In April 2016 Manchester eScholar was replaced by the University of Manchester’s new Research Information Management System, Pure. In the autumn the University’s research outputs will be available to search and browse via a new Research Portal. Until then the University’s full publication record can be accessed via a temporary portal and the old eScholar content is available to search and browse via this archive.

Constituting the Managerial Subject: An Investigation into Middle-Management in FE

Fort, Anthony

[Thesis]. Manchester, UK: The University of Manchester; 2015.

Access to files

Abstract

This doctoral study draws upon interviews with nine curriculum-based FE college middle-managers, and three college strategic plan documents, to critically analyse middle-management identity. Through the use of an analytical framework based on Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical ‘method’ the study shows that when middle-managers talk about their professional practice they are preoccupied with data-metrics. Consequently, they are recognised as ‘disciplined subjects’; disciplined by those data-metrics materially inscribed within the discursive regimes of their college strategic plan documents. The study additionally indicates that the more hierarchically senior the middle-manager the greater the intensity of focus upon data-metrics at the expense of institutional social relations, whereby their preoccupations with data-metrics yield de-socialising effects between themselves and key institutional participants such as teachers, learners and support staff. The study further suggests that while the middle-managers within this study were curriculum-based they were not curriculum-focused; findings which were consistent through the range of middle-management levels: senior-middle, lower-middle and middle-middle, and at separate college sites. Considered together these findings raise a number of important questions for the crucial role of curriculum-based middle-managers, particularly where middle-management as a function is recognised as the means by which policy implementation is secured yet where curriculum-based work, when understood as necessarily tied to pedagogic practices, requires a focus around ‘the learner’; a learner not ontologically foregrounded as data, but in authentically social terms.

Bibliographic metadata

Type of resource:
Content type:
Form of thesis:
Type of submission:
Degree type:
Doctorate of Education
Degree programme:
Doctorate in Education (EdD)
Publication date:
Location:
Manchester, UK
Total pages:
211
Abstract:
This doctoral study draws upon interviews with nine curriculum-based FE college middle-managers, and three college strategic plan documents, to critically analyse middle-management identity. Through the use of an analytical framework based on Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical ‘method’ the study shows that when middle-managers talk about their professional practice they are preoccupied with data-metrics. Consequently, they are recognised as ‘disciplined subjects’; disciplined by those data-metrics materially inscribed within the discursive regimes of their college strategic plan documents. The study additionally indicates that the more hierarchically senior the middle-manager the greater the intensity of focus upon data-metrics at the expense of institutional social relations, whereby their preoccupations with data-metrics yield de-socialising effects between themselves and key institutional participants such as teachers, learners and support staff. The study further suggests that while the middle-managers within this study were curriculum-based they were not curriculum-focused; findings which were consistent through the range of middle-management levels: senior-middle, lower-middle and middle-middle, and at separate college sites. Considered together these findings raise a number of important questions for the crucial role of curriculum-based middle-managers, particularly where middle-management as a function is recognised as the means by which policy implementation is secured yet where curriculum-based work, when understood as necessarily tied to pedagogic practices, requires a focus around ‘the learner’; a learner not ontologically foregrounded as data, but in authentically social terms.
Thesis main supervisor(s):
Thesis co-supervisor(s):
Language:
en

Institutional metadata

University researcher(s):

Record metadata

Manchester eScholar ID:
uk-ac-man-scw:266504a
Created by:
Fort, Anthony
Created:
8th May, 2018, 13:39:34
Last modified by:
Fort, Anthony
Last modified:
8th May, 2018, 13:39:34

Can we help?

The library chat service will be available from 11am-3pm Monday to Friday (excluding Bank Holidays). You can also email your enquiry to us.