ABSTRACT
In neoliberal times, marketisation, managerialism and performativity suggest a values-free approach to educational leadership. School leaders, tasked with driving educational reforms, have not always resisted the reforms they find unpalatable, such as a standards agenda, prescribed curricula, high stakes testing and the fragmentation of the education system. By virtue of their long service, it might be assumed experienced headteacher/principals are largely compliant having successfully managed a school’s performance and secured its place in the market. Some have embraced reforms; others may not see education as values-free, having entered the profession motivated by a desire for social justice and having developed inclusive educational philosophies. The focus here is on headteachers’ resistance of the neoliberal reforms they opposed. I report findings from empirical research exploring 10 headteachers’ critical negotiation of English education policy reforms. Their resistance took many forms as “everyday” or hidden and overt forms of resistance. Importantly, it could be seen in the semblance of compliance as game playing, selectivity, masquerade and reinvention. Drawing on theories of “everyday resistance” and conceptualisation of the daily resistance of colonialism as mimicry and sly civility taking place in a third space of ambivalence and ambiguity, I argue that recognition of headteachers’ critical negotiation of policy reforms as resistance signal the potential for future collective action. These heterogeneous everyday practices are influenced by time, context and intersecting sources of power. Post-colonial resistance theory provides the tools with which to uncover what is often hidden.
