Micropolitics of School Innovation: Recruiting, Mobilizing and Converting Teachers

Drawing on a mixed method research, this paper deals with teaching and technological innovation policies in the field of education, focusing on the implementation of the “Digital Agenda” in Sardinian schools from 2012 to 2015. Following Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory (1984; 1989) and S. Ball’s micro-political perspectives on the analyses of social processes within schools, this article aims to highlight the mobilization of teachers as policy actors i.e. as groups who help to convey and disseminate the meanings and concepts that define the policy and its moral and political objectives. In particular, we should like to emphasize three emerging dimensions of teacher commitment in the digital project: conversion, implying the acceptance of an ensemble of beliefs; mobilisation, implying the commitment to collective or organizational actions; materiality, implying a new material order that conveys a new logic of things.