The state and educational reform: A case study of the Beazley and better school reports in Western Australia

Down, B.ORCID: 0000-0003-4843-0563 (1990) The state and educational reform: A case study of the Beazley and better school reports in Western Australia. Critical Pedagogy Networker, 3 (3). pp. 1-5.

Abstract

Much analysis of educational reform has concentrated on descriptive accounts of how a particular reform or policy came into existence. In general, there has been a failure to elaborate the relationship between educational reform and the wider economic and cultural context. In particular, there has been a lack of attention given in the radical theoretical work to the role of the State in the process of social change and continuity. As a result, educational reforms are usually explained in relation to technical rationality and the politically conservative principles of social harmony and normative consensus. The author argues that the role of the State leads to education reforms such as those seen in the 1980s in Western Australia and argues this more powerfully explains the changes than the theories of the proponents of systems theory.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publisher:	Deakin University. School of Education
URI:	http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/11880

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