ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights specific discourses that have the potential to shape not only actual events but also the underlying social relations between teachers, the state, economy and civil society. It draws attention to two particularly influential approaches on the current restructuring discourse: the ideas of the flexible firm, and the Japanese models of workplace organization. The chapter also highlights the different post-Fordist discourses that have emerged following the breakdown of the Fordist/Keynesian settlement and the class compromise which characterised it. The contradictions and problems generated within the Fordist system of regulation created the necessity for a new social settlement, based upon a reassertion of class rule through a new set of strategies developed by capital both intellectually and in political practice. The chapter shows that teachers' work in Australia is increasingly shaped by very different institutional dynamics: entrepreneurialism, flexibility, managerialism and competitivism.
