Using Shakespeare's Plays to Explore Education Policy Today

By considering Shakespeare's dramatisation of the principles that inform neoliberal education policy, this book aims to contribute to debate on the moral failure of the market mechanism in our schools and higher education system today, and to offer Shakespeare's humanism as a corrective to neoliberal ideology.

Sophie Ward is Lecturer in the School of Education, Durham University, UK. She is a member of the UK team within the European Policy Network on School Leadership (EPNoSL), which has recently secured funding from the EU for the next stage of research into developing an English Action Plan on School Leadership. The project is due for completion in March 2015.

Introduction 1. Entrepreneurial risk: Hamlet 2. Performativity: Measure for Measure 3. School Leadership: Macbeth 4. Rational choice: Antony and Cleopatra 5. Commodification: King Lear 6. Knowledge: The Tempest Conclusion Plot Summaries