Resistance, professional agency and the reform of education in England

Rayner, S. M.; Gunter, Helen

doi:10.14324/lre.18.2.09

Cited by 27 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Parents who feel that their offspring are failed by the state system will feel rescued by the reality encoded by IGSD's symbolic traits (Wright, 2008). Public education is vulnerable to undermining along many vectors: neoliberalism has transformed the teaching workforce into a 'directed profession', and compliance and performativity diminish a teacher's capacity to adopt The prestige economy of elite education 8 critical perspectives (Daly et al, 2020;Rayner and Gunter, 2020). Our contribution to education policy is timely, as public education in England continues to be subjected to central government interventions, pushing state schools previously governed by local education authorities beyond that ambit, into compliance with market forces where curriculum control is informed by a capitalist business-oriented leadership class (Martin and Yarker, 2021;West and Wolfe, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The prestige economy of elite education: a Baudrillardian analysis of an aspirational English school

Holligan

Shah

2023

Lond. Rev. Educ.

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Academic entrepreneurial behaviours are increasingly a research field paralleling processes of capitalist commodification. We mobilise Baudrillard’s concepts to probe a school’s strategic communication methods symbolising class neoliberalism, which aspirational parents may experience as a desired habitus of ‘distinction’. We suggest their knowledge of class and education, once imported into the interpretation of this school’s web presence, will coalesce with its simulacra of elite education. Our account encourages comparisons with selective school websites and utilises the qualitative data on the public site of this school, a methodological approach that has been fruitfully utilised by scholars uncovering the ideological representations created by providers who market UK higher education. The intervention into the marketplace of the selective fee-paying English education of Independent Grammar School: Durham (IGSD) through such a penumbra of symbolic meaning forms part of its pursuit of a competitive edge. International studies of schools chasing prestige and consumer desire confirm that the policies and practices described have become widespread, as shown in the oeuvre of Stephen Ball, whose writings inform the approach of this article. The marketing of the ‘brand’ identified through our theoretically driven analysis may encourage consumers to opt out of the state sector. Neoliberal-class markers of prestige contribute to the erosion of welfare-oriented school ideals in England, and in other nations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The prestige economy of elite education: a Baudrillardian analysis of an aspirational English school

Holligan

Shah

2023

Lond. Rev. Educ.

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“…These external conditions are somewhat unusual, because they provide teacher educators with the opportunity to come together and to play a role -to some extent, at least -in determining how accountability mechanisms operate. In doing so, they demonstrate the collective capacity of educators to exercise professional agency under conditions of reform (Rayner and Gunter, 2020). This provides the sector with an opportunity to test the 'critical unspoken assumption that ... unless teacher education programs are coerced and surveilled by external agents, they are unlikely to perform appropriately, adequately or effectively' (Cochran-Smith, 2021: 18).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enquiring into a teacher performance assessment: towards intelligent professional responsibility in initial teacher education

et al. 2022

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Teacher education is broadly seen as a policy problem in that it has failed to produce sufficient ‘classroom ready’ teachers. One accountability measure that has been introduced in Australia to address this purported problem is the capstone teacher performance assessments (TPAs). All Australian pre-service teachers must pass this hurdle assessment to be eligible for teacher registration, and all teacher education providers must provide evidence of the effectiveness of their programmes in producing classroom ready teachers to maintain accreditation. The research presented in this article investigated the experiences of a consortium of teacher educators from four Australian universities that implemented a nationally endorsed TPA known as the quality TPA (QTPA). Intelligent professional responsibility was used to consider the experiences and possibilities for educators working in a policy context characterised by increasing accountabilities. Our findings suggest that the introduction of the TPA in Australia created momentum for building collaborative national teacher education partnerships with a focus on improving programme quality and graduate readiness to teach. Our data illustrate how the introduction of a TPA policy mandate in Australia created an external accountability context that allowed for teacher educators to bolster the quality of teacher education programmes from within.

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“…For example, parental choice is presented as vital for markets to work, and yet research shows that schools compete to choose children, in effect denying parental choice. Consequently, schools are required to invest huge resources into self-damage (Smyth 2011), prompting localised resistance (Rayner and Gunter 2020).…”

Section: Troubling Policy Mortalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Policy Mortality and UK Government Education Policy for Schools in England

Gunter

Courtney

2023

British Journal of Educational Studies

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Successive UK governments have adopted failure as a strategy in the reform of public education in England: first, to construct crises in order to blame professionals/parents/children for a failing system; and second, to provide rescue solutions that are designed to fail in order to sustain the change imperative. We describe this as policy mortality, or the integration of systemic and organisational 'death' within reform design. Our research demonstrates the interplay between the blame for the 'wrong' type of school, leader, teacher, pupil, parent, and the claimed 'solutions' in the form of new schools (e.g. between 70 and 90 different types in England), organisations (e.g. MATs), professionals (e.g. CEOs), pupils (e.g. branded access to a school place), and parents (e.g. consumer choice). Our research contribution is conceptual through the development of new thinking about policy mortality, whereby the claim is for 'success' but the reality is that some professionals, schools, children and parents are required to fail.

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Resistance, professional agency and the reform of education in England

Cited by 27 publications

References 44 publications

The prestige economy of elite education: a Baudrillardian analysis of an aspirational English school

The prestige economy of elite education: a Baudrillardian analysis of an aspirational English school

Enquiring into a teacher performance assessment: towards intelligent professional responsibility in initial teacher education

Policy Mortality and UK Government Education Policy for Schools in England

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