ERIC Number: EJ1178515
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2018
Pages: 19
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0007-1005
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Available Date: N/A
Surveillance, Governmentality and Moving the Goalposts: The Influence of Ofsted on the Work Of Schools in a Post-Panoptic Era
Perryman, Jane; Maguire, Meg; Braun, Annette; Ball, Stephen
British Journal of Educational Studies, v66 n2 p145-163 2018
This paper asks the question: to what extent do inspection regimes, particularly the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), influence the work of a school, and how might that influence be conceptualised? It draws on an ESRC-funded study of 'policy enactments in secondary schools', which was based on case-study work in four 'ordinary' schools. Here the data set is re-examined to understand the extent to which Ofsted had an ongoing influence on the work of the leadership, management and teachers in these schools. We undertook a process of secondary analysis of the data from the project and found that the influence of the inspection agenda was strong in the schools, policy decisions were often being made to conform to Ofsted's expectations and the influence on leadership and management was clearly apparent. In resisting this agenda we also found that schools to some extent performed 'the good school' for inspections. Finally, we relate this empirical evidence to conceptions of governmentality and post-panopticism to shed new light on their theoretical relevance to contemporary inspection regimes.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Inspection, Governance, Educational Policy, Secondary Schools, Case Studies, Institutional Evaluation, School Effectiveness, Accountability, Educational Change
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Secondary Education
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Language: English
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Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United Kingdom
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