beyond the study scope.Given the small sample of documents, some may argue that they offered little evidence for generalizable insights on existing discourses of TEs' professionalism.
However, worthwhile insights came into fruition by ensuring that the sample was robust despite its size, and the analysis was principled and detailed.They contribute to enriching the limited scholarship on Chilean university TEs.Also, the study can bear relevance for education research in Latin America.Since there is scarce literature on TEs in the region (González-Vallejos, 2018), this CDA study illuminates discourses of professionalism across the continent that may inform future indepth research on this hidden professional group.

Conclusions
A network of discourses-new managerialist, QA, performance, functionalist professional development, organizational professionalism-construct Chilean university TEs' professionalism as a set of perfectible skills and competences rather than a disposition driven by professional knowledge, beliefs, and values.These discourses express and reproduce the ideologies of new managerialism and student-centered learning, all tied together under the supra-ideology of neoliberalism.Moreover, although TEs are not discursively positioned as agentic and empowered, they are still tasked with implementing ITE's main goals.Further questions now need to be asked 'by,' 'of' and 'for' Chilean teacher educators.Is there a way to halt this disempowerment?If so, what do TEs/researchers do to engage with policy-makers and policy implementers at government and university levels?Is there a role for the teacher education research community to foster dialogue among TEs, educational researchers, and policy-makers?In highlighting the discursive construction of university TEs' professionalism, this study appeals to ITE stakeholders.Most importantly, it also appeals to TEs, so they undertake active, critical, and skeptical interrogation of policy that fails to grasp what professionalism means to them.
. In the second phase, from 2005 to 2016, QA policies emerged in response to low education quality and ITE programs' mushrooming in private universities and authorized tertiary education colleges.Distance programs were closed in 2005, and program accreditation became mandatory and entrusted to private agencies in 2006 (Ávalos, 2015).Between 2008 and 2014, the Program for Quality Promotion of Initial Teacher Education (INICIA) supported disciplinary and pedagogical standards development; standard-based exit tests for graduates; and funding for program improvement

Table 1
Documents analysed