Schoolchildren,governmentality and national e-safety policy discourse

The introduction of widespread school Internet access in industrialised countries has been accompanied by the materialisation of what can be labelled as a national school e-safety agenda. Drawing upon Foucault's notions of discourse and governmentality, this paper explores how e-safety policy documents serve to constrain the conceptual environment, seeking to determine and limit individuals' thoughts on this matter. Analysing UK and US government texts, it is argued that four main themes arise that subvert critical, informed debate about children online. Namely, the discursive construction of e-kids, the muting of schoolchildren's voices, the responsibilisation of students and ‘diagnostic inflation’ through realist risk discourses. These issues can be interpreted as an attempt to engender control through particular strategies of governmentality. While recognising that students may resist such attempts at control, it is concluded that the issue of children's digital rights need to be more prominent in e-safety policies.     

To be one’s own confessor: educational guidance and governmentality

Educational guidance is often seen as something good and empowering for the individual. In the present article, such taken‐for‐granted ideas will be destabilised by analysing educational guidance as a practice in which confession operates as a technology that fosters and governs specific subjectivities. White papers produced by the Swedish Ministry of Education will be analysed drawing on Foucault’s concepts of technologies of the self and governmentality. I shall argue that the practice of educational guidance fosters our will to learn through the technology of confession. We are not only confessing ourselves to, and are the confessors of others, we are also our own confessors; that is, we confess our inner desires to ourselves, thus participating in shaping desirable subjectivities. Our desires in life coincide with the political ambition to govern, and thus we govern ourselves.     

Governing the academic subject: Foucault,governmentality and the performing university

Drawing on research conducted at National University of Ireland, Galway, this paper explores how senior managers at an Irish university are seeking to measure and facilitate academic performance in the context of national and global competitiveness and a higher education landscape that appears firmly inflected by neoliberal ideas of rankings, benchmarking and productivity. I draw upon Michel Foucault’s writings on governmentality and biopolitics, in particular, and I utilise findings from a range of in-depth interviews with central university managers, with a view to critically interrogating the envisioning of what is undoubtedly a new academic subjectivity in the Irish higher education sector—a subjectivity that is being progressively planned for and regulated.     

Negotiating teacher professionalism: governmentality and education reform in Hong Kong

This research investigates how the Hong Kong state controls and disciplines the education sector through the regulation and manipulation of discourses. The authoritative narratives are that some schools are failing the students and parents for not being able to provide quality education, and that these schools are not subject to public scrutiny while spending public money. This article seeks to understand the role of such narratives in neoliberal politics and the marketisation of education which lead to governance in the form of initiatives in school quality assurance mechanism; how different actors (Education Bureau, Professional Teachers' Union and individual teachers) are involved in the process; how they negotiate this governance of education; how such governance transforms the self-perception of teachers as well as the perception of teachers by others; and how teachers interpret, appropriate and resist such discursive power.     

The UK National Student Survey: An amalgam of discipline and neo-liberal governmentality

The UK National Student Survey (NSS) has high status on the agenda of UK universities. Its rise in status is linked to its influence on national rankings and associated funding streams referenced to the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). Consequently, many universities have implemented further assessments of student satisfaction, thereby putting additional internal performative pressures on courses and individual lecturers. The research contribution of this article comprises an analysis of the NSS through Foucault's notion of ‘governmentality’, with a particular focus on his work on ‘discipline’ and ‘neo-liberal governmentality’. More specifically, by utilising qualitative data from interviews, research diaries and observations, it will be demonstrated how the NSS functions as a ‘disciplinary’ technology of government which subjects lecturers, departments and universities to intersecting panoptic gazes and perpetual ratings. In addition, the NSS can also be considered ‘neo-liberal’ in that it governs the academic population through narrow conceptions of ‘freedom’ and omnipresent competition. The article proposes that it is through the amalgamated forces of intersecting panoptic gazes, on the one hand, and neo-liberal free-market principles, on the other, that student feedback develops its power to govern.     

Dangerous Carers: Pastoral power and the caring teacher of contemporary Australian schooling

Whilst care imperatives have arisen across the breadth of Western societies, within the education sector they appear both prolific and urgent. This paper explores the deployment of care discourses within education generally and draws upon the case of Australian Health and Physical Education (HPE) more specifically, to undertake a Foucauldian interrogation of care. In so doing I demonstrate the usefulness of Foucault's pastoral power lens and its capacity to provide insight into the moral and ethical work conducted by caring teachers on behalf of the state (Acker, 1995). Following a brief overview of the advocacy, challenges and debates surrounding the issue of caring teaching within education, I draw on the work of Hunter (1994) and three case studies from a genealogical interrogation of HPE that employed Foucualt's ethical fourfold as a heuristic device to reveal the ethical practices and objectives of the good HPE teacher. Drawing on this genealogical work, I argue that HPE teachers and their colleagues have been purposefully incited to constitute themselves as agents of pastoral power. From this Foucauldian perspective, I conclude with an exploration of the unintended and possibly ‘dangerous’ practices of caring teaching that may emerge within the complex and messy nexus of contemporary self‐constitution.     

Discourses on employability: constituting the responsible citizen

In the last couple of decades, there has been a shift from speaking about employment to speaking about employability. The interest in this article is directed at how discourses on employability are mobilised in the wider discursive terrain of governance. How does governance operate, what subject is produced and, more specifically, who is positioned as responsible for the employability of the citizen through such discourses? These questions are addressed by analysing three different kinds of texts: transnational policy documents on lifelong learning and the labour market, a Swedish policy text on in-service training in the health care sector and interviews with employees at six nursing homes for elderly people. A discourse analysis is performed inspired by the concepts of governmentality and the enabling state. The analysis indicates that the individual is constructed as responsible for her/his own employability, and the state and the employer are construed as enablers. However, this is not clear-cut or deterministic as different kinds of texts produce different kinds of positioning. This kind of analysis might help open up a new space for thought and action.     

Governing through guidance: an analysis of educational guidance practices in an Italian lower secondary school

ABSTRACT

Current social policy discourse defines educational and career guidance as a key tool to enhance individual self-realisation while pursuing collective social objectives (economic growth, reduction of drop-out rate, social inclusion). Relying on Foucault’s concept of governmentality, critical research has long destabilised this mainstream narrative by stressing that guidance polices constitute a technology of government through which the political ambition to govern is realised by shaping citizens’ desires and ambitions. This article aims to provide an in-depth empirical analysis of how governing practices unfold within a concrete guidance setting. Based on ethnographic data, the essay focuses on guidance practices addressing 13–14-year-old students in Italy moving from comprehensive education to a tracked educational level. Particular emphasis is given to the role played by guidance forms, questionnaires and exercises. These materials, it is argued, enable particular technologies of the self that are key to involving individual in practices of self-government.     

Unsettling orthodoxies: education for the environment/for sustainability

In this paper I employ Foucault's notion of governmentality to reflect on a debate that occurred in the pages of this journal some 10 years ago. I argue that their exchanges indicate ways in which various positions are engaged in a struggle for dominance in this field, and how particular strategies are used to legitimate and maintain these positions. My purpose is not to propose a new orthodoxy – or even to critique those we have – but rather to raise questions about how the unquestioned ‘that‐which‐is’ of orthodoxies comes to be, and their effects. I also suggest that as environmental educators and researchers, we need to work harder to unsettle more often the taken‐for‐granted in environmental education so that we remain alert to our own easy acceptance of orthodoxies. Without this, we risk our exhortations to those we seek to educate – to think critically, to question assumptions, and so forth – becoming empty rhetoric if we are not practising these ourselves – examining our own, as well as others', assumptions and practices.     

Conceptualising the compulsory education policy apparatus: producing and reproducing risky subjectivities

A governmental research inquiry was conducted into the policy to raise the school leaving age in Western Australia. The study aimed to problematise the policy so as to identify and examine the rationale and intervening practices with young people who were deemed to be at-risk of not meeting the new school leaving age requirements. Drawing on interviews and policy documents, this paper elaborates the concept of ‘apparatus’ as defined by Foucault and Agamben to identify the contexts and consequences of the way the policy produced and reproduced an ‘at-risk’ youth subjectivity. The paper shows how a binary between school completers and non-completers emanated from a context about a crisis in falling retention and early school leaving, myopically focusing on NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training) subjectivities as both the cause and solution to the policy objectives. Consequently, the policy apparatus is productive of the very circumstances it seeks to address, and therefore it recursively cycles around a problem it does not solve.     

Learning as Investment: Notes on governmentality and biopolitics

The ‘European Space of Higher Education’ could be mapped as an infrastructure for entrepreneurship and a place where the distinction between the social and the economic becomes obsolete. Using Foucault's understanding of biopolitics and discussing the analyses of Agamben and Negri/Hardt it is argued that the actual governmental configuration, i.e. the economisation of the social, also has a biopolitical dimension. Focusing on the intersection between a politicisation and economisation of human life allows us to discuss a kind of ‘bio‐economisation’ (cf. Bröckling), a regime of economic terror and learning as investment. Finally it is argued how fostering learning, i.e. fostering life (as a learning process) could turn into ‘let die’ and even into ‘make die’.     

论自我关怀与道德教育

法国哲学家福柯的自我关怀核心可以理解为:调节自我与自我的关系和自我控制技术使生活艺术化,形成主体性,其研究主要侧重男性经验。女性主义自我关怀以女性经验为基础,关注自我尊重与自我价值感,提出聆听自我需求。自我关怀应通过自我回归,形成伦理主体之自我,所以自我关怀的理解不仅仅是狭义的道德行为,还应广义的理解为以自我关系形成的自我存在。自我关怀可通过道德教育,培养自我尊严、自我反省来实现,具体方法有自我写作、自我叙事、自我对话等。     

清代翻译科考论

翻译科是清代科举制度的重要组成部分,它对清代政治、文化等方面产生了重要影响。翻译科开始于雍正年间,但雍正年间只有翻译童试、翻译乡试,乾隆年间才开始有翻译会试。嘉庆之后翻译乡会试才正常化。翻译科分满洲翻译、蒙古翻译、宗室翻译,其中以满洲翻译为主。满洲、蒙古、汉军均可参加满洲翻译考试,而只有蒙古人才允许参加蒙古翻译考试。嘉庆之后,宗室翻译停止举行。道光之后,蒙古翻译停止举行,仅有满洲翻译。     

Shifting the reflective focus: encouraging student teacher learning in video-framed and peer-sharing contexts

Since many studies that use video to support teacher learning are situated in strongly guided contexts and encourage particular kinds of thinking, we still know very little about how more loosely guided contexts can support teachers to think about the dilemmas of practice associated with their own goals by reflecting about video. This study explores how video-based and peer-based reflections about one’s own and others’ practices both indicate and guide the development of teachers’ change-directed thinking when they are sequenced before supervisor feedback. Six secondary preservice teachers reflected about peer-evaluated mini-teaching and videotaped field-based teaching in the prestudent teaching term and then about videotaped teaching alone, with peers, and alone again with supervisor feedback in the student teaching term. These reflections were coded by their subject, degree of reform-mindedness, and tendency toward three foci (player, stance, and source). Patterns in their ‘higher focus’ codes across the three reflective resources during student teaching showed how teachers were developing the goals they espoused in the fall term. Teachers situated their learning in contexts where the degree of scaffolding matched their degree of readiness for change, which was better characterized by their tendency toward subjects and foci that were less ‘one-sided’ than by their tendency toward only reform-minded (standards-based) thinking. While teachers whose reflections were intermediately different from the peer group were better supported by it, most teachers found direct support from the self-video and/or peer-video contexts to advance change-directed thinking associated with their own goals for teaching. The findings reveal not only how goal-related teacher learning can be powerfully supported with loosely guided video-framed contexts, but also how the diversification and/or expansion of teachers’ reflections across the categories used in this study provide robust indicators of both the content and efficacy of their change-directed thinking.     

Governmentality and My School: School Principals in Societies of Control

Abstract

The introduction of new accountabilities and techniques of government for the purposes of educational reform have created new complexities and tensions for school leadership. Policies such as the publishing of league tables in the UK, high stakes testing in the US and the introduction of the My School website in Australia are particularly significant for school principals. In this article I appeal to the work of Foucault and Deleuze to provide an alternate approach to understanding how principals are constituted as subjects through a range of practices and discourses associated with the introduction of the My School website. I specifically draw upon Foucault’s notion of governmentality and Deleuze’s notion of societies of control to provoke new lines of thought into these government practices. I argue that it is through the performative in the education system that school principals are becoming perpetually assessable subjects.     

Foucault and the use of critique: breaching the self-evidence of educational practices

This paper poses methodological questions about the role and limits of Foucault's concept of governmentality in education research. Firstly, it argues for the utility of governmentality as a means of exploring questions of power regardless of domain or scale. Secondly, it explores the boundary between the tasks of formulating critique and articulating reform agendas while working within the Foucauldian ethos. It does this via the examination of a research project which used Foucault’s concept of governmentality to observe the ways young people are regulated and shaped through education and training at a senior college in Australia. The goal of the examination is to shift the focus from the original findings, which highlighted the powerful effects of governing agendas, to a closer examination of their points of failure in local contexts. This shift takes up Foucault’s idea that government is unpredictable and that within the complexity of the assemblages which make government possible, the possibility for unanticipated outcomes and indeed points of failure, is always present. The paper argues that the change of focus is productive and provides a more complex understanding of the interplay between government and resistance. A focus on points of failure of the regulatory and normative aspects of government is taken up with a view to considering the possible links between this aspect of governmentality critique and the development of emergent rather than imposed reform agendas, inspired by local examples of resistance and transgressive practices.