Aesthetic legitimacy: what makes a school feel credible?

The gap between what a school says is happening and what we know is actually happening. You might recognise it:

• A school promotes student-led inquiry, while lessons still centre on worksheets and memorising answers.
• Displays celebrate international-mindedness, while classroom discussion leaves little room for different perspectives.
• An exhibition presents student agency, while teachers have produced much of what visitors see.
• A prospectus promises individual attention, while teachers know there is little time or support to provide it.

The signs are familiar and convincing. Working inside the school, though, we may experience a different reality. That tension was my starting point for exploring aesthetic legitimacy.

This is one way into aesthetic legitimacy, a concept I am developing in my research. It helps us ask how a school’s presentation gains credibility, and how that credibility relates to everyday educational practice.

A working definition.

Aesthetic legitimacy describes how an institution’s claims about its quality, identity and values become recognisable and credible through images, language, material spaces, symbols and practices.

The word “aesthetic” reaches beyond visual appearance here. It includes how a school is seen, felt, described and experienced: its architecture and displays, its terminology and traditions, and the events through which it presents itself.

These signs can communicate meaningful educational commitments. They can also create expectations that everyday practice does not fulfil. I am interested in how that recognition happens, whose expectations it reflects, and how it relates to the education being offered.

How the idea has developed.

1. An initial question from practice.

   In our 2025 paper in Compare, Matthew Terrett and I explored our experiences of an IB school in China responding to educational reforms. We described a tension between the outward performance of IB identity and its pedagogical enactment. This was where I first explored aesthetic legitimacy.

2. A broader account of credibility.

   In our accepted, forthcoming paper in the Journal of Research in International Education, Adam Poole and I develop the concept further. We examine how IB affiliation, values, displays, spaces and events make institutional commitments visible and persuasive to different audiences. The question has grown beyond a concern with superficial appearance to how legitimacy itself is communicated and recognised.

3. Heritage and Britishness abroad.

   In Stewarding Britishness abroad, Adam and I examine how Dulwich, Harrow and Wellington select, preserve and adapt heritage across contexts. Historical narratives, crests, uniforms, architecture and institutional language help Britishness become recognisable as educational authority and value. This develops the relationship between heritage stewardship and aesthetic legitimacy.

How do you understand it?

What makes a school—or another institution—feel credible to you? Which images, words, spaces or traditions carry that meaning? Would someone from a different cultural background read them in the same way?

I’d welcome examples, disagreements and alternative interpretations as I develop the term. Does aesthetic legitimacy help describe something you have encountered? Where does it need refining?

Replies go directly to my email. I’ll ask before quoting or sharing a contribution. This invitation is a conversation, not recruitment for a research study.

From the blog: For those of us who have lived it ↗