Andrew W Wilkins | Goldsmiths, University of London (original) (raw)

Books by Andrew W Wilkins

Policy Press, 2024

To cite: Wilkins, A., Courtney, S.J. & Piattoeva‬, N. 2024. Keywords in education policy resea... more To cite:

Wilkins, A., Courtney, S.J. & Piattoeva‬, N. 2024. Keywords in education policy research: A conceptual toolbox. Policy Press: Bristol

Available to buy in paperback: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/keywords-in-education-policy-research

Keywords in education policy research: A conceptual toolbox, is designed to be an essential handbook and guide for postgraduate students, early career and established researchers and university lecturers and tutors undertaking research or teaching in the field of global education policy research. This book is the first of its kind, namely an accessible, comprehensive resource that facilitates learning of and engagement with some of the most current and cited theories and methodologies shaping contemporary global education policy research. Designed as a pedagogical and navigational tool, the book is unique and indispensable in terms of the material it covers, functioning as a conceptual toolbox to assist:

i. complex learning and teaching
ii. wider reading and knowledge building
ii. critical scholarship and research
iii. interdisciplinary thinking and writing
iv. theory development and application

Bloomsbury, 2023

To cite: Wilkins, A. (ed.) 2022. Policy foundations in education. Bloomsbury: London Availa... more To cite:

Wilkins, A. (ed.) 2022. Policy foundations in education. Bloomsbury: London

Available to buy in paperback: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/policy-foundations-of-education-9781350171138/

This book presents a definitive introduction to key debates in contemporary education policy research and theory. It brings together leaders in the field of education policy research to provide rigorous commentary, evidence and analysis of some of the most pressing issues shaping education policy around the globe. The book is principally designed as a navigational and reference tool to make the field of contemporary education policy research and theory more accessible and exciting to a wider audience. The result is a book that provides the reader with a useful toolkit to engage and understand education policy and theory from a number of different vantage points and perspectives.

Bloomsbury, 2018

To cite: Wilkins, A. and Olmedo, A. (eds). 2018. Education governance and social theory: Interdis... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. and Olmedo, A. (eds). 2018. Education governance and social theory: Interdisciplinary approaches to research. Bloomsbury: London

Available to buy in paperback: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/education-governance-and-social-theory-9781350159723/

The study of 'education governance' is a significant area of research in the twenty-first century concerned with the changing organisation of education systems, relations and processes against the background of wider political and economic developments occurring nationally and globally. In Education Governance and Social Theory these important issues are critically examined through a range of innovative theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches to assist in guiding those interested in better understanding and engaging with education governance as an object of critical inquiry and a tool or method of research.

With contributions from an international line-up of academics, the book judiciously combines theory and methodologies with case study material taken from diverse geo-political settings to help frame and enrich our understanding of education governance. This is a theoretically and empirically rich resource for those who wish to research education governance and its multifarious operations, conditions and effects, but are not sure how to do so. It will therefore appeal to readers who have a strong interest in the practical application of social theory to making sense of the complex changes underway in education across the globe.

Routledge, 2016

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2016. Modernising school governance: Corporate planning and expert handling ... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2016. Modernising school governance: Corporate planning and expert handling in state education. Routledge: London and New York

Available to buy in paperback: https://www.routledge.com/Modernising-School-Governance-Corporate-planning-and-expert-handling-in/Wilkins/p/book/9781138787476

Awarded joint-second prize by the Society for Educational Studies (SES) for books published in 2016.

Modernising School Governance examines the impact of recent market-based reforms on the role of governors in the English state education system. A focus of the book concerns how government and non-government demands for ‘strong governance’ have been translated to mean improved performance management of senior school leaders and greater monitoring and disciplining of governors. This book addresses fundamental questions about the neoliberal logic underpinning these reforms and how governors are being trained and responsibilised in new ways to enhance the integrity of these developments.

Drawing on large-scale research conducted over three years, the book examines the impact of these reforms on the day to day practices of governors and the diminished role of democracy in these contexts. Wilkins also captures the economic and political rationalities shaping the conduct of governors at this time and traces these expressions to wider structural developments linked to depoliticisation, decentralisation and disintermediation.

This book addresses timely and original issues concerning the role of corporate planning and expert handling to state education at a time of increased school autonomy, shrinking local government support/oversight, and tight, centralised accountability. It will appeal to researchers and postgraduate students in disciplines of education, sociology, political science, public policy and management. It will also be of interest to researchers and policy makers from countries with similar or emerging quasi-market education systems.

Book Chapters by Andrew W Wilkins

Critical education policy and leadership studies: The intellectual contributions of Helen M. Gunter, 2023

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2023. Publics in education: Thinking with Gunter on plurality, democracy ... more To cite:

Wilkins, A. 2023. Publics in education: Thinking with Gunter on plurality, democracy and local reasoning. In T. Fitzgerald and S.J. Courtney (eds) Critical education policy and leadership studies: The intellectual contributions of Helen M. Gunter. Springer: Cham, Switzerland, pp. 113-127

In this chapter I reflect on the intellectual legacy of Helen M. Gunter, with a specific focus that recognises and celebrates the contribution of Helen M. Gunter to debates about publics and democracy in education. Here I engage with some of Helen M. Gunter’s major works on educational leadership, consultancy and governance, among other areas of research, to think about the significance of publics as a vantage point through which to represent and understand the changing structures and cultures of education. This includes drawing on a range of literatures to chart the messy terrain through which concepts of the public (and private) are struggled over and contested from the perspective of different epistemologies and analytical traditions. Through mapping the various points of contention and agreement shaping the relationship between these literatures, this chapter locates Helen M. Gunter’s intellectual work within a wider set of political and emancipatory traditions, principally those inspired by post-Marxism and poststructuralism and aimed at the development of human liberation through freedom from tyranny. This chapter acknowledges the significance of Helen M. Gunter to thinking about the possibilities of publics as historical, political and discursive resources for reimagining education for democracy and inclusion.

Researching Global Education Policy: Diverse Approaches to Policy Movement

To cite: Wilkins, A., Collet-Sabe, J., Esper, T., Gobby, B. & Grimaldi, E. 2022. Assembling Ne... more To cite:

Wilkins, A., Collet-Sabe, J., Esper, T., Gobby, B. & Grimaldi, E. 2022. Assembling New Public Management: Actors, networks and projects. In D. B. Edwards, A. Verger, K. Takayama & M. McKenzie (eds) Researching Global Education Policy: Diverse Approaches to Policy Movement.

In this chapter we adopt the analytic of ‘assemblage’ (Anderson & McFarlane 2011) to document how New Public Management (NPM) has been mobilised and recontextualised within different nation states over time through the unique combination of discrete and globally diffuse political movements and configurations. To make sense of these issues empirically, we trace multiple iterations of NPM within five countries: Argentina, Australia, England, Italy, and Spain. We focus our attention on the intermediating actors, networks and projects that have shaped different possibilities for NPM within these countries and reflect on their comparable yet uneven development as dynamic expressions for the emergence of unique assemblages of governance.

Policy foundations in education, 2022

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2023. Mapping the field: Education policy research and theory. In A. Wilkin... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2023. Mapping the field: Education policy research and theory. In A. Wilkins (ed.) Policy Foundations of Education. Bloomsbury: London, 9-32

Using the metaphor of field, this chapter brings together relevant literatures and debates from the Global North to the Global South to trace the intellectual history and contribution to education policy research from the 1970s to the present. To give some provisional structure to what is a messy and complicated narrative, this chapter locates education policy research within specific sets of historical relations, political changes and theoretical orientations.

Policy Foundations of Education, 2022

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2023. Introduction. In A. Wilkins (ed.) Policy Foundations of Education. Bl... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2023. Introduction. In A. Wilkins (ed.) Policy Foundations of Education. Bloomsbury: London, 1-8

Overview of the structure and focus of the book, Policy Foundations of Education (2022).

Inside the English Education Lab: Critical Ethnographic Perspectives on the Academies Experiment, 2022

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2022. Academisation and the law of ‘attraction’: An ethnographic study of r... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2022. Academisation and the law of ‘attraction’: An ethnographic study of relays, connective strategies and regulated participation. In C. Kulz, K. Morrin and R. McGinity (eds) Inside the English Education Lab: Critical Ethnographic Perspectives on the Academies Experiment. Manchester University Press: Manchester, pp. 35-59

England has long been a ‘laboratory’ for experimenting with structured incentives to compel, among other configurations, the organisation of schools as businesses. The focus of this chapter concerns a recent market-based experiment in education in England called the academies programme. The academies programme makes it possible for schools to operate outside their local education authorities (LEAs) as private enterprises or ‘state-funded independent schools’ with significant responsibility for management and accountability delegated to school leaders and governors. From this perspective, the academies programme is a continuation of the idea of ‘co-steering’ or ‘co-governance’ inasmuch as academy status removes the requirement for the administration of ‘needs’ through the bureaucratic centralism of LEAs and instead empowers schools to consensually work with stakeholders to produce flexible, responsive models of service delivery. Yet, as this chapter shows, school autonomy among academies is conditional on the attraction of suitably skilled school leaders and governors who can effectively deploy prescriptions and solutions for ‘effective governance’, which includes conditioning certain people to stay out of governance. In some cases, academy structures resemble the same techno-bureaucratic settlements they were meant to replace and improve, namely LEAs, albeit lacking the mandate or incentives to provide strong democratic accountability based on principles of citizen participation and community voice (Wilkins 2016, 2019a). The suggestion here is that the academies programme has become a target of political control from the centre and business saturation despite claims that academy status works to depoliticise and deregulate schools.

Encyclopaedia of Educational Innovation, 2021

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2021. Deconstructing governance: Perspectives in post-positivist thinking. I... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2021. Deconstructing governance: Perspectives in post-positivist thinking. In M.A. Peters and R. Heraud (eds) Encyclopedia of Educational Innovation. Springer: Singapore

In this chapter I demonstrate the application of using different theoretical approaches to frame meanings and practices of governance. While there are clear overlaps and synergies in the development of these approaches given their shared post-positivist orientations, they are nonetheless distinctive through making possible different kinds of analytical and political work. Therefore, each theoretical position is discussed separately in order to make explicit their epistemological and normative commitments. These approaches are discussed in turn and include:

i. A Gramscian approach to governance (Davies 2012);
ii. A state-centric approach to governance (Pierre and Guy Peters 2005);
iii. A deliberative-interactive approach to governance (Kooiman 2003).
iv. A interpretivist-constructivist approach to governance (Bevir and Rhodes 2006); and
v. A governmentality approach to governance (Millar and Rose 2008).

In what follows I discuss the role of governance as a meta-narrative in education research. Following this I describe the historical context for the emergence of the concept of governance and its relationship to globalisation. In the final section I use applied theory to show how governance can be conceptualised from the position of different analytical orientations and normative commitments. I conclude by outlining the aims and benefits of deconstructing governance from the perspective of different theoretical positions.

Understanding educational leadership: Critical perspectives and approaches, 2020

To cite: Wilkins, A. and Gobby, B. 2020. Governance and educational leadership. In S. Courtney, H... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. and Gobby, B. 2020. Governance and educational leadership. In S. Courtney, H. Gunter, R. Niesche And T. Trujillo (eds) Understanding educational leadership: Critical perspectives and approaches. Bloomsbury: London, pp. 309-322

This chapter critically analyses the relationship between educational leadership and governance through an examination of key trends in global education reform. Through adopting two perspectives of governance as ‘instrumental-rational’ and ‘agonistic-political’, we demonstrate how governance can be used to enrich studies of educational leadership, where leadership is understood as ‘governance in practice’. To evidence the application and value of governance to studies of educational leadership, the chapter draws on case study material from England and Australia. Finally, the chapter uses this material to consider some of the implications of studying educational leadership through the lens of governance.

World Yearbook of Education 2020: Schooling Governance, 2019

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2019. Technologies in rational self-management: Interventions in the ‘respon... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2019. Technologies in rational self-management: Interventions in the ‘responsibilisation’ of school governors. In J. Allan, V. Harwood and C.R. Jørgensen (eds) World Yearbook of Education 2020: Schooling, Governance and Inequalities. Routledge: London and New York, pp. 99-112

A key driver of market education experimentation in England since the 1980s has been a focus on improved conditions for school autonomy and devolved management through greater privatisation management of education services and public-private partnerships, reduced local government bureaucracy and oversight, and maximum delegation of financial and managerial responsibilities to school leaders and governors. In 2010 the scope and scale of these reforms were enlarged significantly through the expansion of the academies programme which led to large numbers of schools operating outside local government jurisdiction. The roll back of local government made possible and encouraged by these reforms has not only given rise to concerns over a regulation gap but intensified scrutiny of the role of school governors. Worried that some school governors are ineffective at holding school leaders to account for the educational and financial performance of schools, government and non-government actors and organisations have intervened in various ways to promote new forms of institutional reflexivity and professionalisation designed to embed self-governance and mitigate ‘governance failure’. In this chapter I examine how school governors are called upon to take responsibility for various strategic-management priorities against the background of receding government control, while at the same time appear to be implicated in various technologies of rational self-management that strengthen the continuation and exercise of government control. An additional, related focus of the chapter therefore concerns the contradictions and vagaries of these reforms, namely the contraction and expansion of state power or what is described as ‘decentralised centralism’.

Re-imagining Education for Democracy, 2019

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2019. Wither democracy? The rise of epistocracy and monopoly in school gover... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2019. Wither democracy? The rise of epistocracy and monopoly in school governance. In S. Riddle and M. Apple (eds) Re-imagining Education for Democracy. Routledge: London and New York, pp. 142-155

In this chapter I draw on Foucault’s genealogical method to examine the professional turn in school governance through a study of recent and profound changes affecting the development of education policy in England since the introduction of the Academies Act 2010. The Academies Act 2010 was a watershed moment in education reform that facilitated widespread privatisation, depoliticisation and devolved management of the school system. The consequences of these reforms have produced mixed results and gains for different stakeholders and interest groups. Among the main beneficiaries are businesses set up as private limited companies who occupy the role of management groups and support services to an increasingly dense, specialised and juridified system of governance. Local communities and ordinary citizens, on the other hand, find themselves marginalised from the business of governance and its expert administration. No longer strictly participatory in design or practice, the role of school governance has shifted dramatically towards a rigid focus on ‘risk-based regulation’ to enhance upward accountability to the funders and regulators of education. This chapter examines two key features of these reforms, namely epistocracy and monopoly, and considers the challenges they pose to participatory democracy in schools.

Education Governance and Social Theory: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Research, 2018

To cite: Wilkins, A. and Olmedo, A. 2018. Conceptualising education governance: Framings, perspec... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. and Olmedo, A. 2018. Conceptualising education governance: Framings, perspectives and theories. In A. Wilkins and A. Olmedo (eds) Education governance and social theory: Interdisciplinary approaches to research. Bloomsbury: London, pp. 1-20

The ‘governance turn’ in education research has attracted significant attention from those interested in the role and interaction of hierarchies, markets and networks as overlapping, interdependent systems shaping the formation of education structures and discourses both nationally and globally. The governance turn denotes the movement toward decentralised, depoliticised education planning and the expansion of market prerogatives, data logics and endogenous privatisation as drivers of education reform. In this introduction we adopt multiple framings, perspectives and theories to examine the various ways education governance is co-opted and translated to make sense of these trends and tendencies in the formation of education systems. Specifically, we detail its polyvalence as a policy strategy, political-economic project, mode of intervention, problematising activity, vehicle of empowerment, scaling technique, and discourse or normative description. Through situating education governance within an interdisciplinary field of critical inquiry and scholarship, we point to the plurality of theoretical perspectives, analytical strategies and research paradigms engendered through education governance studies and underline its significance as a politically-engaged, policy-relevant subdiscipline of education in the twenty-first century.

The Palgrave Handbook of Citizenship and Education, 2018

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2018. Neoliberalism, citizenship and education: A policy discourse analysis.... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2018. Neoliberalism, citizenship and education: A policy discourse analysis. In A. Peterson, G. Stahl and H. Soong (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Citizenship and Education. Palgrave: Basingstoke

In this chapter I draw on various literatures and theories spanning different academic disciplines to explore some of the connections between neoliberalism, citizenship and education. Not to be confused with studies of citizenship education, this chapter documents how users of education services, specifically parents, are invited, even compelled, to perform certain responsibilities and obligations as bearers of consumer rights and champions of their own self-interest. Building on literature which likens citizenship to a ‘governmentality’ (Hindess 2002; Ong 2006), this chapter examines the ways in which parents are invited to manage themselves responsibly and rationally through the proliferation of ever-greater forms of choice making and calculated risk in their navigation of and access to education provision. To evidence the range and reach of these interventions, this chapter adopts elements of Foucauldian discourse analysis (Sharp and Richardson 2001) through a study of key education policy texts to show how parents are imagined and activated as consumers (or ‘citizen-consumers’) in the field of education.

SAGE International Handbook on School Organization (Chapter 32), 2019

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2018. Assembling schools as organisations: On the limits and contradictions ... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2018. Assembling schools as organisations: On the limits and contradictions of neoliberalism. In M. Connolly, C. James, S. Kruse, and D.E. Spicer (eds) SAGE International Handbook on School Organization. Sage: London, pp. 509-523

In this chapter I draw on diverse literature to explore the various ways education researchers employ the term neoliberalism to situate and enrich their analyses of schools as organisations. The focus here concerns not only the breadth and depth of these analyses and what they tell us about the interrelationships between school organisation, statecraft (or state transformation) and the wider economy. It also examines the limits of neoliberalism as a normative description to capturing the complex terrain on which school organisation is overlaid and aligned with local projects and politics. Understood as a first approximation, neoliberalism is significant as a provisional starting point to making sense of the discourses, technologies and logics of domination/empowerment shaping the internal operation of schools. Corporate logic and the enterprise form are dominant framings compelling the development of schools as ‘high-reliability’ organisations or businesses, for example. But more patient critical-theoretical work is needed to move beyond a view of school organisation as tidy expressions of routines of neoliberalism. In this chapter I draw on elements of ‘assemblage thinking’ to conceptualise schools as fields of contestation where different interests and motives conflict, collide and sometimes converge to produce locally adapted translations and refusals of neoliberalism. Rather than assume that school organisation flows uniformly from the singular project of neoliberalism, here it is conceptualised as something that is mediated and struggled over in the context of locally situated dilemmas, obligations, normative commitments, and dispositives.

Educational Leadership: Professional Practice in Neoliberal Times, 2017

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2017. Creating expert publics: A governmentality approach to school governan... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2017. Creating expert publics: A governmentality approach to school governance under neo-liberalism. In S. Courtney, R. McGinity and H. Gunter (eds) Educational leadership: professional practice in neoliberal times. Routledge: London and New York, pp. 97-110

In this chapter I demonstrate the analytical power of a ‘governmentality’ approach (Burchell, Gordon and Miller 1991; Barry, Osborne and Rose 1996; Dean 1999) as an appropriate theoretical strategy for explaining some of the conditions and effects of recent education reforms in England, specifically reforms intended to transform the culture and organisation of ‘school governance’ through techniques of professionalisation and an appeal to neutral expert administration. This includes a focus on the different tactics and calculations employed by governments to rescale the local and bring the gaze of government to bear more closely upon the work of governors and those they are expected to watch over, namely senior school leaders. The application and utility of a governmentality approach is evidenced using data collected through a recently completed three-year research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (Grant Ref. ES/K001299/1, 2012-2015). Data is taken from this project to detail the everyday work of governors and ‘the new technical professionalism’ (Ball, Maguire and Braun 2012: 523) encasing such work and its relationship to more encompassing forms of state power or statecraft.

Corporate Elites and the Reform of Education, 2017

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2017. The business of governorship: Corporate elitism in public education. I... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2017. The business of governorship: Corporate elitism in public education. In H.M. Gunter, D. Hall and M.W. Apple (eds) Corporate Elites and the Reform of Education. Policy Press: Bristol, pp. 161-176

In this chapter I examine the role and ideology of corporatisation and the image of the corporation as a dominant policy technology guiding different aspects of school governance in England. Corporatisation can be defined as the regulation of public organisations and utilities by specific interests, laws and rules intended to subsume the ‘public’ within the logic of the ‘private’. This does not necessarily mean that public organisations are fully privatised since they remain publicly-owned and intensively regulated by their owners, the state. Instead, it points to the transformation of public entities as business-like organisations governed by managerialist practices of securing productivity, efficiency and value for money through internal audit, performance evaluation and enterprise activities. That is to say, corporatisation is not privatisation but refers to the performance and regulation of public organisations as if they were for-profit businesses. Corporatisation also requires certain techniques, shared values, social relations and practices to predominate over others in order for the above conditions to be made legitimate and desirable. This is because, under corporate ideology, means can always been justified where they are commensurate with the fulfilment of certain ends. Therefore, value differences or value divergences tend to be regarded as risky business. In this chapter, I consider the extent to which corporate strategies are evident in the kinds of everyday work engaged with and produced by agents of school governance, namely school governors. Moreover, I consider whether ‘corporate elitism’, rather than corporate elites per se, is implicit to decisions concerning who and why certain people get to enter governance roles.

La Gobernanza Escolar Democratica, 2015

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2016. Gobernanza escolar y la lógica de la política neoliberal. ¿Qué puede h... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2016. Gobernanza escolar y la lógica de la política neoliberal. ¿Qué puede hacer la democracia? In J. Collet-Sabé and A. Tort (eds.) La governanza escolar democrática: Más allá de los modelos neoliberal y neoconservador. Morata: Madrid, pp. 84-100

In this paper I discuss the role of school governance in England with a particular focus on the changing responsibilities of school governors in relation to recent education policy. These issues are located through a broader discussion of ‘neoliberalization’ and the incursion of market forces on public sector organisation. Here neoliberalization is defined as the double movement by which public services and servants are removed from direct government control and bureaucracy, and at the same time enfolded through new relations and practices of steering and facilitation involving the dispersal and intensification of arms-length regulatory instruments (inspection, surveillance, professionalisation and accountability, to name a few). This is what Kikert (1991) calls ‘steering-at-a-distance’ and Du Gay (1996) describes as ‘controlled de-control’.

Mothering in the Age of Neoliberalism, 2014

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2014. Affective labour and neoliberal fantasies: The gendered and moral econ... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2014. Affective labour and neoliberal fantasies: The gendered and moral economy of school choice in England. In M. Vandenbeld Giles (ed.) Mothering in the Age of Neoliberalism. Demeter Press: Bradford, Ontario, pp. 265-282

Since the late 1970s/early 80s political and public policy opinion in England has been saturated with claims to the waste and inefficiency generated through government intervention over the control and delivery of public services. As a corrective to such top-down bureaucracy, neoliberal ideologues insist that citizens should be ‘empowered’ to pursue their own self-interest as a condition of their rights (and obligations) as consumers of public resources. The expectation here is that market-driven reform will produce direct incentives for welfare providers to improve their services through appealing to welfare users as rational economic actors: calculating and discriminating. School choice for example represents the translation of these ideas in the realm of education policy making with parents summoned in the role of active and engaged consumers. A duty and condition of this role is that parents know the ‘right’ school for their child and link up their child’s needs with suitable forms of education provision. This necessitates the performance of ‘affective labour’, including the utility of emotion and feeling for the purpose of maximizing familial advantage. In this discussion I highlight how some mothers articulate emotive discourse as a framing for their choice and in doing so seek to go against the economical grain of maximization through calculation. To conceptualise emotive discourse as a form of resistance that exceeds the calculus of the market is problematic, however. It can also be viewed as productive of neoliberal gains in terms of generating self-governing subjects, for example. To outline these issues I demonstrate how emotion and feeling operate as discursive resources which feed into, and which are products of, neoliberal governance.

Policy Press, 2024

To cite: Wilkins, A., Courtney, S.J. & Piattoeva‬, N. 2024. Keywords in education policy resea... more To cite:

Wilkins, A., Courtney, S.J. & Piattoeva‬, N. 2024. Keywords in education policy research: A conceptual toolbox. Policy Press: Bristol

Available to buy in paperback: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/keywords-in-education-policy-research

i. complex learning and teaching
ii. wider reading and knowledge building
ii. critical scholarship and research
iii. interdisciplinary thinking and writing
iv. theory development and application

Bloomsbury, 2023

To cite: Wilkins, A. (ed.) 2022. Policy foundations in education. Bloomsbury: London Availa... more To cite:

Wilkins, A. (ed.) 2022. Policy foundations in education. Bloomsbury: London

Available to buy in paperback: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/policy-foundations-of-education-9781350171138/

Bloomsbury, 2018

Available to buy in paperback: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/education-governance-and-social-theory-9781350159723/

Routledge, 2016

Available to buy in paperback: https://www.routledge.com/Modernising-School-Governance-Corporate-planning-and-expert-handling-in/Wilkins/p/book/9781138787476

Awarded joint-second prize by the Society for Educational Studies (SES) for books published in 2016.

Critical education policy and leadership studies: The intellectual contributions of Helen M. Gunter, 2023

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2023. Publics in education: Thinking with Gunter on plurality, democracy ... more To cite:

Researching Global Education Policy: Diverse Approaches to Policy Movement

To cite: Wilkins, A., Collet-Sabe, J., Esper, T., Gobby, B. & Grimaldi, E. 2022. Assembling Ne... more To cite:

Policy foundations in education, 2022

Policy Foundations of Education, 2022

Overview of the structure and focus of the book, Policy Foundations of Education (2022).

Inside the English Education Lab: Critical Ethnographic Perspectives on the Academies Experiment, 2022

Encyclopaedia of Educational Innovation, 2021

Understanding educational leadership: Critical perspectives and approaches, 2020

World Yearbook of Education 2020: Schooling Governance, 2019

Re-imagining Education for Democracy, 2019

Education Governance and Social Theory: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Research, 2018

The Palgrave Handbook of Citizenship and Education, 2018

SAGE International Handbook on School Organization (Chapter 32), 2019

Educational Leadership: Professional Practice in Neoliberal Times, 2017

Corporate Elites and the Reform of Education, 2017

La Gobernanza Escolar Democratica, 2015

Mothering in the Age of Neoliberalism, 2014

Journal of Education Policy, 2024

Despite the expansion of New Public Management reforms across the globe and complimentary trends ... more Despite the expansion of New Public Management reforms across the globe and complimentary trends of disintermediation, performance and privatisation, local government authorities in England continue to shape local schooling landscapes. In this paper, we document the role of a local government authority in England in an initiative called ‘Building On’, directed at supporting teachers in the first year of compulsory school to develop and transform their pedagogical practices in response to and following the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on evidence generated from interviews, observations and documentary analysis, we demonstrate that local government personnel performed two important and potentially decisive roles within this initiative: first, as interpreters and translators of policy; and second, as brokers of partnerships and collaborative exchanges. We then illustrate, using the analytic of policy enactment, the contextual dimensions underpinning the role performed by local government personnel within the initiative.

Journal of Education Policy, 2024

The term ‘governance’ is one of the most widely applied concepts in education policy and research... more The term ‘governance’ is one of the most widely applied concepts in education policy and research. Yet its meaning has changed over space and time both analytically and normatively. This history is a complicated one marked by both shifts and continuations in the politics of language and the development of unique intellectual histories and conceptual and empirical turns in the field of education. In this paper we systematically delineate the different meanings ascribed to governance within education with a focus on its polyvalence as a political project, empirical object and research analytic. Specifically, we highlight the various complementarities and tensions flowing from this rich and evolving language. We conclude by calling for more education researchers to reflect on this complicated history and attendant language as part of their framings and interpretations of governance.

Australian Educational Researcher , 2022

To cite: Keddie, A., MacDonald, K., Blackmore, J., Boyask, R., Fitzgerald, S., Gavin, M., Heff... more To cite:

Keddie, A., MacDonald, K., Blackmore, J., Boyask, R., Fitzgerald, S., Gavin, M., Heffernan, A., Hursh, D., McGrath-Champ, S., Møller, J., O’Neill, J., Parding, K., Salokangas, M., Skerritt, C., Stacey, M., Thomson, P., Wilkins, A., Wilson, R., Wylie, C., & Yoon, E-S. 2022. What needs to happen for school autonomy to be mobilised to create more equitable public schools and systems of education. Australian Education Researcher. iFirst

The series of responses in this article were gathered as part of an online mini conference held in September 2021 that sought to explore different ideas and articulations of school autonomy reform across the world (Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, the USA, Norway, Sweden and New Zealand). It centred upon an important question: what needs to happen for school autonomy to be mobilised to create more equitable public schools and systems of education? There was consensus across the group that school autonomy reform creates further inequities at school and system levels when driven by the logics of marketisation, competition, economic efficiency and public accountability. Against the backdrop of these themes, the conference generated discussion and debate where provocations and points of agreement and disagreement about issues of social justice and the mobilisation of school autonomy reform were raised. As an important output of this discussion, we asked participants to write a short response to the guiding conference question. The following are these responses which range from philosophical considerations, systems and governance perspectives, national particularities and teacher and principal perspectives.

Globalisation, Societies and Education, 2022

To cite: Wilkins, A. & Gobby, B. 2022. Objects and subjects of risk: A governmentality approac... more To cite:

Wilkins, A. & Gobby, B. 2022. Objects and subjects of risk: A governmentality approach to education governance. Globalisation, Societies and Education.

Across the globe school autonomy reforms have been criticised for opening up public assets to various dangers or risks, from misappropriation of public monies by private sponsors to secretive governance structures maintained by homophilic groups. While these risks are not the exclusive product of school autonomy reforms, they are an endemic feature of the conditions made possible by these reforms, namely ‘depoliticisation’, ‘corporatisation’, ‘endogenous privatisation’, and ‘disintermediation’. In response international organisations and national governments have called for improved accountability amid fears of corruption and governance failure. In this paper we take a fresh look at the existing literature on school autonomy through a unique focus on risk as a rationality of government. Specifically, we adopt a governmentality perspective of school autonomy reforms in England and Australia to capture the significance of risk to recalibrations of education governance.

Globalisation, Societies and Education, 2019

To cite: Wilkins, A., Collet-Sabé, J., Gobby, B. & Hangartner, J. 2019. Translations of New Publi... more To cite:
Wilkins, A., Collet-Sabé, J., Gobby, B. & Hangartner, J. 2019. Translations of New Public Management: A decentred approach to school governance in four OECD countries. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 17 (1), 147-160

The influence of New Public Management (NPM) on public sector organisation is nowhere more evident or pervasive than in the field of school governance where political actors, school leaders and governors are called upon to make the internal operation of the school more transparent and accountable to others through the explicitness of performance indicators and output measurements. Yet despite the prevalence of corporate and performative models of school governance within and across different education systems, there are various cases of uneven, hybrid expressions of NPM that reveal the contingency of global patterns of rule in the context of changing political-administrative structures. Adopting a ‘decentred approach’ to governance (Bevir 2010), this paper compares the development of NPM in four OECD countries: Australia, England, Spain, and Switzerland. A focus of the paper is how certain policy instruments are created and sustained within highly differentiated geo-political settings and through different multi-scalar actors and authorities yet modified to reflect established traditions and practices. The result is a nuanced account of the complex terrain on which NPM is grafted onto and translated to reflect inherited institutional landscapes and political settlements and dilemmas.

International Journal of Inclusive Education, 2019

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2019. The processual life of neoliberalisation: Permutations of value system... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2019. The processual life of neoliberalisation: Permutations of value systems and normative commitments in a co-operative trust setting. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 23 (11), 1180-1195

Since 2010 the government in England has committed to accelerating the expansion of academies (‘state-funded independent schools’) through displacing the role of local government as principal manager and overseer of schools. In response increasing numbers of schools are embracing the co-operative trust model to improve economies of scale, facilitate stakeholding and community resilience, and fend off the monopolising tendencies of some large multi-academy trusts seeking wholesale takeover of certain underperforming schools. Yet there are concerns that co-operative schools do not represent a radical departure from routines of neoliberalism – defined by managerial deference, technocratic efficiency, upward accountability, and performativity – despite clear signs that co-operative schools promote themselves as jointly-owned, democratically-controlled enterprises. In this paper I adopt a ‘processual view of neoliberalisation’ (Peck and Tickell 2002) to complicate the idea that co-operative schools can be judged in binary terms of ‘either/or’ – neoliberal or democratic, exclusionary or participatory – and instead point to the variegated organisational life of co-operative schools and their messy actualities as they straddle competing and sometimes conflicting sets of interests, motives and demands in their practice of school governance.

Journal of Educational Administration and History, 2017

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2017. Rescaling the local: Multi-academy trusts, private monopoly and statec... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2017. Rescaling the local: Multi-academy trusts, private monopoly and statecraft in England. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 49 (2), 171-185

For the past six years successive UK governments in England have introduced reforms intended to usher in less aggregated, top-down, bureaucratically overloaded models of service delivery as well as secure conditions for greater school autonomy. Yet the ‘hollowing out’ of local government has not resulted in less bureaucracy on the ground or less regulation from above, nor has it diminished hierarchy as an organising principle of education governance. In some cases, monopolies and monopolistic practices dominated by powerful bureaucracies and professional groups persist, albeit realised through the involvement of new actors and organisations from business and philanthropy. In this paper I adopt a governmentality perspective to explore the political significance of large multi-academy trusts (MATs) – private sponsors contracted by central government to run publicly funded schools – to the generation of new scalar hierarchies and accountability infrastructures that assist in bringing the gaze of government to bear upon the actions of schools that are otherwise less visible under local government management. On this account, it is argued, MATs are integral to statecraft and the invention and assemblage of particular apparatuses for intervening upon specific organisations, spaces and peoples.

Discourse: Studies in Cultural Politics of Education, 2017

To cite: Olmedo, A. & Wilkins, A. 2017. Governing through parents: a genealogical enquiry of educ... more To cite:
Olmedo, A. & Wilkins, A. 2017. Governing through parents: a genealogical enquiry of education policy and the construction of neoliberal subjectivities in England. Discourse: Studies in Cultural Politics of Education, 38 (4), 573-589

In this paper we explore the various spaces and sites through which the figure of the parent is summoned and activated to inhabit and perform market norms and practices in the field of education in England. Since the late 1970s successive governments have called on parents to enact certain duties and obligations in relation to the state. These duties include adopting and internalizing responsibility for all kinds of risks, liabilities and inequities formerly managed by the Keynesian welfare state. Rather than characterize this situation in terms of the ‘hollowing of the state’, we argue that the role of the state includes enabling the functioning of the parent as a neoliberal subject so that they may successfully harness the power of the market to their own advantage and (hopefully) minimize the kinds of risk and inequity generated through a market-based, deregulated education system. In this paper we examine how parents in England are differently, yet similarly, compelled to embody certain market norms and practices as they navigate the field of education. Adopting genealogical enquiry and policy discourse analysis as our methodology, we explore how parents across three policy sites or spaces are constructed as objects and purveyors of utility and ancillaries to marketisation. This includes a focus on how parents are summoned as 1) consumers or choosers of education services; 2) governors and overseers of schools; and 3) producers and founders of schools.

Revista Profesorado, Oct 2014

To cite: Olmedo, A. & Wilkins, A. 2014. Gobernar la educación a través de los padres: política ed... more To cite:
Olmedo, A. & Wilkins, A. 2014. Gobernar la educación a través de los padres: política educativa y construcción de subjetividades neoliberales en Inglaterra. Revista Profesorado, 18 (2), 99-116

Este art ículo se cent ra en la relación ent re las normas y práct icas de mercado y la const rucción de la figura del “padre/madre” en la polít ica educat iva británica. Desde la década de los setenta, las familias han sido llamadas a desempeñar ciertos deberes y obligaciones en relación con el estado. Éstos incluyen internalizar responsabilidades frente a los riesgos, asumir obligaciones, desigualdades y un espect ro de crisis de las que anteriormente se encargaba el estado. En lugar de categorizar esta situación como "vaciamiento del estado", sostenemos que el rol del estado se ha modificado para permit ir que los padres y madres asuman un nuevo papel como sujetos neoliberal, mediante el cual se espera que aprovechen el potencial del mercado en su propio beneficio de forma sat isfactoria y (con la esperanza de) llegar a minimizar los t ipos de riesgo que se generan en un sistema educat ivo no regulado. En este texto analizamos algunos aspectos de este proceso de metamorfosis mediante el que se obliga a los padres a asumir algunas normas y práct icas del mercado en el ámbito de la educación. En concreto, nos centramos en como a los padres se les insta a ser 1) consumidores o selectores de servicios educat ivos, con lo que se les anima a asumir un comportamiento compet it ivo; 2) gobernantes y guardianes de las escuelas, cent rados en evaluar el rendimiento económico y educat ivo de las mismas; y, finamente, 3) productores y fundadores de escuelas, con un énfasis en act ividades empresariales y emprendedoras.

Journal of Education Policy, 2015

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2015. Professionalising school governance: The disciplinary effects of schoo... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2015. Professionalising school governance: The disciplinary effects of school autonomy and inspection on the changing role of school governors. Journal of Education Policy, 30 (2), 182-200

Since the 1980s state schools in England have been required to ensure transparency and accountability through the use of indicators and templates derived from the private sector and, more recently, globally circulating discourses of 'good governance’ (an appeal to professional standards, technical expertise and performance evaluation as mechanisms for improving public service delivery). The rise of academies and free schools ('state-funded independent schools’) has increased demand for good governance, notably as a means by which to discipline schools, in particular school governors – those tasked with the legal responsibility of holding senior leadership to account for the financial and educational performance of schools. A condition and effect of school autonomy therefore is increased monitoring and surveillance of all school governing bodies. In this paper I demonstrate how these twin processes combine to produce a new modality of state power and intervention; a dominant or organizing principle by which government steer the performance of governors through disciplinary tools of professionalization and inspection, with the aim of achieving the 'control of control’ (Power 1994). To explain these trends I explore how various established and emerging school governing bodies are (re)constituting themselves to meet demands for good governance.

Critical Policy Studies, Jun 2013

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2013. Libertarian paternalism: Policy and everyday translations of the ratio... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2013. Libertarian paternalism: Policy and everyday translations of the rational and the affective. Critical Policy Studies, 7 (4), 395-406

Following the financial collapse in 2008-09 many commentators went onto pronounce the end of neoliberalism as a credible system for managing welfare state capitalism. The narrow economic belief in individuals as rational utility maximizers (the linchpin of neoliberal governance) was proved to be uncomfortably inaccurate. Instead human behaviour needs to be properly understood as ‘predictably irrational’, according to behavioural psychologists. In light of these claims, British governments and think tanks have published various research and policy documents promoting the dispersal of soft forms of state power to ‘nudge’ citizens into behaving responsibly and rationally. Through an analysis of key policy documents and academic texts, I examine the repertoires and formulations informing this emerging governmental rationality (‘libertarian paternalism’) and draw together these perspectives to explore their effects in terms of framing policy understandings of the rational and the affective. I conclude the paper by utilizing a discursive psychology approach in the context of a discussion of school choice as a vantage point through which to problematize conventional policy translations of emotion. Against the now popular view of emotion as something automated and unreflexive, I demonstrate instead that emotion can be conceptualised as a form of rhetoric used in the practice of affirming or validating particular constructions of reality, thereby highlighting the kind of indexical work emotive discourse aims to achieve.

Gender and Education, 2012

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2012. Push and pull in the classroom: Gender, competition and the neoliberal... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2012. Push and pull in the classroom: Gender, competition and the neoliberal subject. Gender and Education, 24 (7), 765-768

In this paper I explore how learning strategies based on competition and zero-sum thinking are inscribed into the dynamics of classroom interaction shaping relations between high-achieving pupils, and link elements of these practices to market trends in British education policy discourse. A detour through the politico-historical negotiations shaping relations between neo-liberal governance and education is initially sketched out, bringing into focus how the proliferation of policy discourses of consumerism and marketization aim to facilitate and shape the conduct of persons in classroom settings. Drawing on ethnographic observation data taken from a study of two London comprehensive secondary schools, I then outline how pupils are incited to behave as competitive strategists in the classroom and reflect on the gender constructions underpinning these performances and their slippery dynamics.

Critical Social Policy, 2012

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2012. School choice and the commodification of education: A visual approach ... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2012. School choice and the commodification of education: A visual approach to school brochures and websites. Critical Social Policy, 32 (1), 70-87

As subjects of the parental right to choose (DES, 1988), parents are called upon to fulfill certain duties and responsibilities when choosing a secondary school for their child, with the expectation that they might navigate the school system ‘successfully’ and become ‘better informed consumers’ (DCSF, 2008). To comply with these rules of citizenship parents are encouraged to make use of a variety of information on schools as part of a realistic and informed choice, one that is consummate with their role as consumer-spectator. Such ‘cognitive mapping’ is evident in school brochures and websites where choice is assembled on the basis of visual iconography and narrative terrains. This leads to a consideration of how choice is visually mediated and communicated through the circulation of symbols and the structure of narratives. To explain these phenomena, I analyze and compare the ways in which two all-girls faith secondary schools attempt to (further) define themselves, culturally, historically and pedagogically, in a crowded field of choice. I conclude the paper with a discussion of the benefits and insights generated through a visually orientated approach to the study of school choice.

Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2011

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2011. School choice, consumerism and the ethical strand in talk. Discourse: ... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2011. School choice, consumerism and the ethical strand in talk. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 32 (3), 357-370

Research on school choice highlights the extent to which a communitarian impulse informs the way some parents engage with their role as chooser. This suggests that the responsibilities of parents as consumers are often negotiated in collective as well as individualising terms. Drawing on data from a group of mothers of diverse social class and racial backgrounds, this paper builds on some of these perspectives through deploying elements of a critical discursive analytic approach. Its aim is to explore how some mothers engage with the meaning and practice of school choice. Focusing on the emotional labouring that often underpins mothers’ rationalisations of choice, this paper examines the discursive role of emotion in these contexts as a form of social action geared towards achieving certain ends. In turn I discuss the implications of this for thinking through choice as a framing, function and discourse inhabited and performed by mothers.

British Journal of Sociology of Education, 2015

To cite: Wilkins, A. & Burke, PJ. 2015. Widening participation in higher education: The role of p... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. & Burke, PJ. 2015. Widening participation in higher education: The role of professional and social class identities and commitments. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 36 (3), 434-452

Since the neoliberal reforms to British education in the 1980s, education debates have been saturated with claims to the efficacy of the market as a mechanism for improving the content and delivery of state education. In recent decades with the expansion and ‘massification’ of higher education, widening participation (WP) has acquired an increasingly important role in redressing the under-representation of certain social groups in universities. Taken together, these trends neatly capture the twin goals of New Labour’s programme for education reform: economic competitiveness and social justice. But how do WP professionals negotiate competing demands of social equity and economic incentive? In this paper we explore how the hegemony of neoliberal discourse – of which the student as consumer is possibly the most pervasive – can be usefully disentangled from socially progressive, professional discourses exemplified through the speech and actions of WP practitioners and managers working in higher education institutions.

Journal of Education Policy, 2010

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2010. Citizens and/or consumers: Mutations in the construction of meanings a... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2010. Citizens and/or consumers: Mutations in the construction of meanings and practices of school choice. Journal of Education Policy, 25 (2), 171-189

Recent research on school choice highlights the tendency among some White, middle-class parents to engage with discourses of community responsibility and ethnic diversity as part of their responsibility and duty as choosers and who therefore exercise choice in ways that undercut the individualistic and self-interested character framing governmental discourses and rationalities around choice. This paper contributes to these debates through making visible the ways in which some mothers articulate and combine meanings and practices of choice that register contrasting and sometimes contradictory notions of active and responsible parenting. Drawing on data from a group of mothers of diverse social class and racial backgrounds, I explore how some mothers negotiate their school choice around a number of intersecting positions and relations that work across, as well as within, formulations of public-private, collective-individual, citizen-consumer, political-commercial. Through a consideration of the relationships in practice between these diverse elements, this paper questions the analytic value of distinctions between citizen and consumer, community and individual as framings for understanding the motivations and aspirations shaping some mothers’ school choices.

Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 2011

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2011. Community and school choice: Geographies of care and responsibility. J... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2011. Community and school choice: Geographies of care and responsibility. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 21 (1), 1-13

This paper draws on elements of critical discursive psychology in order to explore some of the issues and concerns raised by parents’ responses to the policy and practice of school choice. Drawing on data from a group of mothers of diverse social class and racial backgrounds, this paper examines the dilemmas some mothers engage with in their role as chooser – reconciling competing rationalities for choosing or trying to manage contradictions. A central argument of this paper is that the policy and political context shaping the emergence of school choice in Britain has provisionally secured the development of certain trends in education – consumerism, individualism and competition. Alongside and coupled with this has been the veneration of a narrow utilitarian conception of parents as consumers of education services, defined as people who share the capacity and willingness to maximise the utility of their decisions in a rationally self-interested way. This paper questions the value of this approach as a framing for understanding the aspirations, motivations and fantasies informing parents’ school choice and highlights instead the ways in which some mothers articulate the imaginary of community in their decision-making practices.

Critical Studies in Education, 2012

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2012. The spectre of neoliberalism: Pedagogy, gender and the construction of... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2012. The spectre of neoliberalism: Pedagogy, gender and the construction of learner identities. Critical Studies in Education, 53 (2), 197-210

In this paper I draw on ethnographic observation data taken from a school-based study of two groups of 12-13 year old pupils identified as high achieving and popular to explore how relations between teachers and pupils are mediated and constituted through the spectre of neoliberal values and sensibilities – zero-sum thinking, individualism and competition. Specifically, I demonstrate how certain high-achieving male and female pupils respond to and negotiate competing challenges summoned through the classroom – pushes to be competitive, autonomous and achieve academically, and pulls to court the acceptance of others and become or remain popular. This highlights the deep interconnections between neoliberalism and pedagogy and school-based orientations to learning. At the same time, it draws attention to resistance and the efficacy of the interpellating demands of neoliberal discourses in the context of intersecting dynamics of gender, friendship and popularity. I conclude the paper by considering how neoliberal styles, rhetoric and cultural forms impact on ideas of social justice and possibilities for a ‘critical’ or ‘transformative’ pedagogy that takes seriously the positive contribution of learners to education discourses and practices.

Human Affair, 2012

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2012. Commodifying diversity: Education and governance in the era of neolibe... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2012. Commodifying diversity: Education and governance in the era of neoliberalism. Human Affairs, 22 (2), 122-130

In this paper I explore the pedagogical and political shift marked by the meaning and practice of diversity offered through New Labour education policy texts, specifically, the policy and practice of personalized learning (or personalization). The aim of this paper is to map the ways in which diversity relays and mobilizes a set of neoliberal positions and relationships in the field of education and seeks to govern education institutions and education users through politically circulating norms and values. These norms and values, I want to argue, echo and redeem the kinds of frameworks, applications and rationalities typically aligned with modes of neoliberal or advanced liberal governance, e.g. marketization, monetarization, atomization and deregulation. I conclude the paper by considering how diversity in education renders problematic conventional antinomies of the citizen and consumer, public and private, state and civil society, etc., and forces us to confront the rhizomatic character of contemporary governance and education in the era of neoliberalism.

Journal of Pedagogy, 2012

To cite: Wilkins, A. 2012. Public battles and private takeovers: Academies and the politics of ed... more To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2012. Public battles and private takeovers: Academies and the politics of educational governance. Journal of Pedagogy, 3 (1), 11-29

Introduced to the British education system under the Education Act 2002 and later enshrined in the New Labour government White Paper Higher Standards, Better Schools for All (DfES, 2005), the Academies policy was set up to enable designated under-performing schools to ‘opt out’ from the financial and managerial remit of Local Authorities (LAs) and enter into partnerships with outside sponsors. A radical piece of policy legislation, it captured New Labour’s commitment to (further) private sector involvement in public sector organisation – what might be termed a neoliberal or advanced liberal approach to education reform. A consequence of this has been the expansion of school-based definitions of ‘public accountability’ to encompass political, business, and other interest groups, together with the enlargement of the language of accountability itself. In this paper I address the importance of rethinking conventional public/private, political/commercial divides in light of these developments and foreground the changing nature of state power in the generation and assembly of different publics.

Journal of Education Policy, 2019

This is a pre-copy edited version of a book review of Locatelli, R. (2019) Reframing Education as... more This is a pre-copy edited version of a book review of Locatelli, R. (2019) Reframing Education as a Public and Common Good: Enhancing Democratic Governance, Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. This is a first draft that has been submitted to the Journal of Education Policy.

Journal of Education Policy, 2019

This is a pre-copy edited version of a book review of Mundy et al. (eds) The Handbook of Global E... more This is a pre-copy edited version of a book review of Mundy et al. (eds) The Handbook of Global Education Policy. This is a first draft that has been submitted to the Journal of Education Policy.

This is a pre-copyedited version of a book review of Thornton, M. (2014) (ed.) Through a glass d... more This is a pre-copyedited version of a book review of
Thornton, M. (2014) (ed.) Through a glass darkly: The social science look at the neoliberal university. ANU Press
This is a first draft that has been submitted to the Journal of Education Policy.

Journal of Education Policy, 2015

Special issue of Journal of Pedagogy, 3 (2), pp. 161-173, 2013

Editorial Andrew Wilkins - 'Pedagogy of the consumer: The politics of neo - liberal welfare re... more Editorial

Andrew Wilkins - 'Pedagogy of the consumer: The politics of neo - liberal welfare reform'

Articles

Kevin J. Burke - 'Strange bedfellows: The new neoliberalism of catholic schooling in the United States'

Christopher G. Robbins & Serhiy Kovalchuk - 'Dangerous disciplines: Understanding pedagogies of punishment in the neoliberal states of America'

Jon Frauley - 'Post-Social politics, employability, and the security effects of higher education'

Magnus Dahlstedt & Fredrik Hertzberg - ' Schooling entrepreneurs: Entrepreneurship, governmentality and education policy in Sweden at the turn of the millennium'

Susan M. Martin - 'Education as a spectral technology: Corporate culture at work in Ontario‘s schools'

Glenn C. Savage - 'Being different and the same? The paradoxes of ‘tailoring’ in education quasi - markets'

Panayota Gounari & George Grollios - 'Educational reform in Greece: Central concepts and a critique

Special issue of Journal of Pedagogy, 4 (1), pp. 5-125, 2013

Editorial Andrew Wilkins - Shades of Freire: Exorcising the Spectre Haunting Pedagogy Artic... more Editorial

Andrew Wilkins - Shades of Freire: Exorcising the Spectre Haunting Pedagogy

Articles

Kyle Wanberg: - Pedagogy Against the State: The Ban on Ethnic Studies in Arizona

Zachary A. Casey, Brian D. Lozenski & Shannon K. McManimon - From Neoliberal Policy to Neoliberal Pedagogy: Racializing and Historicizing Classroom Management

Encarna Rodríguez - Child-centered Pedagogies, Curriculum Reforms and Neoliberalism. Many Causes for Concern, some Reasons for Hope

Anne M. Harris - In Transit/ion: Sudanese Students’ resettlement, Pedagogy and Material Conditions

Anne Price & Andrew McConney - Is ‘Teach for All’ Knocking on your Door

Eugenio Echeverria & Patricia Hannam - Philosophical Inquiry and the Advancement of Democratic Praxis

Special issue of Journal of Pedagogy: Neo-liberalism, Pedagogy and Curriculum: A Global Perspective (Part 1)

Situated against the backdrop of a widespread and growing interest in the linkages between neo-li... more Situated against the backdrop of a widespread and growing interest in the linkages between neo-liberalism and welfare, this paper introduces the lens of neo-liberalism as a conceptual strategy for thinking about contemporary issues in education policy. Through charting the historic rise of unfettered market institutions and practices in the context of 1980s England, it highlights the cultural and geopolitical specificity affixed to nation-based articulations and translations of neo-liberalism. Building on this perspective, it considers how market discourses with its pedagogy of the consumer shape a plurality of education sites and practices. To follow, it sets out the specific contributions by authors to this interdisciplinary collection of papers on the themed issue of neo-liberalism, pedagogy and curriculum. It identifies the contexts for their analyses and discusses the implications of their approaches for better mapping the ‘global’ impact of neo-liberalism on welfare states and peoples, specifically the full range of policy enactments and disciplinary practices shaping education customs of pedagogy and curriculum.

Special issue of Journal of Pedagogy: Neo-liberalism, Pedagogy and Curriculum: A Global Perspective (Part 2), Apr 2013

In the second part of this special issue on neoliberalism, pedagogy and curriculum, I explore the... more In the second part of this special issue on neoliberalism, pedagogy and curriculum, I explore the contributions of each author to confronting neo-liberal reforms of education, notably the spectre of neo-liberalism haunting aspects of pedagogy,
teaching and curriculum. Exemplary of the scholarly work produced by many critical educators, the contributing authors share an understanding of the oppressive function of educational apparatuses and their complicity with the reproduction
of dominant epistemes of knowledge/power. In this case, neo-liberalism is defined as a canonical narrative through which existing education relations, practices and discourses are structured and mediated. Against this neo-liberal imaginary, the
authors argue in favour of models of knowing, learning and teaching that work to sustain practices of critical inquiry and self-discovery among learners as active, reflexive and engaged subjects. The result is a timely collection of papers critiquing the nuances pertaining to the global transmission of neo-liberal education and a much-needed reinvigoration of the Freirean demand for a liberating and critical pedagogy.

In this guest blog for Education Uncovered I look at the role of school governance in England and... more In this guest blog for Education Uncovered I look at the role of school governance in England and its consequences for democracy in education.

The government recently announced a series of changes to the oversight and governance of schools,... more The government recently announced a series of changes to the oversight and governance of schools, with the most controversial concerning the 'academisation' of all English secondary schools, and what may amount to the abolition of the role of the parent governor. Here, Andrew Wilkins casts his eye over the changes – and in particular the latter, arguing that we now have an opportunity to think seriously about building capacity to harness the creative energy of families and communities as co-producers and co-creators of education services.

The Conversation, Oct 29, 2014

Small cliques often take control of school governor boards

SGOSS, Feb 20, 2015

Dr. Andrew Wilkins is Senior Lecturer in Education Studies at the University of East London and h... more Dr. Andrew Wilkins is Senior Lecturer in Education Studies at the University of East London and has published a variety of research papers on school governance. This fortnight, Dr Wilkins offers his thoughts on how school governance is changing and the increasing ‘professionalisation’ of the role.

What is the role of school governing bodies today? Who do they answer to and how they do they ans... more What is the role of school governing bodies today? Who do they answer to and how they do they answer? The first question is the standard question, the million dollar question if you like, that today occupies the time and energy of education select committees, media commentators and academic researchers. What do school governors do and might they best do it? Unfortunately the current English state education system is so fragmented and diverse in terms of how individual schools are constituted legally and operate managerially and structurally that there are no easy answers to this question.

Want to know more about how to publish in Journal of Education Policy? Co-editors in chief Anto... more Want to know more about how to publish in Journal of Education Policy?

Co-editors in chief Antonio Olmedo and Andrew Wilkins will be speaking at a 'Sit with the Editor' event organised by UCL IOE, to take place online on 28 May

Are you a UK domestic or international student interested in applying for funding from either CHA... more Are you a UK domestic or international student interested in applying for funding from either CHASE or SeNSS/ESRC to pursue a PhD in the Department of Educational Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London?

In this webinar we will discuss the funding opportunities offered by CHASE (Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts South-East England) and SeNSS/ESRC (South-East Network for Social Sciences).

We will focus on:

What does a CHASE/SeNSS studentship offer?
What kinds of applicants does CHASE/SeNSS support?
Shortlisting process
Supervision
What types of research proposals are typically funded?

This symposium aims to explore the relevance of theories of neoliberalism to contemporary educati... more This symposium aims to explore the relevance of theories of neoliberalism to contemporary education research and to intervening upon and shaping education to create positive change.

A key focus of the symposium will be to address whether neoliberalism as a conceptual framework or normative description (‘everyone is neoliberal now’) is useful to framing understandings of the complex changes underway in education across the globe.

The symposium will provide a unique opportunity for participants to engage with a broad range of issues affecting education, from accountability infrastructures and public-private partnerships to repressive pedagogies and new public management.

Keynote speakers will include Professor Richard Hall, Professor of Education and Technology and Co-Director of the Institute for Education Futures, De Montfort University, and Dr Steve Courtney, Lecturer in Management, University of Manchester. Each speaker will discuss how they use neoliberalism in their research, the benefits of such use to developing and deepening new knowledge about education, and the possibilities for intervention and change (if any) made possible by these approaches to education research.

Bursaries available, up to £75 for travel. Register here: https://www.bera.ac.uk/event/neoliberalism-ste

Why is democracy important as a tool for governing education? What has been the impact of neolibe... more Why is democracy important as a tool for governing education? What has been the impact of neoliberalism, and related trends of marketisation, metric power and corporatisation, on the possibilities of democratic governance in education?

In this video I briefly discuss the uneasy relationship between democracy and the new political economy of education in the neoliberal state.

A key feature of policy reform and political development in Britain since the 1980s has been the ... more A key feature of policy reform and political development in Britain since the 1980s has been the idea that public services are more responsive, flexible and better managed when citizens engage with them as discriminating users or consumers. In education, this approach to reform has been criticised for undermining associations and relations that engender citizenship-based commitments to ideas of public welfarism and a democratic citizenry. This thesis explores diverse sources and types of evidence in order to map the field through which parents are invited to deploy meanings and vocabularies that register a consumerist orientation to school choice, and to illustrate the sets of contrasting and sometimes contradictory discourses enacted by parents in their interpretations and understandings of their role as chooser. This leads to a consideration of how far the expectations and demands of governmental discourses and rationalities work to shape or limit the intentions of social actors. Through comparing diverse sources of evidence, the thesis then develops two interrelated lines of argument. First, it argues that choice connects with ethical injunctions around behaviour and therefore is sometimes mobilised in ways that transcend economic rationality. Secondly, it argues that choice is negotiated at the intersection of multiple discourses, revealing the cross-cutting impulses that inform parents’ decision-making. Through a consideration of the relationships in practice between these diverse elements, this study questions the analytic value of distinctions between citizen and consumer, community and individual as framings for understanding the motivations and aspirations shaping parents’ school choices.

A key focus of my presentation is to move away from conceptualising risk as the product of someth... more A key focus of my presentation is to move away from conceptualising risk as the product of something, as consequential and the unintended effects of externalities beyond human control, but to focus on risk as something that is conditioned or manufactured to produce certain effects, in this case to consolidate certain forms of state control and free market reforms.

The aim of this symposium is to bring together different researchers who share an interest in the... more The aim of this symposium is to bring together different researchers who share an interest in the field of education governance studies and whose work is inflected and guided by different sets of practical and conceptual issues concerning the governance turn in education research. In policy terms, the governance turn denotes the movement toward decentralised, corporatized, depoliticised forms of education planning and the expansion of economism as the normative order of reason guiding education reform. Yet despite such pervasive use, there are multiple approaches to conceptualising and researching education governance, some of which we will introduce and expand on today. This symposium therefore is an opportunity for us to think through these approaches and determine their efficacy for better understanding and intervening upon the changing landscape of education.

In this presentation I consider some of the effects of privatisation, depoliticization and devolv... more In this presentation I consider some of the effects of privatisation, depoliticization and devolved management on the development of education in England. Specifically, I outline the growing influence of technocratic cultures on certain education structures and processes underpinning school governance. A key consequence of these developments, I argue, is the hiving of governance activities and spaces through ‘enclosures’ that limit participation to those who are bearers of relevant knowledge, skills and expertise. Local communities and ordinary citizens, in effect, find themselves increasingly marginalised from the business of governance and its expert administration. In this paper I outline two key features of these developments, namely epistocracy (rule by the most knowledgeable) and monopoly (rule by hierarchy), and outline the challenges they pose to participatory democracy in schools.

In this presentation I reflect on the extent to which school governance in England is embroiled i... more In this presentation I reflect on the extent to which school governance in England is embroiled in the technical-rational management of processes and outcomes and the bureaucracy, performativity and professionalisation typically underpinning such management. While these approaches to school governance are necessary in some sense – devolved management and school autonomy is vulnerable to moral hazard without proper oversight and transparency of their internal operations – they engender forms of de-democratisation or depoliticisation (concealed through an appeal to efficiency and expert knowledge) which undermine local accountability. I conclude by arguing that much of what now constitutes school governance – succession planning, risk assessment, compliance checking, performance evaluation – should be displaced at the school-level and relocated to regional oversight teams to enable the political function of parents, teachers, students, and community members to govern their schools more directly, openly and democratically.

For over 30 years successive governments in England have experimented with market-based approache... more For over 30 years successive governments in England have experimented with market-based approaches to education reform with a view to subsuming moral arguments within economic imperatives, limiting the discretion of head teachers and governors through a tighter focus on managerial accountability, remaking schools into businesses through importing techniques and practices from the private sector, and weakening the relationship between democracy and the legitimacy of those who govern. In this paper, I examine ‘manufactured risk’ as a condition and effect of these reforms.
By manufactured risk I mean the risks to which schools are subject as part of their ‘modernisation’. Take academies for example, sometimes called ‘state-funded independent schools’. Many local government-run schools in England have converted to academy status to take ownership of the land and buildings, set the curriculum and admissions policy, manage budget spending, employ staff directly, and source their own suppliers and professional advisers. But there are risks to converting including but not limited to increased competition, increased costs and diseconomies of scale. Moreover, academies are vulnerable to regulatory non-compliance, related party transactions, conflicts of interest, financial mismanagement, and lack of transparency.
In this paper I explore the relationship between risk and governance through detailing the ways in which risk is implicated in the construction of new sets of antinomies and antagonisms (democracy versus efficiency, lay knowledge versus expert knowledge, amateurish governance versus professional governance) which structures who gets to enter into governance roles. Moreover, I demonstrate the significance of risk as a policy technology that helps to embed, and provide a moral argument for, education privatisation, depoliticisation and de-democratisation at the level of the school.

EdD Lecture University of East London, UK 14 October 2017

For the past seven years successive governments in England have introduced reforms intended to di... more For the past seven years successive governments in England have introduced reforms intended to displace the steering power of local government as a key intermediary player in the governing of schools. These reforms are expected to usher in less aggregated, top-down, bureaucratically overloaded models of service delivery as well as secure conditions for greater school autonomy. Yet the ‘hollowing out’ of local government has not resulted in less bureaucracy on the ground or less regulation from above, nor has it diminished hierarchy as an organising principle of education governance. In some cases, monopolistic organisations dominated by powerful bureaucracies and professional groups persist, albeit realised through the involvement of new actors from business and philanthropy.

Understood from a governmentality perspective (Rose and Millar 1992), MATs are state-sponsored governmental programmes used to intervene upon schools deemed to problematic or failing in some way, and therefore in need of greater regulation, discipline or correction. A key focus of MATs in England are strategies that enable the recalibration of ‘underperforming’ schools as manageable entities with demonstrable, calculable or ‘legible’ gains that can be measured and audited to the satisfaction of external regulators and funders. From this perspective, MATs are important mechanisms to the rescaling or ‘deterritorialisation’ of schools in that they help to establish ‘a regime of visibility’ and ‘a grid of codeability’ (Rose 1988, p. 187) through which multiple schools within a chain may be better regulated, in this case rendered amenable to administration, statistical mapping and governance through appropriate prudential calculations and disciplinary actions.
In this paper I explore the role of large multi-academy trusts (MATs) – private sponsors contracted by central government to run publicly-funded schools – to consider

i) when and why certain forms of producer capture are legitimated over others;
ii) what implications this has for theorisations of neoliberalism; and
iii) how such arrangements work to generate new scalar hierarchies and accountability infrastructures that consolidate forms of state power.

Data strategies and related practices of measuring, auditing, costing and ranking are key feature... more Data strategies and related practices of measuring, auditing, costing and ranking are key features of modern education systems, driven by a market imperative to create schools as navigable spaces that are amenable to the statistical mapping and scrutiny of external regulators and funders. Due to major reforms to school governance in England over the last six years, data strategies and algorithmic actions now also dominate the day-to-day work of school governors and trustees (those responsible for holding senior school leaders to account for the educational and financial performance of schools). Key to these developments has been decentralising reforms intended to shift powers away from civil servants and welfare administrators and disperse them downward and outward towards schools, new providers, local communities and citizens. This includes rolling out new legal and financial freedoms for schools to govern themselves, typified through the rapid growth of academies and free schools in England since 2010 (DfE 2016).

Legally the same, academies and free schools are different to local authority ‘maintained’ schools in that they possess ‘freedoms’ to determine their own budget spending, curriculum (subject to the national curriculum), admissions (subject to the admissions code), staff pay and conditions, and length of school day and term. However, growing evidence of financial mismanagement and scandal (Adams 2016), related party transactions (Boffey and Mansell 2016) and ‘amateurish’ governance (Wilshaw quoted in Cross 2014) has given rise to questions concerning whether school governors and trustees are effective in discharging their duties as custodians of public trust and accountability.
The decommissioning of local authorities as overseers of schools means that school governors and trustees have been spotlighted as integral to public accountability at a time when schools are expected to internalise responsibility for the kinds of ‘externalities’ or risks formerly absorbed and managed by state entities like local authorities (back-office functions and management overheads for example). A caveat to these arrangements is that school governors and trustees are required to exercise ‘good governance’ (DfE 2015) through a strict focus on risk-based approaches to regulation and professional management of internal school processes, namely rigorous and continuous auditing, strategic planning, quality control, target setting, and performance and budgetary monitoring. These new infrastructures have also had significant implications for traditional, stakeholder models school governance as the government calls for the removal of parent governors – governors elected on the basis of a democratic mandate – and their replacement by ‘business people’ or experts (GOV.UK 2013), specifically people with the ‘right skills’ (GOV.UK 2015) who can open up the internal operation of schools to greater political and public scrutiny.

In this paper I draw on evidence from a three-year ESRC-funded project (2012-2015) to examine how the above reforms have generated new accountability infrastructures and attendant calculating practices, classificatory systems and performance indicators, giving rise to new governance spaces and practices as well as assisting in bringing the gaze of government to bear upon the actions of schools.

For the past six years successive governments in England have introduced reforms intended to disp... more For the past six years successive governments in England have introduced reforms intended to displace the steering power of local government as a key intermediary player in the governing of schools. These reforms are expected to usher in less aggregated, top-down, bureaucratically overloaded models of service delivery as well as secure conditions for greater school autonomy. Yet the ‘hollowing out’ of local government has not resulted in less bureaucracy on the ground or less regulation from above, nor has it diminished hierarchy as an organising principle of education governance. In some cases, monopolistic organisations dominated by powerful bureaucracies and professional groups persist, albeit realised through the involvement of new actors from business and philanthropy. In this paper I explore the role of large multi-academy trusts (MATs) – private sponsors contracted by central government to run publicly-funded schools – to consider when and why certain forms of producer capture are legitimated over others, what implications this has for theorisations of neoliberalism, and how such arrangements work to generate new scalar hierarchies and accountability infrastructures that consolidate forms of state power.

Paper presented at British Educational Research Association (BERA) Conference, University of Leed... more Paper presented at British Educational Research Association (BERA) Conference, University of Leeds, 14-15 September 2016

A lecture given to EdD students at the University of East London on strategies to employing educa... more A lecture given to EdD students at the University of East London on strategies to employing education policy discourse analysis.

Since 2010 the number of academies and free schools to open in England has risen sharply in line ... more Since 2010 the number of academies and free schools to open in England has risen sharply in line with government objectives to liberate or forcibly remove schools from local government management and oversight. A major consequence of this recent shift towards increased deregulation has been a renewed focus on strong accountability and the importance of the market as a regulatory device for steering and facilitation in the absence of direct government control.

In this presentation I consider the double movement by which schools are removed from direct control and bureaucracy, only to be enfolded through new relations and disciplines which demand a subservience to and reverence for market imperatives and sensibilities as tools for enhancing accountability. It focuses on some of the fundamental changes affecting school governance at this time, namely in whose interests is school governance exercised and who is included and excluded from the business of school governance and why.

Theory as method: applying social theory in educational research

In this paper I will discuss the application of Foucauldian theory, in particular the notion of g... more In this paper I will discuss the application of Foucauldian theory, in particular the notion of governmentality, to analysing and understanding some of the trends dominating education systems at this time, especially trends underpinned by deregulation and marketisation. I will draw on findings from a recent ESRC-funded large-scale study of school governance in England to illustrate how these applications were carried out and discuss their utility for connecting macro-, micro- and meso-levels of analysis, specifically the interconnections between government policy, the politics of schooling and the construction of subjectivities.

In this paper I discuss the role of school governance in England with a particular focus on the c... more In this paper I discuss the role of school governance in England with a particular focus on the changing responsibilities of school governors in relation to recent education policy. These issues are located through a much broader discussion of neoliberalism and its effects on public sector organisation. Here neoliberalism is defined as the incursion of market forces on public sector organisation, including the introduction of new regulatory tools (inspection, standardisation and accountabilities for example) to replace direct bureaucracy and state intervention and indirectly strengthen government control – what Bob Jessop calls ‘regulated self-regulation’. Drawing on these insights, I demonstrate how a neoliberal political rationality shapes school governance and the kinds of behaviour and orientations idealised and adopted by school governors seeking to make themselves and the schools they govern accountable. Finally, I show how school governance is wedded to mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion (a preference for ‘professionals’ over ‘amateurs’ or unskilled volunteers for example) as well as claims to expertise and specialist knowledge. This raises questions over who gets to influence school governance and what governance is for, as well as bringing into focus larger questions about the role of democratic principles of civic empowerment, participation and representation.

I was invited to give a session on blogging and social media at the University of Roehampton on 6... more I was invited to give a session on blogging and social media at the University of Roehampton on 6 May 2014. The talk was intended to introduce researchers to the ‘nuts and blots’ of blogging and the utility of other social media platforms as research applications or devices, such as twitter, facebook and academia.edu.

Since the 1980s state schools in England have been required to evidence transparency and accounta... more Since the 1980s state schools in England have been required to evidence transparency and accountability through the use of indicators and templates derived from the private sector and more recently globally circulating discourses of ‘good governance’ closely aligned with the IMF and World Bank. The idea here is that schools share characteristics which can be compared and analyzed to determine public service effectiveness and efficiency. The rise of academies and free schools (‘state-funded independent schools’) has resulted in a dispersion and concentration of these practices within schools, with direct consequences for school governors –those tasked with the responsibility of holding senior leadership to account for the financial and educational performance of the school. To complement the new powers and responsibilities devolved to schools under these arrangements, government now demand the inspection, audit and professionalization of all school governing bodies, with the aim to ensure good governance. Ofsted in particular emerges as a dominating presence under these circumstances, effecting and inscribing the conditions by which governors come to understand, know and practise their role.

In this paper I draw on interview and observation data to consider 1) the role of Ofsted as a permanent ‘absent presence’, a spectre, shadow or big Other shaping and guiding meanings and practices of school governance; and 2) the impact of these trends on school governor relations and subjectivities in terms of how governors ‘make sense’ of their role, responsibility and contribution as meaningful and intelligible.

Given this paper is set to be discussed in the context of a roundtable discussion I have rendered... more Given this paper is set to be discussed in the context of a roundtable discussion I have rendered it more conversational in tone. I’m also aware that some participants in the discussion may be unfamiliar with the history of English education policy. I have therefore constructed a kind of ‘nuts and bolts’ paper for want a better description. It outlines the aims, context and data for my study as well as some of the recent developments to affect school organization and school accountability in England. Following this I draw on evidence to flesh out what it is school governors actually do and how these forms of ritual participation and their rationalization are impacted by the changing legal and power arrangements of different school setups and the encroachment of particular forms of accountability, notably finance, legal, performance and consumer. I have deliberately foregrounded the discussion around observable concrete practices, and therefore resisted engaging too much in conceptual or theoretical deliberation/engagement for the time being. However, I am keen to apply theory where it might serve to increase both awareness and intervention to affect change. Foucauldian approaches to governmentality spring to mind.

Dear friends and colleagues My new book Modernising school governance: Corporate planning and ex... more Dear friends and colleagues

My new book Modernising school governance: Corporate planning and expert handling in state education has been published by Routledge (foreword by Stephen Ball) and is available to buy by clicking on the link below (20% discount code: FLR40):

https://www.routledge.com/Modernising-School-Governance-Corporate-planning-and-expert-handling-in/Wilkins/p/book/9781138787476

Please forward details of the book to any interested colleagues in your network and recommend to your library. I have created this session in the hope of getting your comments on a preview of the book provided - kind of an online book launch.

If you would like a complimentary copy of the book for review purposes, please email editorial assistant Thomas Storr (Thomas.Storr@informa.com) stating which publication you intend to submit the review to.

Have a great summer and best wishes,
Andrew

This one-day conference will provide crucial opportunities for school governors, parents, activis... more This one-day conference will provide crucial opportunities for school governors, parents, activists, teachers, civil servants, policy makers, academics and governor support workers to discuss some of the most pressing issues affecting school governance in England.

On 17 March 2016 the British government issued plans to transform all state-funded schools into academies by 2022 at the latest. These reforms include removing the requirement for school governing bodies to retain democratically elected members, namely parent governors, and for more schools to sacrifice their autonomy and join the ranks of 'chain schools' under the direction of large academy sponsors or multi-academy trusts (MATs).

The aim of this conference is to generate critical spaces for debating the future of school governance under these proposals and to enable participants to share and evaluate good practice, offer up new and alternative perspectives, and debate future possibilities and impossibilities.

SSAT Journal 02, 2015

One of the key challenges facing the current education system is ensuring schools govern themselv... more One of the key challenges facing the current education system is ensuring schools govern themselves in ways that are transparent, efficient and equitable. With the growth of academies and free schools, large numbers of schools now operate outside the control and oversight of local government. Hence the spotlight today is on school governors – volunteers charged with the responsibility of holding senior leadership to account for the financial and educational performance of schools.

School governors play an increasingly important role in the education of our children and young p... more School governors play an increasingly important role in the education of our children and young people. Strategic leadership and planning are key aspects of the duties expected of the governor and senior leadership teams – but what steps should schools take to best support governors to effectively discharge these?

At this Westminster Briefing event you will examine the legal, regulatory and social expectations on governors, and what schools can do to ensure governors can excel in their essential, yet multifaceted roles.

Since 2010 there has been a rapid expansion of academies and free schools in England together wit... more Since 2010 there has been a rapid expansion of academies and free schools in England together with the ‘hollowing out’ of local government. During this time new regulations have been introduced to specify the role and responsibilities of school governors, which include holding senior leaders to account for the financial and educational performance of schools. This has given rise to a demand for ‘high-calibre’, professional volunteers who can oversee the strategic development of schools, leading to an emphasis on skills-based approaches to school governance. Not only does this affect how governance is understood and practised but it also changes what governance is and who governors are.
This ESRC-funded project School Accountability and Stakeholder Education (SASE) demonstrates the impact of recent policy developments on the relations and practices framing school governance. It indicates how a skills-based model of governance is necessary but not sufficient to enhancing accountability. On the one hand, good governance relies on school governors and senior leaders enhancing accountability to the funders and to the regulatory body. But good governance also depends on strengthening forms of local accountability through community representation, including opening up opportunities for ordinary, local citizens to shape governance alongside school governors and senior leaders. This research highlights the challenges and benefits of professional and community volunteers working together to make schools publicly accountable institutions. In doing so, it demonstrates the need for more innovative and creative forms of civic engagement between schools and the communities they serve.

Recent years have seen significant changes in the realm of school accountability. Responding to e... more Recent years have seen significant changes in the realm of school accountability. Responding to earlier debate on Democratic Audit, Andrew Wilkins discusses the profound ideological struggles at the heart of reforms. The professionalization of school governance that comes with greater autonomy present a challenge to traditional forms of accountability and may affect engagement with important local stakeholders, he argues.

A conference will be held on 23 October 2014 (12-4pm) to discuss new insights generated through t... more A conference will be held on 23 October 2014 (12-4pm) to discuss new insights generated through the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC-) funded project SASE (School Accountability and Stakeholder Education, 2012-2015), led by Dr. Andrew Wilkins at the University of Roehampton.

Panel members: Professor Stephen Ball (Institute of Education), Chris Caroe (Head of the School Governance Unit, DfE), Professor Gill Crozier (University of Roehampton) (Chair), Professor Becky Francis (Kings College, London), Professor Helen Gunter (University of Manchester), Emma Knights (Chief Executive, National Governors Association, NGA), and Brian Lightman (General Secretary, Association of School and College Leaders, ASCL).

See flyer for how to register for the event. Places are limited."

Executive Editors: Zachary Casey, Rhodes College, Memphis, US Ondrej Kaščák, Trnava Universit... more Executive Editors:

Zachary Casey, Rhodes College, Memphis, US
Ondrej Kaščák, Trnava University in Trnava, SVK (Lead Editor)
Iveta Kovalčíková, Prešov University in Prešov, SVK
Branislav Pupala, Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, SVK
Marek Tesar, The University of Auckland, NZ
Andrew Wilkins, University of East London, UK

Editorial Advisory Board:

Stephen Ball, University of London, UK
Jean‑Louis Derouet, Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique, Lyon, France
Francesca Gobbo, University of Turin, Italy
Tomáš Janík, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
Alison Jones, University of Auckland, NZ
Mary Koutselini, University of Cyprus, Nicosia
Ivan Lukšík, Trnava University in Trnava, SVK
Tata Mbugua, University of Scranton, US
Peter McLaren, Chapman University, US
Sudarshan Panigrahi, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India
Michael A. Peters, University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ
Sally Power, Cardiff University, Wales, UK
Norbert Ricken, The University of Bremen, Germany
Patricia Scully, University of Maryland, US
Klára Šeďová, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
Martin Strouhal, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Stanislav Štech, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Richard Tabulawa, University of Botswana, Gaborone
Ikechukwu Ukeje, Kennesaw State University, US
Isabella Wong Yuen Fun, National Institute of Education, Singapore
Christoph Wulf, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Oľga Zápotočná, Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, SVK
Jörg Zirfas, Friedrich‑Alexander University Erlangen‑Nürnberg, Germany

Editorial Assistant:

Zuzana Daniskova, Trnava University in Trnava, SVK

Language Editor:

Catriona Menzies

El gobierno de lo educativo y de cada centro escolar se está modificando de manera profunda y ace... more El gobierno de lo educativo y de cada centro escolar se está modificando de manera profunda y acelerada. Ante las preguntas fundamentales: ¿qué es una buena escuela?, y ¿cómo debería gobernarse un centro educativo para convertirse en una buena escuela o un buen instituto para todo el alumnado, para los docentes y para las familias?, las respuestas que se imponen en los últimos años vienen dadas por los modelos neoliberal y/o neoconservador. Hoy, el foco de atención del gobierno de lo educativo parece estar centrado exclusivamente en el cómo (cómo evaluar, cómo mejorar resultados, cómo liderar una escuela...), dando por descontado que alguien ya ha respondido por nosotros a las preguntas políticas de la educación. Ante este escenario que se (re)contextualiza de manera diferente en cada país, creemos que aquello que puede articular las alternativas de transformación de la educación y de la escolaridad es una concepción y una práctica democrática y de lo común de la escuela, del sistema educativo y de su gobierno. Desde esta perspectiva se organizó el Seminario Internacional sobre "Gobernanza escolar democrática", los resultados del cual recoge el presente libro. Por su génesis, naturaleza y orientación, este libro pretende ser un libro-herramienta, un instrumento a ser experimentado y utilizado en el trabajo cotidiano de construir una gobernanza de lo educativo y de lo escolar alternativa al status quo actual. No pretende (sólo) comprender más y mejor lo que ocurre sino, sobre todo, convertirse en un destornillador para aflojar y cuestionar las potentes tuercas de la racionalidad neoliberal que produce los discursos, los textos, las políticas, las identidades y las formas actuales de gobierno de lo educativo y de lo escolar. A tal fin, las aportaciones de Stephen J. Ball, Antonio Viñao, Joan Subirats, Andrew Wilkins, Jordi Feu y Núria Simó nos parecen altamente útiles. Es el momento, en palabras de Stephen Ball, de volver a lo fundamental (Back to basics). Es decir, en contra del firme sentido común del mercado, los estándares y la maximización de los resultados, es necesario pensar democráticamente sobre cuáles son los propósitos comunes de la educación. Y, simultáneamente, plantear las preguntas clave sobre el qué, el quién y el cómo del gobierno de lo educativo y de cada centro escolar.

New speakers added to schedule of events Join the conversation!

Dear colleagues We are happy to announce details of our next Education Policy Futures (EPF) we... more Dear colleagues

We are happy to announce details of our next Education Policy Futures (EPF) webinar with guest speaker Mark Murphy, University of Glasgow. We look forward to seeing you there.

Please email or direct message me to attend.

Best wishes, EPF convenors (Andrew, Brad, Rita and Amanda)

Details:

The Challenges to Discretionary Power at the Street-Level: The Case of Education

Mark Murphy, University of Glasgow

9 May 2023, 15:00-16:30 GMT

There is a street-level universe when it comes to discretion where a panoply of factors impact the discretionary power of professionals such as teachers. Professional discretion occupies a unique space in this environment, as it is a vital part of public service delivery but also often viewed with suspicion by policy makers and (sometimes) the public. Yet without the exercise of this power, education service delivery would retreat from any notion of democratic accountability.

Discretionary power is confronted with an increasing set of challenges, chief among them performativity cultures, accountability regimes and creeping juridification. Together these represent a powerful moral force in the world of front-line professionals, a world that is itself a complex and dynamic entity comprised of various rules of professional engagement. These are the subject of continuous negotiation in the face of professional values and changing societal norms but are also influenced by external regulatory regimes that have sought to exercise greater control over public services such as education. Accountability regimes in particular have sought to heighten the quality of front-line delivery while also delivering a form of administrative justice via greater transparency and increased value for money.

In this paper I will touch on these sets of challenges within a broader historical perspective on discretionary power, one which situates front-line discretion in the context of struggles over welfare state legitimation. In particular I will focus on two key aspects to these struggles: the prevalence of ‘blame games’, on the one hand, as a political strategy of legitimation and its consequences for discretionary power; and on the other, recourse to an ‘imagined future’ of schooling and the attendant fictional expectations for educational outcomes. I argue that these represent elements of a strategy to shore up what is a rapidly diminishing stock of welfare state legitimation.

Speaker: Mark Murphy is Reader in Education & Public Policy, School of Education, University of Glasgow. He has published widely in the field of social theory and applied research, with books including Social Theory: A New Introduction (Palgrave, 2021), Habermas and Social Research: Between Theory and Method (Routledge, 2017), Theory as Method: On Bourdieu, Education and Society (with C. Costa, Routledge, 2016) and Bourdieu, Habitus and Social Research: The Art of Application (with C. Costa, Palgrave, 2015). Mark is the editor of the book series Social Theory and Methodology in Education Research (Bloomsbury Press) and Critical Perspectives on Education and Public Policy (Policy Press).

Chair: Brad Gobby, Curtin University

Dear colleagues We are happy to announce details of our next Education Policy Futures (EPF) webi... more Dear colleagues

We are happy to announce details of our next Education Policy Futures (EPF) webinar with guest speaker Antonio Olmedo, University of Exeter. Please accept this invitation to attend. We look forward to seeing you there.

Best wishes, EPF convenors (Andrew, Brad, Rita and Amanda)

Details:

Thursday 23 March 2023, 16:00-17:30 GMT

New landscapes and logics of competition in education: Geography, demography and equity in English education policy

This presentation explores the new landscapes of competition in the English educational system. Such new landscape is part of broader processes of N/neoliberalisation, which involve not only changes at a structural level but also a reconfiguration of the subjectivities of political actors (from politicians to teachers and parents). This kind of analysis is of particular relevance in the contemporary context given the changes in the configuration and structure of educational provision as a result of the programme of academisation during the last decade. The Academies Act was passed in 2010 and it has been seen as the latest step of ongoing processes of disarticulation of the English education framework (see Ball 2013). Such new landscape is formed of an amalgamation of different types of providers, from the traditional state schools and fee-paying private schools, to a set of relatively new hybrid configurations, including individual academies and free schools, trusts, multi-academy chains, etc. This area of academic research has gathered interest in recent years. Researchers have focused, for instance, on mapping school catchment areas (Harris et al., 2016), the impact of catchment areas on choice & equity (Singleton et al., 2011; Allen & Higham, 2018), or the effect of such changes over performance (Burgess, 2014; Leckie and Goldstein, 2017).
This presentation is the base for a potential research project that aims to contribute to existing literature by focusing its scope on the dynamics and operations of local education markets. So far, during the first phase, we drew maps of local educational markets in three different geographical configurations (inner-city, suburb, rural areas). Here the aim is to identify the changes experienced in such maps in terms of the distribution of schools in the past decade since the academies and free-school legislation was introduced. We are also interested in how the process of academisation has affected school demographics and performance indicators. The second phase aims to analyse qualitatively the dynamics of competition enacted by local actors on the ground (parents, schools, local authorities). Here the research would explore the diversity in terms of general ethos, curriculum design and organisational structure in the chose local configurations. Finally, there is an aim to reflect on how traditional spaces and networks of collaboration amongst schools have changed in the last decade and in what ways this is related to the ongoing process of academisation.

Antonio Olmedo is Associate Professor in Education Policy Sociology at the University of Exeter. He is lead editor at Journal of Education Policy and led and participated in several national and international research projects with a focus of analyses of neoliberal policy networks, the role of new policy actors, and the enactment of new solutions for social problems, with an emphasis on emerging patterns of privatisation, opportunity and inequalities in education policy.

Chair: Andrew Wilkins, Goldsmiths, University of London

Dear colleagues We are excited to announce details of our next Education Policy Futures (EPF) we... more Dear colleagues

We are excited to announce details of our next Education Policy Futures (EPF) webinar. Join us for a conversation with David I. Backer, West Chester University, US for a discussion of his new book Althusser and Education: Reassessing Critical Education (Bloomsbury 2022). With Alpesh Maisuria, University of West England (UWE) as discussant.

Book is available open access here: https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/althusser-and-education-reassessing-critical-education/

Best wishes, EPF convenors (Andrew, Brad, Rita and Amanda)

Details:
Thursday 26 January 2023
16:00-17:30 GMT

This event celebrates the launch of Althusser and Education: Reassessing Critical Education (Bloomsbury, 2022) by David I. Backer. Louis Althusser's thinking laid the groundwork for critical educational theory, yet it is often misunderstood in critical pedagogy, sociology of education, and related fields. In this open access book, David I. Backer reexamines Althusser's educational theory, specifically the claim that education is the most powerful ideological state apparatus in modern capitalist societies. He then presents this theory's flawed reception in critical educational research and draws out a lost tradition of educational thinking it inspired with important applications to race, gender, ideology, and the concept of social structure in education. Correcting the record about Althusser's thinking in the traditional narrative of critical educational research becomes an opportunity to revisit fundamental questions for thinking about school in its social context. The launch event gives participants an opportunity to hear the author introduce the text and respond to expert commentaries, as well as questions from the audience.
David I. Backer joined the faculty at West Chester University in Fall 2016. He holds a doctorate in Philosophy and Education from Columbia University, Teachers College. His dissertation, “The Distortion of Discussion,” looked at the social and political significance of classroom discussion. Specifically, he examined when teachers and facilitators say that there will be discussion of some subject, but then lead a recitation, which he argued can manufacture consent to a neoliberal ideology.

Chair: Andrew Wilkins, Goldsmiths, University of London
Discussant: Alpesh Maisuria, University of the West of England - UWE Bristol

To attend email: andrew.wilkins@gold.ac.uk

Dear colleagues We are excited to announce details of our next Education Policy Futures (EPF) ... more Dear colleagues

We are excited to announce details of our next Education Policy Futures (EPF) webinar with guest speaker Jordi Collet-Sabé, University of Vic-UCC, Barcelona. Please accept this invitation to attend. We look forward to seeing you there.

Best wishes, EPF convenors (Andrew, Brad, Rita and Amanda)

Webinar details:

Thursday 1 December 2022
16:00-17:30 BST

Thinking about education differently: Education as self-formation, as commoning activity and without schools

In this seminar, I present and summarise a set of related arguments taken from two papers: 1. ‘Against schools: an epistemological critique’ (with Stephan Ball); and 2. ‘Beyond School. The challenge of co-producing and commoning a different episteme for education’. In both papers, we use concepts from Foucault, Olssen, Lewis and others to find inspiration from and an accommodation between Foucault’s self-formation and communing, a practice of collaborating and sharing to meet the everyday needs and well-being of individuals, communities and environments. This, we argue, offers new ways to think about education beyond the modern episteme.

Speaker: Jordi Collet-Sabé is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education, University of Vic-UCC. Jordi does research in Sociology of Education; family, school and community relationships; education inequalities; and Education Policy. He was the Vice-rector of Research (2019 - 2022).

Chair: Rita Nikolai, University of Augsburg, Germany

To attend email: andrew.wilkins@gold.ac.uk

Dear colleagues We are excited to announce details of our next Education Policy Futures (EPF) we... more Dear colleagues

We are excited to announce details of our next Education Policy Futures (EPF) webinar with guest speaker Ruth Boyask, Senior Lecturer at Auckland University of Technology. We look forward to seeing you there.

Best wishes, EPF convenors (Andrew, Brad, Rita and Amanda)

Webinar details

Wednesday 28 September 2022
07:00-08:30 NZST
Tuesday 27 September 2022
19:00-20:30 BST

Autonomous partnership schools | kura hourua as political rupture in public education

The rise and fall of partnership schools | kura hourua in Aotearoa New Zealand is a story of struggle for social justice and freedom through public education. The partnership schools | kura hourua were established through a short-lived policy (2012 - 2017) as state-funded schools operating autonomously under their own charter. Establishment and closure of the schools were fought on multiple fronts from arguments of school choice, social justice, and self-determination. The schools’ exceptionalism and association with neoliberal individualism made them untenable for a newly elected Labour led government, yet the policy was attractive to some groups marginalised in mainstream public education. The vocal opposition of indigenous Māori communities to the closure of the schools is indicative of the complex relationship between school autonomy and an education that serves democratically the interests of its publics.

This seminar draws upon Max Weber’s work The City (1921) to understand the dynamics of freedom and justice within the autonomous partnership schools | kura hourua. It reflects upon the autonomy of the European medieval city-state or commune, which Weber suggests were the origins of late 19th and early 20th century modernity and its associated democracy. Weber’s city offers a way of thinking about autonomous schools as both democratic and individualistic projects. Put forward are three ways of thinking about autonomy in the city to explain relationships between public education and autonomous schools. First, that struggles within and outside the commune show that autonomy is not an intrinsic characteristic of a bounded entity. Second, that there are symbolic and material characteristics in the communes consistent with democratic equality, yet these are not the only characteristics. Third, there is sight of social justice in school autonomy if a usurpation or rupture of established power establishes the conditions for democracy and relations of equality; however, democracy carries within itself the potential for its own demise.

Ruth Boyask is Senior Lecturer at Auckland University of Technology. Ruth works in the field of critical studies in education, focusing on public education, social justice, democracy, and school reform. Ruth’s recent book is Pluralist publics in market driven education: Towards more democracy in educational reform (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Chair: Amanda U. Potterton, University of Kentucky, US

To attend email: andrew.wilkins@gold.ac.uk

Dear colleagues We are excited to announce details of our second Education Policy Futures (EPF) ... more Dear colleagues

We are excited to announce details of our second Education Policy Futures (EPF) webinar for 2022 and we hope you can join us. We look forward to seeing you there. MS teams link available upon request.

Best wishes, EPF convenors (Andrew, Brad, Rita and Amanda)

Synthetic Governance: Machine Learning and Minor Experiments in Policy Certainty

This paper proposes that the use of data science and machine learning in education policy is part of emerging synthetic governance, an amalgamation of: i) human classifications, rationalities, values, and calculative practices; and ii) new algorithms, data infrastructures and AI, comprising non-human political rationalities (Gulson, Sellar & Webb, 2022). This paper is based on an ethnographic investigation into the use of data science, and specifically machine learning, in a government education system. The paper is interested in whether the data science is introducing new thinking about causality and addressing inequalities pertaining to student achievement outcomes. The paper suggests that the use of machine learning is part of a disruptive act of collaborative governing, that introduces two types of minor experiments in policy certainty based around expertise and disruption, and new cognitive infrastructures in governing.

Kalervo N. Gulson is a Professor of Education Policy, at the University of Sydney, Australia. His research is located across social, political and cultural geography, education policy studies, and science and technology studies. His current research programme is focused on education governance and policy futures and the life and computing sciences. This research investigates whether new knowledge, methods and technologies from life and computing sciences, with a specific focus on Artificial Intelligence, will substantively alter education policy and governance.

Flyer attached if you wish to forward to any interested colleagues/students.

To register to attend email: andrew.wilkins@gold.ac.uk

Education Policy Futures (EPF) is a non-affiliated, independent, global forum dedicated to foster... more Education Policy Futures (EPF) is a non-affiliated, independent, global forum dedicated to fostering knowledge exchange and collaboration among educators and researchers interested in the geopolitics of education policy futures. EPF is critical of accounts that either overestimate the coherence of political programmes or reduce change to a residual effect of undifferentiated power structures and relations, including global hegemonic projects and governmental rationalities. Instead, EPF encourages debates on the intensity and fragility of education policy futures as assemblages of various conditions, projects, actors, and materials. EPF therefore is philosophically and strategically committed to non-reductionist, post-positivist analyses and methodologies that capture the contestability and revisability of education policy futures. Relatedly, EPF advocates for progressive social change leading to more radical and equitable forms of education around the globe. To this end, EPF encourages, where possible, practical use of theory as vantage points through which to reimagine and transform education policy futures. EPF is open to anyone with similar research interests and commitments. EPF aims to host 3-4 seminars each year. To join the members list, participate in events and stay updated on any developments related to EPF, please email Andrew Wilkins: andrew.wilkins@gold.ac.uk

Dear colleagues We are excited to announce details of our first Education Policy Futures (EPF) ... more Dear colleagues

We are excited to announce details of our first Education Policy Futures (EPF) webinar for 2022 and we hope you can join us. We look forward to seeing you there. MS teams link available upon request.

Best wishes, EPF convenors (Andrew, Brad, Rita and Amanda)

Details:

Wednesday 9 March 2022
09:00-10:30 CTZ
15:00-16:30 GMT

Resilience and Digital Educational Privatization: Lego and the Quantification of Play

This paper discusses the ways that resilience discourse has been at the centre of digital educational privatization. Resilience programs for social emotional learning, grit, biometrics, and play based learning quantify affect creating the conditions for the commercialization of youth and schools as educational privatization takes an increasingly digital turn. The paper provides an overview of the trend and the broader structural imperatives driving it and then illustrates it further with the example of the project by Lego and the OECD to quantify play and make play-based learning a global educational standard. The paper calls for rejecting resilience discourse and the newest forms of privatization in favour of democratic educational projects.

Kenneth J. Saltman is a Professor of Educational Policy Studies at University of Illinois, Chicago. He is the author most recently of Scripted Bodies: Corporate Power, Smart Technologies and the Undoing of Public Education, The Swindle of Innovative Educational Finance, and the forthcoming book The Alienation of Fact: Digital Educational Privatization, AI, and the False Promise of Bodies and Numbers.

Chair: Andrew Wilkins, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Flyer attached if you wish to forward to any interested colleagues/students.