Suchergebnisse

Education systems across much of Europe (and indeed the world) are going through a period of challenge around growing and globalised market pressures to improve academic performance. Governments have shifted towards a market-based understanding of education which sees competition and freedom within tightly regulated accountability measures as solutions to problems within the education system (Levin, 1998; Whitty, 2005). Indeed, Europe is described as operating transnational policy-making (Moutsios, 2007). Freire (1985) has argued that education is political and that educators are political actors. This paper considers the perspectives of English primary school head teachers in relation to educational austerity and explores the degree to which they can operate critical consciousness, which Friere viewed as essential for emancipation and transformation. The paper argues that rather than being subject to the deregulation of education with greater autonomy devolved to schools, English primary head teachers are experiencing what Helgøy et al (2007) describe as the re-regulation of education and a reduction of autonomy which these head teachers find increasingly difficult to align with their educational values.

This article considers the experiences and perceptions of practising English headteachers and the tensions that they face when juggling government prescription and government initiatives, which may be antagonistic to their educational values and beliefs. Managerial control over teachers work has been particularly acute and destructive to 'human flourishing'. Headteachers have a moral and ethical responsibility for the welfare and education of pupils. Such professional ethics oblige the professional to seek the good of the pupil and therefore good is viewed as intrinsic to the work of an educator. Thus headteachers are directly involved in negotiating between sometimes contradictory imperatives and drivers. How then does the headteacher cope with what Colley refers to as 'situated ethics work'? This article presents data derived from written responses from 10 headteachers that begin to open up this question. I argue that it is not uncommon for people to weaken in their values-driven stance when under great pressure. It is however important to recognize the extent to which educational values are constrained by neo-liberal value-based market agendas in order to continually question and re-evaluate what is happening within education rearticulating this for the benefit of pupils.

English primary schools are considered quasi‐collegial institutions within which staff communicate regularly and openly. The activities of staff, however, are bound by institutional norms and conditions and by societal expectations. Wider agendas of governmental control over the curriculum and external controls to ensure accountability and learning standards have influenced the development and purposes of middle leaders' roles. This is a conceptual paper that explores issues around the agency of primary school middle leaders within a wider context of the political and educational agenda. Through a reconsideration of research conducted by one of the authors since the inception of the notion of 'subject leaders', we exemplify ways in which primary school middle leaders' attitudes have developed and changed over the past 15 years. In this paper we identify attitudes to leadership, the influence of distributed leadership on primary school role‐holders and possible ways forward for middle leaders.