Mapping the Contours of Neoliberal Educational Restructuring: A Review of Recent Neo-Marxist Studies of Education and Racial Capitalist Considerations

In this article, Sue Middleton draws on interview data from the initial phase of"Monitoring Today's Schools," a research project to monitor the impact of New Zealand's educational restructuring. Unlike restructuring movements in other countries,the New Zealand movement specifically included goals of social equity and cultural inclusiveness, and Middleton focuses on the reactions of parents, teachers,and administrators to the restructuring efforts surrounding these issues. After presenting a brief historical overview of the development of and debate over equity and cultural inclusiveness in New Zealand education, Middleton presents excerpts from interviews with members of three different schools' boards of trustees, which were created as part of the restructuring effort to move more authority to the local school level. She includes their reactions to the impact of social equity and cultural inclusiveness policies on their schools and their children, and concludes by describing recent developments in New Zealand education regarding these issues.

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Reconsidering the Educational Restructuring Process: An Exercise in Retrospective Sense-Making

Journal of School Leadership ◽

10.1177/105268469700700601 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 7 (6) ◽

pp. 540-568 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Bob L. Johnson

Keyword(s):

Public Education ◽

Organizational Structure ◽

Teaching And Learning ◽

Sense Making ◽

Review Of The Literature ◽

Educational Settings ◽

Educational Restructuring ◽

Conscious Effort ◽

Restructuring Process ◽

Conceptual Work

The restructuring movement in American public education has been underway for several years. No longer is it enough, reformers argue, to improve schools as we know them; the very organizations in which teaching and learning are imbedded must be restructured. Yet like so many words associated with reform, restructuring has come to mean everything and nothing. The full significance of the word is often overlooked, its richness lost, as educators and policymakers alike equate any and all change efforts with restructuring. A cursory review of the literature attests to this ambiguity and to the scarcity of conceptual work on the topic. While works on specific restructuring initiatives are prevalent, few focus on the meaning and organizational implications inherent in restructuring efforts. Motivated by this scarcity of conceptual literature, the purpose of this endeavor is to provide both researchers and practitioners a framework for thinking about the restructuring process in educational settings. While not an attempt to offer a comprehensive explanation, a conscious effort is made to move toward an incipient theory of restructuring using the language and logic of the organizational structure literature.

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