 
Week 4 - Local School Management
|  | Local School Management: Is 'Geographic Location' Really the Central Feature of our Vision for Education in the New Millennium? |
| |
Listing of Papers | |
DR LORRAINE LING
Victoria, Australia
IN THE FIRST MOMENTS of the twenty-first century a new cultural context for education is developing. This culture results from the playing out of the New Right agenda in the economic, political and social policy-making arena. The New Right movement, which has dominated the world policy stage for the past two decades, with its two potentially contesting streams - neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism - continues to drive educational policy and practice at a global level. This movement with its emphasis on market forces, competition, economic rationalism, privatisation, quality assurance and measurement of outcomes, competency-based training and assessment and multiskilling, brings a specific culture to bear on education and the work of teachers, learners and teacher educators.
In this 'education for sale' culture, we are all required to become marketing experts and salespeople, entrepreneurs and corporate managers. Schools and universities must seek corporate sponsorship, charge fees and engage in partnerships with business and industry if they are to survive in the educational marketplace. This situation, however, has forced teachers and teacher educators into developing new structures and practices, into forging creative partnerships across sectors of society and into developing advanced marketing and management skills. In many instances, the corporate culture in educational institutions has resulted in more effective use of scarce resources, more efficient modes of operation, creative approaches to courses and evaluation and a less parochial view of what constitutes the context of teaching and learning, as well as what research is valuable. In this paper, a critical look is taken into the corporate culture of education, and the changing roles of educators.
The Marketing Imperative
'Take the risk - give it a try, it might just work. If we don't do it, the opposition will'. These are the sentiments of the market place where the corporate culture, competition and increased productivity are the central driving values. They are also the commonly heard utterances of teachers in schools and academics in universities, where government funding is reduced and the ability and will to market one's wares on the global educational market place is an imperative. At the same time, educators are being held more accountable for their activities, testing programs and quality assurance processes. In a knowledge society, where risk and uncertainty are an essential part of the social context, schools and universities, as the traditional repositories of knowledge, are major corporate players in the sale of knowledge and education to satisfy the believers in human capital theory.
'As developed by the Chicago School, human capital theory had two core hypotheses. First, education and training increase individual cognitive capacity and therefore augment productivity. Second, increased productivity leads to increased individual earnings, and these increased earnings are a measure of the value of the human capital.' (Marginson, 1993, p.38)
The New Right Political Agenda
The conjunction between human capital theory and economic rationalism is the inevitable product of the New Right political agenda, which has driven world politics for the past two-and-a-half decades. Under this neo-liberal agenda there are two strands.
The main one is conservative - the origin of the term 'the New Right'. Neoliberalism became the outlook of many conservative parties the world over. However, there is an important type of thinking that, in contrast to the conservative one, is libertarian on moral as well as economic issues (Giddens, 1998, p.6).
These two potentially conflicting strands of the New Right exert the dominant influence on public policy, including that which directs education. Thus, we have one strand - the conservative one - which demands a strong nation state with a contained role for the markets, heavy intervention in social and economic life and an assertion of strong state control over people's lives and work. The other strand - the liberal strand, however, asserts the need for a weak nation state where market forces are dominant and privatisation, individualism and opposition to the welfare state are central features. In the midst of this tension between the two strands of the New Right are the institutions of society, which include schools and universities.
The education system has responded to the New Right agenda in ways which reflect the inherent tensions in the agenda itself. On the one hand, educational policies call for a recognition of individual difference and a redress of inequality whilst, on the other, they call for performance indicators, standardised testing programs to allow for measurable outcomes to be gauged and corporate funding for public institutions. In schools, marketing plans and strategies are called for as a means to sell the features a school can offer to an increasingly market-oriented clientele. A quick browse through the home pages of schools on the Web will reveal the values and characteristics which schools see as being saleable to the consumers in the educational market place. In universities, which were regarded in 'traditional' times as communities of scholars, academics are now required to sell their wares in the form of expertise through consultancy, writings, courses, research findings and intellectual property in the local and global educational marketplace. This is the corporate culture of schools and universities, and the position description of teachers in schools and academics in universities is changing accordingly.
The New Teacher
The new teacher and the new academic must feel equally at home in the community selling education to all kinds of individuals and groups, or in the industrial/workplace setting, or in the international market-place hawking courses and opportunities around to potential buyers. Teacher educators, in particular, are being made aware of the new places for teaching and learning. The knowledge society, with its inherent risk and uncertainty, has brought a demand hitherto unseen for the professional development of teachers. Teacher educators are thus charged with the provision of highly current professional development courses for teachers and trainers. The intensification of teachers' work has been consonant with the intensification of academic work, however, and if teachers are to be encouraged to choose one professional development opportunity over another, some possibility of personal gain as well as professional gain will probably be preferred. Thus universities are offering credit transfer, recognition of prior learning and all kinds of flexible pathways into university award courses. The universities which succeed in cornering the professional development market will be the ones which are able to be flexible, open to looking at each individual request for credit on its merits and able to sell their 'professional development product' to an increasingly selective and demanding clientele.
Move to Faceless Encounters
Education does not now exist in any one context of time or space. With the notion of flexible provision of learning, the school, and particularly the university, can provide access to learning anywhere, at any time. Flexibility of provision involves a number of aspects.
Firstly, there is flexibility with regard to the location of learning. With a change from face-work to faceless encounters, educational institutions are required to provide a vast array of locations where people can have access to knowledge. This has been facilitated largely through the advances in technology and communication techniques, and allows clients to undertake learning in the workplace, the home, in another geographical location, perhaps in another hemisphere, or indeed, in any location demanded by the consumers themselves.
Secondly, flexible provision of knowledge involves time flexibility. Instead of having to attend a class between certain hours on certain days and times of the year, students are able to gain the knowledge required at any time of the day, week, year or stage of their life. The third form of flexibility required to sell knowledge is 'pace flexibility'. This allows the knowledge to be gained more rapidly or more slowly, dependent on the learners' needs, abilities, or situation, and also implies that learners may enrol on demand, be assessed on demand, be accredited on demand and thus exit on demand from the course. Another form of flexibility is that which allows institutions to enter into joint cross-credit agreements. Such an example is a course offered through La Trobe University, in Victoria, Australia, where students undertake half of the course - a Graduate Diploma in Vocational Education and Training - in an Institution of Technical and Further Education (TAFE) and are give credit into the other half of the course which is undertaken in the university.
These flexible pathways between the different sectors of the education system are increasingly breaking down pre-existing barriers and perception of institutional inferiority or superiority.
Learning Webs
The notion of Learning Webs to which Illich refers in Deschooling Society (1974) seems to be coming to fruition. The technological and communication possibilities of this new era are opening up opportunities for professional educators to sell their expertise and knowledge to those who want to buy it. It is also better allowing for a match to be made between those who can provide the knowledge and those who need or want it. Likewise, the notion of a knowledge exchange between those with different types of knowledge also seems to be reflected in the new culture of learning, whereby different forms of knowledge are seen as being complementary rather than contradictory or exclusive. Illich was critical of what he termed 'the institutionalisation of values' which occurred, where knowledge is seen as a consumer item to be bought and sold through institutions, such as schools and universities. We still see this situation, however, the values of institutions which sell knowledge are changing rapidly.
The contradictions of the New Right agenda continue to be played out in educational institutions in that there is an imperative to adopt the values of the market place and the corporate world, but in doing so, and in being attractive to potential clients, educational institutions must be more accessible, flexible, equitable, open to diversity and less elitist. Here, then, is the nexus between the conservative and the libertarian agendas being reflected in the work of educational institutions.
The Third Way
There is currently much being written (Apple, 1996; Giddens, 1998) about a Third Way which bridges the gap between the two potentially conflicting strands of the political agenda. Giddens (1998) refers to the Third Way Program as involving the following elements:
- the radical centre;
- the new democratic state (the state without enemies);
- active civil society;
- the democratic family;
- the new mixed economy;
- equality as inclusion;
- positive welfare;
- the social investment state;
- the cosmopolitan nation; and,
- cosmopolitan democracy. (p.70)
Giddens (1998) claims that the Third Way is about a reconstruction of the state which goes beyond the libertarian view of shrinking the state and the conservative view of the strong state. Giddens (1998) claims:
'The third way argues that what is necessary is to reconstruct [the state] - to go beyond those on the right 'who say government is the enemy' and those on the left 'who say government is the answer'. If there is a crisis of liberal democracy today it is not, as half a century ago, because it is threatened by hostile rivals, but because it has no rivals... the advance of the global marketplace and the retreat of large scale war are not the only factors affecting the structure of states or the legitimacy of governments. Other factors include the spread of democratization... the lapsing influence of tradition and custom... demand for individual autonomy...the emergence of a more reflexive citizenry. Democratization is outflanking democracy, and the imbalance must be addressed.' (p.71)
What then will the Third Way mean for the education system in general? Giddens (1998) claims that under the Third way there will be an implication of decentralisation and both and upward and downward devolution of power (p.72). He refers to this as 'double democratization'. Thus, in terms of education, there will be an increase in the flexibility of provision and the power of individuals and systems to assert their demands, needs and rights. Giddens (1998) also states that the role of the public sphere needs to be expanded and there needs to be greater 'transparency and openness, as well as the introduction of new safeguards against corruption' (p.73). In the case of educational institutions, their processes for entry, accreditation and assessment, equality and access will need to be open and transparent. Giddens (1998) proposes that: 'To regain and retain legitimacy, states without enemies have to elevate their administrative efficiency. Government at all levels is mistrusted partly because it is cumbersome and ineffective' p.74).
Education systems also need to improve their administrative efficiency as funding becomes tighter and demands for quality become greater. With the rationalisation of resources in education systems, administrative support is reduced. Thus what is left must become more streamlined and efficient in its processes in order to produce more with less. This also has consequences for staffing policies and staff selection, in that there is no room for waste or under-loaded teachers, academics or administrators in the system. Giddens (1998) also stresses the need for risk management which, in the new era, involves 'regulating scientific and technological change, as well as dealing with the ethical questions it raises' (p.76).
This is a central question for universities and schools, where there is a plethora of information available to students in a multitude of different forms. Some of this knowledge is legitimate and sound whilst other information is incorrect, spurious and ill-conceived. Students need the ability to distinguish between what is sound information and what is not. Equally, there is a need for the moral and ethical dimension of knowledge production and use to be addressed in order to protect all parties and bodies of knowledge.
Students Can Learn Anywhere
The Third Way then has major implications for educational institutions and policy, in that it is a radicalisation of what is currently being seen as the new culture of educational institutions. This new culture will not be all about where students learn, as that can be literally anywhere. It will not all be about what students learn, because that cannot be prescribed rigidly given the rapid rate of knowledge creation and change, nor will it be all about when learners learn, because that is totally flexible and open.
What Will Education Be About in the New Millennium?
It will be about flexibility, risk management, efficiency, accountability, quality assurance, increased outputs, comfort with constant change, acceptance of insecurity, transparency of processes and structures and celebration of diversity and difference. It will be about entrepreneurialism, marketing ability, currency of knowledge and skills, mobility and adaptability of educators. This radicalisation is already imminent and those who can take this culture and make it work will be the teachers and educators who lead us into the twenty-first century. Those who cannot accept this new culture are doomed to frustration, stress, redundancy and an acceptance that the world has moved on without them.
_____________________________________________________________
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr Lorraine Ling is Deputy Head of the School of Arts and Education at La Trobe University. She also works within the Institute of Education in the areas of educational administration, leadership and management, policy studies, theory and practice of education and vocational education and training. She supervises post-graduate students and has undertaken research and published in the areas of educational policy construction processes, values in education, diversity and disability and markets in education. Lorraine is secretary of the Professional Development Working Group of the Association for Teacher Educators in Europe and has worked extensively in Asia and Europe, where she has lectured to students and teacher educators. Prior to her work as a teacher educator, Lorraine taught in primary, secondary and technical schools in both metropolitan and rural settings.
Lorraine M. Ling can be contacted by email at:
L.Ling@latrobe.edu.au
_____________________________________________________________
REFERENCES
Apple, Michael W., 1996, Cultural Politics and Education. Open University Press, UK.
Giddens, Anthony, 1998, The Third Way. Polity Press, UK.
Illich, I, 1974, Deschooling Society. Penguin Books, UK.
Marginson, S., 1993, Education and Public Policy in Australia. Cambridge University Press, Melbourne.
|
|
| | |
