Local partnerships as ‘rationalized myths’: a critical examination of the micro-discourse in educational partnership working

Abstract

This paper explores the micro-discursive dimension of local partnership working to generate new insights into the dynamics that explain why partnerships so often fail to achieve their ambitions. It sheds light on to the micro-politics of cocreating the situated partnership narrative, critically placing it in the wider systemic context by understanding local partnerships as ‘rationalized myths’. In doing so, it draws on data from a longitudinal ethnographic case study of a German education partnership on the neighborhood level. The analysis revealed that the local partnership myth created a dual reality for the involved actors: on the one hand it legitimized the partnership’s setup, yet concealed its complex, contradictory and antagonistic reality, and on the other hand it offered the discursive resources for dealing with this reality. A partnership narrative was hegemonically established that exposed the neoliberal ideology behind local partnerships and legitimized a strategy that consolidated the partnership’s structural status quo rather than leading to innovation.

Keywords:

• education partnership
• policy narrative
• hegemony
• coproduction
• governance innovation
• policy enactment
• strategy-as-practice

Acknowledgments

I would like to gratefully thank Morten Nissen, Anne Edwards and the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. I also would like to thank the actors in the field without whom this study wouldn’t have been possible at all, in particular Co, not only for being very open and supportive during the fieldwork but also for constructively discussing the research findings afterwards. Last but not least, I would like to thank Tom Maxfield for proofreading this paper on several occasions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The findings, the methodology and most importantly the critique which marks the starting point of this paper were results of a highly iterative, reflexive and self-critical research process, starting from having been subjected to the local partnership discourse and its related managerial methodology myself in the beginning of the study.

2. Rationalized myth and my general understanding of (micro-)discourse resemble somewhat Foucault’s notion of discourse as ‘power dispositive’ (Jäger and Maier 2009). However, it explains the institutional materialization of distinct public rationalities and their inter-subjective governmental working much clearer than Foucault’s work, whose unit of analysis lies on the (subjectification of) individuals.

3. Nissen conceptualizes this power struggle by means of two heuristics: Hegel’s (1977) concept of ‘recognition’ and Althusser’s (1994) concept of ‘interpellation’.

4. This approach somewhat resembles Moini’s (2011) theoretical suggestion to understand participation as a hegemonic ‘référentiel’ that discursively frames participation processes. Linking participation with neoliberalization, his approach offers a convincing explanation of why participation so successfully spreads despite its missing political impact. Yet, while Moini stresses examining the agency of mediators in producing, reproducing and spreading the hegemonic discursive powers of the ‘référentiel’, it does not offer concrete intersubjective tools to examine local participation on the micro-level.In a similar vein, Howarth (2010, see also Glynos and Howarth 2007, 145–152) suggests critically attending to the ‘fantasmatic logic’ (32) of political practices. He emphasizes that metaphors or signifiers are key in actively suppressing political challenge and contestation and ‘naturalize political domination’ (309) through fueling people’s fantasies, co-opting them into specific political processes. By managing people’s desires through providing ‘direction and energy’ and ‘pointing to things that are desired or rejected’, they allow controlling political processes.

5. Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) (Baumert et al. 2001) revealed a poor performance of the German education system and a strong connection between students’ socioeconomic family background and their school achievements. PISA caused a broad public discussion in Germany and raised the political pressure to tackle these problems. One of the political responses was the ‘educational landscapes’ policy.

6. The participants’ consent for collecting data was obtained once before the fieldwork and before each recorded meeting and interview. All participants were guaranteed anonymity and any identifiers of the locality were removed in the data.

7. The analyzed strategic documents comprised of progressing versions of the education partnership’s overall concept, strategic notes from a project board meeting and evaluations of the administrative steering.

8. Following transcription rules were applied (cf. Bohnsack, Pfaff, and Weller 2010):

emphasized	=	°quiet° loud
,	=	rising intonation
.	=	sinking intonation
word-	=	incomplete word or sentence
((sighs))	=	nonverbal remarks
@word@	=	spoken in laughter
(4) (…) (..) (.)	=	number of seconds of a pause [word] either synonym for a name in order to create anonymity, added information by the author for improving the comprehensibility of the translation, or context information
[…]	=	left out text.

9. Jessop (2004, 16) describes metagovernance (or collibration) as providing ‘the ground rules for governance and the regulatory order in and through which governance partners can pursue their aims’. This includes, e.g. ‘redesigning markets’, ‘constitutional change’, ‘juridical re-regulation of organizational forms and objectives’ and ‘organizing the conditions of self-organization’.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Hans-Böckler-Stiftung [grant number 354275].

Notes on contributors

Stefanie Schmachtel

Stefanie Schmachtel is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of School Education and School Development of the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena in Germany. She obtained her PhD in 2013 from the Department of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and was a postdoctoral researcher at the Edinburgh School of Social and Political Science in 2012 and 2014/15. Her research centers on questions regarding the local governance of education and children’s services. In her doctoral study, she conducted a longitudinal ethnographic case study that examined the collective strategy-building process in a German education partnership on the neighborhood level.