Turning around coast-based schools: an interpretive narrative analysis of a report on school reform in English coastal communities

Parfitt, A (2021) 'Turning around coast-based schools: an interpretive narrative analysis of a report on school reform in English coastal communities.' Improving Schools, 24 (3). pp. 245-260.

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/1365480220968744

Abstract

An interpretive narrative inquiry approach is adopted to shed light on the improvement agendas applied in a specific set of coastal schools. The unifying thread between the focal cases is that they had been designated as failures and made notorious through association with their communities’ tainted reputations. These schools feature in a report published by the Future Leaders Trust, which is used as the resource for this paper. The taken for granted deficit discourses implicit in the accounts of how these schools were reformed are relied upon by the school leaders and other stakeholders to justify why they needed to be turned around. These assumptions that come to the fore through analysis, demonstrate that the socioeconomic contexts found in the jaded English coastal communities are not engaged with. Importing approaches that draw on communities’ resistance to relegation could, potentially, build positive discourses that lead to communities reclaiming educational opportunities in such schools, one clear example being that of Countesthorpe in Leicestershire, UK, in the 1970s.

Item Type: Article
Note:

This article was first published in November 2020 ahead of its inclusion in an issue. It was submitted as an output to REF 2021.

Keywords: coast-based schools, metro-centric agendas, notorious seaside resorts, school improvement
Divisions: School of Education
Research Centres and Groups: Centre for Research in Equity, Inclusion and Community (CREIC)
Research Centre on Policy, Pedagogy and Practice in Education (PPP)
UoA: Education
Date Deposited: 18 Nov 2020 16:58
Last Modified: 16 May 2022 11:19
ISSN: 1365-4802
URI / Page ID: https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/13613
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