Critical approaches to education policy and leadership

Abstract

On June 30, 2010 a one-day research seminar funded by BELMAS, was held in the School of Education, University of Manchester. The seminar titled: Critical Approaches to Educational Leadership and Policy was held in the Ellen Wilkinson Building on Oxford Road. Interestingly Ellen Wilkinson (1891–1947) was an international socialist who worked for social justice. It was on this fitting note that the session began. There were two guest speakers: Stephen Ball opened the day with a keynote on the relationship between the state and markets, with a particular emphasis on new heterarchies through the interplay of private interests with government policy. The day ended with Pat Thomson presenting case studies of projects in schools with children demonstrating active learning, and how social movements start small and build through mutual learning and interest. In doing this, both speakers illustrated the purposes of critical work: to both understand the world we are in, and to seek to change it for the better. In between these two talks were two sets of papers: the first set focused on bigger picture issues of policy change: Jeff Buckles talked about the impact of performance regimes on practice; Richard Hatcher focused on the lack of research evidence for the Coalition Government’s marketisation of schools through an expansion of the Academies Programme and the importing of the Swedish ‘Free’ Schools; Colin Mills’s work explores the growth of consultants in the delivery of literacy policy; Kathryn Ecclestone and Marlene Morrision examined emotion as a policy strategy and the implications for leaders of having to be responsible for their own and others well being; Carlo Raffo raised the question of equity and the relationship between poverty and educational achievement; Howard Stevenson and Autumn Tooms presented work in progress on their thinking about comparisons of neoliberal policies in the UK and USA; and, the morning was closed with a paper by Terry Wrigley where he questioned the educational and research robustness of School Improvement and School Effectiveness. The second set of papers—centred on organisation— focused on close to practice research: Barbara Cole used narratives to examine inclusion and argued for a politics of hope; Patricia M. Davies presented an action research project in her school where children had opportunities for curriculum leadership; Linda Hammersley-Fletcher and Michelle Lowe drew on their projects on remodelling the school workforce to generate insights into the deployment of Teaching Assistants; Harriet Rowley examined the local strategies of a Social Housing Company in raising standards in a newly established Academy; Howard Stevenson drew on his project about workforce remodelling to present analysis of the role of unions in policy analysis; and, Ana-Cristina Popescu raised complexities about decentralisation by focusing on rapid educational restructuring in post-communist Romania. The discussion sessions during the day engaged with the keynotes and papers to generate a range of issues for the field and for BELMAS. Particular emphasis was given to the following as part of the field agenda: