Individualisation in Swedish Adult Education and the Shaping of Neo-liberal Subjectivities

In this article we have analysed the ways a discourse on individualisation is taking shape within adult education in Sweden, how it operates, and what effects it has in terms of shaping student subjectivity. Drawing on a post-structural theorisation we analyse interviews with teachers and students in municipal adult education and folk high schools (FHS). The analysis illustrates how both institutions contribute to the shaping of individualised subjectivities, although differently. At the end, a general question is raised about what happens with the democratic function of adult education in general when a discourse on individualisation operates in the ways described and, more specifically, asks what is happening to FHS as an educational practice that upholds its self-image as a last bastion of a collective notion of learning and subjectivity and nurturing an educational practice of learning democracy?     

Enterprising career education: the power of self-management

This article provides an account of how people’s career management is given prominence in contemporary European policy documents pertaining to career education for entrepreneurship in higher education and in vocational education and training. This study concerns the ways in which policy discourses of career management and governmental practices invoke individuals to understand themselves as entrepreneurial. Proceeding from post-Foucauldian theorizing of the concept of governmentality, the analysis draws attention to technologies and procedures designed to foster career self-management. Focus is also directed to the practices of self-knowledge, self-actualization and self-control as part of the formation of the subjectivity. It is argued that the governance of self-management operates in two interrelated ways: as a practice of inducing individuals to shape an entrepreneurial relation towards their needs and desires, and as a power to enterprise career education. In relation to this, the analysis elucidates how the discourse of competence acts upon individuals to capitalize themselves and engage in a permanent self-assessment of their needs.     

Shaping entrepreneurial citizens: a genealogy of entrepreneurship education in Sweden

ABSTRACT

The focus of this article is the discourse of entrepreneurship education in Sweden. Drawing on a genealogical approach, the analysis draws attention to how this discourse is shaped in the curriculum today, and how it has come to emerge. Focusing on two key events that constitute this discourse, responsibility and problem-solving, and tracing these events back in time, the analysis illustrates how the discourse on entrepreneurship education today shapes a specific kind of citizen, one who is responsible for themselves and who has developed a constant will and desire for learning, thus being able to adapt to the constant changing future. Such a citizen is distinctly different from the one emerging in the 1960s and 1980s, where a citizen that shows solidarity with others, and especially the weak, and who develops problem-solving skills in order to actively engage in the development of society, emerges. These results can be related to wider trends in education policy, where neo-liberal rationalities have become more central, in Sweden as well as in other countries, where there has been a shift of focus, from an understanding of education as a common good, to an understanding of education as a private good.     

What role of education for youth? Discourse within the European Union’s Structured Dialogue

Abstract

Within the EU, answers and responses to detected issues and problems facing young people are regularly searched for within and through education and learning. The EU’s Structured Dialogue on youth is one of the consultation-based policy processes where education is often suggested as a solution and a highly relevant field of action helping to improve youth’s status and life. Using Foucauldian discourse analysis, this paper examines discourse about education present in selected policy texts and statements of various stakeholders and individuals active within the EU’s Structured Dialogue on youth. As an example, the first two phases of the fifth cycle of that dialogue are considered and examined, exploring perceptions of the dialogue and education and their role. The paper aims to explore the underlying political rationalities of education via which the field is governed and programmable realities created, while young people’s specific role and conduct is suggested and framed.     

Poor education,unemployment and the promise of skills: The hegemony of the “skills mismatch” discourse

Development discourse frames youth in the Arab world as lacking in the skills needed for employment and educational institutions as failing. The “skills mismatch” is offered as both the reason for unemployment, and evidence of the poor quality of education in the region. This paper undertakes a genealogy of the skills mismatch discourse, tracing how it became central to education development policy with a focus on Jordan.We show that this discourse lacks analysis of prevailing labor force dynamics and barriers to economic development, and serves to blame youth, educators, and local culture for the failures of economic restructuring.     

Becoming economic subjects: agency,consumption and popular culture in early childhood

This paper considers how young children in early childhood education draw on popular texts and consumer goods in their constitution of subjectivities and social relations. The paper draws on poststructuralist theories of subjectivity, agency, consumption and power, to explore how performative practices of consumption figure in the constitution of economically oriented subjectivities. Drawing on data generated in research undertaken in early childhood centres in the culturally diverse outer metropolitan region of Greater Western Sydney, Australia, the paper considers how economic discourse informs children's cultural knowledges, shaping the ‘techniques of the self’ through their engagement with commercially available images and products. The argument is made that children make strategic use of their knowledge of popular culture and its potential to locate them advantageously in material and symbolic economies, and that the deployment of symbolic and material goods that shapes children's dress, play, and conversation is an important means of rendering oneself intelligible within normative discourses of economic participation.     

Youth media and agency

This article addresses how capacity is conceived of and understood in youth media/civic education programming, and how beliefs about agency, development, relationality and youth manifests in the discourses, programmes, and practices of organizations operating youth media programmes. Through attention to a youth media and development programme in rural Nicaragua, the article addresses a key gap in theorizing how capacity operates within discourses and related practices that constitute ‘youth media’ and, in particular, it critically investigates how youth media discourse rests on an assumed foundation where capacity is defined as agency, empowerment or voice. This article situates youth media production within modernist discourses about education, development and ‘change’, in order to re-conceptualize agency through a mobilities framework that more fully attends to the complex and affective moments in youth media discourses.     

A good student subject: a Foucauldian discourse analysis of an adolescent writer negotiating subject positions

In this article, we draw on the work of Michel Foucault to analyze one student’s subject development in an expository writing classroom. James, the participant, was embarking on the project of becoming a good student, as he understood it, after struggling and leaving school previously. Drawing on interviews, classroom observations and written artifacts, we use Foucauldian concepts and discourse analysis, along with one James Gee’s discourse analysis tools – the identities building tool – to conduct a microanalysis of James’s efforts to objectify himself as a good student subject. The data show how James acquiesced to the truths and practices of the regime of school, including how he mobilized truths of the regime through a process we call masked confession. That is, he negotiated his good student subject position by masking or silencing other subject positions. James’s masked confession was his way of negotiating the realm of ‘multiple truths,’ or multiple subject positions.     

Education recoded: policy mobilities in the international ‘learning to code’ agenda

Abstract

Education policy increasingly takes place across borders and sectors, involving a variety of both human and nonhuman actors. This comparative policy paper traces the ‘policy mobilities,’ ‘fast policy’ processes and distributed ‘policy assemblages’ that have led to the introduction of new computer programming practices into schools and curricula in England, Sweden and Australia. Across the three contexts, government advisors and ministers, venture capital firms, think tanks and philanthropic foundations, non-profit organizations and commercial companies alike have promoted computer programming in schools according to a variety of purposes, aspirations, and commitments. This paper maps and traces the evolution of the organizational networks in each country in order to provide a comparative analysis of computing in schools as an exemplar of accelerated, transnationalizing policy mobility. The analysis demonstrates how computing in schools policy has been assembled through considerable effort to create alignments between diverse actors, the production and circulation of material objects, significant cross-border movement of ideas, people and devices, and the creation of strategic partnerships between government centres and commercial vendors. Computing in schools exemplifies how modern education policy and governance is accomplished through sprawling assemblages of actors, events, materials, money and technologies that move across social, governmental and geographical boundaries.     

Push and pull in the classroom: competition,gender and the neoliberal subject

In this paper I explore how learning strategies based on competition and zero-sum thinking are inscribed into the dynamics of classroom interaction shaping relations between high-achieving pupils, and link elements of these practices to market trends in British education policy discourse. A detour through the politico-historical negotiations shaping relations between neo-liberal governance and education is initially sketched out, bringing into focus how the proliferation of policy discourses of consumerism and marketisation aim to facilitate and shape the conduct of persons in classroom settings. Drawing on ethnographic observation data taken from a study of two London comprehensive secondary schools, I then outline how pupils are incited to behave as competitive strategists in the classroom and reflect on the gender constructions underpinning these performances and their slippery dynamics.     

In-service training programmes for mathematics teachers nested in transnational policy discourses

Results in mathematics on international knowledge surveys like Programme for International Student Assessment and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study have become one of the most important factors for the perceived success or failure of schools and even entire education systems in the policy arena. In this article, we explore the complex recontextualising processes that occur when translating educational policy into actual programmes for teachers’ education. First, the transnational education policy discourse(s) of teachers’ in-service training with a focus on mathematics will be explored. Second, we examine how this transnational discourse is recontextualised in a national policy discourse resulting in a national reform programme for in-service training of mathematics teachers in Sweden. In a third step, concrete teacher training courses in mathematics are examined. The result shows a convergence between the official policy discourse and the pedagogic recontextualising field in terms of a broad teaching repertoire and peer discussions about reflections on certain common objects of learning.     

Discourse analysis as theory,method, and epistemology in studies of education policy

ABSTRACT

Discourse has featured in studies of educational policy as an analytic and methodological tool, theoretical frame, realm of implication, and even a foundational definition of educational policy itself (e.g.) Despite the centrality of discourse as a frame for exploring educational policy and its implications, the ways that discourse is defined or operationalized in educational policy research are often left implicit which can lead to murky relations to larger onto-epistemological questions of how we construct findings from data as well as the nature of policy. In this interpretive analysis, we synthesize a corpus of 37 peer-reviewed journal articles that bring together educational policy and analyses of discourse from varying theoretical and methodological perspectives in order to better understand the breadth and scope of how discourse is defined and operationalized in studies of educational policy, including in ways that are sometimes incommensurate with authors' stated theoretical and methodological positions. After first laying the theoretical groundwork for analyses of discourse in the field of educational policy, we then illustrate how discourse analysis is used differently, and sometimes inconsistently, within contested paradigmatic landscapes. We conclude with an argument for discussions across theoretical frameworks and methodological paradigms about how the concept of discourse lends itself to different epistemological vantage points on educational policy.     

Caring and Daring Discourses at Work: Doing Gender Through Occupational Choices in Elderly Care and Police Work

This paper aims to problematise how gender is being done—1. through occupational choices in two occupations that are traditionally gender divided, elderly care and police work, and 2. through the division of work assignments in police work. Interviews with care workers and police officers are analysed using a “doing gender” perspective, a post-structural notion of subjectivity inspired by Michel Foucault and positioning theory. We argue that a caring discourse operates in elderly care workers’ and police officers’ statements concerning occupational choices, while a daring discourse operates in statements concerning occupational choices within police work. Through these discourses, gender is being done in different ways; caring dispositions are constructed as totally female within the context of elderly care but as more gender-neutral in police work. At the same time, a macho or daring attitude is constructed as a male attribute in police work. Such constructions may have social consequences in terms of dividing work tasks for police, where male officers work in more prestigious and “dangerous” areas, while female officers are left with less prestigious, more caring-associated working areas.     

The silent voices: Pupil participation for gender equality and diversity

ABSTRACT

Background: The international body of research on student voice concludes that active pupil participation has multiple positive effects on the work environment and learning for pupils. In a large study on gender equality and diversity work in Swedish schools, it became evident that pupils wanted to be active participants. However, pupils considered that their wishes were, to a large extent, ignored. Therefore, it is important to try to understand this further by investigating pupils’ perceptions of their experiences.

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to explore how discourses of participation and power are practised, not practised, and materialised, by focusing in-depth on pupils’ representations of gender equality and diversity work within a small sample of Swedish schools.

Methodology: The study is based on data from 10 focus group interviews with 43 pupils from 4 different schools, 2 compulsory schools (pupil ages 6–15) and 2 upper secondary schools (pupil ages 16–18), in Sweden. The thematic analysis utilised a gender perspective anchored in a critical policy analysis approach.

Analysis and Findings: The analysis of focus group data identified three pupil representations of gender equality and diversity work: a onetime occurrence, longing for participation and the (un)fair teacher. These representations were derived from and intertwined with discourses on pupil participation and power. Three sub-discourses were found within the discourse on participation and power: normative barriers to participation, structural barriers to participation and openings in the barriers to participation. The first two sub-discourses support the maintenance of unequal power relations between adults and pupils, while the third challenges these power relations.

Conclusions: Our study suggests that no substantial levels of participation or power among the pupils were represented at the schools. Instead, the analysis visualises pupils as expressing powerlessness and disengagement. However, the discourse Openings in the barriers to participation, together with pupils’ democratic abilities, has the potential to enable change and the development of pupil participation in schools.     

The construction of bilingualism in an American context: three levels of analysis

This paper represents part of an ethnographic study conducted in a small college town in the northern United States. Based on Fairclough's conceptualization of language as a site of social meaning construction and power struggle, I conduct critical discourse analyses on data collected at broad, mid, and micro level contexts. I demonstrate how contrasting meanings associated with bilingualism have ideological origins and reflect underlying power relations, which are evident in academic research, federal and state legislation and policy, local language programming, and classroom interaction. Revealing how unequal relations of power shape meaning through language creates a conscious awareness, which can lead to emancipation for disempowered populations and has significant implications for challenging discriminatory educational policies and practices and identifying the ways in which language proficiency positions students in schools.     

The policy discourse of networking and its effect on school autonomy: a Foucauldian interpretation

Policy discourse officially operates to distinctly influence public perception in an irrevocable and normalising manner. In a Maltese educational scenario of gradual decentralisation and increased accountability, I explore the ‘effects’ of both the global and the local policy discourse of networks and networking on the practising leaders, in addition to their reaction to the policy document mandating these multi-site school collaboratives, with a particular interest on their imposed nature and how this reform impinged on individual school autonomy. This research adopts a case study methodology, with data collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews; participant observation; and documentary analysis, interpreted via a Foucauldian theoretical framework through narrative analysis. The findings reveal an inherent tension among autonomy, centralisation, and decentralisation both within the policy discourse and the unfolding network leadership dynamics. This paper has particular philosophical implications for educational policy, practice, and theory in an educational scenario of school policy globalisation.     

Preoccupied with the self: towards self-responsible,enterprising, flexible and self-centred subjectivity in education

In the neoliberal order, the ideal self is self-responsible, enterprising, flexible and self-centred. Regarding this ideal we argue that the rise of therapisation in society, and in education, particularly, links both the therapeutic and enterprising discourses. The article examines how these discourses jointly produce and legitimate the ideal, and thus, the preoccupied subjectivity of the neoliberal order. As a discursive form of power therapisation is observed here to work by directing students to focus on their inner selves – including their problems, vulnerabilities, dependencies as well as reactions to life events – in a therapeutic mode. And it does not stop there. Therapeutic discourses offer a seemingly empowering and flexible subjectivity, which is central in enterprising discourses. At the same time, however, selfhood tends to diminish to the extent that we argue for a need to understand more about the subjectivities that emerge from the alliance between therapeutic and enterprising discourses.     

The making of entrepreneurial subjectivity in adult education

This article focuses on the idea of entrepreneurial subjectivity and the ways in which it is shaped by the entrepreneurial discourse in adult education. As a result, we argue that educational practices related to adults form a particular kind of ideal subjectivity that we refer to as entrepreneurial. In order to understand how this entrepreneurial discourse in adult education works, we will analyse how the young adults we have interviewed engage in the discourse and what effects this has for the construction of their subjectivities. Our joint empirical analysis is based on discourse-analytic methodology and on our previous empirical studies. Our research results suggest that participants in adult education end up constructing their subjectivities within the limits and possibilities of the entrepreneurial discourse that are made available to them. Embracing the entrepreneurial discourse construed in terms of autonomy and freedom, young people are expected to make a project out of their own subjectivities. As an effect, education as well as young adults’ autonomy is limited to a question of speaking in accordance with what is expected.