Education reform
Subtitle: a critical and post-structural approach
By: Stephen J. Ball.
Publisher: Open University Press
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Buckingham [England]; Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 164
Subjects: Education and state -- Great Britain.; Politics and education -- Great Britain.; Educational sociology -- Great Britain.; Educational change -- Great Britain.
Description: This book builds upon Stephen J. Ball's previous work in the field of education policy analysis. It subjects the ongoing reforms in UK education to a rigorous critical interrogation. It takes as its main concerns the introduction of market forces, managerialism and the national curriculum into the organization of schools and the work of teachers. The author argues that these reforms are combining to fundamentally reconstruct the work of teaching, to generate and ramify multiple inequalities and to destroy civic virtue in education. The effects of the market and management are not technical and neutral but are essentially political and moral. The reforms taking place in the UK are both a form of cultural and social engineering and an attempt to recreate a fantasy education based upon myths of national identity, consensus and glory. The analysis is founded within policy sociology and employ both ethnographic and post-structuralist methods.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [149]-159) and index.