Abstract:
Partnerships have emerged recently in the United Kingdom and Australia as a policy solution for the management of problems associated with the global economy. These problems include the need for economic competitiveness, stimulation of innovation, and management of school to work transitions for young people (see Caldwell and Keating, 2004; Franklin, Bloch, and Popkewitz, 2003; Smith and Wohlstetter, 2001). Accordingly, a growing body of research has examined these transformations in social governance by mapping the features of specific partnership arrangements (Billett and Seddon, 2004; Clegg and McNulty, 2002; Jones and Bird, 2000; Milbourne, Macrae, and Maguire 2003; Power, 2001).
This paper arose out of conceptual issues that emerged in the course of a small research project examining large industry school partnerships within the state education system of Queensland, Australia. The partnerships provide a rich focus for research because they involve multiple partner schools spanning the state, Catholic and Independent school sectors and global industry partners including multinational corporations such as Boeing, Microsoft, and BHP Billiton. As identified in Queensland’s Smart State Strategy initiative (Queensland Government, 2005), a defining feature of these partnerships is their focus on providing skilled employees for key Queensland industries such as mining and aerospace. This feature distinguishes the partnerships from others which typically feature a single school and one or a small number of unrelated businesses, or those that are part of area-based initiatives such as Educational Action Zones in the UK and District Youth Achievement Plans in Queensland (Department of Premier and Cabinet, 2002).
Policy debates on partnerships in Queensland have been framed within stereotypical accounts of globalisation that are prominent in international policy documents. A feature of these discourses is the tendency to assume that narratives of globalisation constitute objective reality with respect to policy contexts. In these accounts, globalisation is conceived as totalising waves of social and economic change that are assumed to escape the constraints of territory and the control of governments. In the course of this research, we found that such deterritorialised accounts of globalisation failed to provide adequate tools from which to conceptualise industry school partnerships as policy strategies. The critical issue here is the tendency of these accounts to impose an ontological distinction between the phenomenon of globalisation and the actions of real people who inhabit physical localities (Sidhu, 2004). By contrast, following Larner and Le Heron (2002) we adopt a situated approach for theorising public private partnerships as an attempt to reterritorialise social governance in education.
Accordingly, we acknowledge educational partnerships as one aspect of neoliberal governance that has emerged recently in Queensland and internationally (Cardini, 2006). Little attempt has been made, however, to analyse the spatial dimensions of partnerships by tracing their emergence within broader rationalities of government through translation into specific located practice (for an exception to this see Seddon, Billett and Clemans, 2004). This paper adopts a governmentality approach to analyse partnerships as technologies of government mobilised to manage the problem of global uncertainty (Miller and Rose, 1990; Rose, 1996a). It examines a specific partnership in Queensland’s aerospace industry that has emerged as part of Education Queensland’s Industry School Engagement Strategy (Queensland Government, 2006).
This paper arose out of conceptual issues that emerged in the course of a small research project examining large industry school partnerships within the state education system of Queensland, Australia. The partnerships provide a rich focus for research because they involve multiple partner schools spanning the state, Catholic and Independent school sectors and global industry partners including multinational corporations such as Boeing, Microsoft, and BHP Billiton. As identified in Queensland’s Smart State Strategy initiative (Queensland Government, 2005), a defining feature of these partnerships is their focus on providing skilled employees for key Queensland industries such as mining and aerospace. This feature distinguishes the partnerships from others which typically feature a single school and one or a small number of unrelated businesses, or those that are part of area-based initiatives such as Educational Action Zones in the UK and District Youth Achievement Plans in Queensland (Department of Premier and Cabinet, 2002).
Policy debates on partnerships in Queensland have been framed within stereotypical accounts of globalisation that are prominent in international policy documents. A feature of these discourses is the tendency to assume that narratives of globalisation constitute objective reality with respect to policy contexts. In these accounts, globalisation is conceived as totalising waves of social and economic change that are assumed to escape the constraints of territory and the control of governments. In the course of this research, we found that such deterritorialised accounts of globalisation failed to provide adequate tools from which to conceptualise industry school partnerships as policy strategies. The critical issue here is the tendency of these accounts to impose an ontological distinction between the phenomenon of globalisation and the actions of real people who inhabit physical localities (Sidhu, 2004). By contrast, following Larner and Le Heron (2002) we adopt a situated approach for theorising public private partnerships as an attempt to reterritorialise social governance in education.
Accordingly, we acknowledge educational partnerships as one aspect of neoliberal governance that has emerged recently in Queensland and internationally (Cardini, 2006). Little attempt has been made, however, to analyse the spatial dimensions of partnerships by tracing their emergence within broader rationalities of government through translation into specific located practice (for an exception to this see Seddon, Billett and Clemans, 2004). This paper adopts a governmentality approach to analyse partnerships as technologies of government mobilised to manage the problem of global uncertainty (Miller and Rose, 1990; Rose, 1996a). It examines a specific partnership in Queensland’s aerospace industry that has emerged as part of Education Queensland’s Industry School Engagement Strategy (Queensland Government, 2006).