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1989 - 19902

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    The Picot report and the legitimation of education policy : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Educational Administration at Massey University
    (Massey University, 1990) Wilson, Kenneth James
    This is a study of the formation of an educational policy. It focuses on the use, by the state, of an individual policy document. The study is theoretically located within the framework of policy analysis, a field of study within the sociology of education. It is argued that the state's response to a fiscal crisis exposes its giving of policy priority to the strategies of accumulation and legitimation. The study illuminates the elitist and technocratic policy formation process adopted by the Government for its review of the administration of education. It is argued that the policy and construction of the Picot Report was the means by which the state sought to legitimise its education policies by organising consent for them in civil society. The study applies concepts which come from recent extensions of neo-marxist analyses of the state to the policy formation process to investigate the limits and capacity of the state to act in policy formation. The role of a small goup of state officials in the construction of the discourses and the management of the policy formation process through which the Report was constructed is described. A materialist concept of language is applied to the policy text in order to illuminate the source of the historically specific discourses from which the text was constructed. An account is given of the construction of the Report. It is argued that a policy text is neither value free nor possessed of a single unambiguous meaning. The assertion is tested empirically by interviewing a sample of those involved in the construction of the Picot Report and examining their responses to establish that a variety of readers of a policy text will create a variety of meanings, even at the level of those who constructed the text. In this way the Picot Report is deconstructed and its constituent discourses arc revealed.
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    Winning a voice in educational administration : study of women working in middle management : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Educational Administration
    (Massey University, 1989) Court, Marion R.
    This study examines a group of women working in educational middle management in both primary and secondary schools in a provincial area of New Zealand. The focus is the inequalities of power in gender relations within the women's home and school situations. It examines the ways these relations contribute to theories explaining the persisting low status of women in educational management. The theoretical framework draws on critical theory and cultural studies, along with feminist critiques of androcentric administration theories and practices. These critiques call for a reconstruction of theories of leadership to take account of women's perspectives and values. A questionnaire survey was used to document the teaching service of 30 women who took part in a 'self-help' management training strategy. Alongside the career constraint of time out of full-time service for child rearing, the women identified discriminatory attitudes and practices that relate to perceptions that women should have primary responsibility for caring and nurturing within both their home and paid work situations. These attitudes are woven into the structures, policies and practices of educational institutions in ways that can limit the opportunities of all women teachers. Six of these women participated in case study interviews which investigated the sexual division of labour at work and in the home. As a consequence of the sexual division of labour and a hegemonic linking between 'masculinity' and authority, they were involved in struggles to 'win' their authority and establish the right to lead as educational administrators. The study also investigated the place of anger in the women's development of a sense of autonomy. It concludes that the caring and nurturing responsibilities of women in the home reinforced an affiliative style of educational management in the workplace, which emphasised shared decision making and equal power relations.