The Corporatisation of Parental Engagement in Multi-Academy Trust Leadership in Subordinated Communities: Thinking with Bourdieu's Field Theory

Abstract

Thinking with Bourdieu’s field theory, this chapter critically examines how corporatised multi-academy trust (MAT) governance has secured parental engagement as a corporate activity to acquire, regulate and naturalise parents, strengthening the position of the organisation and those leading and governing in the MAT. The embodiment of corporate practice within the field has ensured that the ways of thinking, being and doing of institutions and those that govern them, both secure and are secured by recognition of corporate practices as ‘natural’ and legitimate. I make both a theoretical and empirical contribution to the field. First, theoretically, I contribute to Bourdieu’s field theory by extending it to include how corporate practices diminish the agency of parents in dominated positions in the field, in that parents are acquired, regulated and naturalised to secure the field’s logic of practice. Second, I make an empirical contribution to the arguments concerned with the position and stance of actors in a corporatised field with the reframing of parental engagement as a corporate activity concerned with acquisition stability. Further these arguments empirically contribute to the literature concerned with the positioning of parental engagement in a corporatised field providing a model that allows for critical analysis of educational leaderships engagement with parents in a corporatised field. In making this contribution, I offer a model to explain the corporatised framing of parental engagement as it seeks to acquire, regulate and naturalise the practices of parents in their engagement with the MAT and its schools.

Citation

Healey, K.B. (2024), "The Corporatisation of Parental Engagement in Multi-Academy Trust Leadership in Subordinated Communities: Thinking with Bourdieu's Field Theory", Courtney, S.J., Armstrong, P.W. and McKay, A. (Ed.) Critical Education Leadership and Policy Scholarship: Introducing a New Research Methodology, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 91-104. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83549-472-120241008