Privatizing leadership in education in England: The multiple meanings of school principal agency

This chapter discusses the authors' research program, Critical Education Policy and Leadership Studies (CEPaLS), where they chart and critically examine the issues generated by privatization for children, families and professionals, and how explanations can be developed through the interplay of data and theories of power. It reports on research regarding the experiences of school principals in the emerging new school types and how such professionals have come to occupy increasingly privatized roles. The chapter presents and interrogates biographical narratives through deploying Bourdieu's thinking tools, in order to critically read claims about agency within and for practice. Through this, it examines how privatization is operating as a form of depoliticization. The chapter reports the narratives of school principals captured and collected at a moment where major privatization was taking place in education in England. It subjects those data to a critical reading regarding how agency is located within and enables depoliticization.