Privatising educational leadership through technology in the Trumpian era

Abstract

This article focuses on the changes that the election of Donald Trump enables in education policy domestically and in education discourse internationally. I argue that Trump's own charismatic leadership style is a distraction from the privatisation that it is facilitating through Betsy DeVos, Trump's appointment as US Education Secretary. I draw on two contemporary examples of technology-enabled privatisation in education-cyber charters and predictive analytics using big data-to argue that in the Trumpian era, educational leadership may be shifting from corporatised forms, where professionals understood as "school leaders" fulfil corporate objectives through corporatised means. Instead, Trumpian-era privatised educational leadership retreats fully behind the technology boardroom door, where it renders superfluous lead professionals in education institutions, and where its objectives are to generate profit through re-conceptualising learners as data providers. This analysis highlights the need for new tools and methods to describe and explain what is happening, and to help develop understandings of what educational leadership in this new landscape might be, do or achieve.

System leadership as depoliticisation: Reconceptualising educational leadership in a new multi-academy trust

“…It has been identified predominantly as a context for and producer of diverse professional practices deemed ‘educational leadership’ (see e.g. Blackmore, 2011; Courtney, 2018; Courtney and Gunter, 2017; Gunter, 2015a). Gunter (2019b) goes further in arguing that ‘those who provide services in the form of schools (trustees, owners, chief executives, principals…)’ (2019b: 165) operationalise depoliticisation in return for the delegated power immanent in the project and for the status it brings.…”

“…It has been identified predominantly as a context for and producer of diverse professional practices deemed 'educational leadership' (see e.g. Blackmore, 2011;Courtney, 2018;Gunter, 2015a). Gunter (2019b) goes further in arguing that 'those who provide services in the form of schools (trustees, owners, chief executives, principals .…”

Brave new platforms: a possible platform future for highly decentralised schooling

“…Through their subsidiary company, DifSchool, they began to buy up schools and school consortia. The DifSchool company had started based on the American model of cyber charter schools in the early 2000s and by the late 2010s had achieved a global outreach (Courtney 2018). As they received the same state funding as other schools, but had reduced overhead costs with their digital technology-based education and home-schooling approach, the cyber charter school model proved very profitable.…”

Critical education policy and leadership studies (CEPaLS) research interest group (RIG) report

“…CEPaLS members publish widely in highly rated journals – for example, in Journal of Education Policy (Rayner et al, 2018); Educational Management, Administration & Leadership (Gibson and Simon, 2018); Management in Education (Rayner, 2017); British Journal of Sociology of Education (Courtney, 2017); Journal of Educational Administration and History (Courtney, 2018b); and Educational Review (Winchip et al, 2018).…”