Post‐school horizons: New Zealand’s neo‐liberal generation in transition

Dominant conceptions of the world infuse educational experiences for young people in implicit rather than explicit ways—through becoming, as Stuart Hall argues, ‘the horizon of the taken‐for‐granted’. In this article we explore these horizons as experienced by New Zealand’s neo‐liberal generation, currently ‘in transition’ from high school to further education, training and/or employment. As in Britain, further education has become a taken‐for‐granted feature of post‐school horizons for young New Zealanders but it is not a meaningful destination for all of them. The 93 young New Zealanders in our study have grown up during a period of intensive neo‐liberal reform, the speed and scope of which were unprecedented in Western economies. We interviewed these young people in their last year of high school and again once they were well embarked on their post‐school lives. We explore how the landscapes of choice of these young people have been restructured in neo‐liberal times: for some, the influences of parents, teachers, schools, universities and educational policy have come together to construct apparently wide‐open horizons in which university is a taken‐for‐granted destination. For others, however, these influences have remained subject to assumptions about ‘race’ and class that have a long history in New Zealand and the result has been a narrowing of future possibilities for participants. In all cases, we are concerned to explore the costs that are borne by these young people in this new environment.     

Part of the main: a project for English

The teaching of English in England has been transformed over the last two decades by powerful, top‐down orthodoxies, that in turn relate to a European‐wide shift in education towards market‐orientated, neo‐liberal policy goals. One of the effects of this reshaping is that the openness of English to popular cultures has been lessened and its links to the interests of social movements attenuated. Yet, unlike its conservative predecessor, present‐day policy orthodoxy seeks not so much the obliteration of the cultural interests that sustained English than their translation into a new form, in which ideas of ‘creativity’, ‘personalisation’ and ‘innovation’ are reinterpreted in neo‐liberal terms. The article considers how, in such complex conditions, the principles of a new project for English can be developed.     

Back to the future on gender and anti‐school boys: a response to Jeffrey Smith

This article examines recent claims by Jeffrey Smith that: (1) ‘hegemonic masculinity’ is an expression of working class counter‐school culture; (2) some teachers are ‘cultural accomplices’ in constructing ‘hegemonic masculinities’ of anti‐school working class boys, thereby contributing to their underachievement; and (3) these ‘cultural accomplices’ are an emerging response to recent moral panics and neo‐liberal managerialism concerned with ‘failing boys’ at school. It is suggested that ‘hegemonic masculinity’ is not necessarily associated with anti‐school values in working class culture. Many working class boys might subscribe to ‘hegemonic masculinity’ without rejecting learning. Contrary to Smith’s emphasis on how working class culture generates anti‐school ‘hegemonic masculinity’, there is the possibility that ‘hegemonic masculinity’ is fused with anti‐school values produced by organisational differentiation. The continuing commonalities between working class anti‐school boys and the ‘gender regime’ of some secondary schools for over 20 years implies something more enduring at work than recent moral panics.     

‘Tomorrow's Schools’ in New Zealand: from social democracy to market managerialism

This paper uses one national case to illustrate how diverse ideological agendas of central state agencies contest the discursive space within which major education policy reforms are developed. In Aotearoa New Zealand in 1988, ‘self‐managed’ schools were promoted ostensibly to allow parents more say in their children’s education and local school administration. The Tomorrow’s Schools reform policy texts included an existing social democratic partnership rhetoric, positioning principals as professional leaders working collaboratively with elected parent boards of trustees. However, the new ideology of ‘parental choice’ of school within a local schooling marketplace, underpinned by a chief executive or market managerial model of principalship, was later operationalised through mechanisms of ‘steerage’ from the centre. To explain this shift, we examine selected policy text pre‐cursors to the reforms and identify how contrasting forms of ‘principal’ and ‘teacher’ identity emerged within social democratic, neo‐liberal and market managerial ideologies. We further show that while radical (Treasury) market liberal arguments for labour market deregulation and consumer choice failed to gain widespread support, the State Services Commission preferred market managerialist strategies for promoting public accountability of schools (based on aggregate student achievement outcome data and centrally determined national educational priorities) were successfully embedded during the 1990s.     

Japan’s Ministry of Education “becoming the Right”: neo‐liberal restructuring and the Ministry’s struggles for political legitimacy

This article first examines the controversial revision of the Fundamental Law of Education (FLE) by situating it in the larger global context of neo‐liberal and neo‐conservative state‐restructuring and education reform. It then focuses on the domestic politics behind what seems to be the global convergence of education policy along neo‐liberal and neo‐conservative lines. Focusing on the political agency of the Ministry of Education (MOE) and tracing its shifting political interests in regards to the FLE amendment, the article illuminates the MOE’s strategic move to “become the Right” to secure its political legitimacy in the relentless neo‐liberal pressures for fiscal and administrative decentralisation.     

Appropriating Competence: the competency movement,the New Right and the ‘culture change’ project

Abstract

This paper raises some critical issues concerning ‘competency’ as represented, today, by the National Council for Vocational Qualifications and, earlier, by the Manpower Services Commission. It is argued that the narrowly behaviouristic model supported by the ‘competency movement’ is only one of the many ways in which competence has been approached within the social sciences. The issue of why those agencies should have promoted this particular model of competence is explored, using Bernstein's concept of ‘pedagogic discourse’. It is argued that competency should be located within the political context of the policies with which it is associated. The promotion of competency can be understood in terms of political aspirations of the New Right to change the culture of British institutions and economic life in the direction of a neo‐liberal market ideology. The problems of competency are explored with reference to its methodology and the manner in which it represents ‘the world of work’ and competence within it.     

Education,Democracy and the Economy

This paper provides a critique of neo‐liberal political economy of education. It is argued that neo‐liberal ideology trades off democracy against ‘economic efficiency’. However, the consequence of the application of neo‐liberal principles to education is that overall standards of education are likely to decline, thereby creating the conditions for a low skilled, low morale workforce. It is suggested that this outcome is consistent with the Neo‐liberal creation of a low wage low technology economy. On the basis of the critique, an alternative education system concerned with meeting the aims of an education for a democratic, economically sophisticated, society is sketched.     

Choice without markets: homeschooling in the context of private education

Homeschooling is enjoying new‐found acceptance in North America. Drawing on a variety of secondary sources and our own data from Ontario, Canada, we find that homeschooling is growing steadily, and is becoming an increasingly legitimated form of education. To understand these changes, we review prevailing sociological explanations that focus on the rise of neo‐liberal ideology, and pressures of class reproduction and human capital requirements. We document the contributions of these theories and note their limits for understanding the rising popularity of homeschooling. We then situate homeschooling within a broader context of private education, distinguishing segments that encourage market‐consumer, class reproduction, human capital and ‘expressive’ logics. The combination of large investments of time and effort with highly uncertain outcomes makes homeschooling the most expressive form of private education, which we trace to the burgeoning culture of ‘intensive parenting.’     

Girl Number 20 revisited: feminist literacies in new hard times

This paper revisits the question of ‘voice’ in the context of neo‐liberal social and educational reform. ‘Voice’ has been one of the key concepts of feminist and critical pedagogies in the theory and practice of producing social transformation. I argue in this paper, that the political effectiveness of this concept needs to be reconsidered at a time when the incitement to speak is one of the means by which neo‐liberal subjectivities are produced and regulated. I trace the ways the metaphor Girl Number Twenty circulates in the feminist pedagogy literature, with the purpose of engaging in a dialogue about the particular challenges girl number twenty encounters in the context of the new hard times wrought by neo‐liberalism and the shifting tensions between media, ideology and feminist teachers. The paper draws on ethnographic material from a school‐community project that took place in Toronto, Canada with girls' aged 10–14 from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds (Vietnamese, Cambodian, Portuguese, Afro‐Caribbean and Chinese).     

Time to end the bias towards inclusive education?

The UK coalition Government's call to end the ‘bias’ towards inclusion represents a shift in ‘policy speak’ as the new administration attempts to re‐narrate special education by putting forward a ‘reasonable and sensible’ solution to the ‘problem of inclusion’. However, implicit in the call is the assumption that there has, in fact, been a ‘bias towards inclusion’ in education policy and practice; here, that assumption is challenged. Using a critical disability studies perspective, Katherine Runswick‐Cole, who is a research fellow in Disability Studies and Psychology in the Research Institute of Health and Social Change at Manchester Metropolitan University, draws on the concept of ableism and critiques of neo‐liberal market systems in education to reveal and explore the persistent barriers to inclusive education embedded within the education system. It is argued that although there may have been an inclusive education policy rhetoric, this rhetoric is rooted in conceptual incongruities which, rather than promoting inclusion, undermine an inclusive approach to education.     

Code of practice for the pastoral care of international students: making a globalising industry in New Zealand

Export education in New Zealand has grown rapidly since 1990, earning significant foreign exchange and underwriting the finance of domestic education. As principal owner of education institutions, the national state is the primary investor. Previous governments treated the ‘industry’ as both windfall and cash‐cow as they advanced the neo‐liberal project of disentangling state from economy and making education providers self‐regulating. The current ‘Third Way’ inspired government has adopted a more prominent management interest in the making of this globalising industry. A new Code of Practice enacts multiple technologies of control from quality control to standard setting, benchmarking, certification and audit. Legitimated by a discourse of concern for the pastoral care of school‐aged students, it requires institutions to provide detailed information. The Code makes ‘the industry’ visible, makes a market, controls brand NZ education, regulates through consumer assurance, and imposes direct disciplinary controls on institutions. The Code of Practice makes apparent the ambitions and governmental technologies of the ‘augmented’ neo‐liberal state, and is a pivotal structure in the constitution of the industry and of the globalising processes that define it. The paper uses governmentality analysis to uncover these technologies of control and to consider their part in the constitution of both industry and globalisation.     

‘Freer’ Forms of Organization and Financing and the Effects of Inequality in Latin American Educational Systems: two countries in comparison

The introduction of ‘freer’ forms of organization and financing into the Latin American educational systems about 20 years ago parallels similar developments in the contexts of neo‐liberal policies in the USA, Great Britain and, more recently, in Eastern Europe. This article will highlight the effects of ‘school autonomy’, decentralization, and privatization in the Latin American educational systems. In so doing, I will focus on the analysis of educational policy development in Chile and Argentina, based in part on my own research results. The results demonstrate that ‘freer’ forms of organization and financing have not proven to be positive for the progressive distribution of education, democratization and the consideration of diversity—and also not for the (difficult to measure) categories of ‘quality’ and ‘efficiency’ of education. These findings contribute to question whether the neo‐liberal forms of organization and financing of educational systems in Latin America are important factors in the realization of these goals.     

The EU Memorandum on lifelong learning. Old wine in new bottles?

This paper provides a critical analysis of the EU’s Memorandum on lifelong learning in light of the evolution of the concepts of lifelong education and lifelong learning from the late sixties onward. It also analyses this document in light of the forces of globalisation that impinge on educational policy‐making in Europe as well as the all‐pervasive neo‐liberal ideology. The paper moves from theory to practice to provide critical considerations concerning certain ‘on the ground’ projects being presented as ‘best practice’ in EU documents. It brings out the neo‐liberal tenets that underlie much of the thinking and rationale for these projects, and indicates, in the process, how much of the old UNESCO discourse of lifelong education has been distorted to accommodate capitalism’s contemporary needs. An alternative conception of lifelong learning is called for.     

The reforming trajectory of the Italian educational system. Site‐based management and decentralisation as a challenge for democratic discourse

This article aims to present some tensions embedded in the Italian educational reform, arising both from the enactment of neo‐liberal policies and the possibilities of democratic development opened up by the introduction of schools’ site‐based management and decentralisation. The article uses discourses as heuristic devices and presents two case studies regarding the enactment of policies of educational governance promoted in 2003 by a local authority (the Italian Provincia) and inspired by the democratic discourse. These policies were intended to promote the participation and collaboration of schools and heads in educational planning. It illustrates how the neo‐liberal discourse re‐shaped the Italian educational system and challenged welfarism. At the same time, we also attempt to illustrate the action of cultural path dependencies and the space emerging for a democratic discourse, which could be interpreted both as an alternative to its neo‐liberal counterpart and as an attempt to re‐discover democratic participation and promote more equity‐oriented practices in the educational field. Two different understandings of educational governance and headship seem to emerge. The study underlines how the intertwining of national and local policies inspired by contradicting discourses could result in the spread of competitive practices and consequently in a further differentiation of the educational provision and stratification between schools, or have an egalitarian outcome, where processes of collaboration, collective empowerment and reflexivity are enacted. Our work demonstrates how democratic and collaborative spaces opened up by site‐based management and policies of educational governance implemented at a local level are always at risk, due both to the rise of competitive pressures and the resilience of welfarist discourses and practice.     

Skills for sale: what is being commodified in higher education?

‘Commodification’ is a sociological term that has become widely adopted as part of the higher education lexicon. It has been argued that an increased emphasis on the commercial relevance of university courses is anathema to the values of the academy, resulting from the widespread adoption of neo‐liberal policies towards education. This article will discuss the use of the word commodification in this context, with particular emphasis on its economic roots. It will identify three models of commodification derived from the literature and use these to attempt an understanding of what it is that universities are selling. Finally, the article will examine the use of the term commodification within the broader debate about the purpose of higher education.     

The importance of being a ‘lady’: hyper‐femininity and heterosexuality in the private,single‐sex primary school

Drawing on recent ethnographic research in one single‐sex, private primary school, this paper will explore what it meant for the girls in this setting to embody the discourse of the ‘lady’. The paper will propose that classed and gendered discourses of respectability featured strongly in the girls’ lives, as they were expected to behave like ‘proper’ upper‐middle‐class ladies. However, the paper will also suggest that these discourses were being reworked through post‐feminist, neo‐liberal notions of modern girlhood, meaning that the girls also felt compelled to make themselves as heterofeminine ‘girly’ girls; as sassy, sexy and successful, as well as respectable and upper‐middle‐class(y) enough. By exploring the clash between these two sets of discourse, the paper will specifically seek to examine the lived embodiment of intersections of class, gender and sexuality and to explore the relevance of Judith Butler’s heterosexual matrix for these upper‐middle‐class girls.     

The Dakar framework: constructing and deconstructing the global neo‐liberal matrix

The paper’s focus is The Dakar framework for action—education for all: meeting our collective commitments, which presents the UNESCO, G8, World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s blueprint for the ‘development’ of education globally by 2015. Taking a discourse analytic approach, discussion of the Dakar framework make two claims. The first is that the Framework has a Matrix‐like effect in that it potentially closes out other ways of thinking about and practicing education. The second argument is that the apparent contradiction between its deployment of a human rights centered discourse and neo‐liberal discourse that establishes this Matrix‐like effect, must be understood as something more than simply an exercise in lies, deception and rhetoric. Rather, the Matrix‐like effect of the Framework succeeds not because the Framework lies, but because it doubly exploits the very same ambivalence in liberal‐humanism that facilitated the European control of ‘Others’ in an earlier era of globalisation. Gandhi who challenged the Matrix‐like effects of globalising British Empire power in this earlier era of globalisation is referred to in the paper as a real figure of history to exemplify the Neo figure in the discussion of the Matrix as a metaphor for the neo‐liberal EFA policy.     

Resilience and loss in work identities: A narrative analysis of some retired teachers’ work‐life histories

The article examines the importance of ‘emotional labour’ in the constitution of the ‘teacherly‐self’. Deriving from a research project on work and social identity, the article explores the ways teachers have negotiated the radical changes in the profession in recent years, and uses the notion of ‘teacher resilience’ to explore the ways teachers have reacted to the effects of neo‐liberal reforms to education; reforms that have powerfully impacted on the more child‐centred ways of working in the classroom and school environment. Using narrative analysis of the work‐life histories of these retired teachers, recorded using oral history methodology, the authors examine structures of feeling that turn on notions of emotional labour and commitment, resilience and loss in relation to the occupational identity of teachers.     

School Improvement in a neo‐liberal world

This paper uses the concept of paradigm to examine the current state of School Improvement and its relationship to quantitative School Effectiveness studies. It argues that a significant and explicit paradigm change occurred in the early 1990s, resulting in a managerialist approach; a reductionist use of the concept culture; and an inadequate response to the challenges of poverty and under‐achievement. Some arguments are presented to show how this paradigm relates to a broader neo‐liberal context, and an alternative paradigm is outlined.     

The construction of the ‘ideal pupil’ and pupils’ perceptions of ‘misbehaviour’ and discipline: contrasting experiences from a low‐socio‐economic and a high‐socio‐economic primary school

This paper examines the effect of school social class composition on pupil learner identities in British primary schools. In the current British education system, high‐stakes testing has a pervasive effect on the pedagogical relationship between teachers and pupils. The data in this paper, from ethnographic research in a working‐class school and a middle‐class school, indicate that the effect of the ‘testing culture’ is much greater in the working‐class school. Using Bernsteinian theory and the concept of the ‘ideal pupil’, it is shown that these pupils’ learner identities are more passive and dominated by issues of discipline and behaviour rather than academic performance, in contrast to those in the middle‐class school. While this study includes only two schools, it indicates a potentially significant issue for neo‐liberal education policy where education is marketised and characterised by high‐stakes testing, and schools are polarised in terms of social class.