Organizational rhetoric in the prospectuses of elite private schools : unpacking strategies of persuasion

Schools have seldom been examined by scholars in studies of organizational sites. Yet schools and the educational context in which they operate, offer potentially important insights into how organizations use rhetoric in their communications to persuade audiences and leverage advantage in the marketplace. This study, which utilises rhetorical analysis to examine the persuasive, yet ambiguous strategies used in 65 school prospectuses in Australia, revealed six strategies consistently used by schools to leverage competitive advantage and persuade internal and external audiences: identification, juxtapositioning, bolstering or self-promotion, partial reporting, selfexpansion and reframing or reversal. As well as illustrating how schools operate in the context of marketisation and privatization discourses in 21st century education, the organizational theory and methods utilised for the research demonstrates how rhetorical strategies draw on, as well as reproduce, socio-political and cultural discourses around economic and social privilege.

Organizational rhetoric in the prospectuses of elite private schools: unpacking strategies of persuasion

The way in which private schools use rhetoric in their communications offers important insights into how these organizational sites persuade audiences and leverage marketplace advantage in the context of contemporary educational platforms. Through systemic analysis of rhetorical strategies employed in 65 ‘elite’ school prospectuses in Australia, this paper contributes to understandings of the ways schools’ communications draw on broader cultural politics in order to shape meanings and interactions among organizational actors. We identify six strategies consistently used by schools to this end: identification, juxtapositioning, bolstering or self-promotion, partial reporting, self-expansion, and reframing or reversal. We argue that, in the context of marketization and privatization discourses in twenty-first-century western education, these strategies attempt to subvert potentially threatening discourses, in the process actively reproducing broader economic and social privilege and inequalities.

Do private schools in Argentina perform better because they are private?

Includes bibliography

Inequality in education in Costa Rica: The gap between students in public and private schools. An analysis of the results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

Includes bibliography.

Aspects of teacher supply and demand in public school districts and private schools, 1987-88 /

"Data series: DR-SAS-87/88.

The American drawing-book: a manual for the amateur, and basis of study for the professional artist: especially adapted to the use of public and private schools, as well as home instruction.

Introduction and chapters 1-4 published in London under title: The elements of art.

The regulation of private schools in America : a state-by-state analysis /

Shipping list no.: 95-0282-P.

Smithdeal's practical grammar, speller and letter-writer. For use in business colleges, academies, public and private schools,

Second and 3rd parts have special t.p.'s, with copyright date 1896.

Perrot's Wilhem's Musical manual : a new method for vocal classes; designed particularly for colleges, public and private schools, private classes, &c.... /

Mode of access: Internet.

Elements of geometry, the first six books, chiefly from the text of Dr. Simson, with explanatary notes; a series of questions on each book ... designed for the use of junior classes in public and private schools,

Mode of access: Internet.

Philip Phillips' day-school singer for public and private schools.

Publisher's ads on back cover.

The American first class book; or, Exercises in reading and recitation: selected principally from modern authors of Great Britain and America; and designed for the use of the highest class in publick and private schools.

Mode of access: Internet.