Repositioned professionals and heterodox: a response to the precarity of reform in further education

ABSTRACT The precarity of professionals working in schools and colleges at a time of change has been strongly accented by the competitive markets that currently characterise education and the influence of its global reforms. In this article, I draw on empirical data from a project located in a sixth-form college to argue that the field of Further Education is being restructured such that professionalism is hollowed out whilst accountability measures undermine leaders’ authority and enable a low-trust culture. I use Bourdieu’s thinking tools to conceptualise the data, including a rich conceptualisation of this site as a ‘field’ and of practices within it as part of the ‘game in play’. I generate four metaphorical lenses through which a perception of heterodoxy is used to clarify alternative positions that are simultaneously adopted by players and from which a response to the changing field of education reform can be offered.