Our paper focuses on the perceptions that the heads of Portuguese school clusters have about their daily work, and their logics of action, which are here taken as analysers of the effects of school administration policies and of the processes of appropriation and enactment of policies in schools.

Our interest stems from premise that there is, on a transnational level and along the last decades, a ‘managerial canon’, in which the expectations and requirements on the work of heads are part of a semantic universe dominated by appeals to the quality of education, management modernization, evaluation of performances and accountability, competitiveness among schools and school systems. In Portugal, an example of these redefinition was the mobilization of the arguments about the effects of strong leadership in school quality to legitimize the introduction of the school head and to cut with the tradition (existing since 1974) of a collegial body of school management.

Also, we consider the existence in several countries of policies to reinforce collaboration between schools and school headmasters, driven by similar goals: “sharing and rationalising resources”; “improving educational provision coherence”; “supporting wellbeing”; “improving educational opportunities and outcomes” (see Pont, Nusche & Moorman, 2008). In Portugal, this policy is characterized by the compulsive character and the 'top-down' strategy adopted, and to have given rise to ‘clusters of schools’ gathered under a single management structure and a single head.

Our research aims to know and understand the ways in which these policies, emanating from public authorities and fed by other actors located in significant "contexts of influence” are interpreted and translated, appropriated and remade by school actors, in their concrete contexts of action, in a process of “policy enactment” (Ball et al., 2011).

This paper is a continuation of another, in which, under the question "what my job", we tried to understand the characteristic features of school clusters head everyday work in Portugal (Carvalho, Viseu & Costa, 2013). The results of the exploratory study indicate the existence of a contradictory repositioning of the head’s role. Firstly, there was a strengthening of its management powers at the expense of weakening the collegial structures, following the managerial rationale "one profile, one project". Also, there is a displacement of the heads toward the central administration, as executors of the current management of nationally drawn policies, as well as the persistence of constraints set by the central administration. This tension manifested itself in the simultaneous presence of different descriptions made by the heads about their work, either through a repertoire of managerial nature, or a repertoire of bureaucratic and administrative nature. Moreover, in the perceptions of the heads it was still possible to identify a common appeal to other references historically constituted about his role (Barroso & Carvalho, 2009): as advocates for pedagogical and professional interests of teachers; as mediators of various social interests present in school. Suggestively, to the question 'what's my job "one of the heads interviewees replied:" I have to manage. How do you do that? I cannot explain for sure but that's insane!". This statement seems to us exemplar of the effects of the contradictory repositioning of head’s role.

In this paper, based on new data, we want to deepen the understanding of the ways in which directors give meaning to their work, in the light of the elements of ambiguity and conflict that characterize the interventions of public authority. Also, we are interested in the understanding of the ways in which heads, by appropriating and readjust interventions of "coordination and control" that are targeted (Reynaud, 2003), get involved in processes of “policy co-production” (Hassenteufel, 2008) in schools.

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