Educational change in New Zealand has been a hot topic in 2012. We have faced cutbacks, closures, charter schools and league tables, not to mention the 'rejuvenation and consolidation' of Christchurch schools following the 2010/2011 earthquakes. A common reaction has been resistance--from teachers, principals, teacher unions, academics and, in the cases of class sizes and the Christchurch closures and amalgamations, also from parents and boards of trustees. Much of the writing on resistance to educational change (see, for example, Zimmerman, 2006) offers strategies for gaining compliance and successfully implementing the mandated change. Such writing presumes that the changes are necessary, appropriate and will bring about the predetermined benefits without any detrimental effects or unintended consequences. Those of us who have been constantly buffeted by the winds of educational change tend to be a little more wary. Many recent changes in New Zealand education have barely had time to be implemented before the next one is imposed. Given this situation it is hardly surprising that the first reaction is resistance. While teachers are often accused by politicians and the general public as being defiantly resistant to change, I want to take the side of teachers and ask if resistance to change is necessarily a bad thing. The Minister of Education's back-down over several recent educational policy directions highlights that not all policies are equally well-researched, carefully planned or subject to rigorous stakeholder consultation. In this regard, it was heartening to read a blog by highly-regarded educationist Larry Cuban (2011). Although writing about the situation in the United States, his comments ring true in the New Zealand context. He begins: In the midst of both teacher praise and teacher bashing nowadays abides a nagging but persistent assumption among state and federal policymakers hellbent on the standards-testing-accountability agenda, charter school operators, and high-tech enthusiasts for online instruction that most teachers resist change. Cuban goes on to argue that teachers have changed over time and continue to change but that the changes are incremental. He notes that such changes are unobserved and unnoticed by policy makers--and I would add certainly not celebrated. He continues, Moreover, the past 30 years of high-profile criticism of failing U.S. schools produced a tsunami of top-own reforms showing little trust in teachers' professional judgment. While the past 30 years in New Zealand have provided teachers and others in the education community with more opportunities than the US to participate in and even drive change--the development of Te Whariki (Ministry of Education, 1996) and The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007) being two examples (see, Mutch & Trim, in press) but that the current climate of high accountability, low trust, economically driven, top-down change has seen that engagement turn to resistance. Cuban defends teachers in this way: Policymakers determine the worth of proposed changes in curricular, instructional, and school practices on the criteria of organizational effectiveness, efficiency, and equity. Teachers accept, modify, and reject innovations and mandates on the basis of similar criteria but with the focus on students and classrooms. In doing so, they ask substantially different questions than policymakers who focus on the system, not individual classrooms. While schools refusing to implement National Standards or communities protesting against school closures make the headlines as overt acts of resistance, there are other ways in which teachers protest, resist, or make changes in their own way and in their own time. In many centres, classrooms, schools and tertiary institutions, teachers might respond to top-down change with immediate outrage, deliberate avoidance, partial adoption, major adaptation, sneaky subversion or even quiet revolution. …