Being different and the same? The paradoxes of ‘tailoring’ in education quasi - markets

• Authors: Glenn C. Savage
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

In Australia, market-based education policies promote the notion that government schools should flexibly tailor secondary education to the needs of young people and their local communities. Far from offering a “one size fits all” system, policies seek to enable clients (parents, students) to exercise freedom of choice in quasi-markets that offer different educational products to different individuals. The intended effect is a kind of bespoke education tailoring, whereby schools operate as flexible service providers, adapting to the needs and desires of local markets. In this paper, I analyse the policy turn towards market tailoring as part of broader shifts towards advanced liberal governance in education. Following this, I feature interviews with educators in two socially disparate government secondary schools in the Australian city of Melbourne. In doing so, I analyse the extent to which each school tailors its marketing practices to its local community. These interviews suggest inherent contradictions emerge when tailoring is attempted in a hierarchical market with normative and rigid indicators of ‘brand value’. Schools are caught, I argue, between paradoxical demands, requiring them to be simultaneously different and the same.

Keywords

EN

education policy; marketisation; tailoring; governance; secondary schooling

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Journal of Pedagogy
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 279-302

Dates

published

2012-12-01

online

2012-12-28

Contributors

author

Glenn C. Savage

• The University of Melbourne Melbourne Graduate School of E ducation Education Policy and L eadership Level 7, 100 L eicester Street Carlton Victoria 3053 Australia

References

• ACARA . (2009) . ICSEA technical paper 2009. Sydney: Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority .
• Anderson, B . (1983) . Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso .
• Ball, S . J . (1981) . Beachside comprehensive: A case-study of secondary schooling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
• Ball, S . J . (2003b) . The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity . Journal of Education Policy, 18(2), 215-228 .[Crossref]
• Ball, S . J . (2006) . The education debate: Policy and politics in the twenty-first century. Bristol: The Policy Press
• Ball, S . J . (2012) . Global education Inc: New policy networks and the neo-liberal imaginary London: Routledge
• Barrera-Osorio, F. , Fasih, T . , Patrinos, H . , & Santibanez, L. (2009) . Decentralized decision-making in schools: The theory and evidence on school-based management. Washington: The World Bank.
• Bentley, T . , & J . Wilsdon . (2003) . The Adaptive state: Strategies for personalising the public realm. London: Demos .
• Campbell, C . , Proctor, H . , & Sherington, G . (2009) . School choice: How parents negotiate the new school market in Australia. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin .
• Caldwell, B. J. (2009). Centralisation and decentralisation in education: A new dimension on policy . In J . Zajda, & D . T . Gamage (Eds . ), Decentralisation, school- based management, and quality (pp . 53-66) . Dordrecht: Springer .
• COAG (2012) National partnership agreement on empowering local schools. Canberra: Council of Australian Governments
• Dean, M . (1999) . Governmentality: Power and rule in modern society (1st ed . ) . London: Sage
• Dean, M (2010) Governmentality: Power and rule in modern society (2nd ed ) London: Sage
• DEEWR . (2012) . Making every school a great school: Empowering local schools (Victorian Fact Sheet). Australian Government: Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations
• Dixon, M . (2011) . Victoria as a learning community: Extended special lecture - Melbourne graduate school ofeducation. Melbourne: Department of Education and Early Childhood Development
• Doherty, R• A . (2007) . Education, neoliberalism and the consumer citizen: After the golden age of egalitarian reform . Critical Studies in Education, 48(2), 269-288. Everingham, C . (2001) . Reconstituting community: Social justice, social order and the politics of community. Australian Journal of Social Issues, 36(2), 105-122 . Foucault, M . (2008) . The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 19781979. New York: Palgrave Macmillan .
• Gewirtz, S . (2002) . The managerial school: Post-welfarism and social justice in education. London: Routledge .
• Giddens, A . (1998) . The third way: The renewal of social democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press .
• Gillborn, D . , & Youdell, D . (2000) . Rationing education: Policy, practice, reform and equity. Buckingham: Open University Press .
• Goodson, I . (1997) . The changing curriculum: Studies in social construction New York: Peter Lang Publishing
• Kenway, J . , & Bullen, E . (2001) . Consuming children.: Education-entertainment-advertising. Buckingham: Open University Press .
• Klenowski, V . (2009) . Public education matters: Reclaiming public education for the common good in a global era . The Australian Educational Researcher, 36(1), 1-25. Lingard, B . (2010) . Policy borrowing, policy learning: Testing times in Australian schooling. Critical Studies in Education, 51(2), 129-147.
• Lipman, P . (2011) . The new political economy of urban education: Neoliberalism, race, and the right to the city New York: Routledge
• McLeod, J . (2012) . Vulnerability and the neo-liberal youth citizen: A view from Australia . Comparative Education, 48(1), 11-26 .[WoS]
• McLeod, J . , & Savage, G . C . (2010) . Governing the local: Community, ‘vulnerable’ youth and democracy . In Re-imagining Public Education: Critical Politics and Democracy symposium at the AERA Annual Meeting, Denver, USA, 2010 .
• Marginson, S . (1997) . Markets in education. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin .
• Miller, P. , & Rose, N . (2008) . Governing the present: Administering economic, social and personal life Cambridge: Polity[WoS]
• Ong, A . (2006) . Neoliberalism as exception: Mutations in citizenship and sovereignty. Durham: Duke University Press
• Peters, M A (2010) Practice In M A Peters, S Marginson & P Murphy (Eds ), Imagination: Three models of imagination in the age of the knowledge economy (pp . 363-382) . New York: Peter Lang.
• Polesel, J (2008) Democratising the curriculum or training the children of the poor: School- based vocational training in Australia . Journal of Education Policy, 23(6), 615-631.[WoS][Crossref]
• Reddel, T . (2004) . Third way social governance: Where is the State? Australian Journal ofSocial Issues, 39(2), 129-142 .
• Rizvi, F . , & Lingard, B . (2010) . Globalizing education policy. New York: Routledge . Rose, N . (1996) . Governing “advanced” liberal democracies . In A . Barry, T . Osborne, & N . Rose (Eds . ), Foucault and political reason: Liberalism, neo-liberalism and rationalities of government (pp 37-64) Chicago: The University of Chicago Press Rose, N . (1999a) . Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Rose, N . (1999b) . Inventiveness in politics . Economy & Society, 28(3), 467-493.
• Rose, N . (2000) . Community, citizenship, and the third way . American Behavioral Scientist, 43(9), 1395-1411 .[Crossref]
• Savage, G . C . (2011) . When worlds collide: Excellent and equitable learning communities? Australia’s ‘social capitalist’ paradox? Journal of Education Policy, 26(1), 33-59[WoS][Crossref]
• Savage, G . C . (2012) . Imagination, governance, community: Making education, making difference. PhD Thesis: The University of Melbourne .
• Savage, G . C . (2013, forthcoming). Tailored equities in the education market: Flexible policies and practices . Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 34(2) . Steger, M . (2008) . The rise of the global imaginary: Political ideologies from the French Revolution to the global war on terror. Oxford: Oxford University Press .
• Symes, C . (1998) . Education for sale: A semiotic analysis of school prospectuses and other forms of educational marketing Australian Journal of Education, 42(2), 133-152 .
• Teese, R . (2000) . Academic success and social power: Examinations and inequality. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press
• Teese, R . , & Polesel, J . (2003) . Undemocratic schooling: Equity and quality in mass secondary education in Australia. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing Thomson, P. (1997) . Thoroughly modern management and a cruel accounting: The effects of public sector reform on public education . In A . Reid (Ed . ), Going public: Education policy and public education in Australia Canberra: Australian Curriculum Studies Association
• Tsolidis, G . (2006) . Youthful imagination: Schooling, subcultures and social justice. New York: Peter Lang .
• VEOHRC . (2008) . Rights of passage: The experiences of Australian-Sudanese young people. Melbourne: Victorian Equal Opportunity & Human Rights Commission .
• Vickers, M . (2005) . In the common good: The need for a new approach to funding Australia’s schools . Australian Journal of Education, 49(3), 264-278.[Crossref]
• Wilkins, A. (2012). School choice and the commodification of education: A visual approach to school brochures and websites Critical Social Policy, 32(1), 69-86 World Bank . 2007. What do we know about School-Based Management? Washington, DC: The World Bank.
• ---

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10159-012-0014-8