Enterprise Education: Critical Implications for New Zealand Curriculum Governance

Abstract

The proliferation of non-state policy actors in public education systems globally has actuated a turn to new governance analysis within education scholarship. As part of this ‘governance turn’, education policy theorists have sought to clarify the interface between governance by non-state actors and public systems of policy formation and enactment. The phenomenon of ‘enterprise education’ has typically been neglected in examinations of this type, despite comprising a major point of intersection between new networks and public education governance. This article draws on governance theory and methods of social network analysis to posit that enterprise education constitutes a shift in curriculum governance. It shows that, in resemblance to related components of recent neoliberal education reform, enterprise education networks supplant public actors in their traditional prerogatives for curriculum development and delivery. The cooperation of public institutions in this process serves to enact a reconstitution and dilution of public responsibility, as these actors become enmeshed in polycentric networks that are neither exclusively private nor public.