As a school ethnography, this book explores the controversial schooling practices and strategies embedded in charter school management organizations (CMOs), as well as how these practices influence teaching and learning, school leadership, teachers professional identities, and students understanding of success.
As a school ethnography, this book explores the controversial schooling practices and strategies embedded in charter school management organizations (CMOs), as well as how these practices influence teaching and learning, school leadership, teachers professional identities, and students understanding of success. By theorizing the common practices within the organization, Stahl connects current research in neoliberal governance, neoliberal structuring of educational policy, aspiration and social reproduction in schooling. Honing in on the discourse on education reform, Stahl demonstrates that a "unique blend" of neoliberalism and social justice values have permeated the CMOs institutional culture, promoting the belief that adopting corporate practices will fix Americas schools and ensure equity of opportunity for all. The inclusion of institutional texts (emails, Blackberry messages, posters, and rubrics) balances the personal-subjective and inter-subjective to capture a blend of neoliberalism and social justice reframing.
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viii | |
Preface |
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ix | |
Acknowledgments |
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xi | |
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1 | (12) |
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13 | (60) |
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2 School Ethnography, School Effects and Schooling in Neoliberal Times |
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15 | (19) |
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3 Charter Schools, the Reform Movement and CMOs |
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34 | (20) |
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4 Corporatization, CMOs and the "Unique Blend" |
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54 | (19) |
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73 | (96) |
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75 | (20) |
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95 | (23) |
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118 | (22) |
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140 | (17) |
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157 | (12) |
Appendix A Qualities of Exemplary Teaching Deliverables |
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169 | (7) |
Index |
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176 | |
Garth Stahl, Ph.D. is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Education at the University of South Australia and Research Fellow, Australian Research Council (DECRA). His research interests lie on the nexus of neoliberalism and socio-cultural studies of education, identity, equity/inequality, and social change. Currently, his research projects and publications encompass theoretical and empirical studies of learner identities, gender and youth, sociology of schooling in a neoliberal age, gendered subjectivities, equity and difference, and educational reform.