The myth of instant readiness: temporal politics and subjectification in early-career teaching

The myth of ‘instant readiness’, the assumption that graduate-teachers arrive as classroom-ready and fully formed, pervades contemporary teacher education policy. This article interrogates that myth through a narrative inquiry into one graduate-teacher’s first year in a socio-economically disadvantaged primary school. Tracing four critical-incidents across the year, the analysis examines how policy discourses of ‘classroom-readiness’, operationalised through the Teacher Performance Assessment, function as technologies of subjectification, imposing an ought self before the relational conditions for genuine professional becoming have been established. Drawing on Foucauldian analytics of power and Schutz et al.’s (2018) theorisation of ideal, actual, and ought selves, the findings expose ‘classroom-readiness’ as a temporal and political imposition that obscures the ethical and relational dimensions of early professional life. The article concludes by offering the concept of relational scaffolding as a necessary counterpoint to performative readiness frameworks, and as a foundation for rethinking sustainable early-career teaching.