Primary school leadership in England: performativity and matters of professionalism

This article presents interview data from a study involving nine primary
school leaders. Five are leaders of local authority schools while four are
leaders of schools within a large academy chain. The article examines
their perspectives about the current regimes of performativity in the
English education context and, in particular, the accountability demands
of Ofsted. Mindful of contemporary concerns about the tensions between
performativity and professionalism in education, the analysis highlights
the different ways in which each group responds to external accountability
demands. The article illustrates how investments in traditional and
entrepreneurial professionalism continue to impact on how the current
demands of performativity are understood. It highlights the significance
of conceptualising educator professionalism beyond dichotomies that
idealise the former at the expense of the latter and the importance of an
ongoing critical focus on the ways in which professionalism is currently being articulated in schools.