‘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.     

The ethics of competition: accountability policy enactment in Chilean schools’ everyday life

ABSTRACT

Public policies have a moral order, an ethical horizon. They offer a vocabulary of imagined micro-policies. Using the case of Chile, this paper examines the ways in which accountability policies are reworked within schools and how they affect actors’ subjectivities. It adds new findings to the existing body of research on school accountability policies, offering in-depth evidence based on the case of Chile, which has a high-stakes testing model and a widespread competitive voucher system. The research is based on case studies of ten public and private subsidised schools, framed by a sociological perspective of policy enactment theory. The research findings show the ways that accountability policies are recreated, expanded, and intensified at the local level, permeating an ethic of competition. The analysis focuses on three qualitative trends: school actors’ sense-making of test scores and labels; zones of safety and risk for teachers under an accountability regime; and the emergence of a sticky web of persuasion, surveillance, and coercion among school members in order to improve performance. The practices examined are not understood as ‘secondary effects’ or an ‘implementation problem’, as if they occur unconnected from the policy rationale. The outcomes are consistent with the policy itself in interaction with school life.     

Curriculum policy reform in an era of technical accountability: ‘fixing’ curriculum,teachers and students in English schools

Abstract

Drawing on a Levinasian ethical perspective, the argument driving this paper is that the technical accountability movement currently dominating the educational system in England is less than adequate because it overlooks educators’ responsibility for ethical relations in responding to difference in respect of the other. Curriculum policy makes a significant contribution to the technical accountability culture through complicity in performativity, high-stakes testing and datafication, at the same time as constituting student and teacher subjectivities. I present two different conceptualizations of subjectivity and education, before engaging these in the analysis of data arising from an empirical study which investigated teachers’ and stakeholders’ experiences of curriculum policy reform in ‘disadvantaged’ English schools. The study’s findings demonstrate how a prescribed programme of technical curriculum regulation attempts to ‘fix’ or mend educational problems by ‘fixing’ or prescribing educational solutions. This not only denies ethical professional relations between students, teachers and parents, but also deflects responsibility for educational success from government to teachers and hastens the move from public to private educational provision. Complying with prescribed curriculum policy requirements shifts attention from broad philosophical and ethical questions about educational purpose as well as conferring a violence by assuming control over student and teacher subjectivities.     

“Languages aren’t as important here”: German migrant teachers’ experiences in Australian language classes

Narrative studies with migrant teachers offer new perspectives on local educational practices and policies. As part of a study investigating German migrant teachers’ experiences in Australian language classes, this paper uses narratives to evaluate present language education strategies in Germany and Australia. It examines the provision and uptake of foreign languages as a subject area in the two countries and compares existing educational goals and arrangements regarding language education in Germany and Australia. The German migrant teachers’ accounts illustrate how current school policies and the value placed on language proficiency and multilingualism in the two countries’ education are impacting on learning and teaching in the language classroom. The findings have significant potential to inform and stimulate the evaluation of recent national initiatives in language education in Australia.     

Standards-based accountability: reification,responsibility and the ethical subject

Over the last two decades, teachers in Australia have witnessed multiple incarnations of the idea of ‘educational accountability’ and its enactment. Research into this phenomenon of educational policy and practice has revealed various layers of the concept, particularly its professional, bureaucratic, political and cultural dimensions that are central to the restructuring of educational governance and the reorganization of teachers’ work. Today, accountability constitutes a core concept of neoliberal policy-making in education, both fashioning and normalizing what counts as teacher professionalism in the ‘audit society.’ This article focuses specifically on the recent introduction by the Australian Federal Government of standardised literacy testing in all states across Australia, and raises questions about the impact of this reform on the work practices of English literacy teachers in primary and secondary schools. We draw on data collected as part of a major research project funded by the Australian Research Council, involving interviews with teachers about their experiences of implementing standardised testing. The article traces the ways in which teachers’ work is increasingly being mediated by standardised literacy testing to show how these teachers grapple with the tensions between state-wide mandates and a sense of their professional responsibility for their students.     

The entrepreneurialisation of school work as a central theme in present educational changes: the Portuguese case

It is assumed in this paper that the main trend in global education policies is based on an entrepreneurial model intended to submit school work to the same logic that prevails in economic systems at large. Thus, I try to recognise such a model in current educational changes in Portugal. Two paths for the entrepreneurialisation of school work were identified, both of which have a strong influence in this country. As it is the rule in a global context, slogans such as ‘educational excellence’, ‘success for all’, ‘lifelong learning’ or ‘acquisition of essential skills’ are the cornerstones of the educational policies nowadays in Portugal. The continuous improvement of school productivity appears to be the main goal of the public education system in these policies.     

Do educational pathways contribute to equity in tertiary education in Australia?

A key assumption of equity policies in Australia, as in many countries, is that pathways from lower-status, vocationally oriented ‘second’ tiers of tertiary education to ‘first’ tier higher education are able to act as an equity mechanism. This is because students from low socio-economic backgrounds are over-represented in former and underrepresented in the latter. The assumption that pathways support equity is tested in this paper through an analysis of the socio-economic profile and institutional destination of student transfers from vocational education and training to higher education in Australia. It finds that educational pathways deepen participation in education by existing social groups but do not effectively widen participation for groups that do not have equitable access. This is as a consequence of the hierarchical structuring of qualifications within VET as well as in higher education.     

Employability skills in mainstream education: Innovations in schooling and institutional isomorphism

In England, the Studio Schools model, focused on developing employability skills in young people, represents a disruptive attempt at educational innovation. Through a documentary analysis of foundational documents, interviews with the model’s architects and case studies of five Studio Schools, we map the tensions between theoretical conceptualisations of the model and the messy realities of implementing it. We found that the schools faced a wide range of challenges related particularly to local inter-school competition, centralised accountability measures and structural assumptions about the ‘gold educational standard’. When facing these challenges, the course of least resistance for the schools was an iterative abandonment of the distinctive aspects of the Studio Schools model and a move back towards mainstream approaches to schooling. This process of institutional homogenisation is discussed through the lens of neo-institutional theory, with the challenges schools faced and their trajectories framed in terms of coercive, mimetic and normative isomorphism. We argue that the use of isomorphism as a heuristic device provides important insight into the process of educational innovation in an educational system that combines competition and the risk of market failure with coercive accountability measures and embedded assumptions about the ‘gold standard’ schooling pathway.     

Bringing universities to account? Exploring some global and local policy tensions

Increased accountability is at the centre of widespread educational reforms which feature the rhetoric of deregulation in many countries across the globe. Not only have educational systems, institutions and practitioners been required to be more accountable, but arguably the nature of accountability has also changed from professional and democratic to managerial and market forms. In particular, within the hegemonic discourses of the market ideology associated with globalization, market accountability to paying customers (both within a nation-state and internationally) has been foregrounded. However, the hegemony is not complete. Governments have often positioned themselves as ‘market managers’, creating a complex and often contradictory relationship between new forms of market and managerial accountability, layered on top of more traditional notions of professional and democratic accountability. This paper explores the changing nature of accountability in Australian and English higher education, and makes comparisons between them. As we enter the twenty-first century, central higher education authorities in both countries are conducting major reviews and revisionings of mechanisms to enhance the accountability of universities in the new global knowledge-based economy. While the analysis finds convergence of policy objectives and discourses, it also finds divergences in the particular structures and processes employed. Further, it finds a disjunction between macro-level policy intent and institutional-level reactions and practices in both countries. We argue that with globalization ‘talk’, it is important not to gloss over policy differences between individual nation-states, and to problematize potentially globalizing concepts such as accountability within policy debates at both national and global levels.     

Professional Learning and the Unfinalizable: English Educators Writing and Telling Stories Together

Standards-based education reforms and intensified accountability regimes are now a feature of most countries’ agendas to improve the quality of their teaching workforces. One of the direct consequences of these reforms is a requirement that teachers demonstrate their ongoing participation in forms of professional development or professional learning throughout their careers. Along with this, there has been a narrowing of what is acknowledged by standards-based accountability regimes as discipline-based professional knowledge and ‘valuable’ professional development. This essay is a dialogic, reflexive account of a professional learning and writing project for English teachers and teacher educators in Australia, begun in 2013, called the stella2.0 project. The project builds on the groundbreaking work of the STELLA project in Australia from the turn of the century, and some other models of teacher writing projects across the world. Drawing on Cavarero, we critically scrutinize writing and storytelling in the dialogic professional community of the stella2.0 project, and in the process ‘speak back’ to standards-based reform policies that undermine English educators’ agency and professionalism.     

Constructing and educating 'problem children': the case of post-communist Estonia

Estonia is a post-communist Baltic state in which neoliberal market ideologies and still prevailing socialist norms exist side by side in educational policies and practices. It is no longer self-evident what is ‘normal’ and what is ‘problematic’. Special education class for students regarded as having problems is a new innovation in Estonia. The paper analyses the history and current changes and discusses how a ‘problem child’ is constructed in Estonian teachers' perceptions and in the pedagogical methods used with these children. The paper draws on teachers' writings and on an ethnographic study in a special education class. Some comparisons with Finnish educational policies and ethnographic research on secondary schools are made. The findings suggests that in Estonia, a ‘problem child’ is a student who does not conform to the norms of the school, and in focus is behaviour that disturbs the teacher: problems in relation to schools' regulations of time, voice, embodiment and equipment, lack of engagement and unruly behaviour. We reflect the Estonian case with some comparisons with Finland using the concept ‘professional pupil’ introduced in an ethnographic research.     

‘I will be “fighting” even more for pupils with SEN’: SENCOs' role predictions in the changing English policy context

The Coalition Government's ‘Green Paper’ (DfE 2011) proposes a systemic overhaul of services for pupils with special educational needs in England, with increased parental choice of provision and ‘sharper accountability’ (p. 67) in schools. Deadlines for various stages of this reform have not been met, and its final nature remains uncertain. This paper reveals SENCOs' insights into their changing role in this turbulent policy context. This is achieved through the thematic analysis of 227 responses to an ‘open‐ended’ question in the national Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO) Survey 2012. Findings from this sample indicate that SENCOs predict that schools in England will become more inclusive, with greater shared responsibility for achievement for all, and SENCOs' increased involvement in staff training and other whole school capacity‐building activities. Respondents predict a greater partnership with parents, for whom they will provide advice and links to other services. They foresee their reduced involvement in direct teaching and an intensification of their work in other ways, especially in terms of paperwork associated with pupil tracking and other accountability measures. These changes are anticipated against a backdrop of resource cuts, requiring SENCOs to show increasing self‐reliance and imagination.     

Ettore Gelpi: an appreciation

Abstracts

English

The aim of the paper is to argue for a curriculum model approach to problems of development in adult and lifelong (or continuing) education contexts.

The advantages of such an approach are outlined : relating theory to practice and social policies to educational processes; exploring professional role‐structures and their effect upon received curriculum assumptions in the adult sector, particularly the traditional needs‐meeting, remedial and compensatory elements of such assumptions.

The significance of recent theoretical and policy developments in adult and continuing education is reviewed in these terms and some distinctions made between alternative implicit models of the lifelong curriculum. It is suggested that adult education, as presently constituted, might, itself, be an obstacle to the development of an integrated lifelong education curriculum.

In order to elucidate this a number of curriculum concepts, familiar enough in the general theory of education, are considered in the less familiar context of adult and lifelong education: typologies of curriculum models are used to explore some issues of development in this context (e.g. objectives, provision, process, action, research models etc.)

Ideas of a ‘core’ curriculum, and of the ‘hidden’ or ‘latent’ curriculum, together with curriculum development and evaluation are also considered.

The existing state of the adult and continuing education curriculum is then analyzed within such a conceptual framework. The disposition of professional roles is described, together with the curricular implications of the structure of provision (the University Extra‐Mural Departments, the WEA and the LEA sector).

The ideas of ‘flexibility’ and ‘access’ are critically reviewed as a function of professional (rather than political) ideologies, and the adult‐lifelong curriculum is analyzed in terms of administrative criteria on the one hand and educational process and social action on the other.

A prevailing orthodoxy of continuing education is elucidated in curriculum terms, and contrasted with the curriculum implications of lifelong models. For example, such models stress the functional interdependence of learning stages in an ‘intrinsic’ rather than a ‘remedial’ way, whereas much thinking about adult and continuing education in Britain is concerned with compensatory responses to failures of early educational experience.

In conclusion, it is argued that, in curriculum terms, the development of a continuing or a lifelong education system is by no means as straightforward as is sometimes supposed, and that the obstacles lie primarily within the nature of present curriculum assumptions as much as the more obvious material obstacles to development. Adult education, as it is presently organized, articulates the same kind of curriculum assumptions as initial education. The curriculum assumptions of lifelong education, however, are much more concerned with education in terms of social control and knowledge‐content than with access to professional provision which reproduces curriculum models of initial education sectors.     

The responsibilisation of teachers: a neoliberal solution to the problem of inclusion

This paper critically examines competing demands placed on teachers, with reference to recent inclusion policy in England and Australia. The authors draw on Michael Foucault’s analysis of power, neoliberalism(s) and biopolitics to explore the ways in which teachers are ‘responsibilised’ into negotiating and fulfilling demands related to both state-imposed accountability practices and social justice agendas. The economic context and associated ‘politics of austerity’ are taken into account in a critical exploration of how the (biopolitical) management of inclusion in the neoliberal present coincides with diminishing funding for social and educational expertise, with ever-increasing responsibilities being placed on teachers to fill this void. The responsibilisation of teachers in recent legislation and statutory guidance discursively constructs the teacher as a professional who takes responsibility for student and school performance, pastoral care, inclusion and social change. Responsibilisation relies on ‘dividing practices’, obliging some teachers to assess the conformity of colleagues to inclusion policy.     

Market accountability in schools: policy reforms in England,Germany, France and Italy

This article concentrates on the policy reforms of schools in England, Germany, France and Italy, from 1988 to 2009, with a focus on the introduction of market accountability. Pressing demands for organisational change in schools, shaped by the objectives of ‘efficiency’ and competition, which were introduced in England in the 1980s, have been adopted in other European countries, albeit at a slower pace and within the continuing need for domestic institutional conformity. How does the increasing predominance of market accountability in state schools change traditional bureaucratic and professional accountability relationships between politicians, managers, professionals and users? The article argues that despite some evidence of convergence between different education systems, England remains the outlier and continental European countries have been much more reluctant to adopt choice and competition policies.     

The Swedish comprehensive school—lost in transition?

The Swedish comprehensive school system was developed from 1950 to 1971. In the 1990s the system was radically restructured. Developments were based on consensus between different political parties up until the 1980s, however after this date the debate has become more polarised. In 2006 an alliance of four parties was elected to government and began to realise a ‘new educational policies’. As in many other countries, the results of PISA and other international comparative tests are used to ‘scandalise’ the existing educational system in order to accelerate the introduction of change. However, it is not the under-achieving restructured school which is scandalised but the ideas and ideals of the previous, not under-achieving, comprehensive school system. In this article the development of the Swedish school model, as well as its changes during the 1990s and thereafter, are described—against the background of the Swedish welfare model and alterations to it.     

Educational assessment and accountability: a New Zealand case study

This paper discusses the increasing use of assessment as a market signal and as an index of educational accountability. It is argued that assessment policies in New Zealand reflect an uneasy balance between the interests of the new right and more progressive educationists. These influences are examined using three largely contradictory models of educational accountability (professional, market and management). Each model reflects a range of epistemological and ideological assumptions. Thus student assessment serves different and largely conflicting purposes. The paper uses a recent New Zealand policy document (Tomorrow's Standards) to examine the interaction of each model. It is argued that through a failure to state clearly the purpose of assessment, educational reform in this area is overly concerned with the means rather than the ends of education. This has important implications for student motivation and learning. The paper concludes with a comment on current policy development and concludes that some recent initiatives provide the hope that a system of assessment that is both meaningful and relevant to individual learners may be developed.     

’Equal Opportunities’ and Local Management of Schools — what happens now?

The introduction of the 1988 Education Reform Act in Britain marks the beginning of the most substantial changes to the system of State education since the 1944 Education Act. Many have argued that the rationale for these changes rests on the introduction of the principles of ‘market forces’ and represents an attempt to create an internal and external educational market. Already some research has begun to examine the ideology behind some of the measures introduced by the Act such as the National Curriculum and the likely effects of the testing and assessment which accompanies it on issues of ‘race’, gender and class. However, as yet, little work has focused on another measure introduced by the Act which threatens ‘equal opportunities’, that is local management of schools (LMS). It is my argument that central to all these measures is an ideology that sees education as performing a certain function, State schools as certain types of institutions and teachers and pupils as certain types of people. Indeed, just as it is often argued that the National Curriculum rests on an assumption of a specific type of educational knowledge and a certain type of educational practice, so it is my contention that local management assumes a specific model of pupil, school, governor, teacher and parent. Both the ideology behind the 1988 Education Reform Act and the measures flowing from it seek to create a market in education. It is this tenet in the recent reforms which theatens the continuance of ‘equal opportunities’. The creation of this educational market aims to replace the notions of quality of opportunity which in one form or another have represented the British post‐war educational consensus with the rhetoric of choice, standards and differentiation which have been the hallmark of British domestic social policy since 1979.     

How local market pressures shape leadership practices: evidence from Chile

Chile is well known worldwide for its extensive use of market-driven mechanisms in education. Using a case study strategy in three schools, this paper shows that ‘universal’ voucher system and mixed provision (co-existence of subsidised private and state-funded schools) policies are reshaping school management practices. The paper draws evidence from ethnographic data in disadvantaged Chilean public schools and uses Bourdieu’s notion of field as an analytical tool in order to conceptualise the schools’ practices within their local markets as a symbolic and strategic ‘game’ of competition. One of the main findings is that, in response to market pressures and their specific positions within local markets, school leaders built a market-competitive agenda, preparing detailed strategies and undertaking decision-making practices accordingly. These practices were distinctive in relation to different school market positions, impacting the schools’ priorities, value disputes, and management goals.     

Metaphors we’re colonised by? The case of data-driven educational technologies in Brazil

ABSTRACT

This article discusses issues concerning the spread of data-driven educational technologies in Brazil. Here, as elsewhere, educational technology continues to be promoted optimistically as the bearer of a panacea for historically-rooted social problems. Whilst some of these technologies have indeed contributed to important widening-participation programmes in the last two decades, widespread advocacy of technological ‘solutionism’, reflected in gradually stronger policy demands for efficiencies to be improved through ‘innovation’, has supported a relentless marketisation of the country’s educational systems. As transnational corporations position themselves to take control of key areas of these systems, threatening to restructure the whole sector, data-driven educational technologies provide the latest example in a series of ‘new’ ideas offered in an ever-expanding market. Based on the notion of ‘conceptual metaphors’, which encapsulate specific ways of perceiving, thinking and relating with the world, this article examines key metaphors underpinning discourses surrounding data-driven educational technologies in Brazil. In particular, the article analyses ways in which these specific metaphors may be promoting perspectives that ignore difference and obscure broader questions concerning education, thus contributing to the reproduction of previously existing problems and supporting new forms of colonisation.