As we tentatively emerge from the imposed isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic and as the status quo reasserts itself, it seems timely to consider the current state of teacher professionalism. This task seems critical, given the wider backdrop of the neoliberal policy pandemic that has driven the commodification and instrumentalization of education over the last forty years. In many global settings the neoliberal context is characterised by intensified cultures of competition, instrumentalism, individualism and performativity in education. Such cultures and practices, working in concert with the performative pressures arising from neoliberalism, pose significant risks to the ethical core of teaching. Identifying and naming these risks is a key aim of this paper, reflecting the notion of critique as diagnosis or problematisation.