Who incurs the risk? Trust as a mechanism of policy enactment in schools

I examine the role of trust in shaping teacher—principal dynamics in enacting policy in schools. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 26 teachers and a focus group with 10 teachers, I advance research on educational leadership and policy by conceptualizing trust as a mechanism linking street-level bureaucracy theory and policy enactment. Teachers’ trust in their principals affects how they exercise their discretion and enact policy. I demonstrate how trust dynamics structure the allocation of bureaucratic risk between teachers and principals, distinguishing between enactment practices in which risk is incurred individually and those in which risk is shared with leaders. Importantly, trust is a precondition for teachers’ actions, shaping the framing of policy-related problems and decisions prior to enactment. Furthermore, teachers adopt different enactment practices under varying levels of trust in their leaders, highlighting how policy enactment is transformed under conditions of constraint.