Abstract
Foreword for Special Edition
Education is in an age of austerity, bearing the brunt of the global economic recession, with most sectors struggling to maintain quality learning and inclusive educational practices in the face of diminished human and educational resourcing, and low morale among educators and management. The economic crisis that heralded the end of the Celtic Tiger Economy era in the Republic of Ireland has resulted in increased student-teacher ratios in all sectors of education, with corresponding reductions in the resourcing and supports being made available to the majority of students, including those with special educational needs. The global recession has also distinctively impacted on the economies of Northern Ireland (NI). Emerging from decades of conflict, the anticipated economic dividend from peace was short-lived, leading the devolved NI Executive to institute swinging cuts to education services, resulting in similar concerns and impacts as the rest of Ireland but with the additional expectation that education should find ways to promote peace and reconciliation.
The economic recession has further mobilised neo-liberal agendas promoting mainly employability-related competencies and quantitative performativity metrics (that focus on valuing what can be readily measured rather than measuring what should be valued) within and across education systems. At most levels of education in Ireland, curricula have already been recast in more measurable forms, with a focus on defining specific learning outcomes and enabling discipline-specific employability-related skills. This is resulting in the preparation of learners in schools and universities for ‘narrow’ career paths connected to sectors (predominantly, science and technology) that are expected to drive economic recovery. The impact of this in the long-term will be the marginalisation of disciplines within areas such as the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, that are pivotal to the development of just, peaceable and sustainable futures for all, and the lack of which may contribute to widening social and economic divides. Against this background, this collection of papers seeks to examine the impacts of austerity on education in Ireland, North and South. As such, they interrogate some of the key processes and practices of neoliberalism that have taken root across the education sector across the island of Ireland. In this regard, this special edition presents discourses and empirical inquiry on the impact of neoliberalism on school systems, policies and practices, and on the performativity agenda within higher education.
In his presentation, Neoliberal education? Confronting the slouching beast, Stephen Ball tackles his concerns from the perspective of the professional, drawing out the implications of neoliberal reform for the practice and identity of teachers and challenging educationalists to become subjectively aware so that they are better positioned to ‘confront the slouching beast’. This critically reflective contribution has been captured from Ball’s keynote oration at the Vere Foster annual lecture in Dublin in 2013. In the piece, Ball draws on Shamir’s definition of neoliberalism as a set of practices that reflect a conceptualisation of the ‘market’ as the ‘basis for the universalization of social relations’. Although the impact of this global representation is less obvious in Ireland than in some other jurisdictions, it is nonetheless profound, and as noted by Ball, neoliberal reforms are often so incremental that the true extent of impact can only be assessed in retrospect.
Ball underlines the subtleness of neoliberal reforms by suggesting that we do not typically engage with them as grand strategies, rather as ‘mundane and practical’ changes in everyday activity that are embedded in ‘new vocabularies of practice, new roles with new titles, and in grids, templates, mentoring relationships, annual reviews, evaluation and output indicators’. Often these ‘very ordinary’ shifts in how we do things are alluring, creating opportunities to do things differently and offering new roles and responsibilities. The problem, and the focus of his paper, relates to the difficulty in critiquing and challenging policies informed by the neo-liberal agenda: ‘They recruit us as enthusiasts, but if we hesitate or demur then they quickly position us as unprofessional or irrational or archaic. They rework the meaning of professionalism, making it into a different thing’.
Ball argues that in the ‘regimes of performativity’ that are characteristic of the marketisation of education, teachers risk compromising their own complexity and individuality in ‘the ultimate reductionism of humanity to quantity’. The danger in this process, he posits, is that they become ‘unrecognizable’ to themselves and the ethical codes governing education are revised. Professional judgment, which responds to the need of the client, is replaced by ‘commercial forms of accountability driven decision-making’, and the moral language shared by practitioners is adulterated.
Performativity informs daily practice and in so doing fragments and individualises the workplace, such that individuals are left to ‘struggle alone with doubts and fears’. Drawing on Foucault and others, Ball points to the need for collective resistance but highlights the constraints placed on political mobilisation by neoliberal reforms. Critical analysis, dialogue and debate are stymied in a climate that valorises measured outputs and outcomes over reflexivity and the ability to shape ethics and practice. Resistance, he asserts, requires bravery and a commitment to what Burchell refers to as ‘permanent agonism’. Accepting that this state may lead to ridicule marginalisation, Ball contends that not being vigilant and engaged in subjective critique of how professionals imbibe and engage with reform, risks capitulation to the ‘slouching rough beast’ of neo-liberalism and its worst excesses.
Carr and Beckett’s paper responds to the call for a critical analysis of neoliberalism in Irish education. Like Ball, they accept that neoliberalism is less embedded in Ireland than in other western democracies, but in a critique of the education policy agenda based on the pronouncements of the Minister of Education, they illuminate the subtle ways in which neoliberal values are permeating current reforms. In harmony with Ball, they argue that unless the education community begins to critically engage with the ‘top down’ changes, it risks absorbing an agenda that will lead to a marketised and privatised system of schooling and the de-nuding of the teaching profession. Drawing inspiration from philanthropist Vere Foster, who ‘singlehandedly transformed the national school system in Ireland’ and mobilised teachers to political activism, their call is for a self-conscious and robust engagement from teachers in the policy process. Alarmed that the increased regulation and control of teachers and their work by government, coupled with lack of resistance on the part of the profession, is undermining the role of education as a social good, they state a case for the empowerment of the professional.
A core theme in Ball’s analysis, and that of Carr and Beckett’s, is the creative and policy tensions that are characterising the reform of education in Ireland (North and South) as marketisation embeds. The alignment of education with the economy that is core to the neoliberal agenda presents clear challenges for the social reconstruction of a country that was so diminished by the fall of the Celtic Tiger. Carr and Beckett refer to the inconsistencies in the rhetoric around education policy that seeks to promote economic progress by improving educational outcomes, whilst at the same time attending to the need for social reform through schools. They question how the methods proposed (centralisation, concern for performance and accountability of schools, control and regulation of the work of teachers and teacher educators) can meet the aspiration for social reform.
Taking up this theme, though with reference to NI papers by Donnelly and McKevitt, Hughes et al. explore the relationship between new managerialist values in education, and principles of social justice and social democracy. In both cases, the notion that there is necessarily an irreconcilable tension between these terrains is challenged. In their qualitative study of two Catholic Schools, Donnellly and McKevitt find that both schools manage to hold in balance the Catholic ethos, with its emphasis on compassion and support for the most marginalised, and a focus on academic performance and improving standards that is so characteristic of the neo-liberal reform project in education. The paper sheds light on how teachers have engaged with the notion of academic performance, not as an end in itself; rather, as a consequence or intended outcome of a Catholic education. Reflecting the fact that the approach is different in each school, they interrogate how the Catholic ethos and value system has been interpreted and enacted. In an insightful assessment, they find that in one school, a process of ‘spiritual renewal’ was a catalyst for a reinvigorated emphasis on the dignity and self-esteem of the most marginalised. Prioritising such values in the school was promoted as the means through which academic ambition could be realised. In the second school, the Catholic commitment to social justice was defined in terms of social mobility, and the focus was on meeting the physical and material needs of the most deprived pupils, and attending to the educational deficits that are defining features of an impoverished background. Hence the school acted in loco parentis to provide academic support for pupils that was largely absent in the home context.
Donnelly and McKevitt argue that in both cases the essence of managerialism has been imbibed in much the same way as predicated by Ball, in so far as academic achievement is valorised and managerialist notions of performativity, regulation and surveillance are at the core of how this can be delivered. However, professionals justified their actions by framing the school as a site for the uplifting of the most marginalised (a fundamental priority for Catholics) such that they have access to the type of ‘excellent academic education’ that can enhance life chances.
In a similar vein, Hughes at al. examine the dynamic between efforts to promote reconciliation through schools in a system-wide context that is driven by managerialist principles. They similarly find that potential tensions are creatively managed such that managerialist practice may ultimately facilitate the achievement of social harmony objectives. In a case study of the Shared Education initiative in NI, they examine how educationalists, committed to peace-building through schools, seek to deliver their ambitions by engagement with a managerialist policy framework. Paradoxically, competition, performance measurement and outcome orientation become the tools through which reconciliation and social harmony can be achieved.
Both papers draw attention to how the worst excesses of new managerialism might be mitigated by a commitment to alternative value systems. However, they also caution against acceptance that approaches adopted will necessarily lead to the achievement of social good. Donnelly and McKevitt point to the potential for practices in one school to negatively impact the self-esteem of pupils in the longer term, and Hughes et al. highlight the risk of the education system ultimately subverting the reconciliation intention of shared education. The need for professional reflexivity, counselled by Ball and Carr and Beckett, resonates in both these papers.
Holland et al. turn their attention to higher education, and in a detailed exploration of what constitutes research quality in the Art Humanities and Social Sciences, they offer a critique of how new public management imperatives are increasingly shaping academic research production and assessment in Ireland. They highlight how in the wake of recession and austerity, complementary trends towards productivity and the privileging of the scientific method are having a potentially detrimental effect on the conduct of research in ‘softer’ disciplinary areas. As a consequence, the research process and associated outputs are compromised along with the well-being of researchers. In a comprehensive analysis of the neoliberal policy context in Ireland and other jurisdictions, they demonstrate how accountability and performance standards have led to the reductionism of research assessment in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences to a process that is based on metrics and quantifiable outcome measures. This imposition of this framework on disciplines that have traditionally valued normative parameters of assessment has caused considerable anxiety within the research community, and is moderating the behaviour of researchers, such that there is a drift towards the type of research activity that is more easily quantifiable. As others in this collection have argued, Holland et al. conclude that in order to counter the worst effects of this trend (job losses and performance anxiety) alternative positions regarding research and its assessment need to be heard. In this respect, they echo the need for more reflexivity and a reclamation of professional judgement.
The papers in this collection are penned by academics and professionals, and they are based on observations and data drawn from the policy, practitioner and research communities across Ireland. They are consistent in communicating a message that neoliberalism and the alignment of education with the economy has been detrimental to education as a social good. Although it is clear that the worst excesses of managerialism and neoliberal priorities may have been ameliorated by the commitment of professionals to social democratic values, an overriding theme is the extent to which teachers and other stakeholders have become disempowered and are in danger of becoming unwitting players in their own demise, ultimately undermining the role of education in society.
In terms of what can be done, the collection of papers offer suggestions for at least a more critical engagement with neoliberal reform: the mobilisation of professionals; more critically reflective practice; and capacity-building within the education sector so that educationalists are better able to critique and contribute actively to the policy process. Paradoxically though, the enactment of these suggestions demands the creation of space within the educational arena for the type of activity that is inimical within the context of current trends. Perhaps there is much to learn from Vere Foster, whose influence remains so significant to Irish people, North and South, today, and to whose memory this collection is dedicated. A clearly committed educationalist, philanthropist and first President of the Irish National Teachers Organisation, he was a champion of teachers and he consistently challenged the powers of those who stood in the way of education as a means of mobility for the poorest.