Pedagogies of the Best Dressed: School-Business Relationships in New Zealand 1990-2004, Including the Case of Food

<p>In the 1990s there was public speculation that New Zealand schools and businesses were establishing new and more relationships. Three broad public discourses sought to articulate this shift and its effects. They collectively represented business motives for school-business relationships as commercial, social, or operationally focused, or mixtures of these. This thesis argues with evidence from literature and original research, and with special attention on the activities of the food industry, that the prime business motive for school-business relationships was commercial. This motive is explored within the interwoven cultural contexts of changing businesses, changing childhoods and changing schools. In recent years businesses have assumed greater power as corporate meaning-makers in childhood identities as the boundaries between the cultural categories of advertising, entertainment and education collapse and new hybrid forms emerge including new school-business relationship forms. As business integrate public relations with their marketing objectives, this meaning-making role in an information society has intensified and fulfils a wide range of objectives from increased sales to management of public opinion. Businesses with the most fragile public profiles have gravitated to schools the most, and school children have become both key producers and key consumers of the sign value of the socially responsible business. Childhood is considered within a social constructionist perspective and it is argued that businesses influence childhood identity through the transgressive pedagogies of children's popular culture, and the commercialized adult discourses of child development and innocence. The tensions between these are being brought to some resolution in the increasingly popular commercialized edutainment pedagogies offered to students in schools, which simultaneously address adult and child desires. Responding to school-business relationships in New Zealand from 1990 was the marketised and corporatised school. The structural and cultural dimensions of New Zealand's marketisation reforms enabled pervasive discourses of competitive entrepreneurialism and managerial pragmatism to jostle with educational ethics in school-business relationship decision-making. Many school-business relationships found favour as fundraising opportunities or complex and financially advantageous relationships, limiting the potential for teacher dissent or community deliberation and debate. Teachers maintained an influential role in the key area of curriculum-related school-business relationships, but in this research, their perceptions about sponsored materials and programmes were overwhelmingly constructed within a discourse of curriculum utility and student appeal. The corporate agenda was usually positioned as benign advertising and marketing and there wes little understanding of the evolution of corporate public relations in recent years. Teachers decoupled the learning gain through school-business relationships from this corporate marketing. This steered them away from undertaking a deeper analysis of the corporate cultural agenda, limited their interest in the school's wider business relationships, and created a compelling argument for commercialized edutainment in schools. The business-like school was less capable of a critical understanding of the education-like business, and was often disinterested in resistance to school-business relationships. This thesis argues that school-business relationships need to be rescued by teachers from a discourse of pragmatic utility, and critically reconsidered as corporate pedagogies seeking to construct a consuming childhood and further various corporate ideologies and agendas. Schools as meaning-makers themselves are vital to this cultural assessment.</p>

Pedagogies of the Best Dressed: School-Business Relationships in New Zealand 1990-2004, Including the Case of Food

<p>In the 1990s there was public speculation that New Zealand schools and businesses were establishing new and more relationships. Three broad public discourses sought to articulate this shift and its effects. They collectively represented business motives for school-business relationships as commercial, social, or operationally focused, or mixtures of these. This thesis argues with evidence from literature and original research, and with special attention on the activities of the food industry, that the prime business motive for school-business relationships was commercial. This motive is explored within the interwoven cultural contexts of changing businesses, changing childhoods and changing schools. In recent years businesses have assumed greater power as corporate meaning-makers in childhood identities as the boundaries between the cultural categories of advertising, entertainment and education collapse and new hybrid forms emerge including new school-business relationship forms. As business integrate public relations with their marketing objectives, this meaning-making role in an information society has intensified and fulfils a wide range of objectives from increased sales to management of public opinion. Businesses with the most fragile public profiles have gravitated to schools the most, and school children have become both key producers and key consumers of the sign value of the socially responsible business. Childhood is considered within a social constructionist perspective and it is argued that businesses influence childhood identity through the transgressive pedagogies of children's popular culture, and the commercialized adult discourses of child development and innocence. The tensions between these are being brought to some resolution in the increasingly popular commercialized edutainment pedagogies offered to students in schools, which simultaneously address adult and child desires. Responding to school-business relationships in New Zealand from 1990 was the marketised and corporatised school. The structural and cultural dimensions of New Zealand's marketisation reforms enabled pervasive discourses of competitive entrepreneurialism and managerial pragmatism to jostle with educational ethics in school-business relationship decision-making. Many school-business relationships found favour as fundraising opportunities or complex and financially advantageous relationships, limiting the potential for teacher dissent or community deliberation and debate. Teachers maintained an influential role in the key area of curriculum-related school-business relationships, but in this research, their perceptions about sponsored materials and programmes were overwhelmingly constructed within a discourse of curriculum utility and student appeal. The corporate agenda was usually positioned as benign advertising and marketing and there wes little understanding of the evolution of corporate public relations in recent years. Teachers decoupled the learning gain through school-business relationships from this corporate marketing. This steered them away from undertaking a deeper analysis of the corporate cultural agenda, limited their interest in the school's wider business relationships, and created a compelling argument for commercialized edutainment in schools. The business-like school was less capable of a critical understanding of the education-like business, and was often disinterested in resistance to school-business relationships. This thesis argues that school-business relationships need to be rescued by teachers from a discourse of pragmatic utility, and critically reconsidered as corporate pedagogies seeking to construct a consuming childhood and further various corporate ideologies and agendas. Schools as meaning-makers themselves are vital to this cultural assessment.</p>

The Treatment Effect of Business Education on the Supply of High School Entrepreneurs in Atlanta and New Orleans

Strengthening the pathway to entrepreneurship for high school students could be important in regions of the United States where economic mobility is low. We examine the impact of high school business education on the decision to be a self-employed entrepreneur in two southeastern urban U.S. high schools. We appeal to a potential-outcomes framework to estimate the treatment effect of having taken a business and coding/programming course in high school on actually being a self-employed entrepreneur, and planning to do so in the future. We find evidence that having taken a business course in high school increases the likelihood of actually being a self-employed entrepreneur, and on planning to be one in the future. Our results suggest that, at least in Atlanta and New Orleans, urban high school business education can be effective in increasing the supply of entrepreneurs, which could improve economic mobility in these urban regions. JEL Classification: C14, C21, E10, I26, J01, J20, J40, M13

An exploration into the opportunities and constraints for career progression into leadership roles for School Business Managers in the state sector in England

Drawing on data from 116 survey responses by School Business Managers, and 7 semi-structured interviews with education professionals carried out between October 2017 and February 2018, this article reports on findings from a research project focussing on the opportunities and constraints for career progression into leadership roles for School Business Managers (SBMs) in the state sector in England. The article considers the differing roles and responsibilities of SBMs, how leadership is perceived in schools, the visibility of the SBM role, career aspirations of the SBMs who were surveyed, and the perceived constraints to progression to leadership roles. Analysis of the data was carried out using an inductive research approach using mixed methods. Snowballing was used to obtain a meaningful sample size for survey responses. Interviewees were chosen on the basis of judgement sampling. The sampling design for the survey and the interviews was one of non-probability. Findings suggest that leadership roles for SBMs do exist but that there are considerable constraints to these being achieved, not least the lack of appetite amongst SBMs to do so.

Positioning school business practitioners in the English school system

This article explores the increasing professionalisation of school business practitioners in the state school system in England. Often referred to a ‘school business managers’ or ‘school business leaders’, this cohort of the school workforce have been increasingly tasked with leading crucial site-based management functions in schools, such as finance and budgeting, human resources and school operations. As this area of practitioner activity has grown over the last two decades, ‘school business leadership’ has increasingly been positioned by education policy makers and professional bodies as a distinct field of practice within the school system. However, despite increasing recognition of the value of school business leadership within the school system, there is evidence of continued tensions around the inclusion of such practitioners in matters of leadership. Further, there is a paucity of scholarly research exploring school business activity and the increasing professionalisation of its practitioners. Therefore, this article serves to contribute to this gap by exploring the evolution of school business practitioners and their positioning within the wider field of education in England. It argues for further research in England and for knowledge exchange with other education contexts to share insight and explore future potential.

Simulation of school business process

School is an institution where people learn reading, writing, and learning to have good character. The school has a social interaction system in an organizational relationship. Every institution must have a business process to achieve its vision and mission. The business process has activities carried out to provide services or products. This study analyzes business process systems in schools by designing school business process simulation scenarios and then implementing the design of AnyLogic Software and it can contribute to optimizing the management of business processes within schools, where processes are more structured and systematic. The method used in this study is the Business Process Improvement (BPI) Method to eliminate errors and provide competitive benefits by improving business processes. In applying the BPI method, the results obtained are recommendations for improving school business processes: (1) Adding Buses to schools, (2) Adding School Cooperative Staff to transport goods, and (3) Adding Cashiers in School Cooperatives.