ABSTRACT
School reforms and initiatives have profound effects on the lives and work of teachers and other education professionals. In the dynamic and volatile climate of contemporary education policy, this raises continual questions about the role of teachers within the hegemony of school organisations, in relation to processes of school change and decision making. Teachers are subjected to particular ways of working which, whether explicit or tacit, are framed by purposes for schooling driven by market forces and global comparison, where processes become centrally controlled and target driven. Teachers’ values-based priorities are compromised as pedagogies are prescribed within narrow curriculum tramlines; children are tested and categorised while their choices for their own education are limited by schools to meet externally set benchmarks. School improvement, as a distinct body of theory and a focus for advocacy by groups of academics, policymakers and practitioners, emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as a field of study concerned with qualitative studies of educational change.
