In this blog, George Panayiotou challenges assumptions about professionalism in education by examining the hidden pressures educators face to “look and sound the part”. Drawing on experience as a migrant teacher in a London secondary school, as well as conversations with educators from minority backgrounds, the author explores how accent, appearance, mannerisms and institutional “fit” can shape perceptions of credibility and competence.
The blog argues that aesthetic labour is not simply a matter of personal presentation or professional choice. When educators must continually adjust or suppress aspects of their identities to be accepted, they may experience what the discussion described as “performative exhaustion”. This contribution highlights the need to understand professionalism as an organisational and equity issue, inviting educational leaders and policymakers to reconsider who defines professional standards, whose identities those standards privilege, and what it costs educators to fit in.
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When I first stepped into a classroom at a secondary school in London, I quickly realised that my teaching was only part of what was being assessed. I vividly remember subtle, well-meaning remarks from colleagues about how I might improve my attire and “polish” my presentation so that, in their words, I would “look and sound the part.”
As a migrant teacher, I increasingly found myself adjusting my accent, mannerisms and ways of carrying myself to navigate unspoken expectations about what a teacher should look and sound like. I felt that I had to fit in. Over time, conversations with other minority educators made me realise that this experience was not unusual, although for others these pressures could also intersect with race, gender, class and belonging. This raises an uncomfortable question for educational leaders: are our standards of professionalism assessing the quality of educators’ work, or are they rewarding those who already look, sound and behave in familiar ways?
More Than Just a Dress Code
Adapting how we communicate and present ourselves in different professional contexts is not, in itself, problematic. The difficulty arises when some educators must continually soften their accents, alter their appearance, regulate their mannerisms or mute aspects of their identities simply to be regarded as credible or competent. At that point, aesthetic labour (AL) becomes a matter of organisational culture and educational leadership.
Existing work connects AL with expectations around speech, attire, comportment, emotional expression and institutional “fit,” as well as with questions of authenticity and belonging (Ramjattan, 2021). Schools may reinforce these expectations implicitly through branding, recruitment for “fit,” and unwritten assumptions about professionalism. Such practices can privilege culturally familiar ways of presenting oneself while appearing professionally neutral.
The Weight of Performative Exhaustion
Recently, I explored this tension during a roundtable at the BELMAS 2026 conference in Cardiff with teachers and school leaders from minority backgrounds. One particularly powerful insight was what a participant described as “performative exhaustion”: the fatigue created by continually managing how one presents oneself to meet an expected professional image. A participant from the United States described how exhausting this can be for Black educators who feel unable to bring their authentic selves fully into the workplace. When meeting the professional standard requires continually suppressing aspects of oneself simply to avoid being the “odd one out,” the consequences for wellbeing are considerable.
A Social Phenomenon, Not a Personal Choice
The image of the “proper” teacher is socially produced through repeated institutional messages about how authority, credibility and competence should look, sound and behave (Foucault, 1969/2002). Over time, these expectations can become accepted as common sense or “professionalism,” even when they reflect dominant cultural norms rather than the quality of teaching itself. Recruiting for “fit” can therefore become a polite language for sameness.
These pressures are also not distributed equally. Racialised educators may face scrutiny around accent, tone or emotional expression; women may be expected to appear authoritative but not intimidating, confident but not abrasive; and working-class educators may feel pressure to alter their speech, dress or mannerisms to signal competence. For educators positioned across several of these identities, AL can become layered, requiring them to manage several forms of scrutiny at once. AL therefore becomes more than an individual struggle to fit in. It becomes an institutional barrier to inclusion and credibility.
A Call for Inclusive Leadership
If school leaders are serious about inclusion, retention and wellbeing, awareness is not enough. They should examine dress codes, job advertisements, interview criteria, performance evaluations and promotion processes for vague terms such as “professional presence,” “polish” and “cultural fit,” replacing them with transparent criteria tied to the work. They should also ask whose accent, appearance and behaviour have become the unspoken institutional norm.
Policymakers and professional bodies should also examine how standards and frameworks define what professionalism looks and sounds like, and whether these expectations reproduce narrow assumptions about credibility and competence.
The issue is not whether educators should act professionally; professional standards matter. The issue is who defines professionalism, whose identity that definition privileges, and who must exhaust themselves to satisfy it. AL should therefore be recognised not simply as an individual challenge, but as an organisational and equity issue that leaders and policymakers need to confront.
Foucault, M. (2002). The archaeology of knowledge (A. M. Sheridan Smith, Trans.; 2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203604168 (Original work published 1969)
Ramjattan, V. A. (2021). The transracial aesthetic labour of an international teaching assistant. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, 40(8), 973–985. https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-12-2020-0365
AI Usage Disclosure: I acknowledge that ChatGPT 5.2 was utilized for drafting and editing this post to ensure clarity and adherence to formatting standards. The core arguments, personal experiences, and shared insights remain my work.
