The ‘strong’ state and the ‘soft’ market in educational reform processes: Management philosophies and their consequences

Abstract

In contemporary western society, welfare work in general, particularly in education, has been struck by an endless series of policy reforms, discourses and technologies. These have consequences not only for the production of professional identity, but also for the way educational tasks are understood and handled. Inspired by the work of post-structuralist thinkers such as Foucault, Rose, Ball, Alvesson and Willmott, and the psychoanalytical thinker Žižek, the authors describe some of these consequences by analysing two examples which stem from the Danish educational context: upper secondary schools and vocational educational training. The first example shows how a ‘strong’ state logic results in a focus on numbers, which leads to a form of cynical leadership and an undermining of teachers’ professional judgment. The second example shows how leaders and teachers in a vocational training school, with help from critical utopian action researchers, seek to innovate their practices in accordance with ‘soft’ market logic. As a consequence, teachers’ professionalism is ‘hijacked’ by a new form of organizational professionalism.