DATE & TIME: 1st june, 2016, 1.00pm-3.00PM

LOCATION: Room C110, College Building, MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY

Education businesses and the business of education: the pearsonification of teaching and learning. 

A research seminar with Stephen J. Ball

Edu-businesses are getting more and more involved in educational delivery – running schools – and education policy. They are part of a shift in the form and modality of education governance and the reform of the state. They are active also in changing the meaning of education and what it means to be educated. Drawing on some examples from research (Funded by Leverhulme and the British Academy) – Pearson, Bridge International Academies and GEMS – I will argue that a new global education consensus is emerging, in the construction and conduct of which edu-businesses are major players. All of this presents challenges to public sector educators and raises difficult ethical and political issues.

Stephen J Ball is Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology of Education at the University College London, Institute of Education. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2006; and is also Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences; and Society of Educational Studies, and a Laureate of Kappa Delta Phi; he has honorary doctorates from the Universities of Turku (Finland), and Leicester. He is co-founder and Managing Editor of the Journal of Education Policy.

His main areas of interest are in sociologically informed education policy analysis and the relationships between education, education policy and social class. He has written 20 books and had published over 140 journal articles. Recent books: How Schools do Policy (2012), Global Education Inc. (2012), Networks, New Governance and Education (with Carolina Junemann)(2012), and Foucault, Power and Education (2013).