New Managerialism in Education

"The enormous value of the book is that it brings together and demonstrates the close and complex relationships between neoliberalism, managerialism, gender, carelessness and inequity. It is a salutary, sad and stirring read." - Stephen Ball, Critical Social Policy

"This major ground-breaking study of the impact of new managerialism on schools and universities should be read by every teacher and lecturer." Diane Reay, Professor of Education, University of Cambridge, UK

"This research provides a very insightful critique of the development of the current political principles that inform and shape the focus of current educational direction." - The Leader

"The book offers a powerful analysis of how the increasingly performance-driven context makes it more difficult for women to combine care and family with the demands of leadership." Tony Bush, Professor of Educational Leadership, University of Warwick, UK

"Restores and reinvigorates a feminist analysis of gender inequality and injustice in education. The book is essential reading for putting heart and soul back into a critique of contemporary educational reform." Wendy Luttrell, Professor of Urban Education, Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA

"The research is rigorous, convincing, extensive and intensive. Policy-makers and all those concerned with equality in education should consider this a 'must read'." Peter Mayo, Professor of Education, University of Malta, Malta

"New Managerialism in Education: Commercialization, Carelessness and Gender is to be welcomed as the first research-based attempt to analyse some key aspects of how [managerialism] has operated at all levels of education in Ireland. The research seems exemplary, its approach based, appropriately, on qualitative criteria rather than on the narrow reductionist quantitative indicators on which virtually all educational policy is now based." - Irish Times Review

"The authors provide a study of major developments in the education system of the Republic of Ireland that provides well-founded empirical analysis of a kind that is quite rare, not only in the education literature but more widely too ... Moreover, the empirical strengths of the analysis are reinforced by the adept framing of the case-study materials in theoretical terms." - Gareth Rees, British Journal of Sociology of Education

"The subtitle [of New Managerialism] Commercialization, Carelessness and Gender, delineates the three main lines of analytical argument present across the volume, which does a superlative job in illustrating how it is that overt policies claiming to promote gender equity actually do not. .The detail of how that failure happened and the insights given to the mechanisms of exclusion that define the glass ceiling faced by women in senior educational executives is the great contribution of the volume." - James G. Ladwig, British Journal of Sociology of Education

"One of the book's strongest features is its analysis of gender, which insightfully links essential qualities of liberal ideology (both in the sense of neo-liberalism and its origins in Englightenment/classical liberalism) with its emphasis on the autonomous, competitive and achievement-oriented individual to a hegemonic concept of masculinity that inevitably excludes women from senior management roles. This analysis goes beyond more common-place descriptive studies of under-representation in management to show how ... inequalities are an inevitable (and often non-obvious) outcome of unfettered competition, explaining observed disparities in management positions." - Robin Shields, British Journal of Sociology of Education

"The claims of the [New Managerialism] book are based on detailed in-depth interviews with women and men leaders of educational institutions at multiple levels - elementary and secondary schools, higher education, government departments of education,and similar sites. The data is rich and the analyses are subtle." - Michael Apple, Educational Policy

"New Managerialism in Education demonstrates that the process of commodifying education through neoliberal policy initiatives in Ireland is neither uncontested nor complete. The power of this study is in its presentation of rich qualitative data, which demonstrates the uneven integration of neoliberal reforms within the Irish education sector. In this way, this research provides important contributions to a growing body of research that evaluates specific neoliberal projects, with a focus on gender ... This book will be of benefit to scholars who study comparative education, educational leadership, and gender." - Alison Fisher, Canadian Journal of Sociology

"New Managerialism in Education should be compulsory reading for those in the education sector in particular and policy-making more generally. It chronicles how we have got to where we are during the Celtic Tigeryears, and challenges us to re-think quality education, and the qualities of its leadership, in the creation of a better future for all. A most apposite must read for our times." Ciarán Sugrue, Professor of Education, University College Dublin, Ireland