Heroic heads, mobility mythologies and the power of ambiguity

Abstract

This paper explores how the contradictions of neoliberal education reform and its companion, the self-made aspirational subject, are embodied by Sir Michael Wilshaw, former headteacher of Mossbourne Community Academy in Hackney, East London, through his leadership practices. Wilshaw creates powerful mobility and morality tales that pave over the contradictions and ambiguities inherent in the academies programme and Mossbourne's approach. Drawing on a larger study of Mossbourne, the paper focuses on how raced and classed pathological discourses are mobilised and inverted both by Wilshaw and policy rhetoric, cultivating compliance through a belief in the aspirational subject capable of transcending social structures. The paper argues that neoliberal academy reforms are not about autonomy, but the imperative to comply with centralised policy demands at the expense of democratic participation and accountability.

Framing, overflowing, and fuzzy logic in educational selection: Zurich as a case study

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Investigating the CEO of a MAT: Examining practices and positions on ‘the street’

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“…Research suggests that the conceptualisation of headteachers is connected to the micro contexts of headship and the macro political, ideological and structural dimensions of education (Gunter et al, 1999: xi). This relationship between agency and structure is reflected in both biographies of and by headteachers (for example, Marie Stubbs’ [2003] Ahead of the Class ) and primary research on headship: (Ball, 1987; Grace, 1995; Gunter, 2001, 2012b; Gunter et al, 1999; Kulz, 2015; Thomson, 2009). What is evident from such accounts is a focus on the individual at the head of the organisation, where notions of control, direction and mandate are located.…”

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