Teacher purpose in high-performance education

This study examines how Singaporean teachers navigate tensions between personal purpose and high-performance education demands. Using in-depth interviews with six secondary teachers across diverse subjects and experience levels (5–16 years), this research analyses how teachers’ life narratives shape their educational purposes and how beyond-the-self (BTS) commitments inform professional practice. Findings reveal that teachers’ educational purposes are shaped by moral biographies, personal narratives of calling, uplift and proximity that serve as ethical compasses. Rather than resisting or complying with neoliberal structures, teachers engage in pragmatic reorientation, using institutional resources to pursue relational ends. They strategically appropriate institutional language to justify care practices, temporally separate functional and relational goals, and morally reframe disciplinary requirements. These practices constitute purposive teacher professionalism: professional conduct motivated by ethical commitments that extend beyond institutional rewards, demonstrated through tactical navigation within constraints. This concept distinguishes itself by integrating life-purpose alignment with BTS dimensions while acknowledging structural limitations. While grounded in Singapore’s distinctive context, these findings offer international relevance for supporting teacher resilience in high-pressure systems. The study contributes methodologically through its reading against the grain approach that honours teachers’ care while critically examining neoliberal constraints on educational imagination.