Theorising principals' resistance and compliance as part of school autonomy reforms in Australian public education

In this chapter, we consider the voices of school principals as they engage with school autonomy reforms on the Australian context. There has been little research that has explored how school principals engage with and respond to these kinds of reforms through a Foucauldian theorising of principal resistance. We draw on interviews with a range of relevant stakeholders to examine how these principals perceive these reforms and how they engage forms of resistance and compliance to the increased regimes of accountability and performativity. We undertake this analysis via the work of Michel Foucault and his understanding of power and resistance and also the notion of parrhesia, or speaking out, to show a more nuanced theorisation of resistance and subject formation of these school principals as they describe their practices of resistance.