The ‘subject of ethics’ and educational research OR Ethics or politics? Yes please!

This paper outlines a theoretical context for research into ‘the subject of ethics’ in terms of how students come to see themselves as self-reflective actors. I maintain that the ‘subject of ethics’, or ethical subjectivity, has been overlooked as a necessary aspect of creating politically transformative spaces in education. At the heart of egalitarian politics lies a fundamental tension between the equality of voices (or ways of being) and the notion that one way of being or one voice may be deemed more legitimate than another; which in turn puts the equality of beings into question. Building from Michel Foucault’s work regarding ethics and subjectivity, I suggest that a ‘subject of ethics’ can be viewed, in part, as a series of relations of self that form the horizon upon which a subject comes to work on themselves relative to moral codes and power relations. Ethical relations of self can be a useful concept for those interested in educational research that furthers social and ecological justice. In the conclusion of this paper I also discuss the limitations of locating ethics entirely within a constituted human subject.     

Preparing Professionals to Face Ethical Challenges in Today's Workplace: Review of the Literature,Implications for PI,and a Proposed Research Agenda

Ethics is very much in the news today and on the minds of those who teach and/or train current and future professionals to work successfully in today's workplaces. While there seems to be agreement that organizations need to address the topic of ethics, there is also a concern about how best to proceed. Ethics and compliance offices, professional codes, ethics conferences, institutes, and centers, formal and informal ethics courses, and ethics hotlines are only some of the ways in which organizations have responded to the need for ethics preparedness. The diversity of our organizations and the global nature of our economy demands attention to multicultural/international issues as well. In this review, we examine the diverse body of literature research that explores teaching and training practices used to address ethical issues in corporations and institutions of higher education and include a special focus on multicultural environments. We discuss implications for PI professionals and propose a research agenda.     

Ethics and the new materialism: a brief genealogy of the ‘post’ philosophies in the social sciences

This paper explores the relation between poststructuralist theorising and new materialism with a particular focus on the work of Barad. Tracing the lines of thought, particularly as they relate to ethics, through the works of Foucault, Butler, Cixous and Deleuze the paper finds a range of concepts that anticipate and link directly with Barad’s work. Barad’s emphasis on the agency of matter, and on how matter is made to matter, is found to be new. The different analytic work that can be done with these various philosophers is explored through three intra-active entanglements; first, among preschool children and a rock, second, between a girl and a chimp raised as her twin, and third, between humans and cows.     

Social Control and Free Inquiry: Consequences of Foucault for the Pursuit of Knowledge in Higher Education

Key ideas in the work of Michel Foucault are explored and applied to the organized pursuit of knowledge in higher education. His association of power and knowledge accounts for deeply rooted practices in higher education that would need to be mediated or overcome for there to be a revolution in inquiry to occur, such as the one advanced by Nicholas Maxwell. Foucault’s concepts of disciplinary power and bio-power, and how they act to manage the behavior of free citizens, are described. These concepts are then applied to free inquiry, to show how the activity of individual inquirers is managed and how critical inquiry is controlled. The management of inquiry involving four norms, two of them intrinsic to inquiry and the other two extrinsic, is explained. The potential of Foucault’s concept of discursive formations is introduced as a means of reconceiving inquiry to overcome these impediments to a revolution in inquiry.     

Translating policy: governmentality and the reflective teacher

This paper deploys some concepts from the work of Michel Foucault to problematise the mundane and quotidian practices of policy translation as these occur in the everyday of schools. In doing that, we suggest that these practices are complicit in the formation of and constitution of teacher subjects, and their subjection to the morality of policy and of educational reform. These practices are some ways in which teachers work on themselves and others, and make themselves subjects of policy. We conceive of the processes of translation, its practices and techniques as a form of ethics, the constitution of a contemporary and contingent version of professionalism through the arts of self-conduct. In all of this, it is virtually impossible to separate out, as Foucault points out, capability from control. We argue that the development of new capacities, new skills of classroom management, of pedagogy, bring along with it the intensification of a power relation. We are primarily concerned with Foucault’s third face of power, pastoral power or government and how this interweaves and overlap with other forms of power within processes of policy and educational reform.     

我国高校军训的特点及功能发掘与实现条件

大学生军训作为一种特殊的教育形式,具有其他教育形式不可替代的功能,分析我国高校军训的特点,全面发掘和实现军训功能,具有重要的现实意义。我国高校军训以学校为施训主体,侧重于育人,具有全员性特征,是大学生社会实践的重要组成部分。高校军训具有思想政治教育、素质强化和组织构建三大功能。实现军训三大功能应加强军训组织工作,关键不仅在于领导重视,组织机构健全,相关部门协调一致,后勤保障有力,还在于能否为实现军训功能创造多种基础性条件。实现军训三大功能的基础性条件包括：营造浓厚军营氛围、制定周密训练计划、保证适度训练强度、及时跟进班级工作等。     

(Re)considering Foucault for science education research: considerations of truth,power and governance

This article is a response to Anna Danielsonn, Maria Berge, and Malena Lidar’s paper, “Knowledge and power in the technology classroom: a framework for studying teachers and students in action”, and an appeal to science educators of all epistemological orientations to (re)consider the work of Michel Foucault for research in science education. Although this essay does not come close to outlining the importance of Foucault’s work for science education, it does present a lesser-known side of Foucault as an anti-polemical, realist, modern philosopher interested in the way objective knowledge is entangled with governance in modernity. This latter point is important for science educators, as it is the intersection of objective knowledge and institutional imperatives that characterizes the field(s) of science education. Considering the lack of engagement with philosophy and social theory in science education, this paper offers one of many possible readings of Foucault (we as authors have also published different readings of Foucault) in order to engage crucial questions related to truth, power, governance, discourse, ethics and education.     

Professional ethics professional ethics for technology

Conclusion Professional ethics express what a professional society is about. They are an emblem to focus on, to support, to identify with and to advocate for. Our Code expresses who we are, what we do, and shows how our profession functions for the good of all. Our areas of work are related specialties. Those who are unqualified have the potential to do harm. Although ethics is a word with multiple connotations, what professional ethics are about is sociological. Professional ethics are always a matter of work and who is qualified to perform what task for which clients. Professional ethics should ultimately be for the benefit of those who are served by those who labor in professional occupations. Our Code reflects our profession’s relationships with the larger society and, it is anticipated, the present update will be officially adopted by our affiliated professional organizations and state affiliates.     

The Reproduction of Philosophical Bodies in Education with Language

This paper articulates a feminist poststructural philosophy of education by combining the work of Luce Irigaray and Michel Foucault. This acts as an underpinning for a philosophy of desire (McWilliam, 1999) in education, or as a minor philosophy of education where multiple movements of bodies are enacted through theoretical methodologies and research. These methods include qualitative analysis and critical discourse analysis; where the conjunction Irigaray‐Foucault is a paradigm for dealing with educational phenomena. It is also a rigorous materialism (Braidotti, 2005) that opens up the way in which we think about philosophical bodies in education with language. This simultaneously creates gaps in our thinking about the problems associated with philosophical bodies in education, where the imagination may intercede and Eros can do his work, ‘For if Eros possessed all that he desires, he would desire no more’ (Irigaray, 1993, p. 22).     

论教育主体的生成与消亡——基于福柯的后现代主义主体解构观

米歇尔·福柯透过后现代主义及后结构主义视角提出了主体解构观念。通过解构主体,福柯深刻揭露了生活在现代社会中的包括教育领域中的"人"的生存现状。福柯通过对主体进行"考古"性的挖掘和考察,最终形成了他的关于主体实质和命运的独特见解和理论体系。在福柯看来,主体具有历史性,是知识、权力、道德的奴役化和实践化的产物,现代社会的知识型决定着主体必将消亡的命运。基于这些思考,他最终喊出了"人死了"和"主体的消亡"的口号,这体现了一种后现代主义主体解构观,也表达了福柯对现代社会中人的问题的担忧。通过运用福柯的主体解构观来观照教育主体,揭露教育主体的真相,描述教育主体的"生产"过程,阐释教育主体必将消亡的趋势,对于教育中主体的真正解放,回归人的本真,具有重大的理论价值和实践意义。     

Education and countering violent extremism: Western logics from south to north?

Abstract

This paper explores the way education and conflict have become entangled during the post-9/11 ‘war on terror’ response to ‘radical Islam’ at home and abroad. The paper charts the complex ways that education has been deployed to serve Western military and security objectives in multiple locations in the global south and how these strategies have now returned to the ‘ West’ in the form of ‘countering violent extremism’ interventions. Drawing on Foucault’s concept of the ‘boomerang effect’ I will explore whether and how education techniques and strategies deployed abroad in pursuit of imperial interests return to the West and are deployed to monitor, control and suppress marginalised communities in a form of ‘internal colonialism’. Finally, the paper brings the two sections together in the Findings to explore commonalities and divergences.     

‘Finding Foucault’: orders of discourse and cultures of the self

The idea of finding Foucault first looks at the many influences on Foucault, including his Nietzschean acclamations. It examines Foucault’s critical history of thought, his work on the orders of discourse with his emphasis on being a pluralist: the problem he says that he has set himself is that of the individualization of discourses. Finally, it addresses his work on the culture of the self which became a philosophical and historical question for Foucault later in his life as he investigated the historical form of relations between subjectivity and truth in Western philosophy since Antiquity and how philosophy as an activity taught about the care of the self. The conclusion suggests some ways that students might approach his work as they proceed in finding Foucault and their own selves.     

Learning how to be a woman in the Canadian Forces/unlearning it through feminism: an autoethnography of my learning journey A preliminary version of this paper was presented as part of a panel discussion at the Atlantic Regional Canadian Association for Studies in Adult Education (CASAE) 2002 conference.

Gender plays a significant role in the experiences of workers within organizations. This is particularly true for women in non-traditional roles as they constantly struggle with gender barriers that are so ensconced in certain organizations and in society as to be accepted without question. Using an autoethnographical account, I explore the implications of my experience as a woman in the non-traditional role of a military member. First, I will discuss the importance of speaking from a first-hand, subjective position, and will briefly explore how we learn to be men and women through socialization processes in current western society. Then I will focus on how I learned to be a military member in a male organization and will examine how women's bodies and emotions separate women from men. I conclude with a discussion of how learning about feminist theories provoked me to begin to make connections between my experience and larger societal issues that had previously been invisible to me.     

大学生军训中开展心理健康教育的实践探索

大学生军训往往能够改善大学生心理状况。如果能够主动将大学生心理健康教育工作孕育到军动中，不仅能够有效提高大学生军事训练效果，更能够提高大学生心理素质。文章就如何在大学生军训中开展心理健康教育进行了探讨。     

The politics of logic in early childhood research: A case of the brain,hard facts,trees and rhizomes

This paper engages with questions of logic and its politics to explore how those of us in early childhood education can become critical consumers of ‘brain research’. The research truths we use to construct classroom practices decide the meanings of our actions, thoughts and feelings and our interactions with children. Following Foucault (1980), I see these truths as intimately connected with power and its effects on us.     

Break with Tradition: Marshall's contribution to a Foucauldian philosophy of education

James Marshall's work on Foucault exemplifies a break with tradition in philosophy of education and if taken appropriately as a new methodology, a new logic, portends a different future for the field. This article begins from a misunderstanding of Marshall. It then posits Marshall as situated in a particular Foucauldian root: a logic break out of Bachelard, Canguilhem and Foucault. From them a different understanding of ‘concept’ is offered as a break with the analytic tradition in philosophy and philosophy of education.     

Faculty and online education as a mechanism of power

This study uses a critical perspective to examine how online education is used in brick-and-mortar institutions as a mechanism through which power is exercised by and against professors who teach online. Based on a larger study of 25 professors and administrators at four institutions, this work focuses on the experiences of 12 professors. Foucault’s conceptualization of power framed our interpretation of interviews conducted with these professors. Our findings suggest online education enhanced faculty autonomy and visibility, but that it was also used to control faculty members, and for some professors, it was used to alter their professional identities.     

The widening participation agenda: the marginal place of care

This paper is based upon two empirical studies, which identify care‐giving responsibilities as a key mediator of mature students’ – a target group within the widening participation strategy – experiences of higher education. Employing a feminist lens on care, we identify a disjuncture between how students experience the challenges of negotiating care and study, and the narrow and economistic way care is addressed within higher education policy. We point to the broader recognition of care emerging within New Labour’s policies on the reconciliation of paid work and family life and argue that in the context of increasing expectations that learning is for life, care needs to be recognised in a broader form at the interface of both education and employment. Drawing on the notion of a ‘political ethics of care’, we conclude by identifying elements that should be included in a higher‐education ‘care culture’.     

Standardized testing and the construction of governable persons

While debates over standardized testing are ubiquitous, there has been relatively little consideration of how today's standardized testing practices have arisen. The current study provides a chronology of standardized testing within Alberta, Canada. Starting from prior work by Foucault and others on ‘governmentality’, we propose that the movement to standardized testing be viewed as part of a larger societal movement toward techniques of government that operate indirectly and at a distance. These techniques of government seek to ‘manage’ populations through the use of measurement tools and numerical calculations. We suggest that, although these techniques are directed toward populations, they also have specific effects on individual students, parents, teachers, and other participants in the education system. In particular, we contend that standardized testing programmes, by rendering the participants visible and subjecting them to public scrutiny, contribute to the construction of governable persons.     

Constituting neoliberal subjects? ‘Aspiration’ as technology of government in UK policy discourse

Since the 2000s, successive governments in the United Kingdom and elsewhere have embraced the idea of ‘raising aspiration’ among young people as a solution to persisting educational and socio-economic inequalities. Previous analyses have argued that these policies tend to individualise structural disadvantage and promote a ‘deficit’ view of working-class youth. This paper adopts a novel approach to analysing aspiration discourses combining Michel Foucault’s four dimensions of ‘ethics’ and Mitchell Dean’s notion of ‘formation of identities’. Applying Foucault’s and Dean’s work in this way provides a new lens that enables an examination of how policy encourages particular forms of subjectivation, and, therefore, seeks to govern individuals. The findings presented in the paper complicate previous research by showing that raising aspiration strategies portray disadvantaged youth both in terms of ‘deficit’ and ‘potential’, resulting in a requirement for inner transformation and mobility through attitudinal change. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for the identity formation of young people and for conceptualising contemporary forms of governmentality.