Abstract
Experts must adapt to immediate circumstances when managing impressions and be able to reassert credibility and exercise authority when performing professionalism. A credible professional is constructed, applied, and recognized locally as well as relationally, particularly within the context of careers in bureaucratic structures. Few studies investigate professional credibility through processual approaches assessing experts’ testimony and practice in situ as they manage their careers over a period of time. We examine the cycles of professional credibility in a rural elementary state school in Brazil, focusing on how credibility is constructed, applied, and recognized in highly regulated bureaucratic systems. We use the “credit cycle” framework from science and technology studies to analyze education professionals’ positions, career paths, and group dynamics. Our ethnographic approach included participant observation, document analysis, audio-visual data collection, and interviews with education workers. We used event-related phases and narrative analysis to analyze data and uncover insights into professional credibility, expanding the concept of the credit cycle beyond laboratories to include primary education professionals and managers. We consider how individual professional credibility is enacted by producing report cards and educational projects within what is a highly regulated educational system. What is “critical” in our research is a critique of the approach to the bureaucratization of professions that suggests that the outcome is “de-professionalization” or “proletarianization.” Our research findings highlight professional credibility’s relational, transactional, dynamic, and cyclical nature and offer practical insights for understanding and enhancing expertise in bureaucratic settings. Future studies should apply the credit cycle to other professional contexts.
Keywords
Introduction
How do professionals construct, apply, and recognize their credibility in dynamic and challenging environments? We address this question as a significant gap in current research. Many studies have concentrated on the relational dynamics of professional credibility, exploring how workers’ careers, reliability, expertise, and trustworthiness are perceived within professional contexts (Bourgoin and Harvey, 2018; Morris et al., 2023; Walsh et al., 2023; Whittle et al., 2016). However, few have investigated professional credibility’s construction, application, and recognition practices (for an exception, see Abdellatif et al., 2024; Call et al., 2024; Morris et al., 2023; Shen, 2015; Smith, 2010). The research objective of analyzing how professionals construct, apply, and recognize their credibility in dynamic and challenging organizational environments is informed by the “credit cycle” concept initially developed by Latour and Woolgar (1979). Their use of the concept presented scientific credibility as the result of an ongoing cycle of investment, accumulation, and conversion. We will argue that the “credit cycle” also applies to how professional credibility is enacted, particularly within a highly regulated educational setting. Critical analysis has been oriented to proletarianization and de-professionalization theses (cf. Boreham, 1983; Derber, 1983; Evetts, 2011; Kamoche et al., 2011; McKinlay, 1982; Reed and Thomas, 2021; Sewell, 2005; Whitley, 2003). There is a need for a deeper, temporal analysis, one that shows how professional credibility can be enacted strategically, even in bureaucratized structures.
Addressing this gap requires a framework that can account for the evolution of credibility as it interacts with professionals’ performances over time. In our approach, we draw on literature on professional credibility (Abbott, 1988; Bourgoin and Harvey, 2018; Ellis, 2008; Huising, 2014, 2015; Larson, 1977; Macdonald, 1995; Pakarinen and Huising, 2023; Reed, 1996; Walsh et al., 2023; Whittle et al., 2016) as well as science and technology studies (Allchin, 1999; Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Lehenkari, 2000; Lepori et al., 2016; Penders and Nelis, 2011; Shapin, 1994; Shen, 2015; Smith, 2010). Drawing on these theoretical backgrounds allows us to explore how historical assessments of expert testimonies and practices contribute to an evolving understanding of credibility among education professionals, teachers, and managers in a Brazilian rural elementary state school. We argue that insufficient consideration has been given to how expertise evolves over time through cycles of credit (Allchin, 1999; Latour and Woolgar, 1979). A school year, studied over time and in process, offers a unique opportunity to observe credibility dynamics under stringent external demands and complex organizational challenges.
We pose the following research question, which we answer by considering the professionals’ positions, career paths, and group dynamics in accord with the credit cycle to offer a temporally grounded perspective on professional credibility in regulated organizational settings: How do historical assessments of professionals’ testimonies and practices enhance our understanding of how professional credibility is constructed, applied, and recognized? We begin by reviewing the literature on professional work before zooming in on professional credibility and credit cycles. Having outlined the theoretical framework, we next turn to methods, which we context through situating the research setting, data collection methods, and data analysis before proceeding to the findings in a second step. Our research findings have practical implications for understanding and enhancing professional credibility in regulated organizational settings. By applying the credit cycle framework, we focus on and illustrate how experts not only adapt to immediate circumstances to manage impressions (Bourgoin and Harvey, 2018), reassert credibility (Walsh et al., 2023; Whittle et al., 2016), or exercise authority (Bourgoin et al., 2020; Huising, 2014, 2015) but also evolve their professionalism through enacting continuous cycles in relationship with broader structural and social changes (Call et al., 2024; Morris et al., 2023). Drawing upon ethnography (Barley, 1996; De Leon and Cohen, 2005; Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Spradley, 1979; Van Maanen, 1979; Verver et al., 2024; Wolfinger, 2002), we focus on expertise to contribute to deepening the theoretical understanding of professional credibility (Huising et al., 2025).
Professional work and credibility
The credibility of professional expertise is seen to consist primarily of institutionalized trustworthiness (Fleck, 1996; Mackiewicz, 2010) and is extensively studied as such (Abbott, 1988; Chong and Bourgoin, 2020; Collins, 1975; Collins and Evans, 2008; Epstein, 1995; Gorman, 2015; Pakarinen and Huising, 2023; Schillebeeckx et al., 2019; Veltrop et al., 2017; Whittle et al., 2016). A major topic for research has been understanding how professionals utilize cognitive, technical, political, and normative resources to construct, apply, and recognize credibility, manage complex problems, and secure political advantages (Huising, 2015; Noordegraaf, 2011; Reed, 1996; Veltrop et al., 2017; Waring and Currie, 2009; Whittle et al., 2016). As professional work has constantly evolved, so too has understanding and explanation of its changing boundaries and practices (Freidson, 2001; Reed and Thomas, 2021).
Traditionally, professionals held jurisdictional control (Abbott, 1988, 1991), with the jurisdictional boundaries between professions often being contested and reinforced by state and elite institutional credentials (Abbott, 1988; Chown, 2020; Freidson, 1973, 2001). For instance, teachers, due to limited managerial control, could practice a fair degree of self-regulation (Lipsky, 2010; Taylor, 2007), marked by an “asymmetry of expertise” (Abbott, 1988; Muzio et al., 2019). The term asymmetry of expertise in teaching refers to the unequal distribution of knowledge or expertise between the teacher and the students. This concept highlights the disparity in understanding, experience, or skill level between the two parties, where the teacher typically has more expertise or mastery over a subject while the students are in the process of learning and acquiring that knowledge. This asymmetry is influenced by the cyclical reassessment and re-establishment of credibility over time as state institutional regulation enters the workplace to an increasing extent.
Professionals are increasingly subject to neo-liberal control at a distance (de Vaujany et al., 2021; Gane and Johnson, 1993; Reed and Courpasson, 2004). They face both marketization (Farrell and Morris, 2003; Morris et al., 2023) and bureaucratization of their activities (Hodgson et al., 2015; Huising, 2014; Kirkpatrick and Noordegraaf, 2015; Muzio et al., 2011; Noordegraaf, 2011; Waring and Currie, 2009). Contemporary state-employed professionals have to achieve superior performance while complying with target metrics and hierarchical structures of control (Abbott, 1988, 1991; Gustafsson et al., 2018; Larson, 1977; Muller, 2018) while encountering challenges as de-professionalization erodes their indeterminacy (Boreham, 1983; Evetts, 2011; Kamoche et al., 2011; Reed and Thomas, 2021; Sewell, 2005; Whitley, 2003), and as professional boundaries change (Huising, 2015: 271; Morris et al., 2023). Nowadays, credibility and competence must be established independently of state license but in compliance with state requirements (Macdonald, 1995). Education professionals are required to adhere to external standards of performance evaluations in a context of limited resources (Gorman, 2015; Gustafsson et al., 2018; Ibarra, 1999; Macdonald, 1995; Pritchard and Fear, 2015).
Professionals whose careers are forged in state bureaucracies (Gustafsson et al., 2018) offer a decisive break from traditional conceptions of a profession (Abbott, 1988, 1991). Their activities are increasingly relatively circumscribed by regulation and autonomy bounded (Hodgson et al., 2015; Huising, 2014; Kirkpatrick and Noordegraaf, 2015; Muzio et al., 2011; Noordegraaf, 2011; Waring and Currie, 2009). Within the context of social and material trust systems (Jijelava and Vanclay, 2018; Morris et al., 2023; Pritchard and Fear, 2015; Shapin, 1994), they are subject to constant testing (Ellis, 2008; Huising et al., 2025). Trust systems refer to frameworks, structures, or mechanisms designed to establish, verify, and maintain trust between the different parties in schooling. They play a vital role in facilitating cooperation, ensuring security, and enabling interactions where parties may not have direct, personal knowledge of each other. Trust systems are critical in environments where direct oversight or guarantees are not feasible, such as the classroom. Trustworthiness and expertise rely not only on credentials but also the management of everyday norms, standards, documentation, politics, social interaction, and informal information sharing in contested contexts (Abbott, 1988; Abdellatif et al., 2024; Barley, 1996; Duberley et al., 2006; Fleck, 1996; Huising, 2015; Huising, 2023; Huising et al., 2025; Larson, 1977; Noordegraaf, 2011; Reed, 1996; Veltrop et al., 2017; Waring and Currie, 2009; Whittle et al., 2016).
Professional experts must do more than claim abstract knowledge; they must consistently demonstrate and apply appropriate knowledge and practice about and within the complex contexts in which they operate (Epstein, 1995; Huising, 2015; Pakarinen and Huising, 2023; Pritchard and Fear, 2015; Veltrop et al., 2017; Wylie et al., 2014). Professionals’ practices are subject to institutional power dynamics (DiBenigno, 2018; Gustafsson et al., 2018; Huising, 2014; Morris et al., 2023; Noordegraaf, 2011; Veltrop et al., 2017; Waring and Currie, 2009) as well as recognition of their performative claims through interaction with relevant communities of practice (Collins, 2014; DiBenigno, 2018; Jijelava and Vanclay, 2018; Macdonald, 1995; Morris et al., 2023; Pritchard and Fear, 2015; Veltrop et al., 2017). This recognition can also involve various audiences, including clients, the public, and decision-makers (Huising et al., 2025). Within these communities, they may practice techniques of anchored personalization and signification of value-added contributions (Call et al., 2024; DiBenigno, 2018; Wylie et al., 2014). It is through interactions with organizational structures, co-workers, competitors, partners, evaluators, clients, and commissioners that local professional credibility develops over time (Call et al., 2024; DiBenigno, 2018; Gustafsson et al., 2018; Kahl et al., 2016; Morris et al., 2023; Schillebeeckx et al., 2019; Veltrop et al., 2017; Whitley, 2003). Experts must connect and communicate organizationally with audiences assessing expertise as well as those to whom they deliver a service (Allchin, 1999; Daudigeos, 2013; Epstein, 1995; Pakarinen and Huising, 2023; Shapin, 1995). Being perceived as credible is synonymous with being trusted and believed in, something essential for securing resources to shape future outcomes (Latour and Woolgar, 1979).
The credibility of individual expertise relies on documentation of its provenance throughout a professional’s career (Allchin, 1999; Call et al., 2024; Hunton and Rose, 2011; Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Morris et al., 2023). Scholars have traditionally focused on the relational dynamics of professional credibility within various professional settings (Bourgoin and Harvey, 2018; Huising, 2014, 2015; Morris et al., 2023; Reed, 1996; Walsh et al., 2023; Whittle et al., 2016). There is an intricate interplay of expertise and actants (from persons to objects and sociomaterial structures) fostering consensus about professionalism within communities of practice, organizations, or social systems of trust (Barley, 1996; Bourgoin et al., 2020; Daudigeos, 2013; DiBenigno, 2018; Ellis, 2008; Huising, 2014, 2015; Macdonald, 1995; Pakarinen and Huising, 2023; Veltrop et al., 2017; Wylie et al., 2014). Professional expertise is developed by careers spent learning and experimenting within and across professional and organizational domains (Christensen et al., 2001; Kamoche et al., 2011; Noordegraaf, 2011; Schillebeeckx et al., 2019; Thomas and Davies, 2005; Whitley, 2003). Expert claims gain credibility in the execution of work, in which professionals connect their theoretical knowledge, tools, and methods to solutions (Bourgoin et al., 2020) as well as through possession of credentials within the requisite knowledge realm (Abbott, 1988; Larson, 1977; Reed, 1996). As all politics is local, so are credible careers. They are situated in time spent in specific organizational contexts. While professional credibility encompasses aspects of behavior, voice, personality, virtue, and civility (Allchin, 1999; Hunton and Rose, 2011; Shapin, 1994), what is frequently overlooked is how it is constructed, applied, and recognized through temporally periodic assessments of professionals’ present capabilities within and across organizations (Abdellatif et al., 2024; Call et al., 2024; Morris et al., 2023).
Current literature often overlooks the historical depth entailed in constructing, applying, and recognizing professional credibility (cf. Bourgoin and Harvey, 2018; Huising, 2014, 2015; Reed, 1996; Walsh et al., 2023; Whittle et al., 2016). There is a shortage of research focused on the localized examination of professional credibility through a historical assessment of how careers are constructed (for exception, see Abdellatif et al., 2024; Call et al., 2024; Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Morris et al., 2023; Shen, 2015; Smith, 2010). Morris et al. (2023) introduced the concept of the mosaic career to capture the fragmented, socially networked trajectories within the British TV industry. Call et al. (2024) focused on how star professionals shift from direct to indirect contributions over their careers, emphasizing dynamic reinvestments in credibility through evolving expertise. Abdellatif et al. (2024) emphasized the ongoing process of positioning and recognition in professional trajectories, using the metaphors of doors and ladders in academia. A historical assessment of how careers are constructed becomes crucial when considering how service professionals engage in continuous personal development to stay competitive in external job markets and advance their careers and employability (Kamoche et al., 2011; Morris et al., 2023; Whitley, 2003); hence, the long-term, cyclical nature of credibility building needs to be addressed.
Organizational micro-practices can contribute to as well as contest and erode professional credibility (Huising, 2014; Whittle et al., 2016) and how it is constituted, claimed and reasserted (Gustafsson et al., 2018; Huising, 2015; Pritchard and Fear, 2015; Walsh et al., 2023), as well as its mobilization and performance (Bourgoin and Harvey, 2018; Gorman, 2015; Larson, 1977; Reed, 1996). For instance, according to Gustafsson et al. (2018), legal professionals actively compete for opportunities to enhance their influence and autonomy by building credibility through their status, roles, partnerships, and effective communication with clients. Walsh et al. (2023) analyzed how banking professionals employed depersonalization and personalization strategies to regain credibility and manage stakeholder perceptions following the 2008 financial crisis. Whittle et al. (2016) examined how major accounting firms managed their credibility in response to perceived failures, particularly during inquiries by legislative bodies. Veltrop et al. (2017) studied how directors’ motivation to showcase industry-specific professional financial expertise affected their social standing within boards. Huising (2015) showed that health physicists in university labs gained greater authority and credibility than biosafety officers through “scut work,” menial work with contaminated materials, that allowed them to engage deeply in high-level and routine tasks, thereby establishing sustained, relational interactions with clients. Bourgoin and Harvey (2018) discussed how, in challenging interactions, consultants employed tactics of crafting relevance, resonance, and substance to maintain credibility while learning by seeking information and adapting to new settings.
There are organizational studies of the process of building, applying, and recognizing the credibility of occupations (Gustafsson et al., 2018; Huising, 2015; Walsh et al., 2023; Waring and Currie, 2009), in natural history (Star and Griesemer, 1989), autism (Eyal, 2013), and social work (Abbott, 1988; Kirkpatrick and Hoque, 2006). As a result, professional authority is understood as largely transactional (Bourgoin et al., 2020). By contrast, we also address the relational but also transactional, dynamic, and cyclical nature of professional credibility, which must be continually reinvested, or else it can be withdrawn (Bourdieu, 1976; Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Shen, 2015; Smith, 2010). Relational approaches to expertise (Epstein, 1995; Huising, 2015; Pakarinen and Huising, 2023; Shapin, 1995) need to be attuned to the expectations of various audiences (Chong and Bourgoin, 2020: 71). By understanding how professional credibility is constructed, applied, and recognized within specific organizational contexts, we can address how professionals navigate, manipulate, or transform group dynamics and bureaucratic structures (Abdellatif et al., 2024; Dallyn and Marinetto, 2022; Daudigeos, 2013; Latour and Woolgar, 1979) as well as hierarchies and market forces (Call et al., 2024; Kamoche et al., 2011; Morris et al., 2023; Whitley, 2003).
We explore the contemporary challenges that modern bureaucratized professionals face, emphasizing their strategic agency and autonomy in activities in which they have to construct and report organizational facts (Abdellatif et al., 2024; Dallyn and Marinetto, 2022; Daudigeos, 2013; Kamoche et al., 2011; Morris et al., 2023). We investigate how professionals balance aligning with organizational objectives and advancing individual career goals (Buchanan and Badham, 1999; Hunton and Rose, 2011), reflecting personal ambitions and professional constraints (Latour and Woolgar, 1979).
Despite the emphasis on efficiency and effectiveness in professional services mandated by state policies (Evetts, 2011; Reed and Courpasson, 2004; Wylie et al., 2014), we argue that professionals also engage in complex negotiations of credibility to address broader societal and organizational issues while aligning with bureaucratic objectives (Abdellatif et al., 2024; Gane and Johnson, 1993). In studying the professional credibility of primary education professionals, we prioritize expertise over the traditional construct of profession (Huising et al., 2025). Focusing on expertise enables a broader and more nuanced understanding of how professional credibility is constructed, applied, and recognized within educational settings. Rather than limiting the analysis to a profession’s institutional and formal boundaries, we emphasize expertise to illuminate the dynamic resources, practices, and relationships through which education professionals and managers build trust and demonstrate their capacity to address public concerns. This perspective highlights emergent, undervalued, and context-specific forms of expertise critical to the credibility of education professionals in contemporary educational ecologies—for example, in the development of transdisciplinary educational projects that involve not only school actors but also other associations, organizations, and actants. In adopting this approach, we challenge a conventional view of professional credibility as solely driven by adherence to institutional norms and external motivations (Call et al., 2024; Duberley et al., 2006; Ellis, 2008; Kuusisto and Rissanen, 2023; Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Larson, 1977; Merton, 1973; Reed, 1996; Shen, 2015).
Credit cycles
Credit cycles in laboratory life
In 1979, Latour and Woolgar (1979) contributed an anthropological study of a scientific laboratory, Laboratory Life, The Social Construction of Scientific Facts, to the Science and Technology Studies field. In this book, the authors introduced the “cycle of credit,” or “credibility cycle,” to account for the relationship between researchers’ work and the material-semiotic rewards researchers earn from their labor. Researchers earn credit by participating in producing scientific knowledge/facts but need to reinvest credits made as resources to participate in new scientific research activities. Researchers must accumulate credibility in the long term to participate in the scientific practice of producing knowledge/facts. For Latour and Woolgar (1979), experts and their fabrications are credible when longstanding financial, professional, and group investments in making a claim are recognized by those that are reciprocal to a relationship, allowing professional credibility to be reinvested or cashed out (Bourdieu, 1976; Latour and Woolgar, 1979). Latour and Woolgar (1979) compare the credit cycles to capital (re)investments; the credibility that scientists receive from their peers through publication can be used to acquire new resources, such as funding, that permit the development of skills for application in new research, building knowledge, and publicizing scientific findings. Academic knowledge management translates proposals into money, equipment, data, arguments, publications, and citations by peers, underscoring further recognition, new funding requests, and proposals.
Scientists are employees who simultaneously act as independent capitalists who seek and secure financial resources for their laboratories, where the “conversion between one type of capital and another which is necessary for scientists to make a move in the scientific field” occurs (Latour and Woolgar, 1979: 201; see Figure 1). Even though the description of a scientist as a capitalist may not be universally applicable to researchers in all settings, Latour and Woolgar (1979) use it as a lens to interpret specific institutional and professional dynamics, claiming that scientists are subject to economic forces linked to credit and credibility.
The credit cycle.
Extending cycles beyond laboratory life
Numerous science and technology studies have extended the concept of the credit cycle (Lehenkari, 2000; Lepori et al., 2016; Penders and Nelis, 2011). Some organizational studies use credit cycles to explore how researchers and research groups establish professional credibility in higher education. Shen (2015) shows that different higher education institutions can influence unique credit cycles, while Smith (2010) examines how funding shapes the relationship between health inequalities research and policy. According to Shen (2015), higher education professionals also navigate credit cycles influenced by their institutional contexts. Resource distribution and institutional logic shape unique credit cycles for researchers, differentiating elite and provincial universities. These professionals invest in and reinvest in achievements in research funding, authorship credits, and lab space to advance their careers and gain recognition within their academic communities. For Smith (2010), researchers convert the social capital of academic recognition and policy influence into credibility, illustrating how funding mechanisms impact the credibility and professional trajectories of researchers working on health inequalities.
Cycles and school life
We will use the concept of the credit cycle to address professional credibility by examining accounts of professionals’ positions, career paths, and group dynamics. We will weave together individuals and their fact-construction activities, steering clear of oversimplifying the social dynamics of professional credibility (Latour and Woolgar, 1979: 189). By inquiring into the relationship between education workers, group dynamics, and bureaucratic structures, we will provide unique insights into how professional credibility is constructed, applied, and recognized in the highly regulated public education environment. This setting poses distinct challenges and opportunities for credibility, offering a rich context for examining the credit cycle. Here, the framework illuminates how credibility among education professionals and managers is applied and transformed by the bureaucratic, interpersonal, and political challenges specific to this environment. In this context, professionals constantly negotiate between meeting institutional demands and advancing their credibility within the school and community. While primary education teachers manage finances and resources provided by state secretariats, they also endeavor to secure additional funding for their schools, thus converting educational achievements and managerial successes into professional capital with which to advance their careers (Call et al., 2024). This sustains their long-term participation in new activities and in producing new organizational facts (Latour and Woolgar, 1979).
Unlike the laboratory setting in Laboratory Life, where credibility accrues through research outputs and peer recognition within the bounds of institutional and funding priorities, education professionals and managers in a regulated school system face constraints shaped by standardized performance metrics, policy goals, and community-driven outcomes. These distinct pressures lead to a credibility-building process heavily mediated by regulatory requirements and collective goals, differentiating the bureaucratic state school context from the scientifically entrepreneurial laboratory. External controls and expectations drive the construction of credibility in both fields. By applying the credit cycle framework to a novel context, we validate its applicability beyond its original context of scientific research. This demonstrates the framework’s versatility and extends its relevance to other professional settings. Therefore, the credit cycle framework helps answer our objective and research question by providing a structured approach to examining how professional credibility evolves over time. It enables us to analyze historical testimonies and practices within a professional setting and understand professional credibility through its various stages.
Applying the credit cycle to our case allows us to test and refine the framework, thus contributing to theoretical understanding. Adapting the credit cycle framework to primary education reveals unique dynamics less visible in research labs. For instance, while scientists’ credibility is shaped by research advancement, peer validation, and institutional goals, educators operate within a regulated environment in which bureaucratic demands are embedded in their daily actions and performance metrics. For education professionals and managers, credibility depends on pedagogical skills and meeting external standards. To do so requires them to balance reputation with institutional mandates. The complexity of the credit cycle is thus of a different order than that seen in the scientific context of the laboratory.
While individual scientists depend on lab teams for data, technical support, and validation and compete individually, the credit cycle operates collectively in schools. Education professionals and managers align their work with colleagues and the broader school community, transforming credibility into a shared asset, rooted in community values. This collective approach contrasts with individual competitiveness in labs, leading the credit cycle to function uniquely across different professional settings. Scientists convert credibility into “credibility capital” to secure funding and advance careers, reinvesting it in future research (Latour and Woolgar, 1979). Education professionals and managers convert bureaucratic requirements—such as curriculum standards and performance metrics—into professional capital within their local school community. This process reinforces their roles and credibility among peers, administrators, and community members. The credit cycle operates not only as a career mechanism but also as a stabilizing force within a profession whose credibility depends on meeting institutional and communal expectations. Hence, we illustrate the framework’s transformation by showing how professionals gain credit through alignment with institutional metrics, reinforcing their standing and career advancement, while also needing to renegotiate credibility as policies and community needs evolve, embedding the cycle of credibility within both local organizational structures and communities as well as state education realities.
Methods
Situating the research setting
We report on the Final Grades of Primary Education of a Brazilian Rural Elementary State School (RS). Federal, state, and municipal regulations govern the state school system in Brazil. Brazilian state schools are administered at the municipal level for elementary and primary education and by state governments for secondary education, with oversight and funding from the federal government. Curricula are standardized by the Ministry of Education (MEC). The system also includes vocational and adult education programs. Primary and secondary education are free and mandatory for children and teenagers.
Our ethnographic approach observed everyday educational activities within a Brazilian primary school throughout the 2016 school year, engaging with the field and documenting its processes (Barley, 1996; De Leon and Cohen, 2005; Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Spradley, 1979; Van Maanen, 1979; Verver et al., 2024; Wolfinger, 2002). The RS offers primary and adult education programs in Regência, Linhares, Espírito Santo. Founded in a rural setting, RS is a state-administered institution that began operations in 1965 in its current building. Initially functioning as a “uni teacher’s school,” where a single educator taught multiple disciplines, it has since evolved to form educational and administrative school actors, including teachers, principals, educationalists, secretaries, coordinators, and the school meals team. Nowadays, the RS provides education to more than 200 students. The school serves a community predominantly composed of people of mestizo identity (caboclos). It integrates local customs, traditions, and cultural practices into its curriculum, seeing the compulsory education mandate as an opportunity to celebrate and revive local heritage and address local issues. The school has a computer lab, science lab, and sports facilities. The operational details and more information about the school are available on the QEdu platform and are also referenced in our study’s data table for further verification and context.
The RS is one of the 497 schools overseen by SEDU (Secretaria da Educação). SEDU guidelines aim for fewer than 10% of students to repeat a grade each year. How a school reaches these goals is not regulated as long as they are achieved. SEDU restricts annual grade repetition to under 10% and mandates the use of progress and report cards to document academic performance and provide evidence of the success of their efforts. Additionally, SEDU encourages transdisciplinary project-based learning, rewarding schools with annual Best Practices in Education awards for exemplary implementation. RS has a history of developing educational projects related to local and environmental issues to teach curriculum content knowledge.
When Samarco Mineração S.A., Vale S.A., and BHP Billiton on November 5, 2015, were responsible for the failure of a tailings dam upriver, that significantly polluted the Sweet River region, an ecological disaster was created for the RS’s community. The school is situated by the mouth of the river. The ecological disaster was an opportunity for teaching through projects involving other organizations, such as Tamar, a nonprofit conservation organization. Project teaching creates extra work but also provides opportunities for professionals and managers to address local problems. We address professional credibility by focusing on events and fact-construction activities, including project-based education, key events at the end of the first and second trimesters when unsatisfactory student performance was diagnosed, and the production of annual report cards. Our research involved professionals (teachers, the caregiver, the school meal team, and a worker from the Tamar Project) and managers (the school secretary, the coordinator, the principal, and the educationalist).
The research timeframe was selected to align with a complete cycle of educational activities, ensuring a comprehensive overview of all relevant interactions, activities, and organizational dynamics associated with professional credibility. This period was essential for tracking the construction of careers by observing activities related to fact construction and the evolution of professionals involved (Latour and Woolgar, 1979: 189). This included monitoring the beginning, development, and completion of educational projects, the production of school report cards, and the annual evaluations of teachers’ performances. The research investigated how fact-construction activities within a school serve as a medium through which experts translate organizational and educational goals into practices that shape professional credibility. The analysis inquired into the regulations, negotiations, alliances, and conflicts within the bureaucratic and educational landscape, highlighting how these collective dynamics influence the construction of facts essential for professional credibility.
We observed how poor student performance initially led a group of teachers to resist project-based education collectively and to focus on curricular content knowledge instead. Poor academic performance was observed at the end of the first trimester of the school year 2016, the first trimester after the disaster. Even though the Final Grades workers focused only on mandatory curriculum activities during most of the second trimester, school performance did not improve. Exceeding a 10% student failure rate at the end of the 2016 school year would jeopardize the credibility of RS’s workers. Toward the end of the year, educational projects again began to be seen as a way for the school to improve students’ academic performance. Beyond the observed events, testimonies from professionals and managers from the RS and Tamar Project, documents, and audiovisual materials also attested to project-based teaching as an enduring tradition at RS.
The process of continuously proposing, testing, and integrating project-based education into the school’s operational framework exemplifies phases of the credit cycle: constructing professional credibility through innovative practices and materiality, applying these practices by leveraging built credibility as both a mediator and vicarious selector to influence policy, and ultimately gaining recognition from peers and administrative leaders (Allchin, 1999; Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Shapin, 1994). The processes unfold as individuals navigate their career paths and group dynamics within the framework of the credit cycle from 1 year to the next. The relational, transactional, dynamic, and cyclical nature of professional credibility (Bourdieu, 1976; Latour and Woolgar, 1979) is illustrated, thereby challenging contradictory claims (Bourgoin et al., 2020). By exploring the nature of professional credibility, we gained profound insights into how professionals skillfully navigate, manipulate, and reshape group dynamics and bureaucratic structures to their benefit (Abdellatif et al., 2024; Dallyn and Marinetto, 2022; Daudigeos, 2013).
Professionals’ actions and decisions are not merely personal but are strategically aligned with the broader systemic dynamics and the “credibility capital” governing their fields (Latour and Woolgar, 1979). Thus, professionals are not solely molded by the structures within which they operate (Gustafsson et al., 2018; Morris et al., 2023). They actively engage with and influence these structures, advancing their careers, by adhering to the norms and expectations of their professional communities (Latour and Woolgar, 1979). Both permanent and temporary workers at RS accumulated credits that contributed to their credibility. Credibility is made evident through the capacity and reputation of professionals to conduct and contribute to organizations beyond recognition or rewards, encompassing their skills, the quality of their work, and their standing within their community (Latour and Woolgar, 1979). They managed RS’s goals regarding student performance, professional credibility, job prospects, and career paths without leaving local political problems aside (Gane and Johnson, 1993). These strategies offer insights into how professionals construct facts and navigate credibility to construct careers within a regulated framework (Gustafsson et al., 2018; Morris et al., 2023; Walsh et al., 2023; Whittle et al., 2016).
Situating data collection
Analytical distance was maintained from the observed culture. While the principal granted access and requested the secretary’s cooperation in sharing information, teacher participation in the research was voluntary. Initially, close collaboration was not established with the education workers (Calás and Smircich, 1999; Latour and Woolgar, 1979). Indeed, there was a degree of suspicion as to what this outsider was doing and to whom he might be reporting, on the part of the teachers. As the year progressed, relations became more trusting. Over time, increased involvement by the first named author with the research interlocutors’ activities fostered a receptive and candid atmosphere among informants. The school’s staff and the educational authorities knew of the research activity but did not influence its product. Potential biases of the first author’s cognitive and emotional experiences were mitigated by the second author, who remained outside the field and had no contact with informants (Bishop et al., 2021; Bourgoin and Harvey, 2018).
Ethnographic data collection methodologies enabled observation and documentation of the real-time processes through which actors produced educational projects and school reports to understand the practices of constructing, applying, and recognizing professional credibility. Between March and December 2016, the first author spent 15 hours a week in fieldwork. Participant observation, document analysis, audio-visual data collection, and interviews were used to gather data on education workers’ positions, career trajectories, and group dynamics. The sampling method was purposeful, aligning with the qualitative nature of our research. Observations began in the staff room, secretariat, canteen, yard, covered patio, and corridors; virtually everywhere other than where classroom interactions occurred. During the first school trimester, the first author observed the daily activities and interactions of the secretary with SEDU workers from his table in the secretariat. The secretariat acted at a distance through e-mails, producing the school calendar and ordinances, and communicating with RS managers and professionals. SEDU guidelines for organizing allowed us to know in advance when and how an event occurred, such as the last day to submit an educational project for an award, the date of an exam or for assembling students’ report cards. Throughout 2016, the first named author took notes of everything that happened during each school day and described salient fact-construction episodes related to actors’ activities in more detail (Wolfinger, 2002). Field notes were systematically transcribed into a Word document daily, complemented by photographic images, audio-visual materials, copies of documents, transcripts of interviews, and drawings that were constructed throughout each session.
Documentary and audio-visual materials, such as short films produced within RS, social network posts, educational information on the RS, the school calendar, and documents referenced in educational projects, were collected. During the second and third trimesters, 17 critical stakeholders within the school were engaged and interviewed, including the principal, all nine Final Grade teachers, the coordinator, two educationalists, the caregiver, the school secretary, the school meal team, and a professional from the Tamar Project. Informal interviews averaged 40 minutes each, resulting in approximately 10 hours of recorded data, transcribed and organized in Word. During interviews, professionals and managers from the RS and the Tamar Project were shown photos and survey data inscribed in bounded and printed copies of past awarded educational projects. They were asked about the meaning of their participation in the local historical construction of school reports and educational projects (Spradley, 1979). We collected and analyzed the interviewee’s curriculum vitae and publication lists (Latour and Woolgar, 1979). We conducted a diachronic analysis of project processes within the 2016 school year (De Leon and Cohen, 2005). This approach enabled us to trace positions, understand how such projects influenced career trajectories, and examine the enhancement of group dynamics. The following table summarizes the types and quantities of data collected; it clarifies the scope and depth of the empirical data utilized in our study, detailing our application of participant observation, interviews, documentary data, and audiovisual materials (Please see Table 1).
Information about the use of the data.
The researchers elaborated the table.
Throughout our analysis, we ensured credibility and trustworthiness through member checking, triangulation, and peer debriefing techniques. These steps corroborated our interpretations, reduced potential biases, and enhanced the reliability of our study. We provide data accounts from a database of notes amounting to 63,972 thousand words to ground the analysis and narrate the key events. We use this ethnographic data to provide a narrative account of significant events related to professional credibility that occurred during that school year.
Situating data analysis
Our analysis focuses on credibility construction, application, and recognition, employing a narrative analysis separated by event-related phases during the 2016 school year (Boje, 2010; Langley, 1999). This approach enables us to describe the positions and practices of education workers in 2016 and explore their career trajectories and group dynamics. This comprehensive analysis allowed us to collect and examine diachronic process data aligned with the credit cycle (Langley, 1999; Latour and Woolgar, 1979). We used narrative analysis to sequence temporal event histories and characterize professionals based on their activities (Boje, 2010; Langley, 1999; Latour and Woolgar, 1979). The narrative will unfold chronologically, examining professional credibility in a processual manner (Boje, 2010; Langley, 1999).
To build the narrative, we used techniques of codification and categorization (Bryant, 2017; Corbin and Strauss, 1990) to label observations, documents, audio-visual materials, and interview transcripts regarding education workers’ positions, career trajectories, and group dynamics. Coding was an iterative activity deeply interwoven with literature engagement to enrich our understanding and alignment with existing research (Golden-Biddle, 2020; Locke et al., 2022). This iterative process involved cycling between emergent data, themes, concepts, dimensions, and relevant literature (Gioia et al., 2013). The coding process began by engaging with literature directly as a source for constructing codes (Gurses and Ozcan, 2015; Post and Byron, 2015). In step with the literature, we began by abductively identifying professionals’ positions, career paths, and group dynamics as themes used to address professional credibility. The literature served as a direct source of codes. It guided our focus on specific observations, helping to frame the analytical scope and identify critical observations for further scrutiny during coding (Heaphy, 2013).
In collecting data on professionals’ positions, career paths, and group dynamics, we created daily narratives—as prior analytic artifacts (cf. Locke et al., 2022; Smith, 2015)—from the interviews, documents, audiovisuals, and notes (Wolfinger, 2002). This enabled us to assemble a list of emerging issues faced by managers and professionals, which were then systematically categorized and linked to broader theoretical frameworks, grounding our coding in empirical data and theoretical insights for understanding professional credibility. Then, open coding was employed, involving constant comparisons (Corbin and Strauss, 1990), to address the practices related to the construction, application, and recognition of professional credibility within this abductive frame. “Degrees” and “learning at work” (pertaining to education workers’ positions), “intersection with field configuration” and “conversion practices” (career paths), and “enacting concerns and assemblages” and “modes of ordering” (group dynamics) emerged through an open coding practice (Strauss and Corbin, 1998) as first-order concepts (Strauss and Corbin, 1998; Van Maanen, 1979). “Degrees” and “learning at work” relate to how professionals construct their credibility. Positions, reflecting their formal qualifications and ongoing professional development, are foundational in establishing their initial credibility.
Through innovative practices and materiality that arise from their backgrounds, professionals begin to construct a unique professional identity that is recognized and valued within their community. Career paths, highlighted by their “intersection with field configuration” and “conversion practices,” represent dynamic processes through which professionals constructed credibility. As they navigate career trajectories, they leverage their established credibility to influence and reshape their professional environments. This process involves instrumental interactions and engagements in applying their credibility to real-world challenges. As described by “enacting concerns and assemblages” and “modes of ordering,” group dynamics play a crucial role in recognizing professional credibility. These dynamics reflect the complex interplay of relationships and power structures within the organization. How professionals engage with and influence these dynamics determines how their peers and leaders ultimately recognize their credibility. This recognition is often a result of their ability to manage effectively and direct group activities toward collective goals, thus reinforcing their credibility within the professional community.
From these first-order concepts, the study integrated patterns across the data to develop second-order categories of “credit accumulation and reinvestment” (related to education workers’ positions and constructing professional credibility), “assessment of actions” (career paths and applying professional credibility), and “evidence and politics of expertise” (group dynamics and recognition of professional credibility; cf. Huising, 2015). These second-order categories resulted from axial coding (Locke et al., 2022; Strauss and Corbin, 1998). Professionals make “credibility investments” to ascend positions, navigate new paths, and promote novel group dynamics (see Figure 2).
Data structure.
Findings
Employee positions: Constructing professional credibility
Maria, the new educationalist for the Final Grades of Primary Education, was from another city/state. For over 10 years, Maria worked in private religious schools, where what matters, she said, is teaching the curricular knowledge content immediately and applying tests. Maria embarked on a significant transition when in 2016, moving from a decade in private schools, she took up her first educationalist position in a state school. Accustomed to a curriculum-centric approach, she found herself in a new environment that emphasized broader educational strategies. Instead of simply complying with it, she often overlooked the state-supported non-mandatory initiatives emphasizing broader didactic approaches: “Private school is so different. Private school wants results, ready report cards, and closed notes.” Her tenure at RS was short-lived, as her contract was temporary, prompting her to concentrate on delivering tangible educational outcomes that would bolster her professional trajectory, potentially aiding her return to her home state, Bahia, for future opportunities. Maria’s initial months were marked by her gradual, albeit incomplete, integration into the school’s distinctive project-based, environmental, and cultural educational methods. Despite the secular nature of the institution, Maria occasionally infused her religious background into the school environment, a practice influenced by her lengthy experience in faith-based educational settings in which immediate curriculum delivery and frequent testing were paramount. For Maria, the important thing is to value the “family” and the “student,” not the “trees.” She frequently complained about the school’s ecological priorities. During the first trimester, she alleged: “I have never seen a school with so many meetings and projects going on.”
Maria was responsible for the work of the teachers and the school coordinator, Glory, was her immediate superior, as the school principal. Glory had dedicated decades to fostering the school’s unique educational approach, which strongly emphasized project-based learning. Her efforts were driven by a desire to secure her position against potential forced retirement, and she aimed to demonstrate the ongoing necessity of her leadership through the success of these programs. Glory was instrumental in defining the school’s unique educational ethos: “Our way, through which we stand out in the State School Education Network, is to offer education through instructive, environmental, cultural projects—ours and the governments.”
There is a distinction between individuals and their activities in constructing professional credibility, which professionals use to strengthen or achieve new positions and build their careers. In the context of primary school, new and in-house managers and professionals assume new roles, legitimized through their expertise and academic qualifications. Personal histories, fact-construction activities, specific terms of employment contracts, and defined organizational roles significantly influence how professionals are formed and how educational policies and practices are implemented. To accumulate and reinvest credit, resulting professionals and managers engage in strategic fact-construction activities, continuously learning on the job, navigating their career trajectories, and shaping local organizational initiatives. This process demonstrates how career construction and professional credibility are intertwined, with success hinging on the strategic separation of one’s individual career from the material and economic aspects of one’s routine activities.
Career trajectories: Applying professional credibility
In December 2012, the Black River Invites project at RS won first place in Educational Management during the sixth SEDU Best Practice in Education award, marking RS’s first victory. Glory, holding the position of RS’s director and being the project’s creator, also received an LCD TV as part of the award. The school was granted R$25,000.00 and a trophy at a Vitória Espírito Santo ceremony. The success of The Black River Invites project had a long history. We can begin to trace it through Glory’s career trajectory. After studying in Linhares, Espírito Santo, she assumed a teacher position for 4 years, gaining her bachelor’s degree in 1989. Glory arrived at the RS in 1998 to assume the position of teacher: “I went to Vila Regência because, at the time, I had taken a course to accelerate learning at the Ayrton Senna foundation and in Linhares, where I wanted to work, the vacancies were filled; the RS school was the only option. As I needed to work, I took over the group.” In 1998, when Glory entered the school, Madalena had been the principal for 8 years. From the school’s foundation in the 60s until 1986, when Madalena joined the school, there were no educational or ecology projects, not surprisingly, because at this time the Rio Preto (Black River) was where ships were anchored, and rosewood and mahogany trees were shipped, without regard for ecology.
Until almost the end of 1989, there was no teaching team, as there is now. Only after 1990 did secretaries begin working at the school. RS gradually formed educational and administrative school actors, beginning with teachers and the director, then secretaries, coordinators, and the school meals team. Thus, the school workers, such as Glory and former local students who became permanent teachers (Marieta—Mathematics, Morena—Arts, Lucy—Portuguese, Grace—History), and secretary (Theresa), learned to work according to the RS’s educational management practices. From 1995 to 2005, the director, Madalena, increasingly opened the school’s door to organizations in Vila Regência. In 2005, the Tamar Project supported the construction of LIEDI, a building within the school that includes a resources room, science/biology lab, and computer lab room equipped with Internet-connected computers for interdisciplinary project work.
Salui was Tamar’s community relations specialist, a position he achieved after numerous investments of time on his part, every month, from 2005 to 2012, with RS. For Salui, The Black River Invites project incentivized the RS to develop more transformative actions in the school-community relationship. Tamar had arrived in the village in the 80s and Salui had started working formally at Tamar in 1991. Salui commented that “in places where Tamar develops its activities, the school organization always plays a central part, since it is a space where all the children from the community are and from where transformation can come.” However, his work has expanded beyond the school’s boundaries. Nowadays, it encompasses broader environmental education and community development, signifying a shift from an intensely localized focus to a more diversified engagement with the broader community. From 2005 to 2012, Tamar worked within the RS, developing Eco-Citizenship to take advantage of Petrobras’s decision to invest in the locality in 2003. Eco-Citizenship also built a library and a museum next to the Tamar Project office at Vila Regência, boosting work with socio-environmental sustainability projects. Salui, a representative from the Tamar Project, who has collaborated with the school for over two decades, reflected on the evolving nature of the partnership.
Over a period of years, the school’s professionals began to consider Eco-Citizenship as only creating more work. In 2012, when RS ceased to respond to Eco-Citizenship initiatives, Tamar renegotiated the partnership with RS and quit the school premises. The Eco-Citizenship initiative was closed shortly after The Black River Invites received the SEDU award. Until today, the Tamar Project continues to work with but not within the school. The close and intimate relationship between the RS and Tamar Project weakened, even though the prize of R$25,000.00 was more significant for the school than the sum of all other funds (State and federal) received each school year. The award allowed the RS’s education workers to reinvest money and gather knowledge to generate new projects and actions. The Black River Invites’ economic legacy was converted into accessibility, spaces, and resources for reading, researching, and studying, demonstrating how professionals can translate credit from one form to another. Salui’s path also demonstrates the pursuit of credibility capital. After volunteering for Tamar, he eventually became Tamar’s community relations specialist. His dedication and the expertise he developed contributed to transforming his career trajectory and the school-community relationship, through developing projects such as The Black River Invites and Eco-Citizenship.
When Madalena decided to leave the director’s position in 2005 to dedicate herself to being a full-time teacher, Glory applied for and ended up assuming the director position. For Glory, her investment in this position gave her advantages, such as “fighting for the village’s culture and protecting its natural environment.” Glory assumed the role of school principal on October 25, 2005, during the early stages of The Black River Invites project. Under Glory’s leadership, the school continued and expanded its educational initiatives by developing various projects that gained awards. Once Glory accepted the new position as RS’s director, she was able to change the field around her career trajectory. She was an advocate for the village’s culture and environmental protection, aligning its broader political problems and her interests with the school’s goals. Glory played a significant role in developing educational projects. In both Glory and Salui’s cases, their professional credibility and expertise were instrumental in career advancement and project success. Glory and Salui strategically separated their careers from their organization’s routine activities to build their credibility within their roles and leveraged it to further their projects and initiatives. Their career trajectories are stories of how credibility capital plays a vital role in professional lives. In the world of primary education, CVs and the tangible impact of their recorded initiatives, serve as evidence of credibility, shaping career paths and projects. Considering Glory’s length of service, positions, and career trajectory, she was due to retire in 2017. Therefore, 2016 was her last year at the school before finally cashing her accumulated pension. On October 17, 2016, the tender for public procurement of the new director of the RS was made public. The visit of the three director candidates to the school took place on October 20, 2016, as provided in the tender notice.
Professional fact-construction activities are related to career trajectories and the application of professional credibility. Professionals and managers shape both organizational dynamics and their career trajectories by focusing on the intersection of field configurations and conversion practices. Leveraging personal credibility and attesting to professional testimony illustrates how professionals embed their individual contributions within broader institutional actions. Simultaneously, these activities define the individual. Such integration highlights how career paths are not only about advancing personal goals but also about actively participating in and shaping organizational objectives through credible actions. The strategic professional engagements and the careful assessment of these actions emphasize the dynamic, ongoing process of applying credibility to align with personal aspirations and collective goals.
Group dynamics and assemblages: Recognizing professional credibility
In 2015, RS had another award-winning educational project. This year, to submit a more significant number of projects, an “existing” project was re-presented to the ninth SEDU Award for Best Practices in Education as a “longitudinal” pedagogical action, The Drop of Water project. The project was conceived and developed early in 2014 by Lucy and Polly, Portuguese and Biology teachers at the school, respectively. Glory negotiated with the RS managers and professionals responsible for The Drop of Water project. The teachers were overloaded with their teaching-learning activities and taking on such a responsibility would mean more work. Project-based education was regularly contested internally because of workload issues. Glory decided that Magdala, who had just joined the school as a teacher of the Early Grades of Primary Education, should be responsible for developing new educational activities with The Drop of Water project. Magdala also documented and submitted this project to the 2015 SEDU Award for Best Practices in Education. Magdala was a temporary employee who only worked at the school between 2015 and 2016.
In 2015, at the ninth edition of the SEDU award for Best Practices in Education, The Drop of Water project won an award, with the school receiving a further R$25,000.00. No RS professionals attended the awards ceremony except Glory and Magdala. Magdala kept the LCD TV that the SEDU awarded, causing resentment among other teachers. While the other school workers, such as Lucy and Polly, wanted success for the school regarding accessing additional resources, they also sought to succeed professionally, not witness other professionals reaping private benefits of the seeds they had sown. Cuts and freezes in state funding for education meant that not all teachers working at state schools were permanent. In this context, in the 2016 school year, Glory remarked, emphasizing the award’s importance, “The government [of Espírito Santo] sent to the RS only R$ 16,000.00 for the 2016 school year. We need much more, but if it was not for the prize (. . .). Well, the truth is that no school has money. We have everything paid; we must recognize this award’s importance.” Throughout 2016, RS had a high turnover of teachers, coordinators, and educationalists; in the Final Grades of Primary Education in RS in 2016, the coordinator, educationalist, and caregiver had temporary contracts, as did four of the nine teachers.
At the end of the first trimester (May 23, 2016), after the student evaluation board (May 20, 2016), poor performance in the Final Grades of Primary Education was evident. Maria’s concerns that there was a lack of attention to “formal instruction” and too much focus on “trees” gained ground amongst the staff. If the school year had ended in the first trimester, more than 25% of students would have been held back. Failing to meet specific standards would have negative consequences for those remaining at the school, as it would shift their evaluation method from electronic assessments to in-person investigations carried out by SEDU under “special measures.” In elementary education, permanent staff earn annual credits for career advancement and achieving educational goals; professionals and managers accumulate credits for career advancement annually, achieved through pursuing higher degrees, excelling in teaching, and adhering to SEDU guidelines. On the other hand, temporary teachers and educationalists, facing the prospect of seeking new positions once the school year concludes, employed distinct strategies to manage their professional credibility and expertise presentation effectively. This encompassed tailoring their portrayal of expertise based on their target audience, whether prospective employers within government institutions or private educational establishments.
In step with SEDU guidelines, Maria developed pedagogical interventions to reverse the adverse scenario, including reinforcement in math and Portuguese, pair formation, grouping techniques, increasing awareness of absences, notes for students and parents, and more homework. The whole teaching staff supported Maria and focused more on reversing the poor student performance identified at the end of the first trimester from the beginning to the end of the second trimester (September 12, 2016). However, after the student evaluation board (September 8, 2016), poor performance in Primary Education Final Grades was again evident. From that moment on, nobody talked about the difficulty of offering education through the development of project-based education. Educational projects such as Tree Day, Science Fair, and Black Consciousness Day, carried out every year, were now seen by the whole teaching team as possible ways of improving student performance rather than just being extra work. Maria and other teachers started to renew teaching through education projects to reverse the pessimistic scenario. Maria even opted to design and implement a VIP Student project based on an experience she had developed in an Adventist school in Bahia to contribute to reversing poor academic performance. Maria sought to offer education through an educational project in which valuing students/families was the most essential value. Maria designed this project for the RS’s Final Grades in partnership with the Adventist Church and Association of Residents so that mobilizing equipment, decorations, certificates, and a support team was possible.
Developing new facts, such as educational projects and school report cards, produced new realities for RS professionals and managers. Maria assumed the position at RS, and consequently, her career trajectory and group dynamics led her to enact assemblages such as emerging educational projects and activities that produced pedagogical interventions and a new persona. These experiences enabled Maria and other managers and professionals to pursue organizational goals and grow in credibility by displaying trustworthiness and expertise in more extensive political challenges. As a result, education workers could accumulate different types of credit. For instance, Maria’s VIP Student project was featured multiple times on RS’s Facebook page alongside other projects such as Tree Day, Science Fair, and Black Consciousness Day. Their CVs were updated accordingly. Such tactics draw attention to the successful continuity of their educational careers within education organizations. When Maria saw her temporary employment contract terminated at the end of the school year 2016, she had a better opportunity to convert her accumulated credit into a new position. In 2017, she became the new educationalist at the Adventist school in her hometown in Bahia.
In the unfolding dynamics at RS, the interplay between managers and professionals and their activities within the school’s community was crucial in recognizing professional credibility. The negotiation of organizational change, personal transformation, and the navigation of complex social and organizational expectations illustrated how group dynamics were central to the professional development of educators. Despite initial resistance, Maria’s involvement with project-based education initiatives showcased how such dynamics shape individual career trajectories and influence broader educational outcomes. Despite being a temporary employee, her ability to adapt and integrate into the school’s culture underscored the significant role of flexibility and adaptability in professional growth. The strategic use of educational projects to enhance student performance demonstrated how professionals can apply their expertise and accumulated credibility to effect meaningful organizational changes. This intricate mesh of interactions, interests, and the politics of expertise at RS illuminates how education workers navigate and mold their professional paths while contributing to the school’s evolving educational landscape. Through such endeavors, they recognize their professional credibility and actively shape the group dynamics within the educational community.
Discussion
Professional credibility is constructed, applied, and recognized through the reconciliation of different criteria of personal, organizational, and societal worth (Abbott, 1988; Christensen et al., 2001; Gane and Johnson, 1993; Kamoche et al., 2011; Noordegraaf, 2011; Schillebeeckx et al., 2019; Thomas and Davies, 2005; Waring and Currie, 2009; Whitley, 2003). Instead of being considered an unwanted consequence of governance and regulation work (cf. Hunton and Rose, 2011; Kuusisto and Rissanen, 2023), routine organizational behavior can attend to organizational and societal aims and professional career objectives in highly regulated occupations (cf. Buchanan and Badham, 1999). In accounting for organizational and societal goals and problems, RS’s education workers established their personal credibility as a standard of worth (Allchin, 1999). They aligned with the broader systemic dynamics and the “credibility capital” governing their fields (Latour and Woolgar, 1979). Credits accumulated, progressed in the cycle, and were mapped as sources of credibility (e.g. effective academic performance) by navigating, manipulating, and reshaping group dynamics and bureaucratic structures to the benefit of personal careers (Abdellatif et al., 2024; Dallyn and Marinetto, 2022; Daudigeos, 2013). Agonistic and symbiotic processes were used to construct, apply, and recognize credibility in the local context (Allchin, 1999; Huising, 2015; Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Whittle et al., 2016). Education professionals and managers converted from one type of capital to another to progress in their careers. Our understanding is in line with the growing relational perspective on professions and occupations (cf. DiBenigno, 2018; Gustafsson et al., 2018; Kahl et al., 2016; Schillebeeckx et al., 2019; Veltrop et al., 2017; Whitley, 2003), for it demonstrates how agonistic interactions, symbiotic interests, conflicts, and controversies shape the behavior of professionals (Shen, 2015).
Professionals are not solely molded by the structures within which they operate (Gustafsson et al., 2018; Morris et al., 2023); they invest in credit cycles to progress in their careers. We understand the importance of working on immediate situations in which professionals need to follow the rules, fulfill tasks, and have their claims accepted (e.g. Bourgoin et al., 2020; Huising, 2015; Pritchard and Fear, 2015; Wylie et al., 2014). Nevertheless, it is crucial to foster a procedural and dynamic comprehension of professional credibility (Kamoche et al., 2011; Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Gustafsson et al., 2018; Whitley, 2003). This becomes particularly pertinent as professionals increasingly face challenges stemming from a plurality of incommensurable yet competing forms of expertise vying to define problems (Abbott, 1988; Collins and Evans, 2002; Huising et al., 2025) and from the escalating threat of de-professionalization and indeterminacy driven by corporate and bureaucratic organizations (Boreham, 1983; Evetts, 2011; Kamoche et al., 2011; Noordegraaf, 2011; Reed, 1996; Reed and Thomas, 2021; Sewell, 2005; Waring and Currie, 2009; Whitley, 2003).
The controversy in the 2015 school year concerning the Drop of Water project and concomitant overwork made school workers agonistic about teaching the mandatory curriculum content through educational projects. The agonism was despite the school’s historical achievements through such practice and SEDU’s incentives for schools to develop project-based teaching. With the threat of intervention of SEDU in the school in the 2017 school year due to the low academic performance of students in 2016, the professionals rethought their attitudes to project-based teaching, not only as organizational goals but also as personal career objectives achieved through practices of self-evaluation and self-interest (Buchanan and Badham, 1999; Gustafsson et al., 2018; Hunton and Rose, 2011; Kamoche et al., 2011; Kuusisto and Rissanen, 2023; Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Whitley, 2003). More than just following institutional norms, they sought control and exchanged expertise to increase rewards and guarantee the work of the other professionals (Ellis, 2008; Kuusisto and Rissanen, 2023; Larson, 1977; Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Reed, 1996; Shen, 2015). They needed to deal with threats to their professional credibility in the 2016 school year by reconsidering educational projects as a viable way to help reverse the poor student performance reported to the Education Department. As part of complex systems (cf. Pakarinen and Huising, 2023), education professionals and managers’ work is subject to constant remote state measurement, assessment, and evaluation (Evetts, 2011; Muller, 2018) by SEDU. Frequent routine reports on school performance, meals served, attendance made, and activities need to be developed and dispatched to SEDU.
Education professionals and managers in state schools are employees who must account for educating children with government resources while at the same time acting as independent workers who need to manage the professional capital they possess, tied to economic forces linked to credit and credibility (see Latour and Woolgar, 1979). School workers invest in credit cycles by reinvesting their knowledge through practice (Latour and Woolgar, 1979). Their daily activities and innovative ideas contribute to elementary school curriculum development and teaching and learning processes. They obtain credit through the regulator, SEDU, which conducts assessments and grants recognition. These managers and professionals must effectively communicate to the organization or education network how they utilize available money and resources in pedagogical practices, educational projects addressing broader political issues (Gane and Johnson, 1993), and assessments to gain further awards and recognition for their roles and idealizations within a primary education school organization. Thus, professionals can reinvest money and resources from awards and gather knowledge to generate new projects and actions from their positions, enacting their career trajectories and group dynamics (see Figure 3).
The necessary conversion between different types of capital for primary education workers to progress in their careers.
Our findings illuminate how education professionals and managers strategically navigated the landscape, faced with the challenge of rebuilding professional credibility after a turbulent year with deleterious student effects. To succeed in their credit cycles, they accumulated contacts, generated ideas, collected data, developed educational projects, and implemented solutions for academic performance (e.g. Abbott, 1988; Reed, 1996), building their credibility as professionals and developing as individuals (Latour and Woolgar, 1979). In doing this, the education workers learned new skills, transformed group dynamics, produced new realities for the locals, and even changed the trajectory of their careers. The recognition from the 2015 award, positive and problematic simultaneously, was only a tiny part of the credit cycle: “Each facet is but one part of an endless cycle of investment and conversion” (Latour and Woolgar, 1979: 201).
The cycle of credit developed by every single education worker affects the dynamics of the group and the context in which the professional is inserted. For instance, after denying educational projects, Maria embraced them in an attempt to reverse the poor academic performance identified at the end of the second trimester of the 2016 school year. At the end of the 2016 school year, such developments allowed her to compete for and take up a new position in a religiously protestant private school in her hometown, start a new trajectory, and begin to change group dynamics by valuing the students and their families (Abdellatif et al., 2024; Dallyn and Marinetto, 2022; Daudigeos, 2013). Maria pursued personal career objectives and organizational and societal goals (Buchanan and Badham, 1999; Hunton and Rose, 2011). She and other education workers encountered and navigated challenges through a complex knowledge generation system, political maneuvering, and collaboration.
Today, liberal, service, and organizational professions, as well as crucial employee groups, must actively pursue personal expertise and self-autonomy for competitiveness, as organizations cannot always ensure career growth for all workers (Abbott, 1988; Freidson, 1973, 2001; Gustafsson et al., 2018; Kamoche et al., 2011; Whitley, 2003). The reconceptualization of project-based teaching to achieve organizational goals and personal career objectives underscores the dual importance of professional credibility and institutional success. It elucidates the intricate balance education workers must maintain to align their personal career trajectories with the broader goals of their institutions, using the distinction between themselves and their fact-construction activities to advance their careers and gain acknowledgment from leadership and peers within the professional community (Latour and Woolgar, 1979).
Professional credibility is constructed through innovative practices and materiality, involving integrating empirical evidence, career progression, and personal strategies (Latour and Woolgar, 1979). For example, Maria’s degrees allowed her to transition from a decade in private schools to a new position in a state school, focusing on delivering tangible educational outcomes. Despite her initial challenges, Maria learned how to integrate project-based, environmental, and cultural educational methods at work, highlighting how professionals continuously learn and shape their career paths to accumulate and reinvest credits through strategic professional engagements. Professional credibility is applied by leveraging constructed credibility as both a mediator and vicarious selector to influence policy (Allchin, 1999), requiring balancing field dynamics and individual goals. Credibility is applied to mediate and direct organizational change.
Glory’s and Salui’s career trajectories, which result from conversion practices, intersect with field configuration and influence organizational dynamics and career trajectories, exemplifying this process. After taking over the director position, Glory led the school to win multiple awards. Upon becoming Tamar’s community relations specialist, Salui participated in the Black River Invites project, which incentivized RS to develop more transformative actions in the school-community relationship. Glory’s and Salui’s strategic engagements and historical assessment of their actions, attest to professional testimony (Allchin, 1999; Gustafsson et al., 2018; Kamoche et al., 2011; Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Shapin, 1994; Whitley, 2003). They demonstrate how applying credibility can leverage personal credibility to influence organizational dynamics and drive significant transformations within professional environments. Professional credibility recognition comes from peers and administrative leaders (Shapin, 1994). It depends on differentiating personal achievements from work activities and maneuvering roles and outputs to align with professional standards. Maria’s involvement in project-based education initiatives showcased that professional credibility is recognized within and about heterogeneous concerns and assemblages (cf. Pakarinen and Huising, 2023). It is performance within the modes of ordering of a regulated community of practice in which professional credibility is assessed (cf. Abbott, 1988, 1991; Barley, 1996; Bourgoin et al., 2020; Gustafsson et al., 2018; Huising, 2015; Pakarinen and Huising, 2023; Waring and Currie, 2009). Professionals must navigate organizational and social expectations to progress professionally, demonstrating the importance of empirical evidence and politics of expertise. Maria’s ability to adapt and integrate into the school’s culture, despite being a temporary employee, underscores the significant role of flexibility and adaptability in professional growth while also demonstrating that interactions, interests, and controversies govern professionals’ behavior beyond rewards or recognition alone (Latour and Woolgar, 1979). Maria’s strategic use of educational projects allowed her to make “credibility investments,” resulting in new positions, paths, and group dynamics.
The findings illustrate how professionals construct, apply, and acknowledge professional credibility within a highly regulated setting (Gustafsson et al., 2018; Morris et al., 2023; Walsh et al., 2023; Whittle et al., 2016). By examining the narratives of Glory, Maria, and Salui, we see how professional credibility concerns not just following institutional norms but also actively engaging with and shaping the organizational and social structures within which professionals operate motivations (Abdellatif et al., 2024; Call et al., 2024; Duberley et al., 2006; Ellis, 2008; Kuusisto and Rissanen, 2023; Larson, 1977; Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Merton, 1973; Reed, 1996; Shen, 2015). Understanding of the credit cycle in professional credibility offers valuable insights for scholars and practitioners, emphasizing the importance of continuous evaluation, innovation, and strategic engagement in fostering professional growth and organizational change.
The credit cycle framework’s adaptability across professional environments beyond the laboratory demonstrated its relevance for professions where credibility is closely linked to external expectations. Our empirical findings show that education professionals and managers navigate unique pressures shaping how credibility is constructed, applied, and recognized, contributing a new perspective to the literature on professional credibility. Our findings also reveal novel insights that enrich the credit cycle framework by highlighting credibility as a mediator between bureaucratic norms and professional practices, underscoring the centrality of collective support and group dynamics and illustrating how bureaucratic demands are converted into professional capital to pursue external career expansion or stabilize their roles. Together, these insights demonstrate the flexibility of the credit cycle and how it adapts to specific organizational pressures, advancing theoretical understanding by showing how credibility operates as both an adaptable and stabilizing resource in varying contexts.
The research prepares a foundation for broader inquiries into the relational, cyclical, dynamic and transactional nature of credibility across diverse organizational contexts. Beyond mere tactics, “credibility investments” are enacted within and around existing assemblages of agents, objects, and audiences and through exogenous injections of new personnel into a situation (cf. Chong and Bourgoin, 2020; Huising et al., 2025; Pakarinen and Huising, 2023). They must relate to local circumstances and its sociomateriality and do so differently (Bourgoin et al., 2020). As they do so, professionals may ascend to new positions, follow new paths, and promote new group dynamics. Hence, analysis using the cycle of credit invites researchers to adopt a critical, processual, and dynamic stance to investigate professional credibility. Thus, future organizational research based on the cycle of credit is needed for a subtler understanding of the negotiations and dynamics unfolding in constructing, applying, and recognizing professional credibility in local situations and different professional projects, enabling experts to foster impactful changes in their environments. This intricate mesh of interactions, interests, and the politics of expertise illuminates the nuanced ways in which professionals navigate and mold their professional paths while contributing to the organization’s evolving landscape. Through such endeavors, they recognize their professional credibility and actively shape the group dynamics within the community. Despite opposing opinions (cf. Bourgoin et al., 2020), this process demonstrates that professional credibility is relational, cyclical, dynamic, and transactional (Bourdieu, 1976; Latour and Woolgar, 1979).
Conclusion
In this ethnographic study, we examined the dynamics, trajectories, and practices of professionals and managers at the RS school in Vila Regência. In response to our research question, we uncovered valuable insights into the construction, application, and recognition of professional credibility within the context of education workers in a highly regulated setting. For instance, Glory’s career trajectory, marked by dedication and a solid connection to Vila Regência and its challenges, exemplified the intersection of individual strategies with the broader field configuration. Individual careers intersected and contributed to the evolving landscape of the school. Professionals like Maria, who reinvented her approach to education, and Glory, who faced retirement, demonstrated how individual trajectories can shape group dynamics and the collective narrative of an educational institution.
Few organizational studies use the credit cycle to address professional credibility and the accumulation of credits. Studies that do so have focused on organizational researchers and research groups in the context of higher education (e.g. Shen, 2015; Smith, 2010). We have shown that the credit cycle can be extended to other professional projects in which experts fight for space and opportunities, constructing, applying, and recognizing their credibility and the credibility of their claims to expertise in day-to-day practice but also in the long term (cf. Allchin, 1999; Latour and Woolgar, 1979). The cycle of credit can help professionals from different jurisdictions competing to control problem definition (Abbott, 1988; Huising et al., 2025) understand how professional credibility is constructed, applied, and recognized and how credits accumulate. We extended the application of the cycle of credit to the professional project of primary education teachers, fighting against structural inequalities and the effects of ecological disaster to establish credibility and competence (Gane and Johnson, 1993; Larson, 1977; Macdonald, 1995).
The credit cycle framework provides a comprehensive perspective that extends beyond the particulars of our case, allowing us to explore the broader dynamics of credibility in professional contexts. Thus, the implications of our findings resonate within the realm of professional credibility in various contexts. Such a theoretical framework lends itself to applications in different professions and sectors where credibility is paramount. Our exploration of “credibility investments” and their contextualization affords valuable insights to scholars and practitioners alike. The field configuration, though constantly evolving, remains a critical determinant of the practices and trajectories of the individuals within it. Hence, the historical assessment of professionals’ testimonies within a highly regulated educational system, analyzed through the credit cycle framework, deepens our understanding of how professional credibility is constructed, applied, and recognized at the individual level.
The dynamics of credibility construction are not immune to external pressures, such as the threat of intervention by the SEDU, due to low academic performance. This external pressure prompted professionals to re-evaluate their practices and align them with organizational goals and personal career objectives. Thus, our study sheds light on the complex interplay between personal, organizational, and societal purpose, challenging the notion that professionals adhere solely to institutional norms and motivations and demonstrating how professionals navigate a delicate balance between meeting organizational and societal objectives and pursuing individual career goals.
Therefore, our theoretical contribution advances two key areas. First, it enriches the credit cycle literature by extending its application to primary education, demonstrating its adaptability across professional environments. Our application of the credit cycle framework to a highly regulated state school also enriches Latour and Woolgar (1979) framework by revealing credibility as a mediator between bureaucratic norms and professional practice, emphasizing the central role of collective support within the community, and illustrating how education professionals and managers convert bureaucratic demands into professional capital that stabilizes their roles rather than solely advancing careers. This application highlights credibility’s relational, cyclical, dynamic, and transactional nature, providing a new lens to view professional development. By exploring the nature of professional credibility, we gain deeper insights into how professionals skillfully navigate, manipulate, and reshape group dynamics and bureaucratic structures to their benefit. This exploration reveals that professionals’ actions and decisions are strategically aligned with broader systemic dynamics and the “credibility capital” governing their fields.
By illustrating how the activities of professionals such as Glory, Maria, and Salui navigate and influence their environments, we offer a nuanced understanding of the strategic engagements and continuous evaluations necessary for constructing, applying, and recognizing professional credibility. Hence, the credit cycle approach underscores the distinction between individuals and their activities as a resource for the research interlocutors. They leverage this distinction to build their careers, separating themselves as individuals from the material and economic aspects of their school activities. Conversely, the credit cycle approach can guide researchers in not using the individual as the primary unit of analysis.
Second, we deepen the understanding of professional credibility by contributing to epistemic pluralism and critique in exploring diverse methodologies and exposing power dynamics to reveal credibility’s role in mediating between bureaucratic mandates and community norms, extending beyond individual career advancement (Zanoni et al., 2023). We enhance the understanding of professional credibility by using the credit cycle framework to conduct historical assessments of expert testimonies and practices, focusing on their positions, career paths, and group dynamics. This approach offers new insights into how credibility is constructed, applied, and recognized within regulated organizations, challenging the notion that professional credibility is solely based on following institutional rules or external incentives. Hence, drawing on Huising et al. (2025), we invigorate our methodological imagination by employing the credit cycle framework (Latour and Woolgar, 1979) to conduct historical assessments of expert testimonies and practices. By focusing on positions, career paths, and group dynamics, we respond to recent calls to examine and compare how specific forms of expertise emerge and gain significance across diverse contexts (Huising et al., 2025). These contexts range from RS and its local communities to organizations like Tamar, extending to actants such as rivers and environmental disasters. By adopting such a reflexive stance on how credibility capital is enacted, our study resonates with Organization’s advocacy of inclusive scholarly communities and the politics of hope, emphasizing the potential for professionals to redefine credibility in ways that promote collective resilience and adaptability within constrained systems.
Our research was limited to a specific educational context and time frame of 1 year, which may limit the generalizability of our findings to other settings and times. Longitudinal data over a more substantial period could provide further insights into professional credibility. Considering these limitations, a nuanced and dynamic approach, as exemplified by the “cycle of credit,” is essential for a deeper comprehension of this multifaceted construct in various professional domains. An implication is that it may no longer be possible to understand professional credibility through practice-based research that solely maps and describes its sources and nature regarding credentials, institutional recognition of their jurisdictional domain, or expert tactics to dominate different modes of professional existence in organizations. For future research, we recommend exploring the application of the cycle of credit framework in other professional contexts to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of professional credibility. Longitudinal studies could track the evolution of professional credibility within specific professions over time and its systematic local signs of success and failure, providing valuable insights into the sustainability of credibility-building efforts. In a final conclusion we propose that critical inquiry takes the everyday practices of its subjects seriously, rather than treating them as the puppets of any grand theory.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Research interests
Research interests include social sciences, reflexivity, public administration, organization studies, and the intersection of professions, sociomateriality, and organizations.
