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 paper contrasts teachers’ most creative classroom practice and professional learning with the effect of externally imposed accountability requirements. School leader research conversations support an argument that leaders who remained future-focused on responsibility initiated a culture in which resistance, to being governed by retrospective practices associated with accountability, was possible. Everyday acts of resistance, however, are vulnerable to institutional capture when regimes of accountability become normalised.
BallS (2012) Performativity, commodification and commitment: an I-spy guide to the neoliberal university. British Journal of Educational Studies60(1): 17–28.
3.
BakhtinMM (1993) Toward a Philosophy of the Act (LiapunovV., Trans.). University of Texas Press.
DesimoneLPorterAGaretM, et al. (2002) Effects of professional development on teachers’ instruction: results from a three-year longitudinal study. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis24(2): 81–112.
11.
GardinerM (2004) Everyday Utopianism: Lefebvre and his critics. Cultural Studies18(2): 228–254.
12.
GardinerM (2006) Marxism and the convergence of utopia and the everyday. History of the Human Sciences19(3): 1–32.
13.
GardinerM (2013) Weak Messianism: Essays in Everyday Utopianism. New York: Peter Lang.
14.
GriffithAISmithDE (eds) (2014) Under New Public Management: Institutional Ethnographies of Changing Front-Line Work. Toronto, ON, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
15.
HelgetunJDumayX (2021) From scholar to craftsperson? Constructing an accountable teacher education environment in England 1976–2019. European Journal of Teacher Education44(1): 80–95.
16.
LaclauEMouffeC (2001) Hegemony and the Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. 2nd ed.London: Verso Books.
17.
LefebvreH (2002) Critique of Everyday Life: Vol. II (trans. MooreJ). London: Verso Books.
18.
LevinasE (1989) Ethics as first philosophy. In: HandS (ed.) The Levinas Reader (trans. HandSTempleM). Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell, pp.1–308.
19.
LiljaMVinthagenS (2018) Dispersed resistance: unpacking the spectrum and properties of glaring everyday resistance. Journal of Political Power11(2): 211–229.
20.
LillejordSBørteK (2020) Trapped between accountability and professional learning? School leaders and teacher evaluation. Professional Development in Education46(2): 274–291.
21.
LingardB (2010) Policy borrowing, policy learning: testing times in Australian schools. Critical Studies in Education51(2): 129–147.
22.
LingardBSellarSLewisS (2017) Accountabilities in schools and school systems. In: NoblitG (ed.) Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.1–28. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.74
23.
McGrath-ChampSWilsonRStaceyM, et al. (2018) Understanding Work in Schools: The Foundation for Teaching and Learning. Sydney, NSW, Australia: New South Wales Teachers Federation.
24.
MurrayJ (2000) Bakhtinian answerability and Levinasian responsibility: forging a fuller dialogical communicative ethics. Southern Journal of Communication65(2–3): 133–150.
25.
MurruS (2020) Drawing from feminist epitemologies to research resistance. In: MurruSPoleseA (eds) Resistance: Between Theories & Field. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, pp.169–187.
RiccitelliJ (2024) ‘Critical self-care’: reimagining possibilities of self-care as everyday resistance in the context of the neoliberal university. Critical Sociology. Epub ahead of print 8April. DOI: 10.1177/08969205241245091.
28.
ScottJC (1985) Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
29.
SmithDE (2005) Institutional Ethnography: A Sociology for People. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
SmithDE (2014) Discourse as social relations: sociological theory and the dialogic of sociology. In: SmithDETurnerSM (eds) Incorporating Texts Into Institutional Ethnographies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
32.
SugrueCMertkanS (2017) Professional responsibility, accountability and performativity among teachers: the leavening influence of CPD?Teachers and Teaching23(2): 171–190.
TalbotD (2016) Evidence for no-one: standards, accreditation and transformed teaching work. Teaching and Teacher Education58(2016): 80–89.
35.
TalbotD (2020) Institutional ethnography and the materiality of affect: affective circuits as indicators of other possibilitiesJournal of Contemporary Ethnography49(5): 691–709.
36.
TalbotD (2024) Using Institutional Ethnography and students’ voices to explore students’ capacity to learn. Australian Educational Researcher51: 1831–1847.
