James G. Ladwig

New managerialism in education: commercialization, carelessness and gender

Kathleen Lynch and her colleagues Bernie Grummell and Dympna Devine have produced a frustratingly compelling volume that documents the arrival of ‘new managerialism’ in the Irish education system. To my reading, there is no question this volume provides a strong empirical case and analysis of how a somewhat unique system, from amongst the Occidental systems typically discussed in Anglophile research communities, has adopted similar rationale and procedures of governance now found across the global. In their own terms, this case shows how ‘Ireland has moved from being a state governed by theocratic principles to one governed by market principles’ (21). The subtitle of the volume, Commercialization, Carelessness and Gender, delineates the three main lines of analytical argument present across the volume, which does a superlative job of illustrating how it is that overt policies claiming to promote gender equity actually do not. The detail of how that policy failure happened and the insights given to the mechanisms of exclusion that define the glass ceiling faced by women in senior educational executives is the great contribution of the volume. This is very well-crafted empirical work, bringing together an array of macro-level historical documentation and analysis with the face-to-face interviews of people working through this transition. In essence, it is very easy for readers to see just how the micro and macro worked in tandem, and how individual decisions translate into macro systemic dynamics that really did directly contradict legal intent. (The volume points out that many of the gender equity initiatives were motivated with the force of law behind them.) The analytical scaffolding of this argument is what propels it. That is, after a general introduction to the notion of ‘new managerialism’ and its relationship to capital, the volume begins with a discussion of the ‘culture of governance’ in Irish education, a much-needed and parsimoniously constructed background for those of us not directly familiar with Irish

For Whom This Reform?: outlining educational policy as a social field

Abstract Theoretically informed by the sociological work of Pierre Bourdieu, this analysis represents an initial attempt to examine what it would mean to analyse educational policy as a social field. By employing such a frame, two main claims are addressed: (1) that the sociological perspective of Bourdieu offers valuable potential for understanding both educational policy, per se, and what it means to analyse educational policy; and (2) that there is good reason to question claims about shifts in power relations in US educational policy. Where other contemporary analyses of educational policy draw on some of Bourdieus conceptual framework, in this paper I hope to more systematically elaborate methodological concerns raised when applying a Bourdieuian framework to educational policy. Further, I argue the perspective developed here suggests that in the 1980s US educational policy reforms reveal the historical maturation of a social field which has developed its own autonomy and its own rewards.

Modelling pedagogy in Australian school reform

This article presents a discussion of the technical development and statistical results of one of Australias most widely recognised models of pedagogy designed to research school improvement. This is the first public reporting of the statistical results of the productive pedagogy research. Although the modelling of classroom practice from which the productive pedagogy model was drawn clearly supports the hypothesis that pedagogy needs to be seen as multidimensional, not all of the theoretical dimensions outlined in the productive pedagogy model are empirically defensible. Of the four dimensions theoretically proposed, Intellectual Quality, Support Learning Environment, and Connectedness were sufficiently measured for sound empirical examination. Although the notion of there being a dimension of pedagogy related to Recognition of Difference may well have theoretical justification, the productive pedagogy research cannot offer empirical substantiation of hypotheses related to this construct. Consequently, this account of the development of productive pedagogy stands as one example of the risk of professional development interests that run too far ahead of research.

Restructuring Secondary Social Studies: The Association of Organizational Features and Classroom Thoughtfulness

Faced with the remarkable absence of thoughtfulness in U.S. classrooms, some proponents of school restructuring have argued that innovative organizational structures are needed to assist teachers in their efforts to improve the thoughtfulness of classroom practice. Building on previous studies of the general relationship between organizational features and the promotion of classroom thoughtfulness, this analysis presents an in-depth analysis of four secondary social studies departments that made structural changes in school organization while also placing an emphasis on promoting higher order thinking. This analysis suggests that although innovative organizational structures in and of themselves are generally not associated with higher levels of classroom thoughtfulness, innovative organizational structures, in specific contexts, have been positively associated with classroom thoughtfulness. Among the four departments studied here, certain organizational structures, when combined with clear curricular emphases, did appear to be associated with higher levels of classroom thoughtfulness.

The Centrality of Relationships for Pedagogy: The Whanaungatanga Thesis

Te Kotahitanga is a research and professional development project that seeks to reduce educational disparities between indigenous Māori students and their non-Māori peers in New Zealand secondary schools. While evidence of the impact of the project on teachers’ practice and the associated gains made by Māori students has been published previously, in order for the work of Te Kotahitanga to contribute to the broader educational research community, its pedagogical premises require empirical verification. To do so, we must first establish the validity of the pedagogical data by addressing two questions: (a) To what degree can the data gathered in the collaborative processes of Te Kotahitanga be used as a measure of pedagogical quality? and (b) Do these data support the foundational hypothesis of the project, that “extended family” relationships, as understood by Māori people when using the Māori term, whanaungatanga, are a central necessary component of overall pedagogical quality? This article provides an account of the context of this work then presents an analysis directed to these questions in turn. First, our analysis of the observational data gathered during the Te Kotahitanga professional development process is presented, followed by the measures that were developed for each of the main dimensions of pedagogy addressed in this work. Second, using these measures we present our analysis of the inter-relation among these dimensions of pedagogy to test the Whanaungatanga pedagogical thesis.

Organizational Features and Classroom Thoughtfulness in Secondary School Social Studies Departments

This paper offers an empirical analysis of the association between organizational features and classroom thoughtfulness. The findings yield a mixed message. On the one hand, no association was found between classroom thoughtfulness and the organizational features of class size, total numbers of students, amount of planning time and number of courses for which teachers had to prepare. On the other hand, there seemed to be a positive association between levels of thoughtfulness and departmental common visions, curricular revision and instructional improvement programs to promote higher order thinking. While only an exploratory analysis, the evidence from this study suggests that what departments do within extant structures may contribute more to improving the level of classroom thoughtfulness in high school social studies than the mere presence or absence of specific organizational structures.

Working backwards towards curriculum: on the curricular implications of Quality Teaching

This essay builds from ongoing development and research work on a model of pedagogy, from New South Wales, Australia, known as the Quality Teaching model. Where international calls for the professional development and certification of teachers rely on mechanisms of credentialing, often with scant direct attention to the acts of teaching, the NSW Quality Teaching model was developed specifically to examine classroom practice and assessment with a shared, generic, analytical framework across subject areas in K-12 settings. The article presents a summary and some elaboration of the Quality Teaching model and then raises the question of just what implications for curriculum lie underneath the push for improving teaching. Using this model, for example, it is clear that many of our long standing curricular debates must be soundly re-cast if the ideals of Quality Teaching are to be taken seriously. Coming from a context where curriculum is designed and governed centrally, in very conventional terms, the curriculum implications of Quality Teaching raise a big challange for international understandings of just what is included in school curricula.

Integrating Research and Development in the National Schools Network.

Amidst a host of recent teacher professional development initiatives in Australia, the National Schools Network (NSN) can be seen as a major educational reform program. Funded by the commonwealth and state systems, the NSN is a national network providing support for over 200 Australian schools that are rethinking their work organisations and teaching and learning practices in order to improve learning outcomes for students and teachers. A key aspect of the NSNs work has been to link the professional development of teachers with a systematic research program which focuses on issues of organisational change and restructuring. This paper reports on the ongoing development of the NSN, place its work within the larger national and international educational reform agenda, and provides an overview of the Networks strategic rationale for its research and development programs.

Theoretical Notes on the Sociological Analysis of School Reform Networks.

Nearly two decades ago, Ladwig outlined the theoretical and methodological implications of Bourdieu’s concept of the social field for sociological analyses of educational policy and school reform. The current analysis extends this work to consider the sociological import of one of the most ubiquitous forms of educational reform found around the planet: school reform networks. On the one hand, this analysis highlights the extent to which schooling is composed of multiple, co-existing social fields, which offer school reform networks ample leverage points for change. On the other hand, the degree to which reform networks hope to realise their ambitions fundamentally depends on their capacity to leverage the transferability of capitals among those social fields that govern the daily practices of schooling.

Aspirations, education and social justice: applying Sen and Bourdieu

The language in which we delineate aspiration is notoriously difficult to decode. The problem is compounded by the different positions of who is talking, who is listening and what each assumes their relationship to be. Aspirations may be variously preposterous dreams, responsible or risky choices, sites of personal or collective meaning and action. Aspirations have become an important signifier in education policy discourse, particularly in high-income countries. But the language of aspiration is not just policy rhetoric. In any week, in which I talk to students or colleagues, or read through interview data from research projects, aspiration is an important component of the stuff of education conversation. One of the achievements of Caroline Hart’s Aspirations, Education and Social Justice, developed from her doctoral thesis, is the way it offers a kind of code book to gain some insight into the patterns and normative issues entailed in these complex exchanges where aspiration in invoked. Hart’s code-breaker takes the form of a conceptual synthesis, drawing on the work of Amartya Sen and Pierre Bourdieu. These theoretical resources are used to explore data gathered from two studies with secondary school students in England. The first, conducted in 2003/04 in Bradford with students in Years 9, 11 and 13 looked at their views of aspiration and need. The second study drew on survey and interview data, collected between 2006 and 2008 in Sheffield, regarding young people’s decisions about engaging with higher education. The lexicon Hart develops, reflecting on these data, combines Sen’s conceptual sequence of commodities, capabilities, conversion factors, agency, well-being freedoms, and functionings with Bourdieu’s ideas about diverse forms of capital, habitus, and field. This leads her, in reflecting on the data, to distinguish between revealed, concealed, adapted and apparent types of aspiration. She associates each with a particular form of agency, ranging these hierarchically from what she terms independent, with high