Judging Teachers: Foucault,governance and agency during education reforms

Over a decade after publication of Thinking Again: Education After Postmodernism (1998) contention still emerges among Foucaultians over whether discursively made‐up things really exist, and whether removal of the constituent subject leaves room for agency within techniques of caring for the self. That these questions are kept alive shows that some readers have not rethought Foucault, finding what possibly comes after postmodernism. Using Wittgenstein to ‘reciprocally illuminate’ Foucault (after Tully and Marshall), I open teacher inspection and reforms to problematization, as relations to bedrock rules governing games of truth. ‘How, upon entering classrooms, do inspectors know “teaching” is taking place and not crazy and fuzzy things in its name?’ Taking up Hirst's vexing question, I move beyond liberal‐analytic concept‐mapping and neo‐liberal individualism to more fully assay the political ground for judging teaching practices through genealogy. Epistemological, political and ethical concerns intersect as we approach the problem through Foucault's three axes of an historical‐ontology of the present: knowledge(s), power relations, and arts of the self. Drawing on recent Governmentality Studies in Education (Peters ., 2009), we aver the impasses of postmodern relativism while finding limited ranges of agency along each axis, as teachers practice freedoms by critiquing and renegotiating rules.     

The Educator's Dual Role: Expressing Ideals While Educating in Nonideal Conditions

In this essay, Jennifer Morton discusses educators as central examples of agents who engage in ideal and nonideal ways of thinking. The educator, as a representative of the political community, is tasked with two aims. The first is nurturing students with the skills and knowledge they need for the world as they will find it. In pursuing this goal, the educator is assuming certain social facts, some of them unjust, that constitute the present nonideal world. The second aim is civic — educating future citizens. Insofar as the educator is involved in pursuing this goal, his or her role is to work at making certain future social facts true, in the hope of making the future slightly more ideal. Morton argues that if we think of these two aims instrumentally, they can come into conflict. She does not suggest a resolution to this conflict, but rather develops an alternative expressive account of the civic role of the educator. Ideal thinking by educators, Morton maintains, should be thought of as constituting an expression of respect toward their fellow citizens here and now. Ultimately, she argues that this expressive component of the educator's job is crucial to the educator's role in the political community.     

Motivation as Ethical Self-Formation

Motivation is a concept more frequently found in venues concerned with educational psychology than in ones concerned with educational philosophy. Under the influence of psychology, and its typically dualistic way of making sense of the world, motivation in education has tended to be viewed in dichotomous terms, for example, as intrinsic or extrinsic in character. Such psychology-derived theories of educational motivation operate within a dichotomous ontology, traceable to structuralist notions of agency versus (rather than within) structure, while exemplifying the tendency in psychology that philosopher R. S. Peters identified over half a century ago, of seeking to provide totalizing, comprehensive theories of human behaviour in emulation of the achievements of the natural sciences. This article offers an alternative reading of motivation in terms of Foucauldian ethical self-formation that attempts to recognize motivation as arising from the individuals’ socially situated and constrained agency, and that focuses on how individuals pursue learning as a way of creating a particular desired version of the self. We illustrate this approach through a vignette of Wolfgang, a Hong Kong learner of German as a third language. Although we are certainly not seeking to supplant other approaches to theorizing motivation, we believe that the approach we elaborate here contributes significantly to the repertoire of motivational research in education.     

论高校思想政治教育工作者的终身学习

从知识经济时代的要求和特点出发,学习应该贯穿人的一生。文章指出高校思想政治教育工作者不仅应该树立"终身学习"的理念,提高自身的素质以及"终身学习"的意识和能力,而且也应该树立高校思想政治教育工作者终身学习的保障制度的意识。     

Developing different identity trajectories: lessons from the Chinese teachers

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to investigate how three Chinese teachers developed their teacher identities in a reform context. Drawing upon data from a larger social historical study, the work-life narratives of the three teachers at different stages of their careers were used as case studies to showcase three types of teacher identity development trajectories, namely, learning to be both professional educator and subject teaching expert，learning to be subject teaching expert, and navigating to balance between educator and subject teacher. This study also investigated the factors that influence identity development trajectories of teachers and develops a conceptual framework for understanding teacher identity development in China. The framework shows that Chinese teachers’ exertion of their individual agency is embedded in the institutional context. Meanwhile, interpersonal relationships can work as a buffer to alleviate the tension between the institution and individual teachers. The study also shows the ways in which Chinese teachers’ exert their agency when developing their identities. The findings have significant implications for teacher education in terms of how to develop positive teacher identity over the course of a teacher’s career.     

Nomadic political ontology and transnational academic mobility

ABSTRACT

Transnational academic mobility is often characterized in relation to terms such as ‘brain drain’, ‘brain gain’, or ‘brain circulation’ – terms that isolate researchers’ minds from their bodies, while saying nothing about their political identities as foreign nationals. In this paper, I explore the possibilities of a more ‘nomadic political ontology’, where the body is ‘multifunctional and complex, a transformer of flows and energies, affects, desires and imaginings’ (p. 25). In this sense, academic mobility is not only the outcome of national innovation and economic competitiveness strategies, but also sets the conditions for epistemic and ontological change at the level of the individual. In this paper, I explore a personal account of the nomadic political ontology of academic mobility to exemplify the interrelationships between nationalism, academic belonging and transnationalism. My experiences as a transnational subject affect the stability and scope of my work as a policy-oriented researcher who studies the academic profession and the internationalization of higher education. My positionality in relation to my research focus is likely not unique to the field of higher education studies or educational research more broadly, which permits a wider applicability of this exploration beyond personal narrative and a particular national context. This personal reflection, guided by nomadic theory and post-structural possibilities, offers a viewpoint of the academic profession beyond the standard mobility discourse.     

Education in the Anthropocene: Ethico-moral dimensions and critical realist openings

Human-induced changes in planetary bio-geo-chemical processes have tipped earth into a newly-proposed geological epoch: the Anthropocene, which places moral and ethical demands on people regarding who should take responsibility for the well-being of people and planet, how, and why. Drawing generally on critical realist ontology, and more particularly on Roy Bhaskar’s concept of the person as a ‘four-planar social being’ living in the world as a laminated ontological whole, the article examines the dimensions of people’s ethico-moral engagement with the Anthropocene and considers what types of learning processes might enable people to understand, live in, and co-create this period known as ‘the Anthropocene’ in just, care-filled and—where necessary—transformative ways. The article points to the need for a radical re-orientation of education systems in the light of ethico-moral challenges that come to prominence in the Anthropocene, and argues for learning processes that nurture individual and collective moral agency through transformative, even transgressive, learning processes that are relational, humble, interdisciplinary, multi-perspectival, systemic, reality-congruent and contextually responsive.     

Tightrope walkers and solidarity sisters: critical workplace educators in the garment industry

This article focuses on the complex negotiations of critical workplace educators positioned amongst contradictory agendas and discourses in the workplace. While philosophically aligned with critical pedagogical agendas of transformation and collective action for workplace change, these educators perform an array of pedagogic articulations in everyday practice to secure their continued presence in the workplace. What becomes evident in these seemingly opposing articulations are various strategic political positionings of educators alongside their juggling of demands, attachments and inter‐identifications with both learners and managers. The pedagogy that emerges challenges conventional binaries of ‘transformative’ and ‘reproductive’ learning. Dynamics of transformation and liberation as well as reproduction and subjugation appear to be interlinked, along with expanding nets of social relations that blur power hierarchies and spatial boundaries, in a pedagogy that ultimately appears to mobilise hope and agency among workers. The workplace educator works a delicate balance of these dynamics to survive. The argument is based on a case study of a garment factory in Canada in which an adult education programme managed to thrive for 17 years: both workers and educators were interviewed in depth.     

Interest groups and the State in contemporary Spanish education policy

This paper analyses the role of educational interest groups in the context of current educational policy in Spain. The paper focuses on the historical and structural factors that are the basis for understanding the constitution of educational interests. It argues that the historical educational dualism and the political opposition between public and private education explains not only the emergence and political position of each educational actor, but also the dynamics of interaction between them and their strategies to influence policy making and implementation. The final section of the paper analyses the relationship between interest groups and the State. It argues that the diverse and heterogeneous educational demands lead to a specific form of educational politics and explain the conditioned relative autonomy of the Spanish State in education policy making.     

The Necessity for Particularity in Education and Child-Rearing: the moral issue

The justification debate has always been a major issue within philosophy of education. In this study Wittgensteinian interpretation of this matter is offered. It is argued that in using his framework justification itself has to be thought of differently, i.e. as making explicit the bedrock of the form of life the educator finds him or herself in. But Wittgenstein's insights highlight too the particularity of the ethical and therefore also of the educational situation. The paper argues that educators cannot but take a stance, cannot but act in accordance with what appeals to them in the midst of the irreconcilable desires of others. It is therefore considered that the demand for particularity reveals itself here as a demand for authenticity.     

Increasing professionalism and targeting effort: Recent books on the training and development of continuing education professionals

Three recent books provide a wealth of resources to help the continuing educator develop his or her expertise. These works trace the changing concerns which economic and political forces have created for those working in this area of higher education. They are in one sense similar in that their underlying values encourage participation and professionalism in the field, but each focuses upon a specific client area and the individualistic responses each institution makes to provide resources and encourage participation. Teaching strategy assumptions covered by these authors do not always reflect the full range of possibilities, but the areas of omission are the challenges which individual agencies might seize to obtain their marketing advantage and leadership in an increasingly competitive arena.     

高校思想政治理论课案例教学规律探索

案例教学的实施有利于增强思想政治理论课的针对性和有效性,有利于提高思想政治理论课的吸引力和感召力。思想政治理论课案例教学与一般案例教学相比,具有鲜明的政治导向性、强烈的社会现实感和结论的历史必然性等特点’。思想政治理论课案例教学要充分重视教学设计。包括设计教学体系、设计教学案例、设计讨论问题、设计课堂引导等方面。     

Curriculum making as professionalism-in-context: the cases of two elementary school teachers amidst curriculum change in Cyprus

ABSTRACT

In this paper, two case studies of elementary school teachers in the Republic of Cyprus are constructed to discuss how curriculum making relates to teacher biographies and sense of professionalism, as those are shaped at the intersection of their professional history and projections for the future, informed by and informing their constitution as professionals in local institutional and broader social contexts. Drawing on the ecological model of teacher agency, the two cases are utilised to examine how teachers’ narrated professional experiences in past and current schools were at interplay with their general sense of professional role and purpose as teachers. This complex interplay is simultaneously connected to the ways they perceived and constituted their pupils as well as to the ways they themselves were constituted by others as professionals. The examination of the two cases foregrounds the notions of teacher agency and of curriculum making as contingent, negotiated and negotiable, and opens up the space to consider the politics of both as those are permeated by micro-processes of subjection and subjectivation.     

The significance of critical incidents and voice to identity and agency

Human agency is significant to the understanding of professional identities and actions. It is through human agency that individuals can become powerful in changing or authoring their own identities. Stemming from a larger narrative inquiry focused on understanding the professional identities of public preschool teachers, this paper draws on cultural models theory to explore identity, agency and professional practice through the lived stories of CeCe, an African-American public preschool teacher from the United States. Findings demonstrate the influence of CeCe’s lived experiences to her developing sense of human agency and highlight the importance of critical incidents and voice to identity and human agency.     

On the Origins and Persistence of the Jewish Identity Industry in Jewish Education

“Jewish identity,” which emerged as an analytical term in the 1950s, appealed to a set of needs that American Jews felt in the postwar period, which accounted for its popularity. Identity was the quintessential conundrum for a community on the threshold of acceptance. The work of Kurt Lewin, Erik Erikson, Will Herberg, Marshall Sklare, and others helped to shape the communal conversation. The reframing of that discourse from one that was essentially psychosocial and therapeutic to one that was sociological and survivalist reflected the community’s growing sense of physical and socioeconomic security in the 1950s and early 1960s. The American Jewish Committee and its Division of Scientific Research offers an enlightening case study of this phenomenon. Jewish educators seized on identity formation, making it the raison d’être of their endeavor. But the ascent of identity discourse also introduced a number of challenges for the Jewish educator—conceptual, methodological, political, and even existential.     

Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices and Critical Pedagogy: The Fifth Moment in a Teacher Educator's Journey

In order to research and improve her practice, a teacher educator examined her life history and its relation to the ethical and moral discourses of society using autobiography as a self-study methodology. This critical reflection provided the basis for contextualizing praxis-oriented teacher education in an urban school. Based on the transformative framework of critical pedagogy coupled with a self-study of teacher education practices, this article explores how a teacher educator engages in research relating to the self, professional practice, and the analysis of the tensions surrounding otherness and oppression. Critical pedagogy provided the means and the methods to facilitate reflection upon her own earned and unearned privilege in society and paved the way for an agency of change in her practice.     

论中国古代史剧批评的伦理化

在中国古代史剧理论中,以伦理批评替代艺术批评成为一种常见的批评范式。这种伦理化的批评,表现在关于历史剧的创作动因、社会功能、价值取向的阐述方面。它的出现,主要由于当时社会思潮的影响以及历史剧创作与批评获取生存需要等原因。这种现象不但显示了中国古代史剧批评者艺术观念的淡薄,而且反映出中国古代史剧批评者在冲破传统伦理思维习惯束缚时的艰难。     

广义历史唯物主义生成的三重场域——历史观、经济学、哲学

以《德意志意识形态》为标志,广义历史唯物主义的新哲学得以诞生。以批判黑格尔唯心历史观为起点,马克思开始关注市民社会与国家的历史起源,并提出了以共产主义社会解答＂历史之谜＂的基本立场,从而在工业历史的考察中力图实现自然史与人类史的统一。在早期的经济学研究中,马克思虽然没有脱离人本主义的语境,但是通过对李斯特的批判转变了对国民经济学的否定态度,推进了唯物史观的现实性维度。正是在历史考察与经济学批判中,广义唯物主义克服了传统哲学对先验前提的依赖,在经济现实中找到了人性价值的立足点,完成了历史经验论与历史本质论的统一,实现了新哲学在历史观、经济学、哲学三重场域的超越性。     

Education for critical moral consciousness

This paper proposes a lifespan developmental model of critical moral consciousness and examines its implications for education in childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Mature moral consciousness, central to negotiating the challenges of the 21st century, is characterized by a deepening lifelong integration of moral motivation, agency and critical discernment. The paper describes the evolution of moral consciousness through three levels; pre‐critical consciousness (pCC), transitional critical consciousness (tCC) and critical consciousness (CC) and eight chronologically ascending psychosocial themes. It focuses on the first two periods and operationalizes the role of education in cultivating the four dimensions of moral motivation: a moral sense of identity, a sense of responsibility and agency, a deep sense of relatedness on all levels of living and a sense of meaning and life purpose. The paper proposes a re‐envisioning of education in the direction of integrating mind and heart, developing both moral motivation and critical discernment and integrating these into optimal consciousness.     

The Ethico-politics of Teacher Identity

Identity is a contemporary buzzword in education, referencing the individual and the social, the personal and the political, self and other. Following Maggie MacLure, we can think of identity in terms of teachers 'arguing for themselves', or giving an account of themselves. Yet in the wake of poststructuralism's radical de-centering of the subject and its highlighting of a number of impediments to agency, we might well ask how teachers are to give an account of themselves? This paper offers reading of identity that recognizes its paradoxical aspects, yet also contains scope for ethical agency. The latter is explored via a 'diagram' that utilizes Foucault's four axes of ethics to elaborate a framework for thinking about teacher identity as ethical self-formation and for engaging in what I refer to here as 'identity work'. This approach to thinking about teacher identity recognizes our discursive determination, yet also offers scope for recognizing and building ethical agency.