The (educational) market: a longitudinal ethnography. Exploring its impact on creative teaching and learning within the arts, in one Irish urban primary school
Loading...
Files
Full Text E-thesis
Date
2025-07-11
Authors
Conran, Eimear
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University College Cork
Published Version
Abstract
This thesis explores the marketisation of education, influenced by neoliberalism, in the context of the Global Education Reform Movement or GERM (Sahlberg, 2011, 2020), and its impact on creative teaching and learning within the arts, in one Irish urban primary school. It engages in a longitudinal, critical ethnography, aiming to capture the ‘lived experiences’ of educators and students within their field of practice (Bourdieu, 2023), as they engage in a form of cultural re-production, framed by broader marketised shifts.
The influences of the educational market are examined within the global (macro-level), national (meso-level) and cultural (micro-level) contexts, considering not only its effects on cultures of practice, but affects upon individuals (Ahmed, 2004). Central to this thesis is the exploration of a culture of ‘performativity’ that ensues within the educational market, as schools adapt to meet the needs of ‘consumers’ of education. Key trends associated with GERM (Sahlberg, 2011, 2020) are examined, including: competition and choice among schools within the marketplace, standardisation, emphases on ‘core’ subjects such as literacy, numeracy and STEM, and the dominance of outcomes-driven models of education and their perceived ‘sign value’ (Baudrillard,1981; Brancaleone and O’Brien, 2011; Bourdieu, 2020) as products of education. These dynamics can, in turn, generate a sense of ‘unreality’ and ‘intensification’ (O’Brien and Rudd, 2020, p.158) of educators’ roles, amidst the ‘performativity pressures’ to engage in ‘image management’ and ‘fabrications’ or ‘simulacra’ of ‘reality’ (Baudrillard, 2023), in effort to boost the ascribed ‘cultural capital’ (Bourdieu, 2020) of these institutions within the marketplace. Consequently, the creative arts may also face marginalisation, with subsequent reconceptualisation and ‘use’ of the performing arts as an act of (marketised) ‘production’.
Foucault’s (1991) notion of ‘governmentality’ is examined, considering the bidirectional power relations between ‘governance’ and ‘self-governance’ as an exploration of how social actors navigate these marketised changes within their fields of practice. Additionally, the concept of ‘refraction’ (Goodson and Rudd, 2012, 2016) provides a lens for understanding how educators mediate dominant waves of reform within their professional narratives; either by reproducing, re-contextualising or de-contextualising existing policies, thereby offering alternative visions for navigating marketisation.
This thesis contributes to knowledge by providing a critical ethnographic account of educators’ ‘lived experiences’ and professional narratives as they navigate marketised educational reform, offering socio-historical insights into how educators interpret, respond to and mediate systemic change in their professional lives. This study captures the complexity of professional narratives and identities over time, offering a rich and detailed analysis of situated practice in one Irish primary school, and provides insight into how such reforms are negotiated.
Description
Keywords
Marketisation of education , Global Education Reform Movement , Neoliberalism , Creativity , Creative arts , Arts education , Primary education , Irish primary school , Critical ethnography
Citation
Conran, E. 2025. The (educational) market: a longitudinal ethnography. Exploring its impact on creative teaching and learning within the arts, in one Irish urban primary school. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.