Compliance, Resistance and Pragmatism: The (re)construction of schoolteacher identities in a period of intensive educational reform

Abstract

Drawing on empirical research, this article explores the ways in which schoolteachers ‘reposition’ themselves in the face of rapid and extensive educational change, some of which they may view with ambivalence or hostility. Arguing that local responses to public policy are prompting teachers to become increasingly pragmatic in their philosophies and practice, the article identifies and illustrates two distinct forms of pragmatism: ‘principled pragmatism’, through which teachers who feel generally positive towards recent reforms feel able to strengthen and affirm their pedagogic identities by drawing eclectically on a range of educational practices and traditions; and ‘contingent pragmatism’, adopted by teachers in oppositional orientations to reform, whereby enforced reactions to policy change take on something of the function of a survival strategy. The article suggests that a consequence ‐ and possible cause ‐ of the adoption of self‐consciously pragmatic teacher identities is the effective depoliticisation of teachers through an internalisation of current dominant discourses of compromise.