Chen, Hung-Chang; (2018) Disciplining and Governing Headteachers? Exploring Headteachers' Administrative Placement in the Local Education Department in Taiwan. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis sets out to investigate the newly developed aspiring headteachers’ administrative placement (AP) across several local educational departments in Taiwan, a topic under-addressed in most studies of Taiwanese headship preparation. It mobilises qualitative case studies of three AP schemes in three different local districts to explore the rationale, structural content, practices and effects of the AP schemes. Through a number of Foucauldian conceptual lenses, this research aims to question the role of the AP schemes by critically examining the interrelated issues of power relations, discursive meanings and subjectivity within the AP practices. The research reviews the relevant concepts and practices of headship preparation and administrative placement. In addition, Michel Foucault’s thinking tools are used to critically investigate the field of headship preparation and then to form the theoretical framework of this study. The central finding demonstrates that although the AP schemes make contributions to developing several aspects of aspiring heads’ capabilities, they also subject them to a range of disciplinary and dividing practices that on the one hand increase their capabilities and on the other hand strengthen their compliance to and cooperation with the local authority. Their participation in the AP also secures the local delivery capacity which chiefly serves to accomplish organisational and political ends. The thesis argues that the finding adds to what we know about headship preparation and moves us from viewing it as simply a developmental and progressive preparatory programme, to reading it as both a disciplinary and a governmental technology that renders participants knowable, administrable and governable, one that ultimately serves to effectively manage the population of heads at both micro and macro levels. This thesis holds significance for providing an alternative conceptualisation of the AP scheme through a robust theoretical framework which is sorely lacking in much of the headship preparation literature.

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