Factories for Learning

Abstract

This book draws on empirical research based at Dreamfields Academy, a celebrated secondary academy in a large English city, to explore how the heightened marketization and centralization of education instigated through academisation is reproducing raced, classed and gendered inequalities. Over half of England’s secondary schools are now academies that receive funding directly from central government and operate as autonomous businesses. Academies’ impact on achievement levels has been hotly debated, but the social and cultural changes prompted by this model have received less scrutiny.Dreamfields’ ‘structure liberates’ ethos claims to free students from a culture of poverty through hard discipline. Its headteacher assumes the role of business executive, saviour, pioneering cowboy and military commander leading a redemptive troupe of teachers who act as ‘surrogate parents’ salvaging ‘urban children’. With its regimented routines and outstanding results, Dreamfields has received praise from across the political spectrum. This book examines the complex stories underlying the glossy veneer of success by exploring how persistent structural inequalities are concealed beneath the colour-blind rhetoric of aspirational citizenship. The book traces how students, teachers and parents navigate the everyday demands of Dreamfields’ results-driven conveyor belt as raced and classed inequalities are reshaped in new ways and spaces of democratic participation are foreclosed.The book explores how the hopes and dreams of students, parents and teachers are harnessed and mobilized to enact insidious forms of social control, as education develops new sites and discourses of surveillance.

Investigating the CEO of a MAT: Examining practices and positions on ‘the street’

“…It reveals that headship is being recultured and reconceptualised to incorporate distinct and new practices within a complex organisational structure which has the legal status of a business. It builds on work by Kulz (2015, 2017) on the headship of one academy, to examine CEO practice in a MAT. Previous heads of academies operated as street-level bureaucrats and street-level professionals, enjoying institutional autonomy.…”

“…As CEO, Edwards’ practice and position enables him to operate as a street-level bureaucrat , a street-level professional , a street-level policy entrepreneur and as a policy networker, entrepreneur and broker . The study has enabled a ‘lifting of the veil’ to reveal clear distinctions between Edwards as CEO and previous executive headteachers in charge of single academies such as the Principal in Kulz’s (2017) book. These are apparent in three ways: through Edwards’ position and the structure of the MAT; through his praxis, control, discretion and agency; and through his entrepreneurial disposition.…”

RESEARCHING PROFESSIONAL BIOGRAPHIES OF EDUCATIONAL PROFESSIONALS INNEWDARK TIMES

“…While there are emerging accounts of new forms of educational provision and professional positioning as 'school leaders' (e.g. Kulz, 2017;Salokangas and Ainscow, 2018), there has been little examination of position-taking by those inhabiting the CEO role in MATs in these new dark times. Our position is that the field of educational leadership does not currently access the intellectual resources necessary to bring meaning and explanation to this new role in new dark times, and so we argue that Arendtian scholarship provides the required thinking tools.…”

“…The study followed established ethnographic traditions of case studies of single schools (e.g. Kulz, 2017) and those of individual head teachers (or Principals) (e.g. Southworth, 1995;Wolcott, 1973).…”

Collaboration is Uncomfortable

“…Power is inescapable in the secondary setting. Through the structure of the institution, power relations are reproduced (Kulz 2017) and it is only by discussing them that we may begin to shift them. I control the content space and pace of learning, my position as teacher positions me as ‘knower’ and them as ‘unknower’, this asymmetry of power awarded to me by the institution is performed within the secondary institution, so much so that to when I attempt to step backwards from it, this can instil panic in the students.…”