Putting Foucault to Work: Understanding Power in a Rural School

This case study uses the work of Michel Foucault to challenge the normalization of the principal's role and to examine the complex power relations of a rural school and community in the midst of a closure/consolidation and subsequent reopening as a charter school. In so doing, we move beyond analysis of best practices and toward a more theoretical approach to understanding the social interactions and subjectivities that constitute one rural school and its leadership. The analysis challenges commonsense assumptions that schools operate in neutral ways and that “best practices” exist outside of social and cultural constructs.