Collegiate or compliant? Primary teachers in post‐McCrone Scotland

Abstract

Collegiality was cited in the post‐McCrone Agreement as a vital quality for a professional teaching force in Scotland in the twenty‐first century. The Agreement directed schools to henceforth operate more collegially and it was anticipated that this recommendation, alongside the new two‐tier promotion system, would facilitate the transformation of the currently hierarchical school culture into a more collegiate one. Drawing on data concerning the relationship of a small group of Scottish primary teachers with their head teacher, and their attitudes to local and national educational innovations, including the post‐McCrone Agreement, this article suggests that such an assumption is problematical. The tendencies of teachers to adopt a subordinate persona, and to comply with the wishes of the hierarchy despite their own professional reservations, point towards the existence of a hegemonic system in which collegiality has little locus.