The discourse on teachers as agents of school change has recently emerged in educational policies in many countries, emphasizing teacher-led educational reforms. The meaning of this rhetoric is quite vague; its practical meaning is revealed by analyzing how teachers’ roles are normalized in educational policies. With a Foucauldian approach, this study aims to critically analyze teacher images produced and distributed by South Korea’s educational reform policies over the last 20 years. This study addresses two research questions: (1) Under the rhetoric of teachers as agents of school change, what teacher images have been created by Korean educational reform policies over the last 20 years? (2) What are the non-discursive conditions that have led to the establishment of the teacher images presented in educational reform policies? To this end, 94 policy documents from the 5 Korean governments were collected and analyzed. The study results verified a contradictory character of policy discourse in that policies stating teachers as agents of school change appear to empower teachers to reform education, which is not true in reality. The results also revealed complex mechanisms enabling certain policy discourses to be formed by analyzing the formation process of particular teacher images produced by educational policies in relation to non-discursive conditions. Furthermore, this study showed that particular teacher images circulated by educational policies can regulate teachers’ everyday practices, contributing to understanding the way educational policies exert their power. Finally, the implications of the findings were presented.

关于教师作为学校变革的推动者的论述最近在许多国家的教育政策中出现，强调了教师主导的教育改革。这种言辞的含义很模糊。通过分析如何在教育政策中规范教师的角色，揭示了其实际意义。这项研究采用Foucauldian方法，旨在批判性地分析韩国在过去20年中通过教育改革政策产生和传播的教师形象。这项研究解决了两个研究问题：（1）在教师作为学校变革的推动者的言辞下，韩国教育改革政策在过去20年中创造了哪些教师形象？（2）在教育改革政策中建立教师形象的非自由条件是什么？为此，收集并分析了来自5个韩国政府的94份政策文件。研究结果证实了政策话语的矛盾性，因为政策表明教师是学校变革的推动者，似乎赋予了教师改革教育的权力，但事实并非如此。结果还揭示了复杂的机制，可以通过分析与非话语条件相关的教育政策产生的特定教师形象的形成过程，来形成某些政策话语。此外，这项研究表明，由教育政策传播的特定教师形象可以调节教师的日常活动，有助于理解教育政策发挥其作用的方式。最后，介绍了这些发现的含义。