Overview

Pluralist Publics in Market Driven Education opens a conversation on the nature of the public in education systems weary from market driven educational reform. Ruth Boyask observes the characteristic of publicness within contemporary education settings, a characteristic defined by tools from public sphere and democratic education theory. Boyask’s investigations of publicness in educational sites are founded in conceptualising public education as pluralist, unbounded and conditional. These concepts of the public are important for ongoing and future debate on public education. The settings Boyask examines are different in structure, function and location yet each demonstrates the push and pull between market relations (including competition, efficiency and productivity) and the desire for social equality and democracy in education. Examples of educational settings are drawn broadly from an Anglo-American imaginary that has taken hold in educational systems transnationally, with detailed observation from three research studies of education policy enactment in England. The research studies (including research on curriculum reform in a private democratic school, privatisation of regional educational services and governance in English private schools) provide contexts for examining public accountability, public service and the public good as they relate to a reconceptualised public education. Boyask’s argument is that by opening a conversation about the nature of the public within these sites we bring them into the spheres of a pluralist public education. They become open to public scrutiny and through their debate arise new ideas for challenging market-driven restrictions to contemporary public education.

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9781350054509

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Reviews

This book is invaluable in opening up the conversation on the very nature of what is meant by public in educational settings. It is timely in examining the complexity of the relationships between state and market, in its problematizing of normative and reductionist definitions of state and public education. Perhaps the most important contribution the book makes is to show that this policy context confuses and confounds common sense understandings of what is meant by public education, and is correct in indicating that we need a much more nuanced understanding of what is in the public interest, how the public is constituted and how we might define public education. * Jacqueline Baxter, Associate Professor in Public Policy and Management, The Open University, UK * In this fascinating and provocative book Ruth Boyask produces strong philosophical arguments alongside empirical evidence to demonstrate the need to problematise the notion of public education being associated solely with the state's public sector education. She illustrates how concepts of public benefit, public accountability and public services are changing within the evolving landscape of new types of public private partnerships in education. The book presents a compelling argument that principles of equality, democratic participation and social justice associated with the notion of the public good may not be restricted to particular governance structures. As such it makes an important contribution to the debate around reconceptualising public education. * Eva Lloyd OBE, Professor of Early Childhood, University of East London, UK *

This book is invaluable in opening up the conversation on the very nature of what is meant by public in educational settings. It is timely in examining the complexity of the relationships between state and market, in its problematizing of normative and reductionist definitions of state and public education. Perhaps the most important contribution the book makes is to show that this policy context confuses and confounds common sense understandings of what is meant by public education, and is correct in indicating that we need a much more nuanced understanding of what is in the public interest, how the public is constituted and how we might define public education. * Jacqueline Baxter, Associate Professor in Public Policy and Management, The Open University, UK * In this fascinating and provocative book Ruth Boyask produces strong philosophical arguments alongside empirical evidence to demonstrate the need to problematise the notion of public education being associated solely with the state's public sector education. She illustrates how concepts of public benefit, public accountability and public services are changing within the evolving landscape of new types of public private partnerships in education. The book presents a compelling argument that principles of equality, democratic participation and social justice associated with the notion of the public good may not be restricted to particular governance structures. As such it makes an important contribution to the debate around reconceptualising public education. * Eva Lloyd OBE, Professor of Early Childhood, University of East London, UK * In this timely and thought-provoking book, Boyask challenges notions of the public in public education. Her robust empirical and theoretical work illustrates publicness (i.e. public accountability, public service and the public good) beyond state education contexts and draws attention to public education as pluralist, unbounded and conditional. Boyask calls for more nuanced accounts of the ideals and practices of the public within and beyond state and private education systems. Given the inequities generated by increasingly marketized systems of education, such accounts are critical in mobilising spaces of democracy and equity. This book is important reading for those interested in schooling and education as a public good * Amanda Keddie, Professor of Education, Deakin University, Australia *

This book is invaluable in opening up the conversation on the very nature of what is meant by public in educational settings. It is timely in examining the complexity of the relationships between state and market, in its problematizing of normative and reductionist definitions of state and public education. Perhaps the most important contribution the book makes is to show that this policy context confuses and confounds common sense understandings of what is meant by public education, and is correct in indicating that we need a much more nuanced understanding of what is in the public interest, how the public is constituted and how we might define public education. * Jacqueline Baxter, Associate Professor in Public Policy and Management, The Open University, UK * The author makes a compelling case for why a better appreciation and understanding of visual culture is necessary for contemporizing teaching and learning in the visual arts. * William Wightman, James Madison University, USA *

Author Information

Ruth Boyask is Senior Lecturer at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand, where she does research and teaches on postgraduate programmes in education. Previously, she was Lecturer in Education Studies at the University of Plymouth, UK, and remains a member of Council for the British Educational Research Association.

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