Conference Program

In recent years, the Italian school system has been subject to increasing media coverage that directly involves teachers. Alongside the traditional representation of the magister teacher (Hirschhorn, 1993), new hybrid figures are emerging, such as teacher-influencers or digital creator teachers on YouTube and other social platforms, who accumulate visibility and symbolic capital outside institutional circles. At the same time, we are witnessing a renewed reinvigoration of the figure of the teacher as a critical intellectual, capable of exercising reflexivity and intervening in the public debate.
This contribution focuses on these transformations, analyzing them through the perspective of Pierre Bourdieu (1984) as a process of redefining the poles of legitimacy in the contemporary school system. While historically, teaching authority was based on institutionalized cultural capital (educational qualifications, certifications) and relative autonomy from other social spheres, today we are witnessing growing interference from the logic of the media field, which introduces new forms of heteronomy. Digital visibility, content monetization, and the construction of a “personal brand” are becoming resources for symbolic competition within the educational field.

These dynamics add to and intertwine with transformations that have already been underway in recent decades, linked to the spread of New Public Management and neoliberal logics of accountability, evaluation, and performativity, which have progressively changed the modes of regulation and criteria for recognition of the teaching profession (Ball, 2003; Pitzalis 2006).
Through an exploratory analysis of the Italian case – which includes the observation of public figures active on social media – the paper shows how mediatization is not only a peripheral phenomenon, but a possible factor in the restructuring of the professional field of teaching. On the one hand, it can be interpreted as a response to the loss of recognition and institutional devaluation of teaching work; on the other, it contributes to redefining the criteria of professional legitimacy, rearticulating the tension between different principles of authority – in particular between pedagogical authority, critical knowledge production and public visibility.