Consultants and Consultancy: the Case of Education PDF
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Educational Governance Research 4 Helen M. Gunter Colin Mills Consultants and Consultancy: the Case of Education Educational Governance Research Volume 4 SeriesEditors LejfMoos,AarhusUniversity,Copenhagen,Denmark StephenCarney,RoskildeUniversity,Roskilde,Denmark EditorialAdvisoryBoard HerbertAltrichter,UniversityofLinz,Austria StephenJ.Ball,InstituteofEducation,London,England Y.C.Chen,HongKongInstituteofEducation,HongKong NeilDempster,GriffithUniversity,Australia OlofJohansson,UmeåUniversity,Sweden GitaSteinerKhamsi,ColumbiaUniversity,USA KlausKasperKofod,AarhusUniversity,Denmark Jan Merok Paulsen, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Science, Oslo,Norway JamesP.Spillane,NorthwestUniversity,Chicago,USA MichaelUljens,ÅboAkademiUniversity,Finland Educational Governance Research AimsandScope Thisseriespresentsrecentinsightsineducationalgovernancegainedfromresearch that focuses on the interplay between educational institutions and societies and markets. Education is not an isolated sector. Educational institutions at all levels are embedded in and connected to international, national and local societies and markets.Oneneedstounderstandgovernancerelationsandthechangesthatoccur ifoneistounderstandtheframeworks,expectations,practice,roomformanoeuvre, and the relations between professionals, public, policy makers and market place actors. The aim of this series is to address issues related to structures and discourses bywhichauthorityisexercisedinanaccessiblemanner.Itwillpresentfindingson a variety of types of educational governance: public, political and administrative, as well as private, market place and self-governance. International and multidisci- plinary in scope, the series will cover the subject area from both a worldwide and local perspective and will describe educational governance as it is practised in all partsoftheworldandinallsectors:state,market,andNGOs. Theseries: – Coversabroadrangeoftopicsandpowerdomains – Positionsitselfinafieldbetweenpoliticsandmanagement/leadership – Providesaplatformforthevividfieldofeducationalgovernanceresearch – Looksintowaysinwhichauthorityistransformedwithinchainsofeducational governance – Uncoversrelationsbetweenstate,privatesectorandmarketplaceinfluenceson education,professionalsandstudents. Moreinformationaboutthisseriesathttp://www.springer.com/series/13077 Helen M. Gunter • Colin Mills Consultants and Consultancy: the Case of Education 123 HelenM.Gunter ColinMills TheManchesterInstituteofEducation TheManchesterInstituteofEducation UniversityofManchester UniversityofManchester Manchester,UK Manchester,UK ISSN2365-9548 ISSN2365-9556 (electronic) EducationalGovernanceResearch ISBN978-3-319-48877-6 ISBN978-3-319-48879-0 (eBook) DOI10.1007/978-3-319-48879-0 LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2016961942 ©SpringerInternationalPublishingAG2017 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpartof thematerialisconcerned,specificallytherightsoftranslation,reprinting,reuseofillustrations,recitation, broadcasting,reproductiononmicrofilmsorinanyotherphysicalway,andtransmissionorinformation storageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilarmethodology nowknownorhereafterdeveloped. Theuseofgeneraldescriptivenames,registerednames,trademarks,servicemarks,etc.inthispublication doesnotimply,evenintheabsenceofaspecificstatement,thatsuchnamesareexemptfromtherelevant protectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse. Thepublisher,theauthorsandtheeditorsaresafetoassumethattheadviceandinformationinthisbook arebelievedtobetrueandaccurateatthedateofpublication.Neitherthepublishernortheauthorsor theeditorsgiveawarranty,expressorimplied,withrespecttothematerialcontainedhereinorforany errorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeenmade.Thepublisherremainsneutralwithregardtojurisdictional claimsinpublishedmapsandinstitutionalaffiliations. Printedonacid-freepaper ThisSpringerimprintispublishedbySpringerNature TheregisteredcompanyisSpringerInternationalPublishingAG Theregisteredcompanyaddressis:Gewerbestrasse11,6330Cham,Switzerland Foreword Since the 1980s onwards in the UK, schools and universities have been seen as laggingbehindandneedingtobemoreefficientandeffectiveiftheyaretodelivera world-classeducationsystemforthenation’seconomicandsocialwell-being.Over this extended period, governments of different political persuasions have alleged thateducationisfailing.Drawingonneoliberalandglobalpolicyimperatives,ithas been claimed that the market knows best and that business imperatives will solve theseproblems.Oneoutcomehasbeentheemergenceofnewalliancesbetweenthe state and the private sector and the rise of a new type of policy actor. This book exposes the ways in which the logic of privatisation is evident in settings where governmentsturntoconsultantsandconsultancytosolvetheso-callededucational ‘crisis’. Helen Gunter and Colin Mills detail the ways in which attempts at ‘problem- solving’ have been underpinned by moves to privatise public services through the deployment of external expertise that has to be purchased. Consultants and Consultancy: The Case of Education spells out the ways in which these concerns have led to a growth in the influence of consultancy, consultants, and the allied processesofconsultationandconsulting(whattheauthorscallthe‘4Cs’).Anytrust inthecapacityofeducationalists,schools,andteacherstoreformandimprovethe service to which they have brought their professional expertise is sidelined by the problem-solvingskillsandbusinessacumenoftheconsultant.Consultantsaremade up of people with different expertise and backgrounds. Some come from major companies; others are educational professionals who move into consultancy. The book explores who these people are and why they do this work. This book also dealswithhowandwhythe‘4Cs’havebecomeubiquitousandwhatthismeansfor educationprovision.WhilethefocusiswiththeEnglishcontext,thebookprovides a set of analytic tools and theoretical strategies for examining the ‘4Cs’ wherever theyoccur. Thisisthefirst‘majorinvestigationandintegratedmappingapproach’(p.7)that deals with the ‘4Cs’ in the public sector although there have been some studies of consultants and consultancy in the private sector. While many researchers and certainlymanyeducationalistsareawareofthegrowthoftheconsultancyindustry, v vi Foreword this book is the first systematic approach towards analysing this dimension of education provision. The book draws on a wealth of empirical data collected by bothauthorsfromasetofresearchprojectsfundedbyvariousUKresearchcouncils. Attheheartofthisbookareoveronehundredin-depthinterviewsconductedwith policyactorsinvolveddirectlyinthe‘4Cs’industry. This book is about how consultancy works in practice in education settings. It contains an original approach towards an under-researched area and makes a substantial contribution to critical policy analysis. Gunter and Mills develop and sustain a compelling account of the complex, shifting, and at times contradictory elements involved in processes that span from being a ‘critical friend’ to schools to taking over core services in education provision. The book reviews a range of consultancyexperiencesintheEnglishsettingandconcludesthatwhatcharacterises allconsultancyandconsultationprocessesisapolicyentrepreneurialdisposition. One of the strengths of this book lies in the way it draws on a wide range of theoreticalapproachesinordertoteaseoutandrendervisiblesomeofthenuanced waysinwhichconsultancyandconsultantswork.Itdemonstratesthewaysinwhich the ‘4Cs’ industry is constructed and illustrates how the logic of consultation is sustained. In doing this, Helen Gunter and Colin Mills provide a coherent set of conceptual tools and frameworks that will enable other policy analysists in other settings to undertake similar projects. Another strength of the book is that it ‘troubles’andexposesthewaysinwhicheducationgovernanceisbeingconfigured through the work of consultants. In the last part of the book, Gunter and Mills argue that the privatisation and ‘corporatised learning’ (p. 192) that characterise the consultancy trend are not inevitable and they point to spaces for alternative possibilities. This book will appeal to critical policy analysts, policymakers, academics, educationalresearchers,andpractitioners.Itmakesanoriginalcontributiontowards critical education policy studies and will hopefully inspire similar studies in other internationalsettings. SchoolofEducation,Communication&Society, MegMaguire King’sCollegeLondon,UK Acknowledgements Theprojectsreportedinthisbookhavebeenundertakenaspartoftheprogramme of research within the Critical Education Policy and Leadership research group in theManchesterInstituteofEducation.Wearedeeplyindebtedtoourcolleagues:Dr Paul Armstrong,Dr Steve Courtney, Professor David Hall,and Dr Ruth McGinity for their collegiality and scholarship. Helen would particularly like to thank her colleagues for their contribution to the writing of this book through their support thatallowedhertohavesomestudyleave. We would like to thank the funders of our projects: first, the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust for the Consultancy and Knowledge Production in Educa- tion (CKPE) project (SG121698); second, the ESRC for funding the Knowledge Production in Educational Leadership (KPEL) project (RES-000-23-1192); and third, the Consultancy and Literacy (CaL) project is based on a doctoral project by Mills and is partly funded by the Manchester Institute of Education at the University of Manchester. We would like to thank Joanna Bragg and Dr Gillian Forrester who acted as research assistants on the CKPE and KPEL projects and membersoftheProjectAdvisoryGroupfortheCKPEprojectwhovisitedthenorth andgavewonderfulinsightsintoarapidlychangingsituationineducation:Alison Elliott (head teacher), Dr Janet Harvey (consultant), Ian Potter (head teacher), AssociateProfessorAndyTownsend(UniversityofNottingham),andLiamTrippier (consultant). Wewouldliketothankthosewhohaveworkedwithusondatacollection.Our respondentshavebeenverygenerouswiththeirtimeandhaveopeneduptheirlife stories,andwearedeeplygratefultothemfortheirsupportandtheircandour.Many miles have been travelled in order to capture their stories and to witness them at work. We are very appreciative of the access that has allowed us to put on record theradicalchangesthatcolleaguesarewitnessingandexperiencing. We have examined these stories in relation to day-to-day practice and located them within the bigger picture of changes to the state, economy, and politics. We are deeply implicated in these changes ourselves, and so we are mindful of the challengesofhowprimaryresearchisbeingshapedbyeconomisingstructures.We are seeking to make this public and to ensure that important changes to what it vii viii Acknowledgements meanstobeaprofessionalandtoworkwithinandforpubliceducationarenotlost. Weareworkingatatimewhenourprofessionalknowledgeisbeingtakenfromus, and as scholarly activists, our task is to map this, name it, and enable the critical realitiesofwhatthismeanstostayontheagenda.Indoingso,weareindebtedtoa rangeofpeoplewhogiveusintellectualnourishment,butwetakefullresponsibility forwhatwehavewritten.Weseethisasabeginningratherthanthecompletionof ourproject. Manchester,UK HelenM.Gunter May2016 ColinMills Contents 1 ConsultantsandConsultancyinEducation............................... 1 Introduction.................................................................... 1 Consultants,Consulting,ConsultationandConsultancy.................... 3 Governingandthe4Cs........................................................ 7 AnchoringtheBook........................................................... 14 PartI ConsultantsandConsultancyinAction 2 CorporateConsultantsinGlobalCompanies............................. 19 Introduction.................................................................... 19 Who?........................................................................... 20 What?.......................................................................... 23 Meanings? ..................................................................... 28 Summary....................................................................... 31 3 ResearchersasConsultantsinandoutsideofUniversities.............. 33 Introduction.................................................................... 33 Who?........................................................................... 34 What?.......................................................................... 39 Means?......................................................................... 42 Summary....................................................................... 45 4 ProfessionalsasConsultantsinandoutsideofCompanies.............. 47 Introduction.................................................................... 47 Who?........................................................................... 48 What?.......................................................................... 51 Meanings? ..................................................................... 54 Summary....................................................................... 58 ix
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