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Framed as being in response to terrorist attacks and concerns about religious bias in some English schools, 'British Values' (BV) curriculum policy forms part of the British Government's Counter-Terrorism and Security Act, 2015. This includes a Duty on teachers in England to actively promote British Values to deter students from radicalisation. This paper, first, traces the history of Britishness in the curriculum to reveal a prevalence of nationalistic, colonial values. Next, an ensemble of recent policies and speeches focusing on British Values is analysed, using a psycho-political approach informed by anti-colonial scholarship. Finally, we interrogate two key critiques of the British Values curriculum discourse: the universality of British Values globally, and concerns over the securitisation of education. Findings indicate that the constitution of white British supremacist subjectivities operate through curriculum as a defence mechanism against perceived threats to white privilege, by normalising a racialised state-controlled social order. The focus is on 'British' values, but the analytic framework and findings have wider global significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions charting the changing role of local government in education have often focused extensively on 'concrete' policy changes over time, but have provided less detail on the contribution to changing power relations of less tangible shifts. Drawing on Foucauldian notions of discourse and governmentality, in this paper, detailed rationalities of local third-sector and other 'arm's length' actors in English education are explored, with a focus on their relationship to local authority (LA) school admissions teams. The paper aims to provide deeper understanding of tactical struggles for authority which happen within competitive local sociopolitical spaces. Data is utilised from a study of 'Choice Advice' (CA) in 10 LAs, within a background context where arm's length agents deployed to deliver CA have been co-opted into central government marketisation regimes, but local state planning of schooling is arguably more equitable for vulnerable families than are logics advancing a marketisation of education. The research reveals: (1) discourses valourising 'independence' and 'distance' from local state 'agendas'; (2) discourses separating the interests of 'parents' and 'schools', with LAs positioned as representing the latter; (3) dehumanising representations of LA officers as 'faceless', obstructive and requiring regulation from 'critical friends'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out the theoretical and methodological approach of a study of the politics of persuasion and the mobilisation of interest in relation to the Trust schools initiative in England. Drawing on the discourse theoretical approach of Laclau and Mouffe the paper argues that the politics of consensus associated with New Labour reconfigures the field of politics, closing down legitimate democratic space. Building on this approach and that of policy sociology the paper outlines how the researchers seeks to address the following questions – if the space for legitimate democratic debate is so severely constrained then how does a social democratic government deal with the kind of opposition that Labour faced in relation to Trust schools? How do governments persuade dissident citizens to support unpopular policies? How are citizens mobilised to support such policies? This also raises questions about how, in such a restricted political space, do those questioning or resisting such policies, engage in the politics of persuasion and the mobilisation of interests? The reconfiguration of the field of politics and what this means for the constitution of legitimate democratic debate is the object of study of the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 authority. Secondly, enabling the ‘ideals’ to exercise their habitus in judgements over pupils. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Modern business discourse suggests that a key bulwark against market fluctuation and the threat of failure is for organizations to become 'agile', a more dynamic and proactive position than that previously afforded by mere 'flexibility'. The same idea is also directed at the personal level, it being argued that the 'agile' individual is better placed to secure employment and to maintain their economic worth within globalized, rapidly changing markets. Educational discourse, particularly relating to the tertiary sector, is also beginning to appropriate such concepts and in this paper the discourse is probed from the perspective of Foucault's notion of governmentality. The paper argues that agility can be seen to be aligned both with the neoliberal concept of the entrepreneurial self and also with the 'governance turn', whereby policy aims are achieved through the apparently autonomous actions of agents, but actions which are heavily steered by various control mechanisms. The paper suggests, however, that the 'agile' self is but one, albeit powerful, response to the current crisis of capitalism and that counter-conduct is possible by focusing on alternative ethical and political stances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent efforts to opt out of assessments have focused attention on the role that testing plays in accountability reforms in the United States. While opt-out activists often invoke the disproportionate impact of these reforms on communities of color, opting out has been more widespread in mostly White, affluent, and suburban communities. This study explores how resistance to testing is embedded in larger discourses of race, privilege, and opportunity in education. Through discourse analysis, we explore how activists located themselves within racial groups at a national conference in the United States. We show how (1) the mention of racialized identities was often accompanied by discursive markers that anticipated social discomfort and (2) activists of color named their racialized identities more so than White activists, and in ways that were strategic, suggesting activists of color did the harder work of weaving together a racially diverse movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The swift nature of school reform enacted by the new Conservative-led coalition government has sparked debate over the future of state education in Britain. While the government rhetoric suggests a decisive break with past policies, there is evidence to suggest that these reforms constitute the next stage of a long revolution in education reform, centred around neoliberal market discourse. In the following paper, I examine the current government’s education policy discourse and, by employing techniques of post-structuralist discourse analysis, reveal the government’s attempts to rearticulate education around the logics of market, responsibilisation and self-esteem, which act to shift responsibility for social problems from the state to the individual. Furthermore, I shall argue that such rearticulation has been coupled with an ideological fantasy of ‘empowerment’, which conceals the subordination of actors to these neoliberal logics by constituting the parent and, more recently, the teacher as powerful actors who have been freed from legal and bureaucratic constraints forced upon them by central government. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper provides a critical analysis of the Australian government’s education revolution policy as promulgated in the media release document, Quality Education: The Case for an Education Revolution in our Schools. It seeks to problematize the government’s claim to marry quality and equity, via an analysis of the discursive strategies of the Australian government’s revolution talk. My analysis draws on the work of political theorists Jason Glynos and David Howarth and their synthesis of key ideas from Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory into a framework of explanatory ‘logics.’ This framework provides conceptual tools for conducting critical policy analysis, including: characterizing a discursive regime on a synchronic plane; accounting for its constitution, reproduction, and/or subversion on a diachronic plane; and explaining the ways in which it grips or seduces subjects at a nonrational level. Overall, the analysis of the education revolution in this paper demonstrates the value of this framework of explanatory logics for education policy analysis, in the process shedding some new light on the Australian government’s education revolution policy agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understandings of young children as active and capable citizens, while evident in discourses of early childhood education and research, are not widely reflected in the policy for the early years of schooling in Australia. This paper makes an analysis of the gaps and tensions between discourses of young children as active citizens and policy for citizenship education at the national level in Australia and at the Queensland State level. There is a widespread discourse within early childhood that regards young children as citizens and democratic participants in their own lives, as a reflection of the oft-cited Article 12 in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, educational policy and curriculum for citizenship in Australia, by and large, adheres to age and stage understandings of children that deem young children unable to conceptualise and/or articulate ideas of what it means to 'be a good citizen'. We ask which discourses are being harnessed in educational policy for citizenship in Australia, what discourses are silenced or ignored and what this tells us about how young children are thought about in Australian politics and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the example of a Danish reform of educational plans in early childhood education, this paper analyses the emergence of a new pedagogical desire related to administrative educational reforms promoting accountability, visibility and documentation. Two arguments are made: first, it is argued that the changes in administrative practices during the last decade constitute a transformation, but also a reproduction of relations between knowledge and governing that goes back to the big expansion of the welfare state. Second, it is argued that these relations between knowledge and governing are not restricted to the administrative practices, but are part of education and its humanistic legacy as well. As such, the administrative demand of documentation becomes possible and recognisable through its reproductive elements. Elements that are constituted in a transformative conjunction in which the ‘professional nursery teacher’ is produced as a reflective daily researcher, who outlives her pedagogical desire as an analytical care for the optimisation of the ‘learning child’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Economic crises such as those of 1929, 1973 and 2008 appear to associate with shifts in the rhetorics of management. These dates mark the end of expansionary phases within an economic cycle, and they portend what James O'Connor has called a 'fiscal crisis of the state'. It is argued, speculatively, that immediately before and after an economic crisis - be it occasioned by financial bubbles (as in 1929) or by other events (such as the 1973 oil crisis) - a 'normative' or 'commitment' managerial rhetoric develops. This rhetoric strikes a more emollient tone than that of the 'control' or 'rational' rhetoric which had marked the early stages of the economic up-swing. The current economic crisis may follow this pattern. In England, there are already indications that the regulatory rhetoric which applies both to organisational structures and to pedagogical processes is become 'normative' in its appeal; it is a 'commitment' rhetoric which purports to serve what O'Connor has termed both 'accumulation' and 'legitimation'. As an example of this rhetoric, the paper draws briefly upon Paul Adler and Charles Heckscher's concept of 'collaborative community'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy elites use rhetoric in speeches and press releases to provide framing that is intended to influence public opinion. These rhetorical events can be treated as instances in which speech usefully promotes particular discourses. Indeed, elected officials are able to influence how individuals think about problems and solutions through speeches and press releases. Two important rhetorical events in which political elites advance frames for social issues are annual state of the state addresses (SoSA) given by U.S. governors and gubernatorial press releases that inform media reporting about state policy. This study employed policy discourse and rhetorical analyses to examine SoSAs and press releases as rhetorical events within the context of educational policy. Our findings show that governors framed the roles of state government, governors, and educational stakeholders within a discourse that perpetuates a neoliberal version of education. In this framing, governors situated education's purpose as being workforce and economic development, ignoring its role in addressing social issues and preparing informed, engaged participants for democratic society. Given that individuals make decisions about how to address social issues and understand public institutions based on framing provided by political elites, these findings raise implications for state educational policies and the public purposes of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent 'obesity' preventions focus heavily on children, widely regarded as the future of society. The National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) is a flagship government programme in England that annually measures the Body Mass Index (BMI) of children in Reception (aged 4–5) and Year 6 (aged 10–11) in order to identify 'at risk' children and offer advice to parents. Using Foucauldian discourse analysis this study explores how discourses within the programme construct fatness. The NCMP materials contain three key interrelated themes (concerning the hidden threat of 'obesity', the burden of 'obesity', and bodies that pose a greater risk) that combine to construct a 'grotesque discourse' of apocalyptic public health. 'Obesity' is constructed as a social and economic catastrophe where certain bodies pose a greater threat than others. We argue that this discourse has the potential to change health service policy in markedly regressive ways that will disproportionately impact working-class, Black, Asian, and mixed race families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting social mobility seems to be simple common sense. However, the solutions proposed in the UK under successive governments reflect a problematic individualism that is not about helping all of the poorest children, but about encouraging the poor to become as ruthless and competitive as the middle and upper classes. This article shows how the emphasis on competition is delivered in social mobility policy through the language and metaphors that are used. It examines how the problem of social mobility is represented through a critical discourse analysis of Cracking the Code: How Schools Can Improve Social Mobility. This 2014 report, produced by the UK Government's Social Mobility Commission, uses metaphors, especially sporting metaphors, to engage the reader in its discourse. These include 'key steps' and 'marginal gains', 'walking the walk' and 'stepping up to the plate', being 'sharp-elbowed', and 'cracking the code' itself. These metaphors tell a story of competitiveness. The report exemplifies a wider climate in which we are now trying to 'crack' entrenched issues such as poverty, but still working within the neoliberal framework where the solution is yet more competition. Through metaphor, the report seeks to justify, disguise and normalise such competition, and make it seem common-sensical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reveals the Foucauldian docile body manufactured within the Department for Education's special educational needs and disability code of practice 2014 through employment of a theoretical lens of embodiment and an analytical focus on only three words. In problematizing the concepts of support, employment and independence, we seek to upend this docile body juxtaposing such against the active 'non-productive' disabled body. We conclude that the Code is riven with ideological assumptions which act as a constraint to the location, form and function of the body. Everybody's body is sorted and graded according to its ability to fulfil a Conservative work ethic and contribute positively to a society in which bodies are not equally valued. The authors suggest that critical discourse analysis, informed by the outlined conceptualisation of embodiment, could be usefully applied in the critiquing of many policy and guidance documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Campus 2020: Thinking ahead is a policy in British Columbia (BC), Canada, that attempted to hold universities accountable to performance. Within, I demonstrate how this Canadian articulation of educational accountability intended to develop governmentality constellations to control the university and regulate its knowledge output. This research illustrates how power in education is evolving from a disciplinary form, as expressed in the term governmentality, and toward a form of networked power in the form of societies of control. I pursue my analysis by juxtaposing sections of the government report with sections from Gilles Deleuze’s Postscript on the Societies of Control. The synthesis from these two texts demonstrates how BC’s provincial government intended to develop a network of governmentality constellations which would have maintained and exercised power through macro- and micro-surveillance technologies. In conclusion, I argue that BC wanted to assemble its new accountability machine and finally participate in the neoliberal democratic network of educational surveillance in Canada, and eventually, the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the policy rhetoric of the Masters in Teaching and Learning (MTL). This is a new degree being launched in the summer of 2010 aimed, initially, at teachers who have just joined the profession. The degree presages the aspiration for a Master’s level teaching profession in England. Professional development as conceived in the MTL is continuous rather than continuing and permeating the vision is the language of ‘personalisation’. Teachers will be accompanied on the journey by an ‘in-school coach’. These notions suggest a highly tailored approach to continuing professional development (CPD), with careful attention to the identification of teachers’ needs and close support from a colleague. The article argues that, contrary to this impression, the MTL marks a new and significant step in expanding the utilitarianism of the English education system. The MTL represents a deepening hold on education by the state and a growing scepticism about the value of higher education in the CPD of teachers. It also aspires to a changing culture in schools as the workplace becomes the locus for the CPD of teachers. As other authors have described, the national character of education systems in Europe and in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and Asia reflect an increasing instrumentality. The MTL, then, can be seen as part of a global phenomenon; in this case the policy lever of CPD is employed to support performative and audit policy agendas via a rigid accountability system. The MTL also represents a particular form of neo-liberal governmentality where increasing centralisation is ‘masked’ by a ‘simulacra of care’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accountability is one of the most advocated and controversial topics in US education. Since the early 2000s, the federal government has produced a vibrant discourse on accountability, which emphasizes quality, efficiency, and equal opportunity in education. As part of the larger phenomenon of new managerialism, the dominant forms of accountability are currently based on the power of the manager and the market rather than the bureaucratic or professional authority. This study draws on classic rhetoric and the Foucaultian concept of governmentality to analyze the rhetorical construction of accountability in the US Department of Education speeches and examine the role of accountability in governing educational institutions and subjects. The author demonstrates how as a rhetoric, accountability in education operates as a 'sacred language' to propagate neoliberal values and how as a technology of governmentality, it works to maintain the neoliberal political rationality, enforce the openness of educational institutions to government oversight, and enable entrepreneurial subjectivities through responsibilization and moralization of consumer-style choice-making. The author argues that centered on the market-oriented forms of accountability, federal education policies have a limited potential for meeting its officially promoted goals, particularly with regard to equalizing opportunity for minority- and low-income students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the individual academic is all but absent from the assumptive worlds of policymakers in UK higher education. It is taken for granted in research on academic identity that those who work in higher education as teachers and researchers refer to themselves as, and indeed are referred to by others as, 'academics'. Evidence is drawn from a study of policymakers in the UK to demonstrate that the word 'academic' is not a part of the lexicon of higher education policymaking. Moreover, the concept of the academic is cast into shade by an overwhelming emphasis on 'the student experience', and, from another direction, by a location of professional academic accountability at the level of the higher education institution rather than the individual. The article concludes with an exploration of what work this absence of the academic in policy does in disrupting the possibilities for engagement between the worlds of academia and policymaking and in perpetuating the discourses of marketisation and new management in higher education. It also suggests understanding the assumptive worlds of policymakers is a crucial counterbalance to a growing body of literature on academic responses to change, some of which has tended towards the self-referential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on school choice highlights the tendency among some White, middle-class parents to engage with discourses of community responsibility and ethnic diversity as part of their responsibility and duty as choosers and who therefore exercise choice in ways that undercut the individualistic and self-interested character framing governmental discourses and rationalities around choice. This article contributes to these debates through making visible the ways in which some mothers articulate and combine meanings and practices of choice that register contrasting and sometimes contradictory notions of active and responsible parenting. Drawing on data from a group of mothers of diverse social class and racial backgrounds, I explore how some mothers negotiate their school choice around a number of intersecting positions and relations that work across, as well as within, formulations of public-private, collective-individual, citizen-consumer, political-commercial. Through a consideration of the relationships in practice between these diverse elements, this article questions the analytic value of distinctions between citizen and consumer, community and individual as framings for understanding the motivations and aspirations shaping some mothers' school choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]