This paper argues that through their proactive promotion of particular frameworks of teacher competence, governments and international organisations seek to create an institutionalised discourse that functions to win voluntary cooperation from teachers in redefining their professional roles, in order to meet the economic imperatives of globalisation. Drawing on Foucault's theories of biopolitics and governmentality, as well as Dean's notion of rules of conduct, we review the mechanisms through which social discourses become institutionalised within specific sociohistorical contexts, allowing them to be used as a technology of governance. Ball's work on performativity and Robertson's writing on the governance of teachers' work are invoked to argue that teacher competence has become an institutionalised discourse which, through appealing to the rationality of teachers, enlists their commitment to a reformulation of education that centres on national development. This discourse legitimises and empowers governments to define the contents of teacher competence and professional development.