TY  - UNPB
TI  - Visible strategies in pedagogy and management : schools' responses to the quasi-market system
KW  - Secondary schools
KW  - Admission
KW  - Parental choice
KW  - Marketisation of education
KW  - Educational values
KW  - Theses
UR  - http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.487301
AV  - public
EP  - 278
N1  - Leaves 222-278 are appendices
ID  - discovery10007441
M1  - Doctoral
PB  - Institute of Education, University of London
Y1  - 2008///
A1  - Ohmori, Fujio
N2  - ABSTRACT
In England, schools with self-management responsibility compete to be
chosen by parents, for whom information on exam/test results is available, and
student numbers as a result of parental choice decide the allocation of school
budgets. This quasi-market system, introduced by the Education Reform Act
1988, has survived the changes of government and premiership. There has also
been a continuing controversy between the advocates and critics of the quasimarket.
Strangely, both the advocates and critics agree on a paradoxical view that the
traditional academic model with rigorous teaching prevails in the quasi-market
even though parental choice is complex and diverse. The schooling model is
influenced by parental choice only indirectly through the schools' strategies.
Based on Basil Bernstein's theory, this thesis proposes a hypothesis that school
managers in the quasi-market tend to introduce more visible strategies oriented
towards explicit rules in pedagogy and management, or towards 'conservative'
pedagogy and 'managerial' management, than invisible strategies oriented
towards implicit rules, or towards 'progressive' pedagogy and 'collegial'
management.
To examine the hypothesis, as a multiple-case study targeting six secondary
schools in a London borough, semi-structured interviews with headteachers were
carried out between 1994 and 1995, when the quasi-market system was 'purer'
than the current one that contains more interventionist mechanisms added by the
Labour government. The results of the study show that in five of the six schools,
the headteachers were adopting more visible strategies than invisible ones and
therefore, lend support to the hypothesis and its theoretical framework.
Thus the framework can be a solid basis for the systematic analyses of the
effects of the quasi-market forces on school strategies. In discussing the
implications of the findings for Labour's policies, research on quasi-markets, and
Bernstein's theory, reviews of recent literature demonstrate the sustained
relevance of this research to the education system at the time of writing the thesis.
ER  -