What is it about?
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.
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Why is it important?
Of potential interest to readers, the paper offers new ways of thinking about how educational leaders might relate to, and may be formed by, managerial discourses. International school Heads have some degree of freedom in the extent to which they ‘do’ managerialism, the focus of this paper is how this plays out for a Head’s sense of self.
Perspectives
“There are teachers that I have let go, not because they’re not good, they just don’t fit the context. I explain that it is clients who are paying your wages; some teachers don’t get it.” It leaps out, doesn’t it? Clients. He was referring to parents, and he runs a fee-paying school, but the word client is still jarring. Yet, this type of language is echoing out of the boardroom, down the corridors and into classrooms. Education, we are repeatedly told, is big business. This presents an uneasy paradox. School leaders are expected to balance the aims of educational and financial effectiveness. The bottom line, for many Heads, is that the bottom-line matters. How do Heads reconcile the personal tensions this creates? As Heads broker between managing education and managing business, what happens to their sense of self? The response to this question was the focus of a series of interviews with Heads of schools, small and large, profit and not-for-profit. The result was a range of Headship ‘types.’
Denry Machin
Keele University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The hybrid professional: an examination of how educational leaders relate to, with and through managerialism, British Journal of Sociology of Education, July 2017, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/01425692.2017.1355229.
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