Since 2005 federal states in Germany periodically conduct school inspections. Even though some federal states require target agreements between schools and school administration, their implementation is rarely controlled by oversight bodies. Furthermore, the whole implementation process of recommendations resulting from school inspection is scarcely regulated. Due to this low-level obligation, German schools – compared to other European countries, where failing schools can be closed – do not face sanctions for ignoring inspection recommendations. Concerning empirical findings about the use and effects of inspection in schools, previous German studies on inspections found a high level of acceptance in schools, but only small effects regarding school improvement and development (see, e.g., Böttcher et al., 2013). Taking the extensive freedom of German schools into consideration, the whys and wherefores of dealing with inspection results in schools are addressed further in this paper. This paper examines the impact of inspection results against the background of policy intentions and procedures as well as interpretation and processing within schools. As a theoretical framework, the theory of practice by Pierre Bourdieu (1977) is used. The field of school, including its actors as professionals (Bourdieu, 2013), and its autonomy from the political field, provides a helpful concept for interpretation. The results are based on 24 qualitative interviews with headmasters and teachers at four schools in four German federal states in the years 2012 and 2014. These interviews are part of two research projects funded by Federal Ministry of Education and Research (2010-2013; 2013-2016) and were conducted one and three years after the visit of the inspection teams. Within these projects, data were analysed with the qualitative method of thematic coding (Flick, 2010), and within the doctoral thesis theoretical coding of grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) was used. The presented results are a synthesis of both analyses, and focus on the handling and interpretation of school inspection and their recommendation in schools. The paper illustrates three different ways of dealing with inspection. Despite their differences all actors show elements of self-assertion against governmental control instruments such as school inspections. In conclusion, actors develop strategies to retain control of their sphere of influence, and practise a form of mental resistance against inspection.

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