Rethinking the Education Improvement Agenda: A Critical Philosophical Approach

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Offering a philosophical perspective to the educational improvement agenda, this engaging text provides a new language for research into educational improvement, bringing leading-edge philosophy to current practice.

Drawing on philosophical work, including that of Derrida, Foucault and Heidegger, the authors deconstruct the ethic of improvement before exploring key dimensions of education, its institutions and technologies. Each chapter draws on international case studies, provides engaging questions and makes suggestions for further reading to support the reader. Topics covered include: The Ethic of Improvement
Teacher Education
Leadership and Management
Lifelong Learning
The Rhetoric of Numbers
The Governance of Childhood
The State of Education Research

An essential text for all looking at how we think and talk about education and improvement.

Reviews

'Rethinking the Education Agenda fills a huge gap in our understanding of the role and function of schooling. Eschewing a standard argument that the state and (true) education are in opposition, Flint and Peim provide an accessible analysis of a wide range of ideas which challenges traditional assumptions about power and government. This is a much needed myth-busting book that will stretch our thinking about schools and schooling, childhood and life-long learning, teacher education and identity, research and statistics. The insights offered by the authors are fresh and provocative and provide new ways of thinking about education policy in an era of accountability. It should be recommended reading for any student of culture and society and will be of great interest to people working in education policy and teacher education.' Annette Patterson, Head of the School of Cultural and Language Studies in Education, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Rethinking the Education Improvement Agenda is an important and persuasive book.Over the past quarter of a century or more we have been conditioned to think about school effectiveness and improvement in a strictly functionalist and technical way.In this book Kevin Flint and Nick Peim move beyond the conventional wisdom and encourage us to interpret the field critically and from a broader intellectual perspective. In developing their ideas about the enframing', Flint and Peim have given us a book containing a myriad insights that will surely be important in informing not only future research and analysis, but policy and practice as well.' David Hopkins, Professor Emeritus, Institute of Education, University of London, UK
Rarely does a single book fulfill as many timely functions as Rethinking the Education Improvement Agenda. Not only does it provide a cogent and precisely argued reassessment of the purposes of state education, and its concomitant machinery; along the way Flint and Peim have also produced a powerful introduction to continental philosophy and critical theory, demonstrating how it can be used to lucidly expose policy and practice within the field of education in its often anti-democratic, governmental and anti-educational dimensions. If you ever imagined that the work of Derrida, Heidegger and other writers of that supposed ilk, had nothing to contribute to the state of human knowledge beyond obscurity and self-indulgence, then this very accessible book will be a shocking surprise, as politics, power and theories of knowledge are revealed as being the heart of the education machine.' Paul Moran, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education and Children's Services, University of Chester, UK
This book offers a profound critique of the 'state' of schooling oriented education. Educationists aiming to fully understand their own thought and practice in the context of work in such a system ought to take the messages of this book on board for the sake of sanity and clarity of thought. It offers a way to rethink the educational project from a point of view cleared of unwarranted and dangerous enthusiasm in the idea of educational improvement. Deeply philosophical, the complex and demanding analysis of what seems, outside of such a philosophical perspective, really quite simple and commonsensical, is submitted to a treatment that at times shines with true brilliance. This is a book for those in education ready to embrace other possibilities and other ways of seeing. It is for those who care enough to think for themselves.' Helen E. Lees, Research Fellow in the Laboratory for Educational Theory, School of Education, University of Stirling, UK

Author Bio

Kevin J Flint is Senior Lecturer in Education at Nottingham Trent University, UK.
Nick Peim is a Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Birmingham, UK.