Restructuring Identities and Power in Public Education: A Critical Discourse Analysis

• In Event: Race, Place, and Power as Curriculum: Redefining Discourses, Communities, and Identities

Abstract

Neoliberalist and managerialist ideologies driving the global educational reform movement have facilitated normalization of strategic management discourse in education. Discourses help to shape public education by constructing realities and legitimizing actions consistent with those ideologies. Taking a critical approach to discourse analysis, we selected and analyzed texts representing a discourse prescriptive of strategic management in public educational administration. Our findings show how the discourse redefines the identities of and relations among actors and stakeholders as well as how it restructures authority and power between a leadership elite and other stakeholders. We highlight how this discourse colonizes educational administration and threatens the status of education as a public good, invite consideration of alternative discourses, and make recommendations for further research.

Authors

• Sebnem Cilesiz, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

• Thomas Greckhamer, Louisiana State University