Subdued by the system: Neoliberalism and the beginning teacher

•This narrative inquiry examines the impact of educational neoliberalism on teachers.•It retells a teacher's struggle to teach against the grain in a Singaporean school.•It portrays how a teacher was subdued by a neoliberal school culture in 2 years.•It proposes strategies to help teachers navigate neoliberal thinking and practice.

This article reports a study that examined, through the lens of narrative inquiry, the lived experience of a beginning teacher during her first two years in a neoliberal school system. Situated in the sociocultural context of Singapore, the study traced how Natalie, a beginning teacher of a constructivist bent, floundered in a neoliberal school culture characterised by accountability, work intensification, performance appraisal, regulation of teacher motives/competence, and competition. The findings help to illuminate some of the issues that beginning teachers are likely to face in their struggles to implement alternative pedagogies against the grain of increasingly neoliberal school systems.