In 1973, the then Director General of Education in Victoria, Dr Laurie Shears, determined to devolve greater administrative responsibility to the regions when the pile of daily correspondence on his desk equalled his height (although he was not a particularly tall man). This was the first step towards a process of decentralisation in a highly centralised and bureaucratised state education system. In 1997, the former Minister of Education, Don Hayward, and Brian Caldwell, Professor of education at Melbourne University, author of the globally popular text Self Managing Schools and consultant to the Victorian and other national governments on devolution and education reform, published a book recommending that public schools becoming financially and administratively independent, able to raise loans, purchase property and charge fees ( some Victorian state secondary schools already charge full fees to international students). This was to remove what they described was a 'dysfunctional' boundary between public and private schools within the 'education market'.

Superficially, one can see self managing schools as the extension of this logic. But, I argue here and elsewhere, that self managing schools in the context of market liberalism as introduced since 1992 and now extended with the notion of Schools of the Third Millenium, is radically and fundamentally changing the relationship between the individual, the state, the market and the family through reform of structures, processes, a redistribution and re-allocation of responsibilities which change relationships of accountability, and, importantly a shift in values (See Blackmore 1998; Blackmore et al 1997; Blackmore 1996. See also Gewirtz et al 1995).

The marketing of education since 1993 signalled the rapid move towards selfmanagement under the 'radically conservative' policies of Schools of the Future (SOTF) (Giddens 1995). Schools in the Third Millenium will, as grant maintained schools in England, be able to opt out of the public education system ie. self government not self management. These changes have been in response, it is argued, to what is an increasingly more complex problem of governance in a globalised, technologically sophisticated and culturally pluralistic society (Hargreaves 1994). The suggestion is that the changed patterns of production in the workplace-- which also has been used to justify the radical restructuring of educational work--- are in response to changed patterns of educational consumption as both employers and parents are demanding different forms of educational provision to meet the new demands of post modern society ( For the Victorian debate see Seddon, 1993; Angus 1994; Tickell 1994; Smyth 1993; Caldwell 1993, 1994)

I want to explore some of the implications of the construction of the demand for and consumption of education and its impact upon the nature of teacher and principal's work in the context of the newly constituted education market in Victoria. I touch on some aspects of the market, as constructing the demand side of the education-society nexus and the role of the media, and then concentrate upon the ways in which educational restructuring, as a response to the so called needs of post industrial society and globalised economies, has reconstituted through the notion of self management bo_th the nature of school organisation and also work identity of teachers (Acker, 1996; Hargreaves, 1994). This is particularly evident in how self managing schools in the context of the market, have shifted their organisational emphasis and focus upon performance.

I also point to the role of the media as mediating these changed relations between school, individual and society, and how the media is critical in the construction of the education market and the 'heroic consumer'- and in turn how this impacts on educational practices in self managing schools (Warde, 1994). The media is an active agent in the formation, production and dissemination of education policy, and also in the construction of the individual educational consumer, and in the work identity of teachers (Falk, 1994; Wallace 1993).

This paper, therefore, explores some of the ways in which self management has re-configured the nature of public schooling, and in particular the identity formation of teachers as leaders and educational workers in an era of self management. I suggest that notions of self management actively 'form' a particular type of 'teacher subject' and 'manager subject' through a process which is increasingly about the managing of the self to meet particular organisational and individual goals. The theoretical framework of the paper has been developed out of a number of projects on educational restructuring in all three education sectors-- schools, universities and VET (includes TAFE, community and adult education)-- across a number of states, and its implications for the formation of work identity.I have worked on these projects with Judyth Sachs, and at Deakin with Louise Laskey, John Hodgens and Chris Bigum before he migrated north. I will be working through some of the key concepts which are emerging out of these research projects -- in particular notions of performativity and self management,by focusing upon Victorian school 'reform' under Kennett's radically conservative leadership. I conclude with some comments about the implications of such trends for principal's and teachers' work, arising from the possible dismantling of public education and towards self governing schools and even more recently suggestion of the de-institutionalisation of schooling altogether as the Kennett government moves down the dual track of markets and info- technology as substitutes for notions of the public and pedagogical social relations. What will be the role of teachers and principals and, I argue, parents, in virtual schools?

The changing context of the 1980s for educational administration is framed by the deregulation of the market and a move to the contractualist or performative state (Gordon 1993). The corporatisation of education has produced new management technologies. Corporatisation, as defined by Wexler (199?), is when the market infiltrates all aspects of the organisation. Knights and Morgan define corporate strategy as the 'planned relationship between the market and the internal characteristics of the organisation' (1991, p. 257). The discourse of corporate strategy, they suggest, emerged out of a specific set of conditions in the post war period, a critical response to the popularity amongst policy makers, managers and academics of management / workface planning and Mayo-ist human relations theory. Both these earlier discourses focused internally upon how to control within organisations and were not related to the market. Somehow entrepreneurial leaders mystically worked with inspirational characteristics to penetrate the market. There was little _awareness of any capacity or need 'to segment the market and differentiate products for "specific" types of consumers'(Knights and Morgan, 1991, p. 257). Corporate planning became necessary with the conjuncture of globalisation, the separation of managers and owners, and inflexibility in hierarchical organisations in the 1970s and 1980s. Corporate strategic discourse emerged out of idea of planning to control the market outside as well as the organisation internally.

My focus will be upon the corporatisation of school education, and how it is producing new corporate work identities and new modes of work behaviour with shifts towards self management within the wider context of the re- gendering of educational work (Blackmore 1997; Whitty 1994, 1996; Wylie, 1995a&b; Hatcher, 1994). This shift to focus upon the self within organisational theory is paralleled by more recent conceptualisations of the education and work relationship epitomised in human capital theory and, in turn, the shift in responsibility (both financial and other forms of management ) in education from the state to the individual (De Lany 1997; Gee and Lankshear, 1993). Neoclassical human capital economics provided both a definition of the problem and its solution (Marginson 1997 a & b; Luke 1997). Whereas in an expansionist of the 1960s when human capital theory emerged, education was funded on the basis that education of individual produced both individual and national productivity. Education was an investment. Second wave human capital theory in a period of constraint and unemployment argued that education provided value adding and the means to handle new technologies and upgraded jobs, and this led to selective investment in management and high technology areas and lifting generic skills. The third phase of human capital theory as emulated in market liberal human capital theory of the late 1980s/1990s sees individuals invest in education and the aggregate will lead to necessary social investment. Programs and policies thus focus upon the 'self managing individual' who invests in his/her own upskilling (Marginson, 1995, p. 19; Luke 1997).

Educational administration has gained new power through its mediation of the market in education, and in its assumption of new management discourses (Drucke_r 1995, 1993: Senge 1990) and the name of management itself. In particular, the notion of self management has served various purposes. It indicates the shift in emphasis in organisational control from input to output as the complexity of society and organisational life have become too great. Whereas under bureaucratic and overtly centralised systems, management was rule governed and through direction. Now policy makers and politicians seek to steer and not row through policy and the allocation of resources (Taylor et al 1997). At another level, using input-output measures means that the whole education institution or system can be 'tracked, monitored, structured and deconstructed from a fixed central pivot'(Marginson, 1995). Economists and systems controllers assume society is an organistic unified totality. They therefore believe in the capacity to produce a totalising truth. Whereas the belief in such absolutes is not new to educational administrators, it is now in a context of non-absolutes and uncertainty which are a direct consequence of the market in education, the market being the central core notion of the same economics. In this context, new modes of direction and control have occurred-- one of which is that of performativity at the same time that self management is a manifestation of fundamentally different social relations between the individual, the state and education.

Yeatman argues that there has been a shift away from the paternalism of the state, in which the 'paternalist authority of the household was borrowed by the state' towards a contractualist state. But the paternalistic welfare state has been destabilised by the politics of voice and difference arising out of feminism and other social movements.

By performativity, I borrow initially from Lyotard (1984) who, in his analysis of universities, defines it as always being where efficiency is the bottomline for decisions ie. more for less. Lyotard comments

I want to develop the notion here to suggest that performativity in the context of education markets has taken on a new dimension-- that of being seen to perform as much as about substantive or quality performance ie externality of performance. Let me explore this idea for a moment.

The primary problem for politicians and managers in the corporatist deregulated educational organisation is how to tap into the creative capacities of the knowledge workers upon which productivity is achieved by freeing up and creating more flexible and autonomous work environments whilst directing or controlling the enterprise of these _knowledge workers towards organisational objectives (Drucker, 1993). One response has been an administrative and structural one-- through the imposition of corporate managerialism, of which devolution is a key feature. Corporate managerialism could be characterised as devolving responsibility to small subunits to produce flexibility, strong central policy guidelines to coordinate and provide direction, clear processes of review and feedback from local to the centre, emphasis on output not input, and being client focused. It has also facilitated the process of downsizing and doing more with less as centralised budget reduces allocations to the margins where the difficult decisions are made ie different financial and accounting arrangements accompany these processes eg. competitive tendering, outsourcing (Armstrong 1989). Managerialism was a response to a legitimation (financial) crisis of the state; the demands of the new social movements for a more responsive state; the rise of the new Right and its demands for reduced public expenditure; and the increased complexity of governance which led the state to steer through policy (Taylor et al 1997). As the system becomes too difficult to control through the regulation of inputs and processes or by more bureaucratic rule governing means because it is so complex, the emphasis shifts onto outputs or outcomes as the means by which to direct or steer more self managing institutions and individuals. With corporate managerialism, the role of management became one of coordination and strategic intervention, not daily control.

Critical therefore to control and regulate self managing institutions are strong accountability or feedback systems to the centre (Capper 1994). Devolution requires improved reporting to the centre to prove efficiency in delivery as the government (or executive of organisation) is responsible for its own performance for survival. This information feedback is a necessary function of legitimation -- hence the need for performance indicators and peformance management and the production of data base systems-- the former being about systems, the latter about individuals (Brennan, 1996; Cibulka, 1990). It is here where the notion of performativity is central:'there will be the exteriorisation of knowledge with respect to the 'knower'( Lyotard, 1984, p. 4). Whereas previously it had been the power of the engineer which framed earlier modes of management, now it was the power of the accountant which reconceptualised work ie. management accountancy. In the management accounting context, 'conformist innovation' implies the adaptation of personnel practice to the requirements of control and reporting systems, whereas 'deviant' innovation requires some form of challenge ot the accounting frame of reference itself. Instance of conformist innovation ...were the provision of 'hard data' by the personnel department for consumption by management accounting systems, attempts to justify personnel activity in cost terms and the possible development of human-assset accounting as a means of solving both these problems similtaneously'(Armstrong, 1989, p. 158).

Another strategy was posited by neo conservative market liberalism, and the reconceptualisation of education as a commodity and students (parents) as clients(Deem 1994; Ball, 1993; Kenway et al 1993). Thus self managing schools now serve educational markets with a shift in focus onto the individual as the consumer premised upon public choice theory ( Whitty, 1994; Robertson, 1993). Here the argument is that the individual knows best what they want and therefore the government should pass over the funds to individuals to free up their choices (in its most extreme form of vouchers, refentlty renamed as an education entitlement in the West Review on Higher Education (1997)). This has a number of implicit assumptions about education, and _its relationship to the nation state, the economy and the individual. The individual, whether the producer or consumer, is 'free' to roam, to make choices and tap into any resources (private or state). It epitmoses what Warde refers to as the 'heroic consumer' in which consumption and display of consumption is critical to self identity in the age of consumption (Warde 1994). Self identity is a problematic process, particularly with the intensification of symbolic communication in contemporary world. Thus the 'power of socially disembedded images and apprarances and the hyperreality of the world of signs' as the 'heroic consumer becomes chronically engaged with mass media messages' (Warde, 1994 ,p. 229).

There are many simplistic assumptions about the individual self maximising rational chooser here-- about the nature and type of knowledge available to faciliate their choice, but also their material capacity to make choices. We all may choose to go on a six months holiday, we may even be able to acquire all the information-- but who can afford it? And who is so independent of responsibilities to others to follow out our preferences? 'The abstract individual of neo classical economics is not the burdened, worried, haunted, embedded, memory infected, befriended, kinsperson that stalks the social stage (Warde, 1994 , p. 227)

But it is on this basis that Caldwell and Hayward in their proposal for self governing schools in the third millenium. They see the current distinctions between public and private schooling, home and work as 'dysfunctional' (Caldwell and Hayward, 1997) because they create 'artificial' impediments to the free flow of individual choice. They therefore decontexualise the individual from any sense of belonging to the group, the family and the school are treated as black boxes through which the individual can exercise their choices, and the community does not exist other than an accidental aggregation of individual choices. Of course not all individuals are free to choose or be seduced, as the consumer culture leads to a 'majority of happy shoppers and minority subject to state surveillance'(Warde, 1994, p. 224) eg. unemployed, homeless, welfare dependants. Those dependent on the state are deprived of liberty and self expression with the residualisation of state services with the demise of the welfare state and therefore residualisation of those dependent on the state. State welfare becomes a disciplinary function controlling failed consumers.

This links back to devolution and its emphasis on outputs in the logic of corporate managerialism. There are two arguments here about accountability. First, there is the argument hat there has to be a free flow of information to faciliatatethe client chooser. Thus there is a need for improved reporting to parents eg. standardised tests (David Kemp's line about publication of results) which allow for comparability between institutions ( Figgis 1996 a-d) There is no sense of responsibility to others- either the public or the community--only to the self. The second notion of accountability is that of accountability of the centre for public expenditure. Therefore the subunits must be held fully accountable to the centre through strong line management, data bases and accounting practices. The consequences of these lines of argument are significant, because the state does not actually free up education. Rather it sets up new forms of regulation, but ones which remove responsibility for the consequences onto either the individual or the individual school, who can be blamed for making wrong decisions (Ball, 1995).

Thus the state's response has _been in terms of formal and not substantive rationality, with 'the adoption of a rhetoric and measures which are designed to show that we have a cost-effective and efficient public sector' although the public sector is unable to take the 'final test of success in the market place'(Yeatman, 1990, p. 5). The effect has been to dismantle rule bound processes and structures and orient all towards output and outcomes, to achieve flexibility by freeing up the state, and encourage an ethos of change, although, under Labor, still guided by issues of equity. While Labor justified educational restructuring on the grounds of global competitiveness while retaining the welfare and workplace safety nets, the radical conservative governments of the 1990s unleashed market forces in the public sector at the same time that they dismantled and privatised the welfare state (education, heath and welfare). Economic rationalist discourses produced by the new elected radically conservative governments at federal and state levels in the 1990s have extrapolated the premises of human capital articulated in earlier official Labor texts by aligning the discourses of localisation and democratisation with public choice theory predicated upon a level playing field and the atomistic rational individual who makes independent choices to maximise benefits for the self rather than equity principles (Pusey 1991).

The performative state is increasingly premised upon contractual exchanges between individuals. The new contractualism now permeates education. In self managing schools it is embedded in the curriculum and behaviour contracts between students and teachers, teacher employment contracts with principals, performance management contracts between managers and teachers, school charter contracts with the Ministry (Caldwell, and Sawatzki, 1993, Education Department 1994; Invargson et al., 1995; Cuttance, 1990; Cibulka, 1990; Radnor and Ball 1996; Radnor, Ball and Vicncent 1996). It is also reflected in changed work practices and identities, which signify particular value shifts (Brieschke, 1993).

The deregulative aspects of the market and the regulative aspects of the performative state mean that individual government schools compete with other government and private schools for students and take no responsibility for serving local neighbourhood comunities or 'the public'. Public schools are being corporatised (increasingly reliant for funding upon sponsorships) and privatised(as educational costs and labour are increasingly being shifted to parents). So that governments can steer education more efficiently, the re-regulation of schools and teachers occurs through curriculum standards frameworks and standardised assessment in primary and secondary schools. Performativity encourages a process of individuation as teachers and principals work in a 'state of conscious and permanent visibility' resulting in a form of self surveillance which assures the 'automatic functioning of power' (Bartky, 1990, p. 65).

Neave (1996) talks about the law of anticipated results in which the normative function of the supranational level is increasing and how it operates at the institutional level. First, it gives the impression of being autonomous rather than an imposed or constrained decision: and second, it also givens the impression of change coming from the grass roots when very often it is little more than a reactive response to pressure exerted from above. For this reason, it is a _factor of considerable confusion when subsequently researchers seek to determine whether change is bottom driven or or top down imposed. From the standpoint of administrations anxious to avoid approbrium of unpalatable policies, it allows the buck to be passed and denial to be made on the grounds that ... after all, the individual institution ( or individual themselves in signing a one year employment contract) could have said "no". Thus the rhetoric of public policy is often at odds with the institutional behaviour it elicits. One has only to think of the schizophrenic marriage between the centralising tendencies of contemporary British higher education and the government rhetoric of greater autonony to realise the usefulness of the device (Neave, 1996, p. 29-30).

At the same time, the legitimation problem of the state leads to the greater control of Ministers over policy and finance (Taylor et al) --what Lingard calls the Ministerialisation of policy-- and stronger executive government but greater party loyalty. So organisational complexity ironically, despite the claims that it requires the democratisation of the workplace, leads to increased executive decisionmaking, although it increasingly relies upon employee commitment (Drucker, 1990). Head and Ball (1994) argue that while the state itself has become a variable which does not necessarily act in the interests of particular power groups and which is not necessarily patriarchal, boundaries between state/society are 'emergent, partial, unstable, and variable'. At the same time, elites, patriarchy and capitalism, are interdependent but often work against each other in specific contexts. Elite theory, particular that of the Weberian tradition, see the emergence of the technocratic elite as the triumph with the centralisation of power and growing executive power of corporate managers in major firms, transformation of substantive political questions into matters of technique and administration, and the minimalist role accorded to the citizen as voter/client but not activist or policy maker (Head and Ball, 1994, p. 64). But one cannot automatically align ownership with elite rule in the time of MNC's--as markets and management operate often in relatively autonomous ways. But as they point out, this is in tension with specific cultural and historical circumstances in specific contexts. The Australian state, for example, due to its particular cultural, economic and social history, has been strongly interventionist, an interventionism shaped by the particular sets of historical relations between government, labour and capital, and its colonial origins, but one increasingly framed and disciplined, as for other nation states, by international credit agencies in globalised markets, as well as formation of new trading blocs. So what does all this mean for self management in schools?

With in the context of reduced inputs and governmental expenditure, people are now the primary source of productivity. There is an emphasis, Giddens (1995) argues, on productivism not productivity. Productivism is an ethos where work takes primacy in life, separated out of other spheres, and in which work becomes the 'standard bearer of moral meaning' (Giddens, 1995, p. 175). Work determines whether individuals are worthwhile or autonomous. At the same time, the new productivism, while denying the family et al and other priorities, still recognises the need to capture the emotions as well as the intellect of its workers ie it relies upon the obsessive nature of the individual towards work, an obession driven by organisational work practices and also fear of loss of work (Fineman, 1993). In this context, the emotional economy of organisations are transformed (Czarniawska, 1997), as are conceptualisations of leadership. The post modern leader must be _communicative, person oriented and indeed caring (in the protective sense). But productivism also has its own demise inherent in its makeup-- in that its privileging of the economic over the social, it undermines its own capacity to capture the social as a force for greater productivity (Giddens, 1995). It is about input output-- emphasis on outcomes and strategic planning, which in its application producing inflexibility for individuals as much through overwork as lack of autonomy.

Given that it is through HRM that organisations now 'add value', worker co-operation is critical. This is achieved through consensus building, visions and performance contracts through which individuals internalise the goals of the organisation. New modes of work practices are emerging which shape, but do not necessarily determine, new work and personal behaviours. 'Greedy organisations' now seek to channel the intellectual and emotional energy of people through a range of disciplinary technologies associated with school based management e.g. management by objectives, team work and performance management (Cozer 1974).

This is,as is the ongoing constitution of the labour process and the market, highly gendered. This shift is epitomised by the remaking of hegemonic masculinity away from the image of the rational bureaucrat to the multiskilled, flexible, service oriented and entrepreneurial manager or what Kerfoot and Knights call strategic masculinity. Strategic or competitive masculinity

Strategic management seeks to exploit diversity (gender, sexuality), to channel individual desires, passion and energy for organisational ends. Interpersonal relations are supplanted by depersonalised or contrived forms of intimacy which produce new forms of self governance. Team building thus seeks to energise and engage individuals into the corporate processes (Sinclair, 1994). Management thus manipulates intimacy within social relations and reconstitutes it into 'purposive-rational action'. The modern performance principle emerged in 'a period in which instrumental rationality (separation of means and ends, disconnnection of fact from value with a preference for fact; and removal of human feeling and concern from disinterested intellect) defines our view of work (Yeatman, 1990). Performativity of post modern organisations exploits the pleasure of the win, and getting the job done, as well as the intimacy of social relations to achieve organisational goals. This contrasts with the modernist performance principle of the gender neutral bureaucrat which 'embraced delayed gratification, the restraint of pleasure, work and productiveness'.

Thus people management is critical to reconceptualisations of leadership and how the organisation is re-engineered. Hence the institutional schizopherenia evident in self managing organisations which on the one hand encourage initiative, autonomy, and innovation at the same time that on the other, workers feel more controlled and under surveillance than ever before. This is because the democratisation of line management is dependent upon a notion of professional expertise (implying authority and discretionary power). But the professionalisation and democratisation of the upper levels of the management does not permeate down to the lower level workers. Thus middle managers (such as school principals) are ambiguously positioned in this democratic fiction. Being labelled as middle managers 'draws them into the rational-technical discourses of management but does not necessarily confer on them the prerogatives of managers'(Yeatman, 1990. p. 24). In this context in which governments and organisations focus upon formal and not substantive rationality, performativity takes precedence over substance (Lyotard 1984; Lash and Urry 1994). Value is added to the product (eg. schools) through image and design.

Under the principle of performativitrt, efficiency is the bottomline for judgement of self management for schools as efficiency has been established a primary, seemingly neutral, criteria for judgement of goverment. The efficiency principle is difficult to counter because it is amoral-- is not intrinsically bad.

In our research projects we also found how principal's and teachers' work is increasingly focused upon the externalities, upon performance, upon exteriority and not what is happening in schools. Schools now must respond to external demands and not attend to internal needs of students--where is the student in all this? What does this say about principals as agents of change. And where is the role of community? I want to, in drawing upon our research, indicate some of the problems arising from the focus upon performativity. First, the culture of performavity encourages the restriction not disseminatio_n of knowledge. The argument advocating schools to be ranked according to test scores is premised upon the assumption that good performance will attract parents and students and thereby reward good schools.

Ironically, this principle only encourages certain types of information ie what can be measured easily for comparison; and second, it encourages restriction of information flow not encouragement. There is not desire to be outranked by others and the free flow of information allows there to be public disclosure of problems, which is what accountability to community could be understood to mean.True accountability impacts on image and market attractiveness.

Let me quote one teacher to exemplify this point. Teachers are required to complete annual evaluations for the annual report. These are listed under notion of morale. Many teachers do not express dissatisfaction or sense of low morale, first because low morale is viewed as a leadership problem for the principal and not a system problem, and second,because of its impact on performativity.

Performativity therefore encourages the display of particular types of knowledge. Lyotard suggest that social action is judged in terms only of its practice use or performativity...performativity therefore becomes the basis of legitimating knowledge. Real knowledge is knowledge which can contribute to productivity, performance and efficiency. This privileges certain aspectsof social relations and educational activities.

Second, the focus upon performativity, while couched in notions of the team and the unit is ultimately individualising in its effect. The notion of the collective works at the level of the school-- team performance as opposed toindividual performance-- and between schools -- public education and self managing schools.

Third, the emphasis on performativity within the market produces particularly narrow images of what constitutes good schooling and good leadership. Good principals are, I was told, 'those who can control their teachers and their councils'(Blackmore 1996)._ This means little public debate about such issues as the LAP; councils who do not criticise government policy ; teachers who do not strike. The emphasis of the self managing school is upon being seen to perform in the market-- and for leaders it is being seen to be entrepreneurial and strong (Gewirtz et al 1995). It has meant the re-making of hegemonic masculinity away from the image of the rational bureaucrat to the multiskilled, flexible, service oriented and entrepreneurial manager (or in Caldwell's terms strategic leaders). Whereas old modernist performance principles of the gender neutral bureaucrat were about delayed gratification and the denial of pleasure for work, which separated preference from fact, human feeling from the intellect, the new performativities of post modern 'greedy' organisations exploit the pleasure of the win, and getting the job done, as well as the intimacy of social relations to achieve organisational goals. Leaders now get their pleasure out doing something well-- although many would question the outcomes of what they are achieving.

Such was the case of Galway Secondary College-- a former technical school which during the 1980s had begun to convert itself into a school with an academic profile-- a venture which came to fruition under SOTF-- eg. offering scholarships, instituting a school diary-- we were 'to be honest, buying better academic kids'. It as simple as that'. This school, under a pro-active principal with close connections to the DSE, was quick to offer itself as pilot for SOTF.

Already into self promotion, this principal revelled in the promises of the SOTF. By 1994, one senior colleague commented

But he also recognised the dilemmas of the self managing school and the exploitation of the individual investment teachers had in particular conpceptualisations of their work identity.

Strategic management seeks to exploit diversity (gender, sexuality), to channel individual desires, passion and energy for organisational ends. Interpersonal relations are supplanted by depersonalised or contrived forms of intimacy which produce new forms of self governance. Management thus manipulates intimacy within social relations and reconstitutes it into purposive-rational action. But performativity is also about information management, which can counter people management.

Critical to performativity is the capacity of the individual and institution to display and market themselves as both products and producers. Performativity leads to emphasis on outward and not inward looking, onto image management not substantive educational issues.

And again one teacher at Burdekin:

Schools, it seems are messy complex institutions hich do not respond to market forces in simplistic linear ways. Our analysis sits uncomfortably against the vision for the future being espoused currently for Schools of the Third Millenium

What does this emphasis on performativity (as opposed to performance) mean for schools? It _requires even more rapid organisational responses to external demands and the market and a move to strategic thinking. This means jettisoning a central tenet of educational administration-- planning (Logan et al ). Caldwell, in a paper 'Strategic Intentions for Leaders in School for the Third Millenium'(1996b), accepts that the three year corporate plan of SOTF is now passed its use by date. As in our studies, such charters or three year plans are now seen to inhibit strategic thinking, reduce flexibility and constantly address rapid change. Principals in particular voiced concerns about the difficulties of changing the three year priorities in the school charters which were negotiated with the Ministry. Strategic planning coincided with appreciating the manner in which external forces impacted organisations education and the now familiar SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunity and Threats). It is increasingly difficult to prepare a strategic plan, given the turbulence and uncertainty of the external environment. Caldwell cites Hammer and Champy, authors of re-engineering the corporation and applies it the schools

Caldwell suggests that we have already commenced in the re-engineering of schools-- stage one was to create systems of self managing schools in public sector 'with evidence of a contribution to student learning'. Stage two will be an unrelenting focus on restructuring learning and teaching in all schools with an emphasis on performance (10 years). Citing Drucker...

He argues that schools may be more important now because of the knowledge required.

Here Drucker and Caldwell are suggesting a new type of teacher-- one who is the distributive channel through which knowledge is disseminated, accessed and not as a knoledge producer. It also has professional implication, because knowledge is everyone and noone's domain. Already there are suggestions raised about virtual schools--open learning etc

And stage three is that of a new 'gestalt' for schooling in a knowledge society ( 25 Years). Caldwell argues for strategic leadership as laid down by Boisot (1995). This means keeping abreast of issues, recognising threat and opportunity in school environment and in society at large, nationally and internationally; sharing knowledge with others; establishing structures and process which allow school to set priorities and strategies; assuring that the community focuses upon strategic matters; and monitoring of strategies (Caldwell 1997). Caldwell sites three scenarios-- between high low turbulence in env_ironment and high low understanding-- arguing that strategic planning was appropriate when turbulence was low and understanding high--but now it is vice versa with high turbulence and low understanding. So, as Boisot argues, we cannot offer a coherent organisational response. He suggests we must rely upon 'intrapreneurship'...ie individual effort which can be later incorporated into organisational strategies. This is individualised educational entrepreneur --free flowing -- who has the capacity to read intuitively patterns of the environment and whose 'ideas' and initiatives' can be incorporated later. In all of this, there is little sense of the importance of context to eother learning or teaching, particularly the social and welfare role of the school( ).

And what of teachers? Caldwell refers to Gates argument about 'technology as pivotal to the future of teachers role'..Gates argues that all students will be on the internet, all students will have computers at school and at home, teachers will 'select and adapt presentations of the best teachers' and then provide supporting material ..customised individual learning in some subjects beyond the capacity of that the teacher. He sees this as liberating of teachers from that need to provide 'in depth interesting material for 25 students, six hours a day' because they can call upon 'best teaching and best support'.

Caldwell sees schools as workplaces being transformed-- including the scheduling of time for learning and aprpoaches to HRM...rendering obsolete notions of industrial relations. Schools will change in all ways, with no walls but built around global learning networks and 'much of the learning that calls for the student to be located at schools will occurring many place, at home, at the upper year levels, at the workplace'. In these virtual schools , 'A wide range of professionals and paraprofessional will support learning'. Here the solution to the messiness of schools as institutions is to deinstitutionalise schooling, remove any artificial barriers between systems, and reduce to the smallest unit of the school, of not the teacher. Here we have the ultimate decontextualisation of learning which counters most contenporary research about situated learning and the critical importance of school community, social andwelfare aspects of education (Greenspan et al 1993; Fine 1993; ). It represents the individualising tendencies of many contemporary educational reform discourses premised upon market liberalism.

Performativity is both the product of, and in turn produces, the emphasis on information and communication. The role of the media and other communication forms. eg. phone links, internet, newsletters, softnet is critical. But while the performative re-regulating state relies upon the circulation of information through new modes of communication- it is highly selective about what it regulates and what types of information is made public. The public display of error or weakness, where performance is all, means makret loss. Thus the performative state relies upon neutralising damaging information, and privileging favourable information. Such information control has significant implications for institutional and personal behaviours as well as democratic practice. The performative state empties out all substantive politicised content, and in so removing this democratic process, it becomes reliant upon terror and fear...itself _driven out of fear of divulgence and open flow of communication and information. The state seeks to perform outwardly well and to control internal dissension and debate because it reflects badly upon its governance. Any indication of weakness can lead to international markets withdrawing investment, and possible loss of government etc.

Thus you have on the one hand the overt practices of the use of a variety of channels of communication such as media, policy statements, publicity, newspapers and the rhetoric of dialogue, discussion, dissension and sharing of information on the other ( (Fairclough?????p. 13) and on the other a climate of fear and control ie a schizophrenic emotional economy of many educational organisations. Likewise, at the institutional level, schools seek to control information about their daily work while constructing the image that all is well through carefully managed information. Yet the state, on insisting that schools report on particularly narrow range of output performance indicators, does not offer schools the same protection that they seek themselves.

The new info technologies are not only reshaping the pedagogical relations and organisational aspects of schools, but are central to performativity first, as the means for organisational display, and second for accountability. Thus the performative state uses the media and a range of info channels (Infonet, Education News, Hotline) to maintain its legitimacy as being a good performer. Similarly, individual schools, principals and teachers are increasingly sensitive to the media.

In a state headed by a former advertising man, the media is a critical aspect of creating the image of good leadership and effective management. One female primary school teacher commented on how the Victorian DSE had used the media:

Talking to principals and teachers, it became evident that they felt that their work was shaped elsewhere-- that issues which they had to deal with often arose not out of their particular school or classroom context-- but in response to another range of amorphous expectations which rarely made explicit. One teacher commented (LK , Harrington)

Teachers in particular, voiced their sense that their self image as teachers was being shaped by the media, an image which was strongly disempowering as it cast teachers as being failures or lazy. One principal commented how :

Another principal:

This school has in its charter the priority of developing the work ethic. After the amalgamation of a high performing academic high school and less academically oriented high school and two technical schools, the school felt that it was important for it to develop its profile.

Principal's referred to how they received policy initiatives through the media-- with little or no forewarning. The state also actively manages policy through the media. Principals would read about new policies they had to implement in the paper, and then the fax was there in the morning. Such publicity led to even higher expectations. In one school, after the public launching of the Keys to Life passing out $10 million dollars for state schools for reading, one principal forewarned--

Most schools, regardless of their student base and profile, were including literacy as a main charter priority. The charters served to symbolically act as mechanisms indicating that the schools were being responsive, and policies were often developed to symbolically indicate that schools were addressing the issues eg. policies on gender equity, gifted children etc. At the same time, the absence of certain policies also indicated how the school wished to project itself eg.to produce a racial discrimination policy, as many schools have done recently in response to Hanson debate, was seen to give the message that there must be a racial problem at the school.

Schools also had to be ready to counter bad press which arose out of departmental policy ie media utilised by the department to implement policies eg. school closures. Thus schools are publicaly named as being asked to consider emagalation or closure in the final weeks when enrolment decisions are being made by families ( eg. cluster of Brunswick schools in November 1997), often creating a self fulfilling prophesy by marking out schools which are 'ar risk'. Schools, when marked for possible closure by the Department, had to mount considerable media pressure (large sign in front yard and local paper ads) stating they were not closing.

Likewise, the government was particularly concerned about manipulating the media in terms of reducing conflict over contentious issues-- eg. the introduction of the LAP (Age, ????, 1997). There was careful management of the LAP so as to minimise publicity. Principals were directly told their stance was to be as advocates of the LAP and that they had to interview and encourage all parents who wished to withdraw their child not to do so.

_

At the same time, many schools felt the local press was supportive and fair--'the media gives us all time and space in the paper....and this district has a healthy competition which is not new or recent. But as one teacher commented, schools have to be more reflective in how they market, be more focused, and accept that they have strengths but also weaknesses. He commented

The media thus becomes part of the regulatory or disciplinary technologies used by the state to control schools, principals and teachers while they are, as public servants, denied access to publicly respond in the media.

Thus while there has been an attempt to seemingly simplify and flatten management structures through devolution by devolving the messy business of educational work and the hard decisions to individual schools, requires newer more symbolic modes of control. Bernstein that

And the very process of change itself has worked as a means of control. One principal voiced the argument that the onslaught of change had a purpose and was a key strategy by the government to stop opposition-- control through overload.

In turn, the new work practices arising from devolution, self management, and emphasis on outcomes and the externalities of education have significantly transformed the nature of teachers work identity formation.

_

Another aspect of corporatisation is the development of new techologies of the self. The issue for leadership, according to new management theorists such as Drucker, is how to recognise diversity, both group and individual, and exploit difference to generate initiative and action. For leaders in such organisations, conceptually oriented skills in terms of the mental work of planning, analysis, assessing and making decisions need now to be matched with the social capacities to motivate individuals and manage cultural change. Organisational change is about changing people, about tapping into what motivates people to change. Leadership focuses upon not informing individuals what to do, but recognising, supporting, resourcing and co-ordinating others with expertise in the organisation to take action at the workface.

Whereas personnel management had emerged out of the human relations movement had been of little concern to executive managers, HRM recognised the centrality of labour as providing increased productivity (value adding) in times of scarce inputs. Whereas personnel management recognised that 'people have a right to proper treatment as dignified human beings while at work, and that they are only effective as employees when their job-related personal needs are met', underpinning HRM is the idea that management of human resources is much the same as any other aspect of management, and getting the deployment of the right numbers and skills at the right place is more important tham interfering with people's personal affairs'(Legge, 1989, p. ) Personnel management was about selecting, developing, rewarding, and directing employees in such as way as not only do they get satisfaction and therefore give their best but that they do so in ways which allows the organisation to achieve its goals. HRM is more about consensus and self internalisation towards organisational goals. and mediation. It is totally identified with management interests and distances management from the workforce.

This individualisation process is symbolised in the shift away in management language away from industrial relations (which implies a sense of the collective) to employee relations (one-on-one relationships) through a parallel move away fronm cenrtalised to decentralised structures under enterprise bargaining ( and more recently the Workplace Relations Act) which echoes the shift from welfarism to contractualism. HRM is now central to organisational leadership and managing core values of organisations through systematised and coherent sets of practices and procedures. This has occurred, not necessarily consciously, within the shift to market liberalism as a hegemonic New Right political ideology, and both in the context of international market comptitiveness and financial crisis. HRM is now the core work of executive managers but with embedded, gendered, tensions- the 'hard' side emphasises the quantitative and calculative aspects necessary for business strategy; the 'soft' side emphasises communication and motivational aspects of leadership. Thus the paradoxes embedded in the language of 'tough love' which refers to 'separation' not' sacking'; and a form of 'care that does not shy away from the correct decisions'. But always the needs of business come first. This will not occur if you treat employees with soft 'care' (Legge, 1989, pp. 19-40).

Whereas the modernist management discourses of the 1980s rejected the rule governed and bureaucratic models of the post war era in favour of the therapeutic control of team work and quality circles in human resource management (Schon, 1983; Lasch 1978); post modernist management discourses are about self regulation and the reflexive post modern subject (Waring 1989; Rose 1990; Giddens, 1995). Administration, as another powerful disciplinary fields, has itself productive capacities in the regulation of the social (eg. psychology), facilitating shifts in the form of governance throughout the twentieth century from sovereign and visible power to invisible power through the 'very technologies designed to classify, nurture and regulate normality' eg. mental testing and industrial psychology (Walkerdine, 1993). The early twentieth century saw the birth of the 'modern' organisation to fill the space between the 'private' lives of the citizens and the 'public' concerns of rulers. Subjectivity, Rose suggests,

Rose argues that the problem of defining the good life has shifted away from the ethical register to a psychological register through which our selves are defined, constructed and governed in psychological terms...ie psychologically inspired techniques of self-inpection and self- examination. This view is matched by both modernist accounts by Christopher Lasch and others who have focused upon the therapeutic aspects of management, some of which filtered into the more humanustic versions of human resource management (Legge, 1989 ); and more recent post structuralist accounts of worker identity formation and subjectivity ( Casey 1995 ; Du Gay , 1966). Giddens (1995) points out this process of individuation is critical to the maintenance of the new contractualism--it works against community, a sense of responsibility to others, and encourages a strong sense of self and the self maximising individual chooser as it taps into the two aspects of corporate identity of being a p_roducer and consumer.

Traditional employee-firm relations have been seen by management to be dysfunctional in this context; they have therefore attempted to transform workplace culture, for example by setting up institutions which place employees in a more participatory relation with management, such as 'quality circles' . To describe these changes as 'cultural' is not just rhetoric; the aim is to produce new cultural values and workers who are 'enterprising' or self motivating or as Rose has put it, "self steering". These changes in organisation and culture are to a significant extent changes in discourse practices.

At the institutional level, the new contractualism in social relations privileges one on one relations between employer and employee, and ignores the group. This is not more evident that in performance management, where school principals in Schools of the Future can claim for up to an additional 15% on the basis of their performance. The school is ranked through consumer satisfaction surveys on 9 areas from the principal has selected three for each year in their performance management plan, which include school image and leadership. Yet research indicates that it is a wide range of factors which contribute to improved students outcomes, of which teacher student interactions are the most critical. Thus principals reap the benefits of teachers' work and the collective practices of the school community. Principals also work with teachers on their performance plans under the Professional Recognition Program, and are responsible for promotions etc. Thus teacher performance is also individualised, bioth in term sof who makes the judgement and also how that performance is displayed through the CV in which we substitute the 'I' for the 'we'. As one teacher commented:

The performative state thus constructs a certain type of subject -- whether principal, teacher, student or parent. The emphasis on performativity and accountability significantly alters work practices and identity formation. Good parents are those who care enough to shop around and indeed invest time, effort and money in their child. Good schools have a well manicured and resourced environment, and computers on every lap.

Or as Robyn commented-- what we mean by profesionalism has changed...'teachers are dressing up, concerned about image and that sort of thing'. Image is very important.

This has implications for teacher professionalism. The learner is someone who as an individual chooser values only that knowledge which is useful. This implies a certain type of pedagogy in which the teacher is no longer the source of expertise, the chooser is a source of expertise upon which to judge usefulness. It is a student centred discourse which is appealing, but which also disempowers teachers because it imparts a sense of loss of professional judgement.

Symbolically, policies also indicate absences in the discourse of self managing schools-- signalling what are important in some schools and not others, but also questioning issues about responsiveness. Many staff spoke about the expectations that schools deal with a range of social problems eg. unemployment, drug abuse, health, homelessness, child abuse ( See Figgis 1996 a, b,c). A leading teacher 3 at Burdekin commented:

Yet as teachers argue, their capacity is limited to get outcomes out of kids who do not eat properly or have no home or a life of abuse. So on the one hand, teachers are expected to deal with wider and more demanding social issues as portrayed and defined through the media, while the necessary infrastructure to deal with such issues has been dismantled.

Furthermore, while teaching has always been about performance (Walkerdine, 1992), it was performance derived out of passion for teaching and care for children. Now, being passionate about the core work of teaching and learning is not enough. Now they are positioned as performers-- to attract clients, to persuade, to seduce through indicating their expertise, yet an expertise which is constantly under challenge. One also has to be passionate about the school priorities by performing a range of extra-classroom activities.

While many, if not most, teachers respond to being involved in decisions and active participation in wider aspects of school affairs as could be expected from any professional, many teachers had a strong sense that their commitment to the kids was being exploited

Thus their performativity ( as distinct from their substantive performance) is judged by criteria which are out of control of teachers, in which teachers are judged by a set of external criteria of the management or by how what they do in the class is represented symbolically through some for of communication ie. how they communicate what they do eg. CVs, promotion applications and on standardised assessment ( eg. LAP) which is not testing situated learning and which ignores the broader cultural and social contexts in which they teach and kids learn.

Teachers felt that the relationship between themselves and parents had altered with Schools of the Future.

I want to make some concluding commments and raise some issues about how we might reconceptualise self managing schools and work identity.

First, What is emerging out of various studies on self managing schools is that it is about self management rather than self governance (Raab ). Raab sees self management as being about managing the routine daily matters and responding to demands. Self governance is about developing sets of relationships within and with the community which allow for autonomous judgement and productive relationships ie. which deals with wider set of civil and social relations. Self governance is premised upon notions of reflexivity, whereas self management is about response to extraneous pressures, externalities, and is managed top down change (Louis 1994). Self governance sets up a different set of priorities which recognises the importance of social relationship, which has a different vie of social change, and therefore a different world view of education. Here schools can be viewed to be pro-active not reactive.

And certainly, our research indicates that many schools are working proactively within the constraints of SOTF to promote self governance and community. Many principals were seeking to counter the competitive and individualising tendencies within the system, to reduce the competitive relations between schools in order to minimise system wide damage by establishing principal networks, developing more socially responsible marketing procedures eg. all schools advertise together and without comparisons with each other; and in sharing of scarce resources eg. special education staff. Furthermore, teachers were tapping into the performativity functions in ways which redefined what they saw as accounatibility. And teachers were actively working within the practices of performativity to produce what they see are more subtantive and educationally worthwhile educational experiences and outcomes which are premised upon social relations and not exchange relations.

Second, there is a need to tap into the motivational aspects of work life and the conditions for productivity which will actually produce learning organisations which are not merely about symbolic action. the framework under which schools are being re-engineered is one which fails to address motivation. Most, although not all ,teachers teach because they love certain aspects of the job, are committed to care for kids, and prpobably have a strong belief that education can produce some changes to produce a more fair and just society. A theme throughout our research was the sense amongst teachers that there was a lack of trust -- both they were not trusted to do the right things by kids, and they were unable to trust their employers to do the right thing by them.

Giddens talks about the need to foster active trust to increase productivity rather than productivism which is about the exploitation of trust). He suggests that we need to foster conditions under which desired outcomes can be achieved, creating situations in which active trust is sustained, according autonomy to those affected by programmes or policies, generating resources which enhance autonomy, and a decentralisation of political power which actually responds to bottom up information flow as well as recognition of autonomy, although he rightly warns that there is a tension between centralisation and decentralisation which has to be address because it is about legitimation (Giddens, 1995, p. 93). One principal commented:

Third, there are implications for work and gender identity. Giddens also argues that masculinity, detraditionalised, is also under threat. ...given that men can no longer retain their economic privileges without question as the ideals of masculinity previously pinned on performance in the public sphere is broken with the 'emotional revolution in which women are the prime movers. While I view this as a rather optimistic view which fails to recognise how successfully masculinity has been able to remake itself in other periods of radical change, I do feel that there are possibilities here (Blackmore, in press). _The fundamental issue is to reflect upon why we change, and how we change; and then to consider once we have a sense of what is important, how to go past the symbolic and the performatative.