The relationship between headteachers and inspection is complex, particularly when in service head teachers are employed as inspectors. This study takes the English case of inspection to examine how headteachers interpret their work and agency as inspectors. Employing ideas on 'boundary crossing' it is informed by, and contributes to, the…

During recent decades many school systems in Europe have undergone extensive changes in their governance structures. The guiding image of this 'modernisation' was an idea of evidence-based governance of schooling: 'New school inspections' have been a recurrent feature of such modernised governance systems in most countries. In this chapter the…