Devolving practices: managing the managers

Abstract

Devolution is a management technology which is currently ‘transforming’ the State Department of Education in Queensland, Australia. This paper presents an analysis of the research findings of a study centred on the daily practices of one woman principal contextualised in the web of documentation in which she operates in this new corporate culture. A Foucauldian theoretical framework of ‘governmentality’ has been used in order to analyse the competing discourses of devolution as experienced at a particular site. The analysis positions practices of devolution not as a possible liberating technology, nor as a negative control mechanism, but rather as an administrative strategy which aims to ‘know’ schools and their populations in specific and calculated ways as a requirement of modern government. The paper considers the positioning of one particular school as subject and object of the discourse of devolution. It argues that while it is possible for a principal to mediate the discourse, there are parameters which define limits. This raises the question as to whether it is power or merely responsibility which is being handed to school principals since principals as managers are also managed through the processes of devolution.