This paper draws upon the work of Roger Dale and Pierre Bourdieu in an attempt to specify and trace the mechanisms through which global educational agendas seem to be imposed on (or asserted in) current educational policy and practice. I report two institutional ethnographies (one of a secondary college [high school] and the other an Institute of Technical and Further Education) conducted during a period of rapid educational 'reform' in the State of Victoria, Australia. In this paper I attempt to provide relatively thick description and explanation of the subjective experiences of educational actors living through, contesting and bringing about changes in their own contexts. The data throw some light on how globalisation and prevailing neo-liberal policies such as new managerialism are able to become dominant in sites of contested educational practice.