This study stems from research on the "Standing Conferences of Rectors and Vice-Chancellors of the European Universities" (1948-), an experimental initiative for co-operation among European universities, emphasising the reformative ideal that appeared in international circles in the years following the Second World War. These conceptions…

The further education (FE) sector in England has experienced two decades of marketisation. This article takes as its focus the first five years of incorporation (1993-1998) for one case study college in a city ("Coppleton") in the West Midlands of England, five years that were dominated by a contract dispute. Data from interviews with…

This paper builds on recent scholarship on the gendered nature of educational work to argue that while conceptualisations of the principalship are underpinned by scholarship and policy assumptions that construct the work of the principal as a male domain, women have responded to opportunities presented by changing historical, political and social…

This paper analyses shifts in the representation of history and physics as named organisational units on Australian university websites over the last 15 years in the context of broader questions about the production of knowledge in contemporary times. It derives from a broader project concerned with disciplinarity, changing university contexts and…

This paper utilises an interpretivist framework and recent developments in practice theory to examine the conditions which influence practices of socialising into the role of school principal in Trinidad and Tobago. The results indicate that for the 11 early career primary school principals, role socialisation occurs within complex "practice…

The mechanics' institute movement of the British Isles has been underrated by some historians, who have argued that many of the institutes were attended by the middle and upper classes. In any case, they state that by the 1850s, they were declining in both popularity and usefulness. This paper questions these assumptions, concentrating on the…

There are relatively few studies of how representations of teachers, schools and educational administrators in popular films and television might be, and are, used in leadership preparation. This paper seeks to add to this small body of work; it reports on an exploratory study of the representation of headteachers in contemporary children's…

Faiths have long used education as a means to preserve and transmit cultural values from one generation to the next. However, they have also employed education to unite people of different cultures and proselytise others to their worldview. Over the last two centuries, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Latter-day Saint, LDS, or…

A search for women in Baron and Taylor's (1969) "Educational administration and the social sciences" [London: The Athlone Press] using feminist poststructural discourse analysis (FPDA) has revealed a changing discourse about gendered educational administration over the course of 50 years. Whilst few women are featured in the text…

This article deals with the "troubled history" of head teachers' evaluation in Italy, as a specific strand of the controversial and fuzzy embedding of New Public Management (NPM) discourse in the Italian education system. Since the 1990s, NPM has shaped both policy agendas and professionals' subjectivities, leading the way to a…

Since the end of the 1980s, the Norwegian education system has gone through major reform, influenced largely by new managerialist ideas. Strategies to renew the public sector were promoted as the new public management (NPM). This paper investigates the way ideas connected to NPM reforms have been introduced and interpreted in the Norwegian…

In changing times for higher education that are dominated by a neoliberal ideology, we set out to uncover how Heads of Departments (HoDs) perceive their role with respect to supporting their staff and their academic freedom. Freedom to pursue academic research is seen as key to the generation of new knowledge yet it is potentially constrained by…

The issue of the "best" type of teacher education currently under discussion led us towards a historic-ethnographic study dealing with the teacher education approach of the English Department which existed at Oranim Academic College of Education in the years 1971-2001. Seven teachers and former Heads of Department were interviewed, as well as the…

This paper uses one national case to illustrate how diverse ideological agendas of central state agencies contest the discursive space within which major education policy reforms are developed. In Aotearoa New Zealand in 1988, "self-managed" schools were promoted ostensibly to allow parents more say in their children's education and local school…

Managers and personnel within tertiary institutions colonised by neo-liberal ministrations and buffeted by the winds of a "change culture" formed within the philosophical shifts of the last century can be considered in terms of "immigrants" or "refugees" within this new territory. The case story of this article is set in a college of education…