Abstract
This paper theorises the field of symbolic control and reflects on the critical literature of policy studies, exploring the possibilities that the former might offer to the analysis of global policy discourses and their up-take in specific national and local contexts. Starting from the rapidly expanding literature on the ‘globalising’ and ‘globalised’ projects that ‘modern’ nation states have been implementing to ‘manage change’, the paper argues that theories on governance can be developed considerably – theoretically and in terms of their capacity to guide empirical research – through their exposure to Bernstein’s sociological theory of symbolic control and Totally Pedagogised Society. Drawing data from an empirical study carried out in Greece, it explores changes in the field of educational administration towards the systematic implementation of ideas and practices of new public management, evident in processes of the selection, training and professional practice of middle level administrative staff. Semi-structured interviews with the new Heads of Primary and Secondary Educational Directorates were focused on how they perceive their position, roles and activity as important agents within the field of symbolic control, through which global policy discourses are enacted within the national education system, instituting new forms of practice at local levels.
Keywords
Globalisation and the ‘modernisation’ of education
This paper, focusing on the shifts taking place in the forms of knowledge and in relations of power in the Greek educational context, aims to reflect upon the ‘modernising’, ‘globalising’ projects implemented by ‘modern’ nation states around the world to ‘manage change’ in education and societies. In particular, we theorise the field of symbolic control and changes to the agencies and agents within this field over time, and the relation of this field to the field of economic production. The empirical case, exploring changes to the roles, responsibilities and work of educational administrators in Greece, exemplifies the on-going transformations of this field. It also provides an illustration of how agents from different factions of the middle class are involved in pedagogic work, and the increasing pedagogisation of social relations.
In the recent literature, the term ‘modernisation’ is linked to the emergence and contours of global (‘neo-liberal’) educational projects, centred by the logics of human capital formation within ‘learning societies’ (Seddon and Levin, 2013: 5). It draws attention to ‘re-regulatory trajectories’ evident in national education spaces (Seddon and Levin, 2013: 5), as nation-states develop their education reform agendas. So, modernising processes refer to the political programmes developed by governments in nation states, in conditions of globalisation and post-welfare regimes. The usefulness of the term is that it stands as a reminder that national policies today are more and more national manifestations of globalised education policy discourses and practices, and that their understanding necessitates approaches which ‘historicise’ and ‘contextualise’ them (Lingard, 2000, 2013).
Two other terms relevant to the topic are ‘New Managerialism’ and ‘Network-based Governance’, which refer to two overlapping processes and themes in research. The former refers to the introduction in the public sector and in education of the model, methods and practices of the so called ‘New Public Management’ (NPM). This involves replacing traditional bureaucracy and professionalism with sensibilities and practices drawn from private sector management (activity costing, total quality management, notions of leadership, ‘excellence’, etc.). As a discourse, NPM introduces an enterprise oriented view of professional practice. It emphasises target-setting, marketisation and choice, the measurement of performance, and evidence-based change. It expects agencies and agents to be customer centred, and to display transparency, adaptability to rapidly changing economic and social conditions, dynamism and innovative initiatives through mutual and continual learning and the cultivation of horizontal and non-hierarchical relationships (e.g. Clarke and Newman, 1997; Gee and Lankshear, 1995; Thrupp and Hursh, 2006). Network-based governance, on the other hand, refers to the ascendancy of networks and networking within the education policy field across different levels, from the global to the national and local. It is often explained in terms of the need of modern societies and governments to treat seemingly intractable policy issues that are difficult to respond to through traditional solutions. For example, at the supranational, European level, a claim is made in the relevant reports that through governance, the European Union (EU) will be able to meet the challenges the EU and the citizens of member states face in the new conditions of globalisation (e.g. European Commission, 2003). The emphasis is on a new type of ‘good governance’, capable of eliminating the shortcomings of national governments, which, among other things, often fail to implement new policies. More generally, for advocates, network governance brings new and innovative solutions to bear upon complex problems by mobilising into action all sectors: public, private and voluntary (Ball and Junemann, 2012).
NPM and (Network-based) governance are topics that have occupied a great deal of researchers’ activity in the field of critical policy studies. The former is centred on managerialism and its underpinning, neo-liberal ideology and practices (e.g. Lorenz, 2012); and the latter on changes in the role of the state induced by globalising forces, and how these affect the relationships between what is now seen as the networked state and education. In such research explorations, governance, in particular, has become a central concept, either as an analytical tool or more often as a general term to refer to the ways new forms of education provision, new education practices and roles for professionals, etc., are regulated in novel ways, in new localised/globalised spaces and with new instruments and ‘knowledge-based regulation tools’, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA-OECD), the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) and the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC-OECD) (Carvalho, 2012; Kanes et al., 2014; Lawn and Grek, 2012; Ozga, 2009, 2012; Pons and Van Zanten, 2007; Rambla, 2012; Rinne and Ozga, 2013; Rizvi and Lingard, 2010; Whitty, 2008).
From this perspective, we study the activity of educational administrators – an important category of agents within this field of action. We assume that this activity has been framed the last few years by constant education reforms in Greece, affecting schools and educational professionals. Our specific hypothesis is that, through the engagement of educational professionals with the reforms, global policy discourses are relayed, recontextualised and reproduced or changed in Greek education administration and in education more widely. Our analysis of the empirical case, centred on this group of agents, is an illustration of the view that the on-going modernising project in Greece, which these reforms constitute, is essentially a process of ‘pedagogisation’. This is a term with great potential for re-signification, exactly at the point where critical policy studies encounter the theory of symbolic control and its conceptual apparatus, especially the concept of the ‘Totally Pedagogised Society’ (TPS) (Bernstein, 1990, 2001a, 2001b), discussed in the next section.
We argue that the shifts identified in discourse and practice, especially through policies of evaluation and evidence-based performance, have the dynamic to transform this field of action. These changes, evident also in the proliferation of pedagogising discourses, raise fundamental questions about the deep implications of global modernising policies for education, its specialised professionals and the entire society.
From governance to the theory of symbolic control and ‘Totally Pedagogised Society’
In contexts driven by the ‘policy epidemic’ emanating from powerful international institutions (Ball, 2003) and diffused in national education fields through ‘travelling policies’, governance in a Europeanised education space (Lawn and Grek, 2012) has been seen as one of the crucial objectives of the Lisbon Strategy and subsequent official texts and actions of the European Commission. For example, in Greece, the ‘New School’ plan, the document announcing the educational reform programme of the 2009 socialist government – part of which is targeting professionals working in education administration – makes a clear reference to this on-going EU objective.
Foucault’s theory helps to conceptualise such phenomena through the notions of discourse and governmentality as the two horizons from where policies and practices in this domain can be analysed (Doherty, 2007; Foucault, 1991). Discourse refers to the totality of signs, practices and relationships that produce regimes of truth. The governance discourse promotes a technocratic model of steering and regulating the world and ruling out alternatives, and is animated by the search for ‘rational’, ‘responsible’ and ‘efficient’ instruments of problem management (Lemke, 2009). Governmentality helps to trace the ways that policy practices, like governance, in their concrete materiality, operate to fashion individual and collective ‘subjectivities’, the practices through which government is implemented, the forms of self and the subjectivities presupposed by the different practices of government and, ultimately, the transformations of subjects that governing practices are aimed at (Foucault, 1988, 1991; Haahr, 2004). By adopting this point of view, researchers argue that the dominant discourse of governance, which is developing in the European educational policy space, produces regimes of knowledge and truth and fashions teachers and other educational professionals’ subjectivities in particular ways (Ball, 2013). In studying the domain of educational administration, the object of our inquiry, governmentality, suggests a focus on emerging forms of practice and the kinds of knowledge promoted or excluded by them, and on the criteria through which activities are perceived to be appropriate and legitimate and vice-versa.
Our argument is that theories of governmentality used in the analysis of governance discourses will benefit from an encounter with Bernstein’s theory of symbolic control and TPS. The term of ‘symbolic control’ is used by Bernstein (1990, 2001a) to refer to the field and the agencies and agents which specialise in dominant discursive codes, that is the codes which, within a given society, shape legitimate ways of thinking, relating and feeling. Symbolic control is defined as ‘the means whereby consciousness is given specialised form and distributed through forms of communication which relay a given distribution of power and dominant cultural categories’ (Bernstein, 1990: 134). The theory of symbolic control provides a conceptual apparatus for the analysis of educational knowledge and pedagogical processes by describing principles of knowledge organisation, meaning making and ‘orientation’ to knowledge, pedagogic discursive codes and modes of subjectification. The second term, TPS, was inspired by observations related to the transformations in the production, circulation and use of knowledge, and especially the processes and practices for its pedagogising, in globalised conditions (Bernstein, 2001b, 2001c). It is an analytical device that maps conceptually the pedagogic terrain in the radical shift from the paradigm of education to the paradigm of (lifelong) learning, and extends this theory significantly (Ball, 2009; Bonal and Rambla, 2003; Gewirtz, 2008; Singh, 2015).
Several critical policy studies researchers have made use of the term TPS to address questions of governance and governmentality, contributing to the analytical development of the concept. Gewirtz (2008) points out that learning discourses are taking up a totalising role in governing and regulating individuals as subjects willing to be trained and retrained. Ball connects the TPS with the technology of performativity (Ball, 2004) as the regulative aspect of lifelong learning discourses. Components of performativity regulate public and private life, from schools’ work practices to ‘total mothering’ (Ball, 2009). Robertson (2011, 2012, 2013), also, contributes to the development of the theory of symbolic control and TPS by describing the transformations in education and teachers’ work in particular, brought about by the action of global governing agencies, such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Bank and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). She utilises the concept of boundary to analyse changes in power and control relations and to identify the re-bordering and re-ordering processes which reconfigure, territorially and functionally, the national scale along spatial levels from global to local, and alter agents’ practices within the field of symbolic control. A significant idea to note in her analysis is that international surveys used in education are peculiar types of pedagogic devices that govern inside national territories through the production of knowledge about the ‘good teacher’, ‘professional development practices’ and ‘good teaching methods’, and through linking this knowledge to students’ results (see also Kanes et al., 2014; Tsatsaroni and Evans, 2014).
This literature, which brings together the concepts of (network-based) governance and TPS, can be enriched further by drawing on the work of Bernstein scholars who, focusing on changing forms of knowledge and modes of pedagogic communication, have made significant contributions to the development of the theory of symbolic control and TPS. Tyler (2010) argues that, for example, political interpretations of international test data attempt to ‘re-centre’ state control over education systems through setting and assessing standards in a de-centred environment. Singh (2015), also, draws attention to the ways the nation state, with its reduced power in the economic field, exerts power and influence in the symbolic field. She takes up Bernstein’s suggestion to explore how the state’s influence is not simply exercised in and through the administrative apparatus of state education departments and the formal schooling institutions but increasingly through a diverse range of agencies and agents, which are located within and beyond the field of symbolic control. Thus, Bernstein scholars, identifying the new ways that the state influences the expanding field of symbolic control, have developed the concept of TPS to describe the increasing pedagogisation of society, and to study the modes of pedagogic communication through which institutions and individuals are regulated.
In particular, TPS points to phenomena described by governance, such as the emergence of ‘transboundary’ relations, eroding the nation space (Robertson, 2013: 91); ‘trainability’, that is ‘the ability to profit from continuous pedagogic reformations and so cope with the new requirements of “work” and “life”’ (Bernstein, 2001b: 365), associated with lifelong learning discourses that take up a totalising role in regulating individuals; performativity, as the regulative aspect of such discourses; and the mobilising into action of public, private and voluntary sectors in matters of education. In addition, the concept of TPS suggests, first, tracing systematically the changes in the strength of insulation of borders and boundaries, demarcating the field of symbolic control, on the one hand, from the state and, on the other hand, from the cultural field. As already explained, the field of symbolic control consists of agencies and agents which ‘shape legitimate ways of thinking, ways of relating, ways of feeling, forms of innovation and so specialise and distribute forms of consciousness, disposition and desire’ (Bernstein, 2001a: 24). Bernstein distinguishes between the modes of production of discursive codes by two sorts of agencies: those that predominantly receive governmental funding and operate in the field of symbolic control; and those that are largely funded by commercial interests and so operate in the cultural field – a subset of the field of economic production (Bernstein, 2001a; Singh, 2015). He suggests that the significant growth of the agencies producing discursive codes, located in the cultural field (e.g. Pearson’s educational productions) ‘may bring together or blur the relationship between the cultural field and the field of symbolic control’ (Bernstein, 1990: 157). So, in the present, globalised world, TPS helps researchers to identify the variety of agencies and agents operating within and across the fields of symbolic control and cultural production, and which might lead to the emergence of ‘hybrid formations’ (Singh, 2015: 10).
Second, TPS suggests that crucial for studying the extended pedagogisation processes going on in today’s societies is the description of changes in the pedagogic device, a ‘principal producer of symbolic control’ (Bernstein, 1990: 159; Tyler, 2001: 149). The pedagogic device provides the ‘intrinsic grammar’ of pedagogic discourse through rules of distribution, recontextualisation and evaluation (Bernstein, 1990: 180, 2000). These are the principal means through which symbolic orders are reproduced, contested and transformed. Furthermore, in the era of lifelong learning discourses, the constant reforms and the political programmes of nation states to modernise their education systems can be understood as re-centred moves, operating principally with the evaluative rules of the pedagogic device. As Singh (2015) puts it: [C]ontrol over the evaluative rule of the pedagogic device becomes the means by which the state attempts to re-assert control over the increasing proliferation of modes of knowledge distribution and recontextualisation through new circuits or networks of pedagogic communication (Singh, 2015: 6).
The proliferation of pedagogic discourses, apparent in the spread of lifelong learning policies and practices, means that the influence of the state over the evaluative rules is strengthened as control over the distributive rules (who gets access to what kinds of knowledge) and the recontextualising rules (the pedagogising of knowledge) weakens. In conditions of lifelong learning, it is simply not possible to control these rules (Singh, 2015). This relates, exactly, to the argument that the proliferating lifelong learning discourses are not ‘simply a façade for the concealed political agendas of the neoliberal performative state shaping education along market principles’ (Singh, 2015: 12). Such increased number of pedagogic discourses call researchers to analyse their intrinsic grammar. Central to this is the importance that this theory attributes to power and control relations for understanding changes in knowledge organisation and its pedagogic communication. For Bernstein: [p]ower relations…create boundaries, legitimise boundaries, reproduce boundaries, between different categories of groups, gender, class, race, different categories of discourse, different categories of agents. Thus power always operates to produce dislocations, to produce punctuations in social space (Bernstein, 2000: 5). [P]ower establishes legitimate relations of order. Control…establishes legitimate forms of communication appropriate to the different categories. Control carries the boundary relations of power and socialises individuals into these relationships (Bernstein, 2000: 5). [D]ominant power and control relations are realised as forms of pedagogic communications (Bernstein, 2000: 5).
We have argued in this section that on-going transformations in national education systems have been described in the critical policy studies literature through the concept of governance. Furthermore, we proposed that the shift from the paradigm of education to the paradigm of learning, at the level of pedagogical knowledge and practice, would benefit from being researched through the theory of symbolic control and TPS. Our claim is that such transformations dislocate learning from bureaucratic schooling institutions and school teachers and relocate it across a spectrum of agencies in the expanded fields of symbolic control and cultural fields (Singh, 2015). This results in the production of competing and often contradictory pedagogic discourses, regulated by new pedagogic communication codes. These new codes provide agents, teachers, learners, researchers, etc., with opportunities to invent new ways of working and new spaces for identity construction. Bernstein offers critical policy scholarship possibilities to study these new practices and relationships.
‘Historicising’ and ‘contextualising’ the Greek modernisation project
In analysing the specific policies through which the Greek educational authorities attempt to institute new forms of administrative practice, and in exploring the new forms of power and knowledge inscribed in the daily work of professionals within this field, the present study attempted to ‘historicise and contextualise’ the on-going changes (Lingard, 2013: 123; Robertson, 2013). In the present section, a rough sketch is drawn of the trajectory of the modernising political projects in Greece during the last decades, purporting to reform education administration.
In the recent history of Greek education, there have been a significant number of important modernising moves with reference to the field of education administration. Since the late 1970s and especially since 1982, when the socialist political party assumed power promising to democratise society, successive governments, especially those led by the socialists, attempted, through legislation, to redistribute responsibilities and roles to the middle level agents in the field of symbolic control, redefining the power relations between the state and the schooling institutions and agencies. Such legislative measures were premised on the need to change the mode of legitimation in decision-making and the control of education, from arbitrary rule and command to legal rational action and democratic procedures (Andreou and Papakonstantinou, 1994; Bouzakis, 2003; Zambeta, 1994). Progressively, such legislation also sought to modernise the system and to align it to European models of school organisation and practice and, since 2000, to objectives and targets of the EU. Teacher assessment and school evaluation – abolished in 1982 – was reintroduced through legislation in 1997 as an important component in the exercise of administrative practice. Though this measure failed to materialise, because of the massive resistance and opposition from teachers’ unions, it was still significant because it brought evaluation and accountability into the educational agenda, creating conditions for negotiations over its meaning and scope.
In this paper, we concentrate on recent education reforms associated with the programme ‘New School: The Student First’, which the Greek Ministry of Education, under a socialist government, presented on December 2009 (Ministry of Education, 2009). The reform focused on the reorganisation of the educational system, the restructuring of its administrative framework and the reforming of the school curricula, aiming at strategic targets such as the improvement of student performance in literacy, mathematics, physics, foreign languages and information and communications technology (ICT). Part of this modernising program was the introduction of Law 3848 (2010) which, among other changes, described a new role for Educational Executives. Considering them as key agents in the implementation of the reform, it established new criteria and new procedures for their selection. The nature of these changes suggests that the administration of education and changes in the roles and practices of educational professionals and teachers formed the core of Greek educational reform.
More specifically, this political programme of reforms in its intentions and rhetoric was radical, aiming to transform education according to European standards, objectives and forms of accountability. The programme initiated a series of interventions – innovative curricula and pedagogical methods, new programmes for the training and continuous development of teachers, and self-evaluation of schools – and emphasised the political will to decentralise the system and to strengthen the autonomy of agencies and agents at all levels of the education hierarchy (Ministry of Education, 2009). The reform was also a distinctly ‘pedagogising’ programme, crucially introducing processes of retraining of middle-level educational professionals – the new Heads of Primary and Secondary Educational Directorates (HEDs), legally responsible for the functioning of schools in different prefectures in the country, and school advisors – as well as school teachers through large, in-service training programmes. This reform called schools to measure up to the challenge of the new age and to ‘open’ to society. It encouraged schools to experiment with new ways of working and to cooperate with the local community and the wider world. It also encouraged them to experiment with new teaching and learning activities and to embrace lifelong learning principles and practices. The language of the reform was also distinctive, articulating a discourse about quality, innovation, excellence and the values of being active, productive and competitive (Ministry of Education, 2009).
Summing up, the innovations characterising the ensemble of these radical reforms aimed to weaken existing boundaries closing and isolating schools from the social world, and to allow movement from ‘inwards’ to ‘outwards’, and the reverse. In particular, a significant feature of the reform was the opening of the school pedagogical and administrative space to new actors and players. As a political programme it represents an attempt on the part of central government and the state to enhance its influence and exercise control over schools and teachers, and to recruit the principals of schools, middle-level administrative and pedagogic advisory agents – that is, the totality of education agents and agencies within the field of symbolic control – into its radical vision. At the discursive level, the reforms represent a change in boundaries insulating the political sphere and the field of politics and respective interests, from the field of education. The insulation between the state and the symbolic field weakens, and the boundaries between the field of the specialised agents of education and agents in the wider cultural field are transgressed (see next section; also Sifakakis et al., 2015).
The recent economic and political developments in Greece and the associated austerity measures (Traianou, 2013) have obviously affected this ‘modernising’ project. Nevertheless, it still preserved its impetus with subsequent, mixed governments, ideologically and politically, and the coalition government (conservative and socialist parties), (2012–2014), preceding the current one. The crisis provoked resistances and lack of trust in the coalition government’s motives behind the promotion of the reform measures. As data discussed in the next section shows, this discourse, crucially, affected the sensibilities of the education community, their language, their way of thinking, feeling and responding to ideas, and their values and practices. Current conditions in the country suggest that the situation is unstable, especially after a new coalition, led by the left, and supported by an independent right wing party, assumed power in January 2015. This government has already announced new criteria and procedures for the selection of educational directors, and changes in the structure and the responsibilities in the educational administration field.
‘Modernising’ Greek educational administration: An illustration of transformative processes in the field of symbolic control
Focusing on the ‘modernisation’ of the Greek education administration, the current section presents data from interviews with education administration professionals on the conditions of their professional practices and the transformative processes in the field of symbolic control. The following subsection briefly presents the methodology of the study.
Methodology
The policies promoted by the Greek Ministry of Education were similar to those implemented in other European countries and many countries around the world (e.g. Ball, 1998; Gewirtz et al., 2004; Gunter and Forrester, 2009; Lingard, 2000; Whitty et al., 1998). The study reported here addresses changes in education administration in Greece. It aims to reveal the ways in which the shifts taking place in the forms of knowledge and in relations of power in conditions of Europeanisation and globalisation of education (Dale and Robertson, 2009; Lawn and Grek, 2012; Rawolle and Lingard, 2008) are contextualised in the national space. The study as a whole concentrates on three recontextualising instances (Bernstein, 1990; Singh et al., 2013). The first is the process of selection of the new HEDs. The second consists of the processes of ‘training’ they were submitted to, in preparation for assuming their new roles. This training was also a requirement of the new legislation, asking HEDs to present certification of competence in educational administration – as well as certification of competence in ICTs. The third recontextualising process occurs in the exercise of administrative practices by the selected professionals.
Elsewhere (Sifakakis, 2012; Sifakakis et al., 2015), we have presented in detail the key features of this discourse, as expressed in the pedagogic discourse, produced and enacted in the first two recontextualising instances just described, namely the selection procedures of middle-level educational professionals (principals of schools, HEDS and school advisors), and their training. Especially, we analysed the new legislation, the procedures and criteria of selection and the ‘pedagogical’ materials used by the selection committee appointed by the government in this process. This research highlighted the ways in which the new forms of knowledge and power relations, promoted through dominant global and European discourses on education, have been instantiated and institutionalised within the field of educational administration in Greece. Our analysis indicated that the pedagogising process undergone by the professionals in educational administration constituted a strong normative framework, which tightened control over them and the education field. Furthermore, resources deemed legitimate to support the action of these new educational professionals were those drawn mainly from fields outside of education. These findings suggest a weakening of the boundary between education and other action fields, such as the economy, the market and the arena of politics, indicating that principles from other fields tend to colonise and redefine education values and purposes.
In this paper we focus on the last recontextualising instance, exploring how the principles of ‘New School’ reform are inscribed and enacted in the daily work of educational administrators. In particular, we ask whether boundaries are ‘recognised’ (Bernstein, 1990: 129) and reproduced, or whether they are resisted and transformed.
We draw on data produced through semi-structured interviews with HEDs, aiming to trace boundary maintenance or change in the interviewees’ talk. The sample of interviewees comprised 19 HEDs – 10 from primary and nine from secondary education – almost one-sixth of the 116 HEDs in the country. The interview protocol, centred on professionals’ administrative duties and practices, was formulated along four axes and included questions about the procedures through which they were selected; the (re)training programme they had to go through; their perceptions of the role and content of their work; and their views and perspectives about schools. Policies concerning Quality Assurance and Evaluation across the public sector and in education, elaborated and implemented from 2009 onwards by successive governments, referred to earlier, were the common denominator of the questions comprising the interview schedule (see Appendix 1).
The analytical framework deriving from the theory of Symbolic Control and TPS is based on the foundational concept of ‘boundary’. Boundary is a deep metaphor driving the development of the language of Bernstein’s theory. It expresses a concern ‘with how distributions of power are realised in various, and often silent, punctuations of social space which construct boundaries’; and a concern ‘with how these boundaries are relayed by various pedagogic processes so as to distribute, shape, position and opposition forms of consciousness’ (Bernstein, 2000: xiii). Relations between and within symbolic categories (strongly or weakly insulated boundaries) corresponding to power and control relations are the conceptual means to model pedagogic discourse and practice in the specific field of professional action. The concept of ‘meaning orientation’ refers to ‘privileged and privileging referential relations’ (Bernstein, 1990: 15; emphasis in the original); that is the prioritising of meanings within a context and the power – deriving from relations between contexts – which is attributed to certain meanings and those who select them. Orientation is defined in terms of ‘introverted’ or ‘extroverted’ meanings, corresponding to introjected or projected types of identity formation. The former promotes inwardness, generating inner commitments related to the perceived intrinsic value of specific knowledge domains, while the latter promotes outwardness reflecting demands and contingencies of external fields of practice (Beck and Young, 2005; Bernstein, 2000; Sarakinioti, 2012; Sarakinioti et al., 2011).
This analytical framework aided the development of a grid serving as a theoretically informed set of categories for the in-depth analysis of the interviews (Appendix 2). Data were codified along two axes: the axis of power and the axis of knowledge. Then they were synthesised to locate shifts in discourse. In particular, the methodology developed in the context of the present research contributes to the identification and systematic description of the ensemble of rules directing the selection and organisation of particular forms of knowledge; the tracing of the ways this knowledge articulates with power in the action field of education administration; and the exploration of the ways individuals are shaped in their entanglement with global ‘governmental rationality’ (Lemke, 2001) in local contexts. In Bernstein’s language, the tools developed in the present research help to describe how individuals are engaging with the power relations and modalities of control of the pedagogic discourse. In other words, they assist in tracing and analysing the transformations in the relations of power and the principles of social control which regulate the conditions, the communication and the processes of pedagogic discourses in this action field. This way, they allow us to explore the bordering and ordering processes ‘as a means of defining which entities and identities are made visible and governable and which are not’ (Robertson, 2011: 284; see also Bernstein, 2000; Singh, 2015; Singh et al., 2014).
The pedagogisation of the discourse of ‘modernising’ state schools and education
The present section discusses how the pedagogic discourse has been translated in the agents’ talk about their everyday professional activity. Our theoretical framework directs us to consider three dimensions, namely, the delimitation of subjects as agents, the forms of legitimate communication in education administration, and the meanings permeating and defining professional practice in this field.
The administrative work: Agency and specialisation
Concerning the relations of power, the interviewees in our data talk about a strongly demarcated administration field which operates on the basis of common rules, procedures and criteria, as required by the new forms of communication and action in the entire public sector. They appear to distinguish the education administration space from the field of politics and political power (the minister, the political parties, the factions of the trade unions, etc.) and to conceive it as an organic part of a re-concentrated public administration sector (see Ball and Junemann, 2012). This suggests that HEDs resist change and attempt to maintain and even to strengthen the boundary insulating the political field from the field of symbolic control, traditionally shaped through bureaucratic–professional relationships. The extract below shows that the interviewees appear to recognise the need for new forms of governance in education administration, where the administrative field would be separate from the field of politics.
As I’ve already said, a different kind of structure of education, a different organisational chart, another General Secretary at the Ministry, abolition of the regional directorate and empowerment of the [prefecture level] directorates of education, a different organisational model with HEDs not evaluated according to what political party they belong to, right; but actually evaluated objectively…
Such demarcations, however, are not always clear-cut in the talk of the interviewees. This is not only because of the long tradition of dependence of middle level administrative agents on political parties but also because – as a number of them recognise – the political is intrinsic to educational administrative work.
… The posts of the Directors of Education, whether we like it or not, are somehow political posts as well. That’s how those below and the people see them. Has the government changed? Who will be ‘in’? Those who support the government…
Many of the participants in the interviews state that education is a public good which must be provided to every individual with no exception, and this right must be protected by the state. At the same time, they are entertaining the idea of schools being opened to contributions offered by hybrid formations (Singh, 2015), located in an emerging space between the cultural and the symbolic fields (e.g. teams from the public and private sectors, acting as trainers for in-service courses for educational professionals). However, they clarify that the form of participation of such agencies must be clearly defined and distinctive. They also argue that the adoption of administration models and practices that are currently dominant in fields outside education (especially the economy and the market) could aid schools in their improvement efforts; but that the professional in education administration needs to adapt them in order to make them relevant to the principles and the conditions of education, and operable in the school context.
The extract below illustrates the predominant position of interviewees in understanding the field of education administration as distinct from the intrusions of political power while at the same time wishing the state would continue to provide the fundamental conditions for the operation of the schools.
The society actually invests in school and has expectations from schools. It has to be related to the economy of a society and generally to a wider level. Political power attempts to implement a certain policy and due to the financial resources it possesses it can direct certain things. Generally, the relation needs to be close and there should be interaction and interdependence and one should expect benefits from the other. Economy from society and society from economy and the political power to oversee and the country to gain benefits. This I think is what is expected.
The interviewees also make the point that the state should ensure that market or other influences are filtered by educational agents.
Apart from parents and colleagues, we have visits from agencies, public and private; things have been complicated, they have been complicated… They think that anyone may enter the school-field whenever they like and promote whatever they want… There, you understand, there are issues, there are limitations… Of course one may enter the field, given that permission is [officially] granted, given that it is not proselytising or prohibited. These are rather sensitive issues and we all need to be cautious and careful.
We can sum up on this point by saying that, although we have identified in HEDs’ talk instances which entangle them in relationships at the intersection between the cultural and the symbolic field, the overall data suggest that they, as agents of symbolic control, tend to preserve the strong boundary traditionally separating the two fields.
With reference to the axis of knowledge (see previous section), the interviewees commented on the criteria used for the selection of HEDs and on the ‘legitimate’ professional qualifications, capabilities and knowledge promoted by the training programmes which were mandatory for them. They also expressed their views on the knowledge resources that they see as appropriate or necessary in exercising their daily administrative work.
Interview participants state that the training programmes to which they have been submitted use a range of knowledge resources, such as management, economics, law, etc. Most of the interviewees appear to appreciate such knowledge, based in fields outside of education. However they did point out that this knowledge should be adjusted to the purposes and practices of the field of education. Most of them appear to believe that the most appropriate training agencies and ‘educators’ to be involved in the training of education administration professionals are those that specialise in administration and management, independently of the sector (public or private) in which they are located. These views suggest that, on the axis of knowledge, the strength of the boundary insulating knowledge specific to education from knowledge associated with other fields tends to erode, indicating changes in power relations.
Yes, I think EKDDA [The National Centre for Public Administration and Local Government] is a good agency for education issues regarding administration, because a large part of it is related to administration.
… Regarding the financial aspect of education… really good session that gave us all the different financial aspects of how school units operate… how the private sector sees the administration. There was one trainer, specialised in human resources, from the National Bank… and the others were saying: ‘what does he have to offer?’… That’s not it, this offers a perspective of management.
There was one [trainer] who was employed in the Banking sector, who introduced us to how the private sector operates, how a bank operates, the role of the director, the role of the deputy director, the role of the staff. We realised how public administration operates. People from the private sector … We saw the criteria, the standards, the objectives and the processes… Utterly useful.
The interviewees often acknowledge that their professional work requires them to be knowledgeable both about the functioning of the education system and the disciplines of education through which teachers and other education professionals are formed. However, they rarely refer to their daily activity in terms of it being a specialised type of work, anchored in specialised disciplinary–professional forms of knowledge (Young, 2013). The majority of the interviewees referred to ICT skills, their acquisition and certification, as of high priority, a necessary tool in their work. Furthermore, they appear to place value on and prioritise knowledge grounded in everyday experience in their field of action. Moreover, common sense reasoning about problems encountered tends to be valorised while forms of decision making based on scientific and education professional principles appear to be depreciated. Knowledge grounded in workplace experiences is emphasised more than acquisition of knowledge through engaging with academic/scientific domains. Overall, it is competencies perceived as useful and necessary within the field of practice that are recognised, at the expense of specialised educational knowledge.
This is very important. To be able to select from the accumulated knowledge all those practical bits, which during a seminar like that could prove useful.
To conclude, concerning the axis of knowledge, the interviewees’ field of reference tends to be knowledge domains outside of education while in terms of content specialisation they tend to prioritise practical action over specialised and research-based knowledge.
Pedagogic communication
We are accused at the moment that we are, let’s say, on the government’s side. Personally, I am a civil servant who just wants to do his job well, I wish that the benefits of the choices of any government reach every student, in every village, in every school. That is my aim. But it’s that, people say: the Director of Education is a political post…
The extract above is indicative of a position, held by many interviewees, that the central government legitimately preserves the right to decision making in relation to the fundamental matters in the running of the educational system (policy making, curricula, recruiting and contracting of personnel, etc.). This suggests that the structures and the rules of hierarchy in the education administration field are deemed to be valid, preserving the centralised and bureaucratic nature of the education system. Therefore, administrative conduct, framed by explicit and visible hierarchical relations, is perceived to be legitimate.
At the same time, when the interviewees talk about how they operate in their daily work, they tend to refer to communication strategies based on cooperation, exchange of information, teamwork activities, participation in networks, project-based and innovative programmes of work. That is to say, they appear to embrace and promote the government’s official educational policy and language; and so to strive to encourage, motivate and ‘empower’ the educational community. The interviewees’ reference to these practices suggests that a weakening of the boundary, customarily shaping communication and interactions in this field, is thought to be legitimate and even preferable. This represents an invisible and implicit form of control over communication rules (Bernstein, 1977). Furthermore, engagement with middle class factions across diverse fields, and consequently negotiation of different values and interests appear to be a game worth playing.
…we had invited the Minister of Education to [city] and we signed a Memorandum of Cooperation between the Chamber of Commerce and our Directorate for the Mediterranean diet. There we put Chamber into the game regarding local production associated with this diet. This action had a huge acceptance from society since as a matter of fact it was communicated widely…
Concerning knowledge, what is crucial is that the interviewees appear to recognise, indirectly and sometimes directly, that the compulsory character of training programmes to which they have been submitted means that the selection of the knowledge resources is under the control of governmental agencies and/or agencies assigned with the responsibility to organise and deliver training courses for them. Thus control over the selection of knowledge resources is visible, instituting a ‘governmental’ professional mode of control over the HEDs’ action (Beck, 2009: 137). On the other hand, when asked in the interviews about their experiences from such training courses, they appear to prioritise weakly insulated communication principles. They also appear to adopt such principles in the training programmes they themselves organise for principals and school teachers, in the context of intensified lifelong learning initiatives for the promotion of ‘New School’ innovations.
…we would like, perhaps, more working groups, to work more, and more experiential activities… 60% to be case studies work, practical work…participation…in group work, as the program design, correctly, prescribes it.
Overall, the analysis of relations of control indicates that although hierarchical relations, historically present within the administrative structure, are preserved and perceived to be legitimate, control over rules of communication, especially as reflected in training and pedagogising processes, becomes invisible.
Meaning orientation in administrative practice
Meaning orientation in HEDs’ daily professional practice is crucial in understanding power in the field of educational administration and legitimate knowledge, constituted through power and control relations. The analysis of interview data shows that almost all interviewees agree with the view that education should be oriented to the market and aim for the economic development of the local community and the wider society – especially in the current period of acute economic crisis.
Regarding quality assurance and evaluation processes, the interviewees to a great extent accept the accountability methods and evidence-based policies promoted by the central government at the time of the study. They justified this view by claiming that evidence-based performance will motivate teachers and the education community to improve their competence and to engage in innovative activities enhancing the quality of school work. They also maintain that the schools should publicise their outcomes and should be accountable to the local community and to society, seeing this as schools’ own responsibility. A number of the interviewees argue that schools and the education professionals need to become autonomous as a precondition for them to achieve performance targets prescribed by government or demanded by society. This invocation of autonomy is framed by principles dominant in fields outside education, suggesting an ‘extroverted’ orientation, driven by performativity as the regulative discourse of educational work. Consequently, reference to autonomy is reference to the need for more spaces of freedom ‘…with respect to how they distribute their financial and discursive resources in order to optimise their market niche’ (Bernstein, 2000: 49).
So education not only needs to, but also is obliged to, seriously obliged to serve this market… Teachers are the only category of professionals that has not been assessed and that is absurd. Everyone in Europe is being assessed, customers assess the services they receive and, if they are not satisfied with the quality of the service, then they won’t choose it again, but teachers seem to be untouchable.
… Publishing students’ performance results acts as an incentive for others – the other schools – to improve … Of course they will contribute to quality. These are tools that have entered our lives willy-nilly and we have to use them and familiarise our students with these.
Once we break free and allow free choice of schools that shall be an incentive for the educator – for the whole school anyway – to work more…
A number of participants express reservations, disagreement and even opposition to evidence-based performance; some of them recognising a risk of alienating and isolating schools if their work is based on competition, publicising of quantified data, etc. However, overall the data show that dominant perceptions are infused with the idea that external regulation of performance is useful and necessary and/or even unavoidable, suggesting that professional practice is directed by extroverted meaning orientations.
It is dangerous to follow the market rationale that says keep your skills to yourself, use them for your own success, do not let them free, and that rationale I think will create conflicts, jealousy, oppositions among the teaching staff of different schools.
Analysis of data on meaning orientation with reference to knowledge shows again a strong tendency towards projection. Interviewees appear to value knowledge that is situated and applicable in the field of practice. They point out that the everyday needs in education administration require them to display qualities of efficiency and effectiveness, rather than academic distinction and formal academic qualifications.
I think that a trainer who used such methods [case studies, practical exercises] enabled the trainees to better follow the topic, to discuss; the opportunities for discussion using these techniques were much more.
Finance is not included, financial administration, … if new selections [of HEDs] take place these are the things that should have priority in the evaluation.
If I have the capability to communicate with the citizen, if I have the potential to deal with issues that arise, this is what, I think, was not explored [in the interviews for the selection of HEDs].
Interviewees prioritise forms of knowledge and skills which allow them to communicate with non-specialists in education, to manage risks, solve problems, manage the personnel, etc. Education administration, they claim, requires an educational professional with management competencies and leadership skills. However, they do stress that education needs not technocrats but teachers trained as managers.
It [the program of training] was about personnel management, crisis management, discipline issues and whatever we experience everyday and try to attend to.
Everyday practice is more about management.
Following Bernstein’s theory (2000; Sarakinioti, 2012), weakly insulated boundaries between and within symbolic categories (knowledge content, social relations, evaluative practices) and projected meaning orientation describes generic modalities of practice. Our research findings on the recontextualisation of the globalised governance discourse in the Greek education administration field reveal transformations in knowledge and power relations, which force executives to negotiate qualities of a bureaucratic–professional type, hitherto at the core of their professional identities, as they are called to adopt more generic practices of management (Sifakakis et al., 2015).
Concluding remarks
This paper has focused on the dominant global and European discourses and practices which work to promote NPM models and networked-based relations in governing and regulating education. Our research explored the forms that the articulation of such discourses takes in the Greek national space and the field of education administration. We have argued that bringing the theory of symbolic control and TPS into the analysis of global policies helps to extend the approaches of governmentality in the exploration of changes in power and knowledge relations, here, with reference to those who lead schools and teachers. More precisely, we have argued that the concept of symbolic control provides the sociological resources to study the shaping, dissemination and enactment of policies at global, national and local sites, to comprehend the enormous changes taking place in education, encapsulated in the idea of TPS, and to analyse the pedagogical means through which consciousness is distributed and shaped in specialised forms in the contemporary times of globalisation and lifelong learning.
The empirical study about changes in the field of education administration in Greece shows that power relations in education remain strong, though significant changes are evident. The system of administration overall preserves its character which traditionally has been highly centralised and bureaucratic. However, the data suggest emerging shifts towards ‘de-concentration’ and a redrawing of boundaries (Ball and Junemann, 2012; Robertson, 2013). Especially with reference to dominant hierarchical relations and modes of communication, the most significant shift that data allow us to capture is a rather strong tendency for the body of education administrators to insulate themselves vis a vis the arena of political power and party politics, and a parallel tendency to see themselves aligned to a new professional category of specialists managing services in new ways in the public sector. That is to say, there is evidence of a managerial attitude permeating the educational administration apparatus, also evident in the emerging modes of control of the entire public sector; as well as a disposition to neutralise, depoliticise and de-specialise educational issues (Nóvoa, 2002; Robertson, 2013).
Concerning knowledge, the analysis of data captures more radical shifts in the pedagogising discourse, re-configuring social relations, interactions and subjectivities in the field of education administration. There is evidence of: (a) a shift towards particular kinds of knowledge, drawn from fields outside of educational studies, that are seen as legitimate and appropriate for administrative work in education (Gunter and Forrester, 2009); and (b) a marked change in the pedagogising process. Educational executives have been initiated – pedagogised in legitimate knowledge through evaluative practices, which crucially occurred during the process of their selection, the training programme which they were submitted to in order to have their competence certified, and, at the time of the research, by an on-going evaluation scheme implemented for all employees in the public sector. These changes constitute a re-centring move whereby the state attempts to govern and regulate the field of symbolic control and its principal agents through the evaluative rules of the pedagogic device (Bernstein, 2000; Rizvi and Lingard, 2010; Singh, 2015; Tyler, 2010).
Examining the forms of pedagogical practice emerging within the field of education administration, two shifts are evident, though not crystallised and not without hesitation, resistance or opposition. First, the forms of knowledge utilised in the action field orient education administrators towards their work as essentially a practical field, operating according to the logic of managerial accountability and performance, based on outcomes and evidence. Second, the hitherto existing divides in the Greek educational system insulating the specialised educational agents from other agents within the field of symbolic control (e.g. the church, parents, community groups, other stakeholders, etc.) are starting to become porous. Similarly, with relationships between this field and the cultural and economic fields, where interests and values of different factions of the middle class are recognised as relevant in pedagogic work. This weakening of boundaries between previously insulated and clearly demarcated fields of practice suggests a potential proliferation of pedagogic discursive codes, and a multiplication of sites for pedagogisation of educational professionals, conditions which are characteristic of TPS. Nevertheless, the state, now in its stronger evaluative role, remains the main regulator of developments within the field of education administration. Yet identities of professionals in education administration were not easy to characterise. This is not only because of the instability of the political and social conditions in Greece, due to the economic crisis, and the consequent retrogression in legislation and in policy formation in matters of education. Neither is it only because the identities of the educational professionals are at the moment in transition, hence there is fluidity and wide space for negotiation. The difficulty we encountered relates to the nature of processes of pedagogisation, especially in the societal mode of TPS, where pedagogical processes and devices are a means not only for controlling performances but also for multiplying and distributing doubt (Pels, 2003; cf. Singh et al., 2014). Pedagogical modes are also interruptor systems to class and social relations, providing possibilities for ‘transforming the order of the imposing other’ (Bernstein, 1990: 159).
Critical scholarship work on globalised policies and the modernisation of education systems has revealed a great deal about transformations in social relations and identities. From the perspective of the theory of symbolic control, evaluative regimes and devices (e.g. international testing of students, reportage of students’ results on websites, visible and invisible criteria of competency and excellence for teachers and administrators, travelling policies such as quality assurance mechanisms, etc.) are ‘…increasingly de-located from the human agency of individual teachers and relocated in an ensemble of techniques, instruments, data banks and machine logics of the state (international, supranational and national state)’ (Singh, 2015: 7). This multiplies and intensifies the struggles over the evaluative criteria in the field of education. The evaluative monitoring devices ‘refer to all processes of knowledge acquisition and the formation of the self-governing pedagogic subject, who is open to continuous and ongoing evaluation’ (Singh, 2015: 7).
We recognise that performativity is the dominant regulative principle in education and the entire public sector. At the same time, we acknowledge that the struggles over the evaluative rules of the pedagogic device do not refer only to policy networks, schools, teachers and administrators but also entangle us as researchers – a condition that has been widely discussed by critical policy studies scholars. In such conditions, the theory of symbolic control and TPS urges us to respond differently towards our own theories, theoretical assumptions and the devices or tools we use and develop to perceive and describe today’s social realities. It encourages us to adopt ‘open-ended forms of inquiry’, avoiding reductionist approaches and pessimistic understandings of current changes in the field of education (Queiroz, 2011; Singh, 2015). Furthermore, it emphasises that any heuristic device developed in research does not only describe and illuminate what it speaks about, but also actively ‘engages with, becomes entangled in, and shapes the formation of the “real” world’ (Singh et al., 2014: 834). Therefore, the theory of symbolic control and TPS helps critical researchers both to research systematically and, at the same time, to develop greater awareness concerning the impossibility of remaining outside the reality of the TPS which is depicted in their work. This suggests that there is a need to ‘unhasten’ (Pels, 2003) and ‘delay conclusions’ (Singh et al., 2014: 832).
Footnotes
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
The grid of interview analysis.
Declaration of conflicting interest
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.