Management as ideology: the case of ‘new managerialism’ in higher education

The paper explores ideological conceptions of management, especially ‘new managerialism’, with particular reference to their role in the reform of higher education. It is suggested that attempts to reform public services in general are political as well as technical, though there is no single unitary ideology of ‘new managerialism’. Whilst some argue that managers have become a class and have particular interests, this may not be so for all public services. The arguments presented are illustrated by data taken from a recent research project on the management of UK higher education. It is suggested that managers in public service organisations such as universities do not constitute a class. However, as in the case of manager‐academics, managing a contemporary public service such as higher education may involve taking on the ideologies and values of ‘new managerialism’, and for some, embracing these. So management ideologies do seem to serve the interests of manager‐academics and help cement relations of power and dominance, even in contexts like universities which were not traditionally associated with the dominance of management.     

The hybrid professional: an examination of how educational leaders relate to,with and through managerialism

This paper examines how one particular class of educational leader – international school Heads – relate to managerialism. Representing a novel site of new theorisation, the independence enjoyed by these leaders allows a ‘purer’ view of managerialism as experienced ‘in here’ (inside the subject), not just as a reaction to what is ‘out there’ (i.e. to policy). Through analysis of twenty-five face-to-face interviews, they were found to have relationships to managerialism that are not compliant or transgressive, educational or managerial, but hybridic. Some Heads relate to managerialism pragmatically; they reluctantly ‘do’ managerialism but avoid, segment and/or moderate managerial influences on their identities. Other Heads proactively use managerialism to discipline their staff and organisations; they draw power from managerial discourses; and they claim its values as their own. Seen through the lens of hybridity, educational identifications remain important, indeed they remain paramount, but for some subjects, they have been conjoined with complimentary managerial ones.     

Education reform and managerialism: comparing the experience of schools and colleges

This paper explores the organizational and management consequences of the changing policy environment facing public sector education in England and Wales over the past 10 years. In particular it considers how far arguments about the replacement of older ‘bureau-professional’ forms of organizational order by more ‘managerialist’ forms in the public sector in general can be applied to the specific case of education. The paper begins by reviewing the major policy changes that have affected schools and colleges since 1988. Drawing on published studies from these sectors, it then considers a number of themes: changing roles of senior and middle managers; changes in managerial and organizational culture; and changes in specific aspects of management. Emphasizing the tentative nature of the evidence, the paper identifies some common trends which imply a movement towards managerialism in many institutions. However, it also identifies areas where the position is less clear and suggests a number of factors which may explain differences of experience. It emphasizes the importance of not reifying a previous ‘golden age’ of collegiality and concludes that what is being experienced is a complex and dynamic process of adjustment between old and new organizational and managerial forms.     

Conditions of domination: reflections on harms generated by the British state education system

Education in Britain increasingly appears to serve a very narrow notion of pedagogy, partly reflecting the ‘conditions of domination’ generated by the rise of the new managerialism in the delivery of public services. In the name of economy, efficiency and effectiveness, social progress is increasingly seen to lie in achieving continual increases in ‘productivity’, realised through giving management the absolute freedom to arrange its resources in whatever way it feels appropriate. At the heart of this critical reflection on these contemporary developments lies a concern for the role of education in democratic development, as well as the various harms that are the direct result of a profoundly reductionist and dehumanising ‘education’ system. The article concludes by outlining some alternative possibilities for more humane and democratic pedagogical processes.     

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.     

Views from the blackboard: neoliberal education reforms and the practice of teaching in Ontario,Canada

This article discusses findings from two case studies examining the impact of neoliberal education reform on the classroom practice of teachers and adult educators in Ontario, Canada. We asked educators to comment on the impacts of 20 years of policy shifts in their classrooms. Teachers in public schools and adult literacy programmes echoed each other on issues of managerialism, privatisation and punitive accountability mechanisms. Both schoolteachers and adult educators made references to a reduction in autonomy and to an emerging ‘culture of fear’ in educational institutions and programmes. The experience of teachers highlights contradictions between the promises of neoliberalism and the ground-level impact of policy.     

Healthy competition and unsound comparison: reforming educational competition in Singapore

It is frequently claimed that the ‘competition state’ responds to external competition by making competition increasingly central to its internal processes as well. This article discusses education reform in Singapore as departing from the opposite position. In Singapore ‘excessive’ competition in education is now targeted by policy-makers as a major obstacle to making Singapore education competitive in the global ‘knowledge economy’. Nevertheless, the consequence of education reform does not seem to be a reduction of educational competition as such, but rather a transition from an ‘academic’ to a ‘holistic’ form of competition, raising new questions of educational equity and fairness.     

School effectiveness: new managerialism,quality and the Japanization of education

School effectiveness is a microtechnology of change. It is a relay device, which transfers macro policy into everyday processes and priorities in schools. It is part of the growing apparatus of performance evaluation. Change is brought about by a focus on the school as a site-based system to be managed. There has been corporate restructuring in response to the changing political economy of education. There are now new work regimes and radical changes in organizational cultures. Education, like other public services, is now characterized by a range of structural realignments, new relationships between purchasers and providers and new coalitions between management and politics. In this article, we will argue that the school effectiveness movement is an example of new managerialism in education. It is part of an ideological and technological process to industrialize educational productivity. That is to say, the emphasis on standards and standardization is evocative of production regimes drawn from industry. There is a belief that education, like other public services can be managed to ensure optimal outputs and zero defects in the educational product.     

School exclusion and educational inclusion of pregnant young women

This article analyses the school exclusion and subsequent educational inclusion of pregnant young women participating in a course of antenatal and key skills education at an alternative educational setting. It examines the young women's transitions from ‘failure’ in school to ‘success’ in motherhood and re-engagement with education. This article draws on participant observation- and interview-based research carried out with pregnant young women and staff at an alternative educational setting in London in 2007–2008. The young women's participation in the course represented a severing of past negative experiences in mainstream education, allowing a renewed focus on education alongside a positive maternal identity. The setting represented a form of inclusion, and the young women appreciated the focus on their social and emotional well-being, yet the limited academic provision in some cases continued to reinforce an educational exclusion.     

'Poisoned history': a comparative study of nationalism,propaganda and the treatment of war and peace in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century school curriculum

This paper investigates the educational philosophy and practices of Achimota School, which was established in the Gold Coast Colony (the southern part of today’s Ghana) in 1927 as the governmental model school for leadership education. Achimota’s education aimed to develop leaders who were ‘Western in intellectual attitude’, ‘African in sympathy’. To fulfil this objective, Achimota attempted to develop a curriculum that took into account the sociocultural background of African students while trying to provide an education on a par with that available at English public schools. The paper first examines the discourse surrounding the establishment of a model secondary school for African leadership, which involved diverse groups of people – colonial officials, missionaries, European educationists, traditional chiefs and African nationalists – and then reviews the relevant educational philosophies of the twentieth century. Finally, the paper describes the Achimota education as experienced by students, a mixed product of English public school tradition and ‘African tradition’. Regardless of the efforts to balance the two ‘traditions’, what was actually created was a new Achimota culture that selected essences from different ‘traditions’ and remoulded them for a novel purpose.     

Choosing the arts: the moral regulation of parents in the educational marketplace

The neoliberal turn in public education positions the parent as a consumer within an expanding educational marketplace. This shift is premised on the notion that the free market is best suited to promote equity. Critics of this claim highlight how a larger choice arena creates additional opportunities for privileged parents to mobilize their resources to further their child’s advantages. While extremely important, this framework of analysis ignores the role that educational choice plays in producing parent subjectivities. In this article, we explore how parents at one specialized arts high school construct notions of the ‘good/moral’ parent around the decision to ‘choose the arts,’ and how these categories work to reinforce dominant race, class, and gender hierarchies within the school. We hope to illuminate how educational choice is not solely about shaping the material and symbolic conditions of the child; it is about producing parent subjectivities as well.     

Juridification of educational spheres: The case of Sweden

This article takes the interlinkages between law and politics as its starting point. It analyzes recent changes in the legislative style of education governance in Sweden as not only a species of crisis management, but also a long-term response to a series of tensions arising out of the push toward what has been identified as ‘juridification’ in many Western nations—the reliance on law and judicial means for addressing core moral predicaments, public policy questions, and political controversies. The article outlines the notion of juridification at a theoretical level and highlights juridification processes and their possible ramifications on education. It argues that recent changes in the legislative style of education governance in Sweden not only reveal much about the commitments and implicit assumptions of modern regulatory and evaluative regimes, but also reflect the general impact of the rationalization of social and political life on the organization of government. The article provides a case with which to examine some of the theoretical underpinnings and implicit conceptual assumptions of modern regulatory and evaluative regimes as well as educational institutions’ relationships with the State. It shows that regulatory frameworks define the conceptualizations of what educational institutions do and thus of what actually gets done.     

Personalisation: the nostalgic revival of child‐centred education?

Personalisation is an emerging ‘movement’ within education. Its roots reside in marketing theory, not in educational theory. As a concept it admits a good deal of confusion. It can refer either to a new mode of governance for the public services, or it qualifies the noun ‘learning’, as in ‘personalised learning’. The concern here is with its intellectual affinity to child‐centred education, one which the government in England has strongly denied. On balance, the government’s view of personalisation is not of a piece with what may commonly be regarded as child‐centred education. But the strong semantic accord between the terms ‘personalisation’ and ‘child‐centred education’ provokes a question: why does the government not provide a term which unequivocally distinguishes its current ‘vision’ for education from child‐centred education? By retaining the term personalisation, the government purports to do two things: first, because of its focus on personalised ‘tailored’ needs and co‐produced solutions, it adapts education even further to a consumerist society; and second, because the term personalisation strikes a chord with the discourse of child‐centred education, it blurs the fact that little to do with pedagogy or with curriculum has in fact been changed. The term personalisation generates a nostalgic appeal to better times long gone.     

Fixing contradictions of education commercialisation: Pearson plc and the construction of its efficacy brand

ABSTRACT

This paper explores some of the fundamental contradictions related to the commercialisation of education and how Pearson plc – ‘the world’s leading multinational education company’ – is trying to overcome these challenges through discourse and semiotics. Pearson’s Efficacy Framework is a semiotic-calculative device created to measure the impact of educational products and services sold by the company. This paper examines the ways in which the efficacy programme and tools developed by Pearson represent a type of ‘social fix’ intended to resolve contradictions linked to education commercialisation by demonstrating the ‘measurable impact’ and ‘outcomes’ resulting from its educational products and services and communicating that to customers, shareholders, policymakers, state managers and partners. Efficacy will be analysed as it relates to a hegemonic ‘knowledge brand’ in the making in education that is being actively promoted and appropriated by Pearson. Pearson, therefore, aims to construct a corporate brand and reputation around efficacy based on legible measures of performance, which this paper argues is in response to risks and contradictions associated with the commercialisation of education.     

Education,health and social welfare in the late colonial context: the International Missionary Council and educational transition in the interwar years with specific reference to colonial Africa

Mission schools in Africa in the first half of the twentieth century were in many ways microcosms of the great educational debates of the times. The objectives of policies regarding access, governance and curriculum were part of a historical evolution of mission education but they were also increasingly a reflection of significant new trends that were to reshape the theory and practice of colonial education. New forms of educational research and professional expertise were to play an ever‐increasing role in shaping the forms and content of the education provided. The brief of the mission churches was to meet with the increasing demand for schooling. Church and state gradually expanded their cooperation in the field as the costs of education outstripped the resources of the missions and the demand for mass education came to be linked to nationalist demands for political and economic rights. This paper is concerned to map the background to those international influences that shaped the policy and practices of mission education and the increasing engagement of colonial governments with the field of education. It addresses the question of the worldwide Protestant mission church’s response to the changing political, social and economic environment of the first half of the twentieth century. In particular it seeks to explore how mission initiatives shaped thinking about education in Asia, Africa, Oceania and Latin America by the 1930s. It also attempts to situate those issues within a wider educational framework by linking them to the emergent debate concerning pragmatism and utilitarianism in regard to progressive education in the USA and the quest for social democratic education in the United Kingdom and Europe as part of a response to socialism, nationalism and totalitarianism. In short, the paper explores the influence of the Christian mission churches with regard to social policy, in general, and the provision of education, in particular, during the interwar years, with special reference to areas influenced by the work of the International Missionary Council. At a time when there was a crisis of support for ‘foreign missions’ how did the debates between fundamentalist‐evangelicals and supporters of a ‘social gospel’ transform themselves into debates regarding the role of missions in non‐Western societies? And how did these essentially ecclesiastical/theological issues come to influence public policy, specifically educational policy, in the long term? The conclusions are that mission churches had a very significant influence on the shaping of educational thinking in the colonial and imperial context at a time when state influence in the sector was still often quite weak. The origins of the conference and research culture that has informed educational policy since the establishment of the United Nations Organization had its roots in the broad context of the Charter of the League of Nations, with a meeting of religious and secular goals, prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. Between 1910 and 1939 there was a significant history of educational reform and community development that has only been partially documented in relation to its global significance. This is an attempt to build a framework for understanding the nature of those changes and what was achieved. The investigation is conducted through an exploration of the three great World Mission Conferences of the International Missionary Council (IMC) held at Edinburgh (1910), Jerusalem (1928) and Tambaram, India (1938). The attempts of Christian churches to engage with dramatic social changes associated with industrialisation, urbanisation, poverty, cultural change and the rise of anti‐colonialism, with specific regard to the field of educational policy, are documented and analysed.     

Exemplarity and education: Retuning educational research

This article explores the idea of exemplarity in relation to educational research and teacher education. Exemplarity is introduced as an alternative to the paradigm of evidence and ‘what works’, which seems to be omnipresent in educational research at present. The idea of exemplarity relates to the particularity of educational practice. The claim of this article is that we need to skew the dominance of functionalistic studies of education, which focus on skills and solutions to problems, or on providing quick fixes and methods to be applied in practice. I will argue that this tactic shuts down interpretive spaces and gives the teacher an illusion of simplicity and efficacy that connects poorly with the complexities of pedagogical practice. Exemplarity provides a different way of answering the question of ‘what works’, since it does not claim generalisability, but instead offers a path to reflective engagement with the complexities of educational processes. The idea of exemplarity highlights how educators can be invited to lend an ear to practical experience and pedagogical theorising, and through these develop their tact and reflective abilities through exemplars that display pedagogical principles. This, in turn, offers the possibility of retuning one’s practice, and in the scope of this article, retuning educational research itself.     

Pedagogising poverty alleviation: a discourse analysis of educational and social policies in Argentina and Chile

For the past decades international organisations and governments have promoted and implemented analogous education policies on the grounds that education is the key factor to foster development and fight poverty. This article sets the context of these educational programmes and analyses their discourse on poverty in Argentina and Chile. Then, it shows how they institutionalise strict surveillance, institutional denigration of the poor and professional scepticism. In general, the conclusions underpin one hypothesis that leads the analysis: eventually, these targeted education policies ‘pedagogise’ poverty alleviation in that they aim to ‘instil flexible identities’ into the poor rather than open channels for social inclusion.     

Evidence and its consequences in educational research

We begin by arguing that the continuing dominance of ‘evidence-based’ thinking in educational policymaking does serious harm to the notion of evidence itself; also that it brings a loss of coherence to education as a practice that might wish to be regarded as a coherent and research-informed one. The second section of the article suggests that the invidious consequences of ‘evidence-based’ thinking are likely to continue unless energetically challenged by a vibrant and robust understanding of education as a practice in its own right. In elucidating such an understanding, we investigate closely the notions of practice and practitioner, and their intrinsic connections, drawing on landmark researches on practice by authors like Alasdair MacIntyre and Joseph Dunne. Building on the understanding of education as a practice in its own right, the third section argues that the Dewey-inspired notion of justified warrant, rather than proof or replicability, is more appropriate to research claims made in education. Here we focus in particular on action research, which has experienced recurring difficulties in having its research credentials recognised.     

Perspectives on human and social capital theories and the role of education: An approach from Mediterranean thought

Current discussions about education suggest that a transformative pedagogy that goes beyond the acquisition of knowledge and skills is needed. However, there is no agreement as to the inputs needed for a correct development of the educational model. In this sense, we can identify the presence of two different approaches to human and social capital which embody distinct educational worldviews. On the one hand, the ‘Marketable Human Capital’ or ‘Personal Culture’ approach, and on the other hand, the ‘Non-Marketable Human Capital’ or ‘Civic Culture’ approach. The first, which is linked to mainstream economic theory, sees education as any stock of knowledge that contributes to an improvement in the productivity of the worker and individual well-being. The second, which is rooted in the Mediterranean tradition of political thought, highlights the role of civic virtues, reciprocity, and public action within the educational process and its influence on public happiness. In this article, we analyse these connections in order to introduce the eighteenth-century Mediterranean tradition of economic thought into discussions about human and social capital theories and the role of education in them. Focusing on education through these prisms, national and international agendas must be reoriented towards the integral development of people to include broader global debates.     

Decoding ClassDojo: psycho-policy,social-emotional learning and persuasive educational technologies

ClassDojo is one of the world’s most successful educational technologies, currently used by over 3 million teachers and 35 million children globally. It reinforces and enacts emerging governmental ‘psycho-policies’ around the measurement and modification of children’s social and emotional learning in schools. This article focuses specifically on the ways ClassDojo facilitates psychological surveillance through gamification techniques, its links to new psychological concepts of ‘character development,’ ‘growth mindsets’ and ‘personal qualities,’ and its connections to the psychological techniques of Silicon Valley designers. Methodologically, the research mobilizes network analysis to trace the organizational, technical, governmental and scientific relations that are translated together and encoded in the ClassDojo app. Through its alignment with emerging education psycho-policy agendas around the measurement of non-cognitive learning, ClassDojo is a key technology of ‘fast policy’ that functions as a ‘persuasive technology’ of ‘psycho-compulsion’ to reinforce and reward student behaviours that are aligned with governmental strategies around social-emotional learning.