Public-Private Entanglement in Education

"This is important work in a post-neoliberal context in which the very idea of a public sector is under attack." - Patricia Burch, Professor of Education, University of Southern California

Hybrid school organizations, which combine public and private features, have become increasingly common in contemporary education. This shift raises concerns about whether we are witnessing a potential erosion of the public character of education.

This edited volume advances public-private entanglement as a conceptual lens to study these developments in an effort to gain a more thorough understanding of schools as complex hybrid organizations and of what is being transformed – or lost – as public and private features become more tightly interwoven.

The different chapters in the volume offer conceptual tools, empirical examinations, and normative evaluations. In doing so, they move beyond the increasingly inadequate dichotomy of “public” versus “private,” foster cross‑disciplinary dialogue, and provide insight into the drivers, logics and consequences of public-private configurations across varied educational systems.

The volume culminates in two integrative frameworks: a multidimensional model that identifies the organizational dimensions affected by public-private entanglement, and a value framework for assessing and evaluating public-private entanglement in education. By means of these two models, the volume aims to provide researchers, policy advisors, and educational practitioners tools to map, understand, and evaluate public-private entanglement in education.