A critical investigation of the role of parents in the governance of multi-academy trusts in subordinated communities.

Student thesis: Phd

Abstract

This thesis reports on an ethnographically informed multiple case study undertaken in three multi-academy trusts (MATs) that critically examines the role of parents in the governance of MATs with schools in subordinated communities. The study sets out to offer an empirical account of MAT governance and the role parents play in MAT accountabilities, conceptualising governance engagement with parents in the positioning, and position taking, of actors. To do this, I employ firstly Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory to understand the relationship between structure and agency in the entanglement of policy and practice in three multi-academy trusts. Secondly, I engage with Karen Barad’s (2007) concepts of intra-action and agential cuts to explore the materialisation of place and perceptions of knowledge production in the interactions with parents in the governance arrangements of MATs. Over the course of a year I generated data, initially from documentary data from primary sources concerned with school governance legislation and guidance, to explore the policy context and inform field research. Thirty-one semi-structured and narrative interviews, nine observations of parent events/activities and photographs of places generated data. Participants were from leadership and governance positions within each MAT, with parents from one academy within each of the MATs that acted as the site for data generation. The analysis and interpretation of this data are reported in five articles and one book chapter. The first output maps legislation concerned with school governance to understand how the state has [re]positioned itself, others and parents, as it [re]constructs ‘effective’ governance. I map these [re]constructions using the metaphor of the moon to reveal how constructions of ‘effective’ school governance have waxed and waned over time as underpinning ideology has shaped discourse. In the second output, I typologise the role types played by parents in MAT governance arrangements and examine how, in modern school governance, these types are both products and enablers of corporate activity. By thinking with Bourdieu’s concept of field and capital, I illuminate how parents are positioned in the governance arrangements of the MAT to secure public accountabilities and the symbolic order. In the third output, I think with and extend Bourdieu’s field theory, to critically examine in this chapter how corporatised MAT governance positions parental engagement as a corporate activity to acquire, regulate and naturalise parents. In the fourth output I use Johansson and Vinthagen’s (2016) analytical framework to conceptualise parents’ agentic responses as instances of everyday resistance and provide novel insights into how corporatisation in so-called modernised, professionalised school governance is, and might in future be, resisted. The fifth output draws on Karen Barad’s concept of intra-action to critically investigate how place matters. I show how, co-agentically with human actors, place manages parents’ engagement, positions expertise, exercises control and acts as a mechanism of public relations. The sixth output conceptualises data as a murmuration. Employing Barad’s concept of the agential cut to engage at three moments in this entangled murmuration of data, I adopt a poetic inquiry approach to explore the permeations, deviations and exclusions in discourses and practices that are shaping the role of parents in MAT governance in subordinated communities. Collectively this analysis illuminates the role of parents in MAT governance in subordinated communities, which positions parents as objects of corporate activity. Engagement with parents in the governance of MATs is framed as acquisition and risk management. By exploring MAT governance arrangements rather than its constitution, this analysis contests th
Date of Award1 Aug 2025
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • The University of Manchester
SupervisorAndrew Howes (Supervisor) & Steven Courtney (Supervisor)

Keywords

  • Corporatisation
  • Multi-academy trusts
  • school governance
  • Bourdieu
  • Barad
  • Subordinated communities
  • Disadvantaged

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