Crafting the Consumer Teacher: Education Influencers and the Figured World of K-12 Teaching

Consumerism and its associated discourses have long been associated with schooling. Indeed, the curriculum of schooling has been said to produce a consumer citizen. In this paper, we consider the production of the consumer "teacher" by examining the role social media education influencers play in facilitating the relationship between market ideology and education. Through inquiry into publicly available Instagram posts shared by 18 education influencers comprising the popular United States-based P-12 educator collaborative, Teach Your Heart Out™, we explore how the discourses used in the figured world of P-12 teaching created by education influencers on Instagram ultimately produce a consumer teacher by emphasizing three key elements of consumerist ideology. We conclude with points of concern for the teaching profession that may arise from these consumer discourses, including the transformation of public education into a neoliberal, private investment.