The high-tech, post-Fordist school

In many parts of the world, including Victoria, Australia, public schools are undergoing changes to the way they are administered, funded, and staffed and are being asked to accept a different mission and a different set of responsibilities. This paper points out that these structural changes to public school systems are explained and legitimized by their proponents through reference to post-Fordist arrangements of labour, capital, and technology, not through reference to educational discourses per se. At the same time computer-based technologies are being asked to play an increasingly prominent role in education, and it is argued that this computing-in-education project is a key strategy in moving aspects of post-Fordist reform from the administrative wing, down the corridor and through the classroom door. Finally, it is argued that both structural and technological change in school systems contribute to and are nurtured by the prevailing culture, best understood as the postmodern condition.

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