Session Information
05 SES 05 A, Children and Youth at Risk and Urban Education
Paper Session
Contribution
This is a period of rapid change within English education policy, resulting in the decline of the delivery of school and college based education by public bodies. The competitive choice driven system promoted through neo-liberal education policy and discourses was officially endorsed and promoted in the DfE White Paper, ‘The Importance of Teaching’ (2010), which expressed a desire for the academies programme to be ‘dramatically’ expanded. This desire was actualised through the radical 2010 Academies Act, which allowed schools to become converter academies. Statistically, the growth in new converters is significant with a 41% increase between 2010 and 2012 (West and Bailey, 2013:153). We recognise that these policy changes are not confined to the UK but are part of a wider shift towards private provision in education as exemplified in Sweden and the United States. Given the scale of these developments, described as ‘system wide changes’ (West and Bailey, 2013) we critically explore their impact on the subjectivities of education professionals working within these settings. It is our view that the free schools programme represents the most radical development within the coalition government’s education agenda with potential implications for the development of new curricula, increased school autonomy and new parent/school relationship characterised as the ‘voice and choice’ discourse of neo-liberal education policy (Reay & Ball 1998; Ball et al. 2000; Ball, 2008; Plummer 2001). We aim to critically analyse the DfE’s espoused policy aims through our investigation of free school provision at a time when it is relatively new, documenting the direction of policy within a dynamic, fluid context.
The questions posed and possible areas for exploration are:
- In what ways does the research setting implement free school policy and provision?
- In what ways has the implementation of free school policy shaped and influenced practitioners’ professional identities?
- What do practitioners’ narratives reveal about the experience and implementation of this policy discourse and spaces of resistance?
Possible areas to explore:
- Do practitioners experience dissonance and incongruity?
- What are the possibilities and the challenges of implementing new policy?
- Is there conformity, or resistance?
- Are practitioners able to absorb and re-appropriate policy in alignment with their own positioning?
Broadly, our approach is based on a social constructionist paradigm in order to interpret and analyse policy and empirical data. We draw on Foucault’s concept of policy as a discourse from which social subjectivities are constituted, a view captured by Weedon who refers to:
“The institutional effects of discourse and its role in the constitution and government of individual subjects” (Weedon, 1997:104)
We also draw on Stephen Ball’s critical post-structuralist analysis of neo-liberal education policy, in referring to:
“The enterprising of the state itself: state subsidised privatisation might be a better term for the way the relationship between private capital and central government has developed over the past decade and a half” (Ball, 2009: 96-97)
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Ball, S., Maguire, M. & Macrae, S. (2000), Choice, pathways and transitions post-16: new youth, new economies in the global city. London: Falmer Press. Ball, S. (2008) The Education Debate Bristol: The Policy Press DfE (2010) The Importance of Teaching Norwich: TSO Duckworth, V. (2013) Learning Trajectories: Violence and Empowerment amongst Adult Basic Skills Learners London: Routledge Duckworth, V. (2014), Literacy and Transformation, in Duckworth, V. and Ade-Ojo, G. (eds.) Landscapes of Specific Literacies in Contemporary Society: Exploring a social model of literacy. Monograph: Routledge Research in Education: London Farrell, F. (2014 a) A critical investigation of the relationship between masculinity, social justice, religious education and the neo-liberal discourse Journal of Education and Training vol 56 (7). Farrell, F. (2014 b) ‘We’re the mature people’: a study of masculine subjectivity and key stage 4 Religious Studies Gender and Education vol 26(6). Goodson, I. and Ball, S. (1997) Teachers’ Lives and Careers London: Routledge and Falmer Goodley, D., Lawthom, R., Clough, P. & Moore, M. (2004), Researching Life Stories: Method, theory and analyses in a biographical age. Oxon: Routledge. Goodson, I. F. (1992), ‘Studying Teachers’ Lives: An Emergent Field of Inquiry’ in Goodson, I. (ed.), Studying Teachers’ Lives, pp.1 – 17. London: Routledge. Goodson, I. (1998) “Storying the self: Life politics and the study of the teacher’s life and work” in W.F. Pinar (Ed.), Curriculum: Towards new identities (pp. 89-98), New York, Garland. Goodson, I. F. (2001). Life histories of teachers: Understanding life and work. Japan: Koyo Shobo Plummer, Ken (1995). Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change, and Social Worlds. London: Routledge. Plummer, K. (2001) Documents of Life 2, London, Sage. Reay, D. & Ball, S. (1998), Making their Minds Up: Family Dynamics of School Choice, British Educational Research Journal, Vol. 24, No.4, pp.431 – 448 Weedon, C. (1997) Feminist Practice and Theory 2nd edition Oxford: Blackwell West, A. and Bailey,E. (2013) The Development of the Academies Programme: ‘Privatising’ School-Based Education in England 1986-2013 British Journal of Educational Studies, 61:2, 137-159
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