Search

To-date qualitative research in the field of policy enactment has tended to focus on investigating existing national policy discourse and the ways in which this discourse is creatively reconstituted in school-based contexts of practice. In this paper, the focus is on uncovering the ways in which a school-based commitment to a specific policy--in this case creativity--is sustained and has a legacy even after national policy discourse and priorities have changed. By focusing ethnographically upon the legacy of policy at a school-based level, the paper sets out to illuminate the social actions teachers undertake to establish, nurture and protect their institutional and professional investment in and commitment towards creativity.

In late modernity, the marketisation of public services has become a global policy phenomenon. In the case of schooling, this has resulted in parents discursively positioned as consumers of education making a choice between providers of education. To date the majority of research on parental choice has focused on the urban; this paper is concerned with the rural. Using ethnographic data collected through interviews (N = 24) and observations in one English village, it explores the ways in which parents engage with primary school choice. The research draws on Bourdieu's interrelated concepts of field, habitus and capital to discuss how the dispositions and resources parents had impacted upon the school choices they made. In presenting its findings, the paper distinguishes between the long-term residents ("villagers") and more recent arrivals ("newcomers") to suggest a differentiated commitment to place and schooling.

The paper reflects critically on the use of arts-based approaches to (re)present ethnographic educational research data, positing that the use of these artistic genres while creating new opportunities for engaging and enacting the complexities of twenty-first century realities also pose new challenges particularly in relation to the application of a performative methodological rigour. In engaging with this issue, the author conceptually borrows in part from Boal to situate himself as "impresario-joker" and through this lens reflects critically on the performative process and performance ethic underpinning his work--as a non-artist researcher--to stage a piece of ethnographic educational research as performance art. The paper while supporting the potential of using the arts in the (re)presentation of ethnographic data, also acknowledges that the securing of its academic legitimacy requires the establishment of a performance ethic if it is to be taken seriously within the academy. (Contains 1 figure and 3 notes.)