Abstract

In Chile, the creation of the Superintendence of Education over 10 years ago, whose main function is to oversee compliance with laws, regulations, and protection of rights, as well as provide citizens with a formal procedure to present complaints about situations that occur within schools, has contributed to emerging juridification. As compliance and complaints fall under the responsibility of school principals, this paper analyzes how they experience juridification and the main tensions that arise in relation to their professionalism through a qualitative case study with eight school principals, exploring their perception of the influence of the Superintendence in the school system, along with challenges that it has implied for their work. Results suggest increasing complexity and bureaucracy of procedures to managing conflicts internally and avoiding the threat of complaints, imposing a legal logic over an educational one, while families wield a new power that weakens the ability to reach agreements with representatives of the school, instead escalating the problem with the Superintendence. Implications of this emerging juridification are discussed in relation to principals’ professionalism, particularly regarding conflict management, risk avoidance and the incorporation of highly bureaucratized processes into their management practices due to the predominance of the legal discourse. © 2025 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.