Recognising Acts of Resistance in Teachers’ Work

International studies mark a shift in the language of teachers from professional autonomy to safety induced by compliance measures. What is not well-documented is how teachers resist the pervasive, negative effects of accountability regimes. This presentation employs data from two separate but related institutional ethnographies together with literature from resistance studies to identify acts that might be classified as resistance. Individual and focus group interviews with students, teachers, and school leaders are used to contrast teachers’ most creative classroom practice and professional learning with the effect of externally imposed accountability requirements. In particular, the school leader research conversations support an argument that leaders who remained future-focused on responsibility for learning initiated a culture in which resistance, to being governed by retrospective practises associated with accountability, was possible. Such acts of resistance, however, are vulnerable to institutional capture when regimes of accountability become normalised.