Teacher professionalism and agency in managerialised schools

Purpose This article aims to advance conceptual understandings of contemporary professionalism in public-sector settings increasingly shaped by managerialism. By foregrounding teachers’ agency, the article examines how professionalism is enacted and reshaped in Swedish schools through reforms introducing new hierarchical roles and calculative mechanisms. Design/methodology/approach The article draws on two qualitative investigations of teachers’ experiences of managerial reforms. The first empirical scene explores the introduction of first teacher positions, elevating selected teachers into hybrid professional–managerial roles. The second focuses on individual differentiated pay (IDP), where performance-based salary setting introduces measurable criteria and calculative devices. An interpretive approach is used to analyse how teachers navigate these developments and how their actions shape how managerial arrangements operate in practice. Findings The findings show that managerial reforms do not simply weaken professionalism but create heterogeneous professional landscapes in which teachers exercise agency. First teachers engage in managerial tasks and collaborate more closely with school leadership, contributing to new definitions of professionalism in managerial settings. IDP systems introduce calculative infrastructures that attempt to standardise and measure teaching performance; yet teachers actively interpret, negotiate and adapt to these expectations. Across both scenes, professionalism emerges as dynamic and co-constructed through ongoing interaction between managerial interventions and professional agency. Originality/value The article contributes to research on teacher professionalism by showing how professional agency shapes the local enactment of managerial reforms. It moves beyond narratives of de-professionalisation and highlights how managerialism and professionalism are intertwined in practice, emphasising the negotiated and evolving nature of professional work in contemporary schools.