16 results
Search Results
2. Discipline Lessons from American Faith-Based Autonomous Schools: A Narrative of Power and 'Mini-Public' Ideology
- Author
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Finefter-Rosenbluh, Ilana
- Abstract
Widespread neoliberal approaches to education consider schools increasingly accountable for self-management and 'client' recruitment, encapsulating economic ideologies that assume privatisation is essential for social progress. With an ever-shifting landscape of market-driven policies and the increasing growth of private education settings, more research is needed to cast light on emerging or under-researched aspects of "autonomous schools." Located within a U.S. state that has strict constraints on tax subsidies for religious K-12 education, this paper investigates how an extensive form of "decentralisation" corresponds with schools' discipline and ethical environment. It analyses teacher interviews and web documents from faith-based, autonomous schools in a state that has "devolved" power and authority for decision-making to parents and other independent 'agents', having a distanced relationship with its non-state 'actors'. The paper follows Foucault's use of the metaphor of the "panopticon" and adopts his power analysis to examine the nature of "parental control" and its influence on disciplinary and ethical practices. Evidence suggests that these autonomous schools are driven by a "'mini-public' ideology" that constrains educators' autonomy and generates particular disciplinary norms; entangling ethical, educational, and social ramifications, including teacher resistance and "teacher demoralisation." Implications for policy are discussed in this context of control.
- Published
- 2022
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
3. Troubled Spaces: Negotiating School-Community Boundaries in Northern Nigeria
- Author
-
Dunne, Máiréad, Humphreys, Sara, and Bakari, Salihu
- Abstract
Community participation is a vital component of the educational decentralisation policies that are now widespread in Nigeria. In this paper, we explore school-community relations in different localities in northern Nigeria, where there is both very little inter-generational experience of schooling and minimal engagement by local communities in social and political management processes. Drawing on ethnographic data in and around six primary schools in Adamawa State, northern Nigeria, we problematise school-community relations and highlight the complexities and tensions in their social interactions. This we do by focusing on the school boundary that both connects and distinguishes it from the surrounding community. In particular, we explore the agonistic spatial and temporal regulation that operates at the school boundary, with specific attention to the different ways that students, teachers and the community comply or resist such strategies of governmentality. In concluding, we argue that it is imperative to think through the implications for/of international education and development policies as they are launched in diverse localities. This would help to avoid accounts of local deficit that are so readily invoked when top-down policies reach communities.
- Published
- 2021
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
4. Education Policy-Making and Time
- Author
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Thompson, Greg and Cook, Ian
- Abstract
This paper examines the global policy convergence toward high-stakes testing in schools and the use of test results to "steer at a distance", particularly as it applies to policy-makers' promise to improve teacher quality. Using Deleuze's three syntheses of time in the context of the Australian policy blueprint Quality Education, this paper argues that using test scores to discipline teaching repeats the past habit of policy-making as continuing the problem of the unaccountable teacher. This results in local policy-making enfolding test scores in a pure past where the teacher-as-problem is resolved through the use of data from testing to deliver accountability and transparency. This use of the database returns a digitised form of inspection that is a repetition of the habit of teacher-as-problem. While dystopian possibilities are available through the database, in what Deleuze refers to as a control society, for us the challenge is to consider policy-making as a step into an unknown future, to engage with producing policy that is not grounded on the unconscious interiority of solving the teacher problem, but of imagining new ways of conceiving the relationship between policy-making and teaching.
- Published
- 2014
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
5. Panoptic Performativity and School Inspection Regimes: Disciplinary Mechanisms and Life under Special Measures
- Author
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Perryman, Jane
- Abstract
This paper looks at Ofsted and particularly special measures regimes as part of a disciplinary mechanism. It examines issues such as school effectiveness theories, the increasing powers of Ofsted, and life under special measures and links it to performativity, discipline and surveillance using the metaphor of the panopticon. The change in teachers' accountability is traced, along with the rise in the audit culture in teaching, and the increase in the power of Ofsted. The research context is a case study of a school over the period 1999-2003. During this time the school was placed into special measures and provided an opportunity to examine the effects of a key Government policy. The issues researched were Ofsted, special measures and the effects that these had on schools and teachers. The paper argues that a special measures regime is an example of panoptic discipline which I call panoptic performativity. The primary research is echoed by much of the existing research and first hand accounts of Ofsted inspections. I also locate special measures regimes in the context of Lyotard's "performativity", Foucault's "normalization", and the school effectiveness literature.
- Published
- 2006
6. Discipline lessons from American faith-based autonomous schools: a narrative of power and 'mini-public' ideology.
- Author
-
Finefter-Rosenbluh, Ilana
- Subjects
SCHOOLS ,DECENTRALIZATION in management ,DISCIPLINE ,SOCIOLOGY ,PARENTS - Abstract
Widespread neoliberal approaches to education consider schools increasingly accountable for self-management and 'client' recruitment, encapsulating economic ideologies that assume privatisation is essential for social progress. With an ever-shifting landscape of market-driven policies and the increasing growth of private education settings, more research is needed to cast light on emerging or under-researched aspects of autonomous schools. Located within a U.S. state that has strict constraints on tax subsidies for religious K-12 education, this paper investigates how an extensive form of decentralisation corresponds with schools' discipline and ethical environment. It analyses teacher interviews and web documents from faith-based, autonomous schools in a state that has devolved power and authority for decision-making to parents and other independent 'agents', having a distanced relationship with its nonstate 'actors'. The paper follows Foucault's use of the metaphor of the panopticon and adopts his power analysis to examine the nature of parental control and its influence on disciplinary and ethical practices. Evidence suggests that these autonomous schools are driven by a 'mini-public' ideology that constrains educators' autonomy and generates particular disciplinary norms; entangling ethical, educational, and social ramifications, including teacher resistance and teacher demoralisation. Implications for policy are discussed in this context of control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2022
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
7. Importing control in Initial Teacher Training: theorizing the construction of specific habitus in recent proposals for induction into teaching
- Author
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Hilary Cremin and Jamie Stanfield
- Subjects
Coalition government ,White paper ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Discourse analysis ,Pedagogy ,Habitus ,Criticism ,Performative utterance ,Ideology ,Sociology ,Discipline ,Education ,media_common - Abstract
This article attempts to provide theoretical perspectives on the recent Conservative-led Coalition Government’s promotion of Teach First and related initiatives in England. In particular, we suggest the emergence of three ‘ideal’ types of teacher in the initial teacher training programmes outlined in the 2010 White Paper and related Conservative discourse: the ‘Elite Graduate’, the ‘High Flyer’ and the ‘Ex-Soldier’. These ‘ideals’, we argue, are dually performative: not only legitimating habitus proximate to Conservative ideological interests, but also awarding them authority over pupils and the educational ‘field’. We begin our discussion with an analysis of the amendments to school disciplinary practice proposed in April 2011 which appear to place new emphasis on teachers’ dispositions. Seen in the light of concomitant criticism of current teachers’ passivity, we suggest, these changes relate to our ‘ideals’ in two ways. Firstly, suggesting the need for a new cohort of teachers up to the challenge of au...
- Published
- 2013
8. Disciplinary Power Matters: Rethinking Governmentality and Policy Enactment Studies in China.
- Author
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Han, Xiao
- Subjects
GOVERNMENTALITY ,GOVERNMENT policy ,SOVEREIGNTY ,NEOLIBERALISM ,POLITICAL philosophy - Abstract
Besides Foucault's own focus on liberal contexts, the relatively limited application of his thoughts in illiberal countries may also result from the misunderstanding of power. The traditional juridico-discursive model interprets power as a possession wielded by one group over others, merely functioning as something forbidden. Thus, policy analysts risk falling into the trap of 'naive optimism or pessimism' – by overemphasizing either the secondary adjustment or strict sovereign control. Returning to Foucault's observation of the 'sovereignty–discipline–government society' triangle, this study examines how discipline establishes the linkage between sovereign will and self-government in both (neo)liberal and illiberal nations, aiming to: first, theoretically clarify how modern forms of power in different political systems overlap and co-operate with each other, thus justifying the expansion of Foucault's ideas into illiberal contexts; second, demonstrate the interpenetration of agency and constraints through empirical exploration of Chinese transnational higher education policy enactment, and by so doing to avoid the centralization circle or policy experimentation hypothesis framework; third, highlight the importance of discipline in realizing the 'tricky combination' of totalization and individualization through producing capable subjects for authoritarian objective in modern societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2023
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
9. Young people’s voices: disciplining young people’s participation in decision-making in special educational needs
- Author
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Jane McKay
- Subjects
Corporate governance ,Special educational needs ,Sociology ,Empirical evidence ,Postmodernism ,Discipline ,Participative decision-making ,Social psychology ,Education ,Qualitative research ,Governmentality - Abstract
In recent years, education and family policy in the UK has sought to incorporate the views of children and young people through an active participation agenda, in the fulfilment of children’s rights under the obligations of the UN Convention for the Rights of the Child. Drawing on empirical evidence, this paper suggests that this aspiration is flawed. The inclusion of young people’s voices in decision-making is context dependent, and influenced by individual relationships, both positive and negative. It is framed by policies that subjugate children within disciplinary technologies that determine a regime of ‘truth’ about effective and appropriate participation. Drawing on data gathered as part of a wider study on the relationships between services users and services providers in special educational needs, this paper demonstrates that active inclusion of the voice of the child can be illustrated to be at least variable, and at worst prejudiced. It is suggested that the notion of participation produces taci...
- Published
- 2014
10. Teaching within and against the circle of privilege: reforming teachers, reforming schools
- Author
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Lawrence Angus
- Subjects
media_common.quotation_subject ,Political science ,Accountability ,Power structure ,Ideology ,Public administration ,Discipline ,Disadvantage ,Privilege (social inequality) ,Education ,Disadvantaged ,Managerialism ,media_common - Abstract
Three decades of neo-liberal education in western countries, particularly English-speaking countries, have not served most children well. The evidence is mounting that the neo-liberal experiment has been a failure on many grounds, not least because of its deprofessionalizing effect on teachers. The disciplinary effects of neo-liberal policy frameworks on education remain powerful, but there are numerous teachers and schools who have resisted the regime of managerialism and accountability. This paper celebrates such activists. It argues that the internal focus on the delivery of instruction and test-taking inside schools ignores the point that the major influences on the school performance of children exist outside rather than inside the school. The paper argues that young people who have been ‘othered’ and put at a disadvantage by the neo-liberal education system deserve to be treated in a more dignified, engaged and respectful manner than seems to be the case within the ideology of accountability and top...
- Published
- 2012
11. Panoptic performativity and school inspection regimes: disciplinary mechanisms and life under special measures
- Author
-
Jane Perryman
- Subjects
Pedagogy ,Accountability ,Performativity ,Panopticon ,Public policy ,Sociology ,Audit ,Policy analysis ,Discipline ,Education ,Primary research - Abstract
This paper looks at Ofsted and particularly special measures regimes as part of a disciplinary mechanism. It examines issues such as school effectiveness theories, the increasing powers of Ofsted, and life under special measures and links it to performativity, discipline and surveillance using the metaphor of the panopticon. The change in teachers’ accountability is traced, along with the rise in the audit culture in teaching, and the increase in the power of Ofsted. The research context is a case study of a school over the period 1999–2003. During this time the school was placed into special measures and provided an opportunity to examine the effects of a key Government policy. The issues researched were Ofsted, special measures and the effects that these had on schools and teachers. The paper argues that a special measures regime is an example of panoptic discipline which I call panoptic performativity. The primary research is echoed by much of the existing research and first hand accounts of Ofsted ins...
- Published
- 2006
12. Documents and debates Social exclusion, sure start and organizational social capital: evaluating inter‐disciplinary multi‐agency working in an education and health work programme
- Author
-
Carl Bagley, Julie Rattray, and Clare L. Ackerley
- Subjects
Government ,business.industry ,Attendance ,Public relations ,Education ,Documentation ,medicine ,Social exclusion ,Sociology ,Social isolation ,medicine.symptom ,business ,Discipline ,Social capital ,Health work - Abstract
Social policy‐making in the UK under the Labour government has galvanized around the issue of social exclusion, identifying young children (0–4 years) and their families living in areas of high social disadvantage to be particularly at risk. This paper attempts to recover the experiences and views of professionals concerned with the delivery and implementation of a multi‐agency programme tackling the social exclusion of these young children and their families known as Sure Start. The data are based on the analysis of documentation, attendance and observation at meetings, and 32 semi‐structured interviews with members of the inter‐disciplinary team responsible for the Sure Start programme's delivery. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed using open coding from grounded theorizing. The paper, in reflecting on the problems and dilemmas of multi‐agency approaches and reported in other research, considers how the preliminary findings from this study suggest the team have managed to accommodate...
- Published
- 2004
13. Parents and schools: partnership or surveillance?
- Author
-
Gill Crozier
- Subjects
business.industry ,Control (management) ,Public relations ,Education ,Power (social and political) ,Individualism ,Conceptual framework ,General partnership ,Pedagogy ,Sociology ,Marketization ,business ,Set (psychology) ,Discipline - Abstract
This paper argues that ‘partnership’ is an essential part of the marketization of education. Whilst the market fragments and promotes individualism, ‘partnership’ promotes involvement, commitment and responsibility. It is, though, an involvement, commitment and responsibility based on individual vested interest; a necessary prerequisite to protect one's ‘investment’. In harnessing this, control upon the individual is exerted. ‘Partnership’ is presented here as double‐edged for both parents and teachers. Whilst parents may call teachers to account, ‘partnership’ acts as a form of control upon parents. Employing ‘surveillance’ as a conceptual framework, the nature and purpose of ‘partnership’, together with its management by teachers, is discussed. The paper argues that partnership serves as a device for monitoring parents and engendering what Foucault describes as ‘disciplinary power’ which is ensuring that parents learn to be ‘good’ parents as defined by the teachers and adopt a set of values that match t...
- Published
- 1998
14. Principles of legitimation in educational discourses in Iceland and the production of progress
- Author
-
Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson
- Subjects
Legitimation ,Education theory ,Capital (economics) ,Pedagogy ,Primary education ,Educational psychology ,Sociology ,Curriculum ,Discipline ,Curriculum theory ,Education ,Epistemology - Abstract
On the one hand this paper is an exploration of how suitable the theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault are to explain educational reform. At another level, the paper tells a story of educational reform in Iceland in the last 25 years ‐ through the Bourdieuean and Foucauldian lenses. The paper identifies legitimating principles in the discourse on educational reform in Iceland and focuses on the tensions over what counts as capital in teacher education. In short, pedagogy, curriculum theory, educational psychology and other educational sciences signify a discursive pole that is gaining currency at the cost of the capital of the traditional academic disciplines, such as Icelandic, history and biology, which signify the other pole in this spectrum. The paper argues that an epistemology of progress underlying reform often prevents reformers from taking a reflective stance on the historical foundations of their beliefs in educational science; they take for granted that progress and evolution are poss...
- Published
- 1993
15. A critical analysis of the Language Background Other Than English (LBOTE) category in the Australian national testing system: a Foucauldian perspective.
- Author
-
Creagh, Sue
- Subjects
DISCOURSE analysis ,LANGUAGE & languages ,NATIONAL competency-based educational tests ,COMPETENCY tests (Education) ,PERFORMANCE - Abstract
This article presents a Foucauldian analysis of the political rationalities of national testing and accountability practices in Australia, and their inconsistencies for students for whom English is a second or additional language. It focuses on a problem associated with the statistical data category ‘Language Background Other Than English’ (LBOTE) in the Australian national testing system. There is large variation in the performance of LBOTE students, but the average score of the group serves to homogenise the category and silence the association between language and test performance. Using Foucault’s ideas about governmentality and disciplinary power, this article examines the technologies of power evident in the Australian education reforms, in order to challenge a particular version of reality, created by the LBOTE category. The impact of disciplinary power on English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers is signalled, as they navigate the dual demands of meeting education accountabilities whilst supporting high needs ESL learners. This article challenges the idea that current accountabilities are able to address the goal of equity for all Australian students, rather suggesting that a focus on test performance, represented by statistical categories like LBOTE, undermines implementation of specialist pedagogy, and demands that teachers transform their practice to satisfy systemic need rather than student need. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
- Published
- 2016
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
16. [Untitled]
- Subjects
Social psychology (sociology) ,media_common.quotation_subject ,05 social sciences ,Social change ,050301 education ,Social class ,0506 political science ,Education ,Power (social and political) ,Friendship ,Cultural diversity ,Pedagogy ,050602 political science & public administration ,Sociology ,0503 education ,Discipline ,media_common ,Diversity (politics) - Abstract
Drawing on data from a project exploring children's and adults’ friendships across social class and ethnic difference, this paper focuses on the enactment of national and institutional policy around children’s friendships as realized in three primary schools in diverse urban areas in London. Through a focus on the way in which social and emotional learning (SEL) and teachers’ understandings of children’s friendships seek to govern children’s friendship behaviours, we turn to Foucault’s work to explore how power shapes relations between policy frameworks and teachers’ practices, and between those who teach and those who are taught. We discuss the disciplinary potential of SEL and teachers’ ‘common sense’ understandings of children’s friendships, but conclude by noting possibilities for teachers to create spaces in which all children can safely explore the nature of friendships.
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