Introduction

The New Labour period in office continues to be the focus of scholarly analysis and debate (Walford, 2005; Chapman and Gunter, 2009), and what the specific focus on the politics of knowledge production has achieved is to interrelate policy texts and research evidence with the power relations that produced and used it. So the original questions that I began the book with can now be answered: first, what type of knowledge was used and why? A doxa of beliefs about schools and the profession, together with effectiveness and improvement data to support the delivery of radical reforms, was used to enter and play the leadership of schools game. Second, what forms of knowing were deemed legitimate and why? Common-sense belief statements combined with correlations and/or normative claims regarding the correctness of particular leadership structures, cultures and practices were used to stake claims for distinction within the leadership of schools game. Third, who were regarded as knowers and why? Trusted knowers with shared dispositions to play the game within and for central government and its arm's length bodies, and who revealed the habitus to stake their capital within the leadership of schools game. Such regime practices enabled the normality of politics – debate, disagreement, negotiation and resolution – to be regulated or, indeed, rendered unnecessary.

The mapping and critical analysis of knowledge production has shown how regime dynamics are located within institutionalised governance, and how policymaking can best be understood through the formation, development, stability and dissolution of regimes of practice by knowledge workers who variously located their research and professional projects, and staked claims for recognition and distinction. While the leadership of schools game has a legacy and may continue, the end of the New Labour mandate to govern in May 2010 means that the NLPR has lost its institutional base, and a new government has taken office. This has implications for social relations within regimes and how positioning and repositioning may be happening. Therefore, while this final chapter brings the book to a close, it cannot be the actual end because ongoing work is necessary in the charting and analysing of education policy as a place where dominant economic and political interests have sought to take control.