From Hope & Glory to Waterloo Road : mediating discourses of ‘crises’ surrounding schools and schooling in British television drama, 1999–2011.

TELEVISION programs; EDUCATIONAL standards; LECTURES & lecturing; ACADEMIC achievement; EDUCATION

Popular television drama is an important discursive site engaging the public with debates about schooling and professional identity. Between 1999 and 2011, external discourses of ‘crisis’ (of academic achievement or students’ mental and emotional health) were mediated as alternative discourses of ‘crisis, failure, and salvation’ in which a Standards agenda predominated, or that of the school as a ‘caring community’.Genreanalysis reveals how ‘school’ dramas exploited distinctive narrative types to privilege a particular discourse. Adapting Schatz's (1981) scheme of Hollywoodgenretypes, these dramas are characterised by a narrative strategy of ‘restoration’ of the ‘failing’ secondary (high) school to its public function of raising achievement, or after 2007 of ‘integration’ more concerned with assimilating ‘troubled’ students into the school community. This shift in representation is consistent with, and contributes towards, the ‘rise of therapeutic education’ where the Head Teacher and teacher are portrayed more as counsellor than educator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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