Headteachers in the United Kingdom face the challenge of acting as both the main strategic planner for the whole school and as the leading professional practitioner within it. This paper describes how general changes in the occupational characteristics of school headteachers have been contingently interpreted in a large urban primary school in England. It relates how one headteacher attempted to balance an urgent requirement to prepare the school for inspection with her long-term aim to facilitate individual staff contributions to school development. Data, obtained between November 1995 and April 1996, were gathered through document review; observation; and interviews with the headteacher, deputy headteacher, eight teachers, other school staff, a member of the governing board, and an external consultant. The paper describes how the headteacher's main concerns involved the tensions within the following functions: (1) being both a manager of teachers and a fellow teacher; (2) engaging in both surveillance and professional communication; (3) responding to both individuals' professional development needs and those of the staff as a whole; (4) seeking external affirmation and avoiding external threat; (5) encouraging participation and determining outcomes; and (6) controlling decision making and encouraging teacher contributions. The paper offers two examples of how the headteacher creatively coped with the pressures of headship: first, to transform external regulation into a resource and to enhance her control, and second, to accomplish an acceptable self-identity in constrained circumstances. (Contains 23 references.) (LMI)