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    Community empowerment? School autonomy, school boards and depoliticising governance

    77561.docx (79.73Kb)
    Access Status
    Open access
    Authors
    Gobby, Brad
    Niesche, R.
    Date
    2019
    Type
    Journal Article
    
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Citation
    Gobby, B. and Niesche, R. 2019. Community empowerment? School autonomy, school boards and depoliticising governance. Australian Educational Researcher. 46 (3): pp. 565-582.
    Source Title
    Australian Educational Researcher
    DOI
    10.1007/s13384-019-00303-9
    ISSN
    0311-6999
    Faculty
    Faculty of Humanities
    School
    School of Education
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/77359
    Collection
    • Curtin Research Publications
    Abstract

    © 2019, The Australian Association for Research in Education, Inc. The public education systems of many countries have undergone governance reforms involving administrative decentralisation, corporatisation and community ‘empowerment’. In this paper, we examine the significance of local participation and partnerships in the context of public school autonomy and their corporatisation. Focusing specifically on the use of school boards in the Independent Public Schools (IPS) initiative in Western Australia, we analyse the interview responses of five IPS principals using Foucauldian notions of governmentality, governance and community. The analysis shows that school boards are conceptualised and mobilised through the narrow technical–rationalist discourses of governance associated with corporatised school autonomy. School boards function as a new form of governmentality that constrains recruitment and participation in school decision-making in ways that depoliticise education. In response to the rise of school autonomy and corporatisation in Australia and elsewhere, we argue for wider local participation on school boards and local engagement with, rather than eschewal of, the politics surrounding education and the public good.

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