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3343Education Management in Managerialist Times: Beyond the Textual ApologistsOpen University Press. 2003.For academics and students, Education Management in Managerialist Times offers a critical guide to existing educational management texts and makes a strong case for redefining educational management along more socially and politically informed lines. The book also offers practitioners alternative management strategies intended to contest, rather than support, managerialism, while being realistic about the context within which those who lead and manage schools currently have to work.
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2308In Europe, welfare state provision has been subjected to 'market forces'. Over the last two decades, the framework of economic competitiveness has become the defining aim of education, to be achieved by new managerialist techniques and mechanisms. This book thoughtfully and persuasively argues against this new vision of education. This in-depth major study will be of great interest to researchers in the sociology of education, education policy, social theory, organization and management studies…Read more
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693Structure, Agency and the Sociology of Education: rescuing analytical dualismBritish Journal of Sociology of Education 20 (1): 5-21. 1999.Theorising the interplay of structure and agency is the quintessential focus of sociological endeavour. This paper aims to be part of that continuing endeavour, arguing for a stratified social ontology, where structure and agency are held to be irreducible to each other and causally efficacious, yet necessarily interdependent. It thus aims not to be part of that on-going journey in search of the 'ontological holy grail'. Instead, it offers a way of linking structure and agency which enables the …Read more
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453The Place of Culture in Organization Theory: Introducing the Morphogenetic ApproachOrganization 7 (1): 95-128. 2000.As Allaire and Firsirotu (1984) pointed out over a decade ago, the concept of culture seemed to be sliding inexorably into a superficial explanatory pool that promised everything and nothing. However, since then, some sophisticated and interesting theoretical developments have prevented drowning in the pool of superficiality and hence theoretical redundancy. The purpose of this article is to build upon such theoretical developments and to introduce an approach that maintains that culture can be …Read more
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336School Effectiveness Research: an Ideological Commitment?Journal of Philosophy of Education 33 (2): 253-268. 1999.As the international momentum of the school effectiveness movement continues, its exponents remain largely impervious to criticism. This paper argues that while they may not readily align themselves with the individualistic aspects of Conservative social philosophy, their methodology necessarily secretes an atomised social ontology. The charge of ideological commitment rests on the fact that the essentially positivist epistemology employed by school effectiveness researchers presupposes an ontol…Read more
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301Reclaiming Metaphysical Truth for Educational ResearchBritish Journal of Educational Studies 50 (3). 2002.It is not uncommon in educational research and social science in general either to eschew the word truth or to put it in scare quotes in order to signify scepticism about it. After the initial wave of relativism in the philosophy of natural science, a second wave has developed in social science with the rise of postmodernism and poststructuralism. The tendency here is to relativise truth or to bracket out questions of truth. In contradistinction, this paper revindicates the metaphysical nature o…Read more
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284New Labour, School Effectiveness and Ideological CommitmentIn Justin Cruickshank (ed.), Critical Realism: The Difference It Makes, . 2003.As Bhaskar (1989:1) argues, we need to take philosophy seriously because it underwrites both what constitutes science and knowledge and which political practices are deemed legitimate. At present, the field of educational research internationally is witnessing a pragmatist trend, whereby practical education research is carried out without reference to ontological and epistemological concerns. For David Reynolds, a leading UK school effectiveness academic, '[p]recisely because we did not waste ti…Read more
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276Structure, Agency and School Effectiveness: Researching a 'failing' schoolEducational Studies 25 (1): 5-18. 1999.Qualitative data of a 'failing' junior school are used to highlight the ways in which a particular Local Education Authority (LEA) responded to 'serious weaknesses' outlined by a team of Office for Standards in Education inspectors and how staff mediated such LEA intervention. Such mediation will be theorised via the employment of analytical dualism, whereby structure and agency are held to be irreducible emergent strata of social reality. The purpose of this paper is not to complement and buttr…Read more
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275The 'Mini-Renaissance' in Marxist Educational Sociology: A critiqueBritish Journal of Sociology of Education 22 (2): 203-215. 2001.This paper argues that the recent 'mini-renaissance' in Marxist educational sociology as propounded in particular by Rikowski (1996, 1997) is fatally flawed, not only denying the sui generis (autonomous) properties of the educational system but also precluding practical social theorising per se . The reason for this centres on the adoption of a universal internal relations social ontology, which results in the reduction of concrete social reality to the narrow abstraction of the omnipresent 'Cap…Read more
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154Explanatory Critique, Capitalism and Feasible Alternatives: A Realist Assessment of Jacques' Manufacturing the EmployeeIn Chris Carter & Damian Hodgson (eds.), Management Knowledge and the New Employee, Routledge. 2004.his chapter discusses some of the basic tenets of a critical realist social ontology. It defines capitalism, which Roy Jacques conspicuously fails to do. Jacques argues that the very point of explanatory critique is to facilitate useful action. For Geoffrey Hodgson, the epsilon scenario could be described as beyond capitalism. A form of employment contract remains, but it is a mere shell of its former capitalist self. In the work process, the degree of control by the employer over the employee i…Read more
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147Reclaiming Metaphysical Truth for Educational ResearchBritish Journal of Educational Studies 50 (3): 339-362. 2002.
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146Structure, culture and agency: rejecting the current orthodoxy of organisation theoryIn Stephen Ackroyd & Steve Fleetwood (eds.), Realist Perspectives on Management and Organisations, Psychology Press. pp. 66-86. 2000.
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132Review Symposium: Leaders and Leadership in Education (review)Educational Management and Administration 30 327-350. 2002.
University of Warwick
PhD, 2000
Heathfield, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Social Science |
Philosophy of Education |
Philosophy of Teaching |
Realism and Anti-Realism |
Social Ontology |