This research explores the thesis that certain kinds of educational practice have the capacity to create new possibilities for transformative political agency within neoliberal social systems. In recent decades, many critical theorists have argued that neoliberal rationality, which is the dominant form of politico-economic reason in late-capitalist societies, is harmful to human well-being, democratic life and ecological futures. They also argue that it is increasingly difficult to challenge (Brown 2003). These theories reflect both the experiences of educators and the philosophical claim that we live in a time of ‘contracting possibilities’ (Kompridis 2006). However, while this contraction seems to create acute hopelessness in some contexts, it generates political experimentation in others (Graeber 2009). This contradiction is pronounced in education, where we have seen both extreme neoliberal reforms (Ball 2012) and radical struggles against them (Coté et al. 2007), but have little research showing how neoliberal rationality itself becomes powerful or is transformed. This project will explore this problem by interviewing teachers in formal and alternative educational institutions in order to understand how spaces of possibility for agency concretely ‘contract’ and ‘expand’ in their work. Interviewees will then be invited to apply preliminary findings about the relationship of educational practice, neoliberal power and possibility in their work and participate in a series of research workshops to reflect on the consequences of this activity. By combining the conceptual rigour of critical philosophy, the empirical texture of phenomenology and the co-operative meaning-making of action research, this project will apply an interdisciplinary methodology to work through barriers between these sources of knowledge to deepen our understandings of (a) how neoliberal rationality is produced and challenged through educational work, (b) the nature of ‘possibility-enabling practices’ in neoliberal society, and (c) the influence of social context on such practices.