Unsworth, Ruth ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4900-3590 (2023) A new mode of control: an actor-network theory account of effects of power and agency in establishing education policy. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 56 (1). pp. 54-68.

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Abstract

In this paper, I argue that power promised to England’s teachers bythe 2010‘Importance of Teaching’white paper has rather playedout as a reformulation of methods of policymaking to moreindirect modes of government control. I trace the growth ofgovernment control in English schools, promised front-line powerin 2010 and a rise in non-statutory guidance after this point.Taking an actor–network theory approach to ethnographic data Ithen describe how a school takes up one such non-statutoryeducational initiative–‘Maths Mastery’. Focusing on early stagesof the school’s adoption of the initiative, I trace associations ofactors which problematize existing practices for the teaching ofmaths and how the initiative is imbued with authority in relationto these. I argue that the ways in which certain actors–statutoryeducation policy and government funding–associate with the‘optional’initiative reveals a‘back door’control of teacher agency.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	Published
DOI:	https://doi.org/10.1080/00220620.2023.2258827
Subjects:	L Education > L Education (General)
School/Department:	School of Education, Language and Psychology
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/8647

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