Foucault and education: Disciplines and knowledge
Abstract
First published in 1990, this book was the first to explore Foucault's work in relation to education, arguing that schools, like prisons and asylums, are institutions of moral and social regulation, complex technologies of disciplinary control where power and knowledge are crucial. Original and challenging, the essays assess the relevance of Foucault's work to educational practice, and show how the application of Foucauldian analysis to education enables us to see the politics of educational reform in a new light.
... As an alternative, Allen (2022) noted that some thinkers have turned to the writings of the French philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault, whose work on discourse and power tends to be viewed as more agentic than the dialogic iterations introduced by Bakhtin and other theorists. Moreover, unlike Bakhtin, Foucault is one of the few theorists whose concepts and ideas have gained canonical status across several disciplines, including discourse studies, surveillance studies, and education studies (Ball, 2013;Fairclough, 2013;Marx, 2012). ...
... This explains why Foucault valued concepts such as architectonics and texts as products of social discourse that are fragmentary yet capable of translating and even hiding the operation of power (Boje, 2008). For him, texts and their architectonic forms translate the symbiosis between knowledge and power that is central to discipline (Ball, 1990). To make Foucault's work in architectonic theory more accessible, I want to demonstrate what Foucauldian architectonics entails as an alternative conceptual framework for contextualizing black education. ...
... For example, informating is an articulation of authorship that recognizes how the disciplining forces of surveillance interact to regulate texts and facilitate the circulation and automatic function of power through knowledge (Foucault, 1995). More significantly, informating orders and disciplines the discursive parasitism of intertextuality in its operation, thus federating, legitimatizing, and transforming the status of texts from mere data and information to knowledge deemed worth knowing (Ball, 1990(Ball, , 2013Dennis, 2022;Derrida, 2004). Foucault (1995) considered the power of writing to translate lives and behavior into texts to be an essential mechanism of surveillance and the meticulous control of the operations of the body. ...
Increasingly, theories of signification are introduced to advance fugitive pedagogy in black education, digital culture, and beyond. However, scholars seldom question the dialogic thinking that substantiates many of these positions. Nonetheless, the algorithms and agents that control advanced technology and digitalization continue to trouble many of our presuppositions about Bakhtinian dialogism and texts. As a result, this paper argues that fugitive pedagogy may be too quiescent as a discourse and paradigm for understanding the character of black education and surveillance in the digital age. Digitalization not only rearticulates and reproduces various forms of racial surveillance, but it also extends the afterlife of racial chattel slavery in education. Using Foucauldian architectonics as a paradigm, this paper explains why discursive parasitism and panopticism are more comprehensive as a discourse for illuminating and explicating why so many of the challenges that black education faced in the past persist in the digital age.
... Aðferðafraeðin sem lögð er til grundvallar er orðraeðugreining (Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson, 2006) en naer þó fyrst og fremst til þess er varðar að greina þrástef (e. discursive themes) og hvað er ávarpað/ ekki ávarpað. Orðraeða er hér skilin út frá skilgreiningum Foucault (Foucault, 1978(Foucault, , 1979 sem hefur verið vel útfaerð í menntastefnurannsóknum af Stephen Ball (Ball, 1990). Fyrsti höfundur hefur einnig greint orðraeðu með svipuðum haetti í öðrum rannsóknum (Berglind Rós Magnúsdóttir, 2012, 2013a, 2013b. ...
... Með greiningu á orðraeðu má sjá hvað er viðurkennt sem mikilvaegt, sem hefur hlotið óformlega löggildingu. Yfirleitt eru margar mótsagnakenndar orðraeður í gangi á hverjum tíma en til verður samkomulag og ríkjandi skilningur sem lesa má í gegnum þrástef (Ball, 1990). Þrástef merkja einfaldlega að eitthvað sé síendurtekið og mynda mynstur í orðraeðunni. ...
Þessi grein sprettur upp úr heildarendurskoðun á framhaldsfræðslukerfinu hér á Íslandi sem hófst í janúar 2023. Skoðað er hvernig stjórnvöld á Íslandi hafa skilgreint markmið fullorðinsfræðslu í frumvörpum sínum og lögum allt frá 1974. Í framhaldi af því er rýnt í framtíðarsýn UNESCO, OECD og íslenskra stjórnvalda varðandi menntun fullorðinna og að lokum velt upp hvernig má nýta þessar greiningar og stefnuskjöl til markvissrar endurskoðunar á gildandi lögum um framhaldsfræðslu (nr. 27/2010) sem unnið er að um þessar mundir. Greining frumvarpanna leiðir í ljós að hugmyndafræði almennrar menntunar með víða skírskotun til fjölbreyttrar menntunar fyrir alla hefur æ meir vikið fyrir aukinni tæknihyggju og skólahyggju sem beinist fyrst og fremst að þröngum hópi fullorðinna einstaklinga með stutta skólagöngu að baki. Einnig kemur fram að núverandi lög um framhaldsfræðslu ná ekki að takast á við þær áskoranir og þrástef sem koma fram í fjölþjóðlegum framtíðarstefnuskjölum OECD og UNESCO. Greinin endar á því að leggja fram tillögur um inntak markmiðsgreinar þar sem gætt er að jafnvægi milli ólíkra þátta og að þróa markmið sem eiga rætur sínar í almennri menntun, skólahyggju og tæknihyggju og efla fólk til samfélagslegrar, borgaralegrar og atvinnutengdrar þátttöku. Auk þess er lögð áhersla á að tekið verði tillit til framtíðaráskorana sem eru þrástef í fjölþjóðlegum stefnuskjölum og fundið aukið jafnvægi milli áherslunnar á opinbert líf og einkalíf í inntaki námsins.
... Studies in this area intersect with various domains such as school development, cybercrime, knowledge management, team dynamics, electronic management, and organizational barriers. Research on school management spans numerous themes including the development of effective teaching environments (Benoliel, 2021), the application of national education standards (Hosnan, Hidayat, Heruwati, Jamaludin, & Mursyid, 2019), and the impact of school infrastructure and teacher competence on educational quality (Sari, Koul, Rochanah, Arum, & Muda, improving the quality of the education system to produce more competitive and quality human resources (Ball, 2012;Court, 1994;Robertson, 1996;Whitehead, 2001). School management performance depends on school productivity which can be measured based on the added value of students (Crawfurd, 2017). ...
School management helps owners of educational institutions easier to manage their education system. Good school management will make it easier to achieve the goals of education itself. This paper aims to examine the status and position of the visual map of research in international school management publications using a bibliometric approach. In this study, researchers used document data collected from 2,241 documents published from 1970 to 2020. The results showed that the University of South Africa and Tshilidzi G. Netshitangani are the most active institutions and individual researchers in school management publications. Articles are the most common type of document in school management publications. There are four groups of collaborative researchers in research on the issue of school management publications. In order to classify the body of knowledge resulting from the publication of half a century, this study establishes a clustering of convergence axes associated with school management publications: Schools, Organization and management, Leadership, and Education, abbreviated as SOLE research themes
... The education system in Poland has been adapted to serve the ruling party based on the idea of top-down policy development, which in turn has become a factor in the erosion of social capital (Śliwerski, 2020a) and a source of atrophy regarding parent and student participation in school matters (Leek, 2022). This paper draws upon the policy actor framework outlined by Ball (1990) in trying to understand how teachers are involved in policy-making within authoritarian policy. One of the assumptions of this study is that the authoritarian and political power dynamics of a society affect the extent to which teachers can become active agents with the potential to transform those very dynamics. ...
This study delves into the educational functions of the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum within the framework of the prevailing authoritarian education policy in Poland. The primary objective is to comprehend the motivations driving teachers to transition to the IB curriculum and to delineate the specific functions fulfilled by the IB curriculum within this authoritarian context. The findings suggest that the authoritarian policy of education in Poland is marked by centralized control, reduction of autonomy, restrictions on academic freedom, the politicization of education, suppression of dissent, lack of transparency, and political interference. This has led to a decline in the quality of education in Poland and a rise in dissatisfaction particularly among teachers, who have experienced a decline in the level of autonomy and control they are able to exercise over their teaching. In conclusion, the study revealed that teachers in Poland continue to experience challenges and negative experiences due to the authoritarian policy of education. However, their experiences have also revealed their resilience and commitment to their work, and their decision to teach according to international curricula has provided them with a sense of empowerment and agency in the education system. The study profiles the three main educational functions performed by the international curricula under the current authoritarian education policy: providing autonomy in teaching, bridging the gap between national and international curricula to expand professional skills and knowledge, and supporting professional collaboration.
... Uncovering a policy problem's underlying assumptions, inner bias, and hidden preoccupations is another strength of the methodology (Fairclough 2013). Instead of uncritically accepting a policy 'problem', discourse analysis divulges the construction of the very problemhow the 'problem' is created and given shape in the same policy proposal that is offered as the response (Bacchi 2000;Ball 1990;Fairclough 2013). As a methodology, discourse analysis is inherently activist as its final stage involves identifying new, alternative discourses which can counteract 'social wrongs' in the current, dominant discourses (Cummings, De Haan, and Seferiadis 2020). ...
Following the recent claims lodged at two universities in Aotearoa New Zealand alleging the existence of racism, there has been scepticism towards the professed commitments by universities to create an inclusive and safe environment for Indigenous Māori. As a Kaupapa Māori-informed study, we (a group of Māori and Tauiwi scholars) employed tenets of Critical Race Theory to examine how the representation of Māori is racialised and subordinated in university strategic documents. We located five predominant discourses portraying different mechanisms that reify whiteness in university practices such as the selective interpretation of Te Tiriti articles, targeted recruitment of Māori, framing of Māori as dependent on the Crown to succeed, commodification of mātauranga Māori, and avoidance of conversations about structural racism, colonisation, and racial equity. Our findings suggest that university strategic goal statements need to incorporate a critical race analysis , or else risk perpetuating practices that fall short of challenging the status quo.
... An extensive body of work in the fields of social sciences and humanities on schooling, knowledge and subjectification (e.g. Ball 2012Ball , 2013Bourdieu and Passeron 1990;Foucault 1988;Robertson and Verger 2012), and critical sociolinguistic ethnographic research on processes of citizen-making through everyday interactions in school settings (Codó and Patiño-Santos 2018;De Mejía 2013;Gao 2017;Heller and Martin-Jones 2001;Martín-Rojo 2010;Pérez-Milans 2013;Rampton 2017;Unamuno 2011) has informed our reflections on how in the English language classrooms, more in than any other school subjects we observed 5 (even within the areas of social sciences and humanities), there was more explicit frontstage talk on how students should conduct and orient themselves (see also Nyssen, this volume), who should they beor become. In other subjects, most of this happened when teachers were policing classroom behaviour. ...
This paper interrogates how English language teaching and learning spaces become a locus for a “pedagogy of personality”: spaces where ideal forms of personhood can be transmitted, taught and learned. We draw on ethnographic accounts of moments produced in a municipal English language teaching programme in Rionegro, Colombia, and in the English language class of an elite international school near Barcelona, in Catalonia. We explore discourses mobilised by teachers, students, and school administrators that glorify personality traits that should enable students to become “good community members”, “good citizens” and to reflect on the ways in which language learning spaces are imagined to have an effect on learners’ personalities. We claim that it is not necessarily the English competence acquired in these spaces, or the act of speaking English itself, which is imagined as automatically triggering the enactment of ‘better’ forms of personality. Rather, we believe that our ethnographic data point to the fact that language curricula provide the space to construct, spread and normalise moral values which are associated to idealised forms of subjectivity, and desired forms of being. The discourses circulated through landscapes and classroom interactions show how the mere act of being in an English language learning space is expected to raise students’ awareness of the moral duty to become better, more responsible individuals. We make a key contribution to critical sociolinguistic research by placing a focus on how “good personality” is informed by the pedagogic trajectories of each space, beyond neoliberal projects of self. Moralising catholic discourses, values and ideologies, and broader humanist educational discourses inform ideas about personality and personality development in these spaces. Thus, we call for a slower sociolinguistics, that takes pause before reaching for the explanatory power of neoliberalism and makes room for the complex, historically sedimented logics of our research sites.
... How does resistance against normalised neoliberal governmentality occur? Central to this question is the acknowledgement that both resistance and contestation are the results of the construction of subjectivities as 'processes of becoming that focus on what we do rather than on what we are, that is to say, the work of the care of the self' ( [31], p. 87) [40]. Thus, the tight interrelationship between power and resistance encompasses an endless process of construction of our subjectivity (re)configured upon 'our understanding of ourselves [that] is linked to the ways in which we are governed' ( [41], p. 14). ...
This article analyses the specific forms of doing and building politics in the Chilean student movement, and through which, it becomes a key actor for mobilising (re)politicisation within a post-authoritarian democratic society. The bio-politics of existence – transforming life into political action – is central to understanding this role. The bio-politics of existence refers to the emergence of a new political subjectivity in the Chilean student movement engaging with new forms of (re) politicisation of everyday life and forms of egalitarian political relationships. The bio-politics of existence interweaves with self-transformation to constitute subjectivities that subvert neoliberal governmentalities. Learning through making mistakes is central for student activists in 2006 to (re)vision their political agency and animate, in 2011, a radical political imaginary of politics as being-in-common. The manifold forms of the bio-politics of existence in the Chilean student movement, from everyday activism to grassroots building network alliances – presupposing temporal contingencies to identity politics as marginal sites and spaces of resistance – unveil a rhizomatic growth of egalitarian, participatory politics through which the Chilean student movement transformed, from below, the character of politics and democracy in a society regarded as the first laboratory of neoliberalism.
This chapter considers the role of philosophy in our time, including some gloomy ruminations on impending crisis in the Anthropocene, including the possibility of species extinction. How can philosophy address the world after the death of God, without recourse to a saving principle? Various positions addressing the present condition in terms of crisis are addressed as important modes of understanding. In relation to this, my attempts to rethink the role of education in the modern and contemporary world order are revisited. I identify several following lines of thought, mostly derived from Heidegger’s reintroduction of ontology into western thinking, as possible entry points for exploration of ‘thinking otherwise’ and of eschewing the ontotheological commitment of most contemporary discourse on the meaning and value of education in our world. The work of philosophy, it is asserted is not done, and, with some struggle, productive lines of thinking emerge that seem to entail a very serious revaluation of all values and assumptions. This may include a rejection of ways of thinking that promote unbounded progress in the name of some powerfully, historically rooted modes of knowing, thinking and feeling that come from tragedy, specifically Attic tragedy as articulated by Nietzsche as a possible antidote to the false promises of education’s self-misrecognition.
The dominant mode of philosophy of education forecloses the ontological question concerning the relations between education and world. We can reconsider the global condition of manifest education by considering the proliferation of educational institutions with their governmental structures and functions. Resources for thinking otherwise are available, are powerful and urgent and combine to suggest a critique of the privilege accorded to ‘pure’ education by educational philosophy, education studies in general and even critical education studies (that turn out to be not so critical after all). The role of educational faith is contrasted with serious positions that undermine the ontotheological commitment to pure education.
The first part of the twentieth century involved profound changes of the economic structures of society. New welfare regimes occurred that focused on public health and education and, in the Nordic countries, led to several initiatives aimed at widening knowledge and disseminating it to many and new groups of people. They included women who had not hitherto been offered much schooling and whose situations also varied much according to social class, space, and place of upbringing. Such gender and intersectional issues are usually not dealt with in welfare state theories but will be focal points of this chapter. In the Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, these developments led to an increased focus on home economics as an educational and professional field. Accordingly, the focus is on Scandinavian networks on home economics education for women in the decades around 1900. We aim at understanding the backgrounds of the networks: whom they targeted, what tasks they comprised for the role of women, and how their ideas of ideal womanhood intersected with gender and social class, whether located in urban or rural areas in Scandinavia?
The past decades have seen a plethora of TV reality talent shows emerge. The viewing population likes nothing more than seeing a ‘class’ of bakers, sewers, potters or dancers develop their skills and face the scrutiny of judges before being whittled down to a winner. The popularity of these shows says something about the national psyche but, aside from the entertainment value, may also carry conceptions of teaching, learning, assessment and feedback. By applying a metalinguistic thematic analysis to judges’ feedback, this paper seeks to examine how one UK show in particular, ‘ Strictly Come Dancing,’ presents feedback and, using a feedback framework, how this is understood. This feedback framework is notable for the links made to self-regulation, an area that continues to influence UK education policy. This paper will argue that when popular TV shows such as Strictly Come Dancing are viewed through a pedagogical lens, they reveal models of feedback which are not necessarily valued. Furthermore, analysis reveals the spectacle of normalised and broader educational neoliberalism policy reflected back at us.
This Chapter maps out the evolution of mathematics teacher professional development over the twenty year time period between 2003 and 2023 for the case of Egypt. Based on the school-society mirror theoretical framing, the work sets out to explore relations between societal trends and how these can be seen as projecting themselves on the trends in mathematics teacher professional development. The study takes a form of a case study, focusing on the particular context of Egypt. The data was collected in the form of extended interviews that were triangulated by an extensive desk based study. Findings indicate a reciprocal relationship between societal trends and professional development trends. In light of the growing trend of globality in the mathematics classroom, the Chapter calls for a need for contextual understanding of the local influencing factors that affect the way teachers perceive the ethos of teaching and learning mathematics as mathematics educators.
This research project explores the use of ‘happy accidents’ as agents for facilitating more meaningful and critical exploration in secondary school art. Owing to a preoccupation with standardisation and quantifiable results, the more nebulous and invisible qualities of art have become deprioritised within many curricula. This paradigm creates ‘safe’ pedagogies that place emphasis on verisimilitude and technical acme as the yardstick for ‘successful’ artwork, preserving the identity of teachers within the epistemological frameworks that dictate education. Equally, as competitive individualism and reward demarcate education, young people are spending more time partaking in activities for their instrumental value. This ‘teaching‐to‐test’ model translates to formalist, linear modes of making as the most expedient means of achieving grades. The following research aimed to trouble this status quo and offers a pedagogy that allows for more responsive, playful and personal approaches to experimental artmaking. The mechanism used as a springboard into inquiry was the ‘happy accident’, facilitated by the use of unpredictable media such as Photoshop and photocopying. Adopting a middle ground between Atkinson's ‘unknown’ and the inferentialist model described by Walton, students had the latitude to combine known and unknown knowledge to push their artmaking into more meaningful territory, whilst preserving evidence of the ‘mark scheme’. To bolster my attempts at disrupting canonised imagery of ‘good’ school art, students also troubled the common practice of creating overly embellished, illustrative sketchbooks, with the creation of self‐made, A2, portfolio style books. The knowledge produced in this project was interrogated within a multimodal, arts‐based research methodology: through interview analysis and the analysis of the artwork, or artefacts, produced.
This study examines the development of institutional policies on language testing, taking the case of a former British colony, Singapore. Using historical narrative inquiry to analyse the Ministry of Education’s archived documents, we investigate how institutions form part of the assessment ecosystem that continues to function in the present day. We identified two main themes in the development of English language testing in Singapore. The first theme From Free Enterprise to Governance describes the trajectory of language testing from the colonial era to independence, with a fragmented assessment landscape gradually moving towards centralized planning. The second theme Individual Agency and Institutional Change illustrates how the needs of the individual interact with the institution. Responses by the ministry and examination board provide important insights into the processes of test development from a micro perspective and how consequences for the individual intersect with macro issues. We highlight the necessity of taking a historical perspective to provide a more holistic picture of how we currently practice language testing.
This research explores barriers to the academic space in which development knowledge is codified, legitimised and taught. It also speaks to these questions more broadly. Focus group discussions with representatives of 32 civil society organisations in Sierra Leone, 2 follow‐up workshops in Sierra Leone and 24 semi‐structured interviews with senior academics in the UK and North America were conducted to explore: who determines what knowledge is deemed important for students and future development practitioners to know; and how to identify barriers that limit the contribution of a wider range of stakeholders.
Racism is identified as a key factor in how knowledge is valued. Additional factors in terms of time, logistics and the structuring of academic space are also significant. Drawing on the work of power analysis scholars, we propose a three‐step framework for curriculum analysis, which identifies (1) key stakeholders in knowledge production and curriculum design; (2) spaces of power (open/invited/claimed/created/closed) within the academy and (3) the interplay of forms of power (visible/hidden/invisible) that facilitate or limit access to these spaces.
The chapter argues that the modern school is an ‘intolerable’ institution. Contrary to the sensibilities of educational research that look for more and/or better schooling as a way of making education more equal and more inclusive, our position is against the modern European school as an institution of normalisation and exclusion within which equality and inclusion are impossible. Using Foucault’s strategy of reversal and the commons approach as a critical mirror, we propose the urgency of creating times and spaces of discomfort as a commoning activity in education. We thus ask fundamental questions of both the modern episteme and prevailing truths of education; ourselves as modern educators; and schools as places of persistent failure and irredeemable injustices. The reversal strategy and the commons as critical tools are used to create discomforts and to re-politicise, question and unlearn the current ethics of extinction. This opens up new possibilities for the ethics of continuance; a new order of things that can allow for new grammars of living, new subjectivities, new forms of educating. Finally, the chapter offers some sketches of what a new education could look like. That is, an education understood as self-formation, as the care of the self, others and the world as a political activity more related to ethics than to truth.
This article examines the phenomenon of teacher alienation through the lens of Marxist theory, exploring how capitalist and bureaucratic structures inherent in educational policies contribute to feelings of disconnection and disenfranchisement among educators. Drawing upon Marx’s concept of alienated labor, the study delves into the ways in which teachers experience alienation within the context of modern education systems. By tracing the historical roots of alienation in capitalist societies, the article highlights the pervasive influence of market-oriented reforms and accountability measures on teacher autonomy and professional agency. Furthermore, the study examines the implications of teacher alienation for both educators and students, emphasizing the detrimental effects on teacher well-being, job satisfaction, and instructional effectiveness. It explores how feelings of alienation can hinder collaboration, innovation, and collective efficacy within educational communities, perpetuating cycles of disengagement and disaffection among educators and students alike. Ultimately, the article calls for a reimagining of education that prioritizes the empowerment and well-being of educators, challenging dominant paradigms and policies that perpetuate teacher alienation. By centering the voices and experiences of teachers, policymakers can work toward creating more supportive, inclusive, and equitable learning environments that foster a culture of collaboration, creativity, and social justice in education.
This chapter builds on Chapter 4’s analysis of the challenges experienced with governance in the case study schools by focusing the crisis in school finance. Each school’s governing board minutes are analysed alongside the interviews carried out with governors. Throughout the data the financial pressures felt by governors are explored as well as how this has contributed to decisions made about joining a MAT (for the first two case studies) or the discussion about potentially joining a MAT for the third case study.
This chapter details the approach taken to carry out my research. It details the specific questions being researched and the use of a Foucauldian approach that underpins my methods. Contemporary scholars who have suggested refinements of Foucault’s ideas are employed. The chapter then explains the multiple case study approach where I look in detail at the circumstances surrounding academisation in three schools. I describe the particular activities carried out in each case study. In this chapter I also give a brief overview of both Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), explaining how both are used to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the data generated in the case studies. Using these approaches allowed me to analyse the large amount of text produced by the minutes and the transcribed interviews.
Mathematics education, especially the central activities of teaching and learning mathematics, is thoroughly entangled with issues of power, authority, necessity, compulsion and submission. Schooling is compulsory almost everywhere as is mathematics. What is the ethical basis of universal schooling and the imposition of mathematical study within it? General areas of authority in schooling and mathematics teaching can be identified at several levels from the macro-view down to the micro-view. Drawing on four ethical principles from medical ethics (beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy and justice), an ethical audit of the teaching and learning of mathematics is conducted. Evaluating the mathematics curriculum means applying these principles to its aims, content, pedagogy and assessment system. Two outstanding problems are identified: first, the large number of ideological assumptions in most education systems and mathematics curricula, which cause distortions and harm; second, the central embedding of power and authority in mathematics itself, which, in the way it is manifested in schooling, is empowering for many, but harmful for some. The findings of the chapter are that school mathematics is beneficial for some students (and for society), is harmful to a minority and offers very restricted autonomy—less than is possible for children. However, the major ethical deficit of school mathematics is with regard to social justice. In most societies, school mathematics does not benefit all alike and does not fully develop everyone’s talents and potential.
Celem proponowanego artykułu była rekonstrukcja praktyk edukacji włączającej, a w szerszym kontekście – procesów inkluzji społecznej, z perspektywy interdyscyplinarnej osadzonej na pograniczu studiów o niepełnosprawności, badań edukacyjnych i filozofii polityki (Connor, Gabel, Gallagher, Morto; Goodley). Tak umiejscowiona analiza pozwoli zakwestionować pewne –przyjmowane za oczywiste i niepodlegające dyskusji praktyki inkluzywne odwołujące się do koncepcji indywidualnych potrzeb czy równych szans edukacyjnych, które są konstytuowane na opozycji wykluczenia i włączania oraz określonego rozumienia pojęcia równości. Rekonstrukcja założeń edukacji włączającej pozwoli również wydobyć różne znaczenia i sposoby rozumienia kluczowych kategorii pedagogicznych, takich jak pojęcia: tożsamości, sprawczości (podmiotowości), inkluzji, jednostki i społeczeństwa czy samej edukacji.Podstawowe założenia kształtujące ramy przedstawionych rozważań i analiz teoretycznych dotyczą rozumienia edukacji jako procesu zanurzonego w życiu społecznym i kulturze, który nigdy nie jest neutralny politycznie (Bernstein; Bourdieu, Passeron, Giroux, McLaren, Rancière). Rekonstrukcja źródeł i podstawowych tez inkluzji w edukacji, zaproponowana przez Masscheleina i Simonsa (2005), odwołuje się do narzędzi epistemologicznych zaczerpniętych z prac Foucaulta i ukazuje paradygmat (dyskurs) inkluzji w perspektywie krytycznej, obnażając jego silne uwikłanie w wartości i logikę neoliberalnej polityki edukacyjnej. W rezultacie powstaje „pedagogiczny reżim” włączania,wytwarzany z perspektywy aparatu zarządzania edukacją, swoiste inkluzywne urządzenie edukacyjne.
Academic freedom constitutes an integral part of traditional university values that ensure the proper functioning of universities in pursuing truth and inculcating civic values. In a globalized world where Higher Education (HE) policy is the result of the interaction of local, national, and international levels, the positions of international organizations on questions of academic freedoms deem significant. Within global discourses on HE, literature contrasts the World Bank’s human capitalist to UNESCO’s humanistic approach. Through Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of both organizations’ documents, the paper presented a genealogical analysis of academic freedom that challenged the existence of static, opposite, and binary positions. Transformations, ruptures, juxtapositions as well as gaps, limits, and exclusions were detected within and across International Organizations’ discourses. Juxtaposition of economic and humanistic rationales as well as academic freedom protection and neoliberal policy interventions have muted discursive conflicts and inherent contradictions. The failure of UNESCO to address contemporary threats to academic freedom emerged from the appearance of neoliberal transnational governmentality as an inevitable social regularity that delimits what can be said and cannot be said about academic freedom. Through coercive funding schemes and technologies of differentiation, surveillance, and monitoring, the WB created the space for such transnational governmentality, and placed faculty members under its gaze resulting in undermining academic freedoms and de-professionalization of academics.
In this chapter, we respond to a call for all mathematics education researchers to become equity researchers (Aguirre et al., J Res Math Educ 48:124–147, 2017) by articulating how equity is foundational to making second-order models of students’ mathematics. Second-order models are explanatory accounts of particular students’ mathematical reasoning and learning that can be used to orchestrate future mathematical interactions with other students. First, based on prior research, we view equity to be about power and respect. We define an act of equity to be acting on social boundaries with the intent of changing their shape or direction in order to address known inequities. Second, we explain why the following domains of teacher-researcher activity are each acts of equity: making second-order models, establishing epistemic students or generalized models, and using second-order models and epistemic students in our research and teaching. Third, we demonstrate how attention to social identity categories and social identities can enhance current second-order models to better support acts of equity. We show two examples from recent research. In the first, we demonstrate how a teacher-researcher addressed the local dynamics in the interaction by relating it to broader gender norms and patterns of interaction. In the second, we demonstrate how a teacher-researcher designed a study to address an explicit equity-related context in conjunction with mathematical reasoning. We make recommendations and pose questions to frame further work.
Whenever justification of classroom punishment has been attempted it has usually been on grounds that punishment acts either appropriately pedagogically, teaching students how to behave morally, or is a necessary evil that enables the practical running of the school so that it may carry out its educational business. By itself the first justification leaves punishment in schools as only an extension of wider social attitudes about the virtue of punishing perceived moral wrongdoing, rather than providing any distinct argument for punishment specific to the special circumstances of the school. By highlighting an entanglement between the moral and the conventional, and between discipline and punishment, within the context of the school, I shall argue that the essentially contested nature of education and its purpose, and the related question of the school’s suitability as a venue for it, means that the school’s most promising defence of its use of punishment—that punishment of students might somehow be necessary for enabling the important educative business of the school—becomes undone. Schooling and education are not necessarily synonymous, and as schools provide only one vision of education—and this vision is contestable—then upholding the business of any one school in order for it to achieve its particular unsettled and disputed purpose is not a morally sufficient reason to coerce a student’s compliance through regimes of ‘harm intended as harm’.
Evaluation processes in education shape people’s histories and possibilities. Susanne Maria Weber, a pioneer in organisational learning studies reflected in her work on the possibilities to counter monolithic outcomes and explore design methods for transformative evaluation. Susanne Weber emphasises that we need to explore social complexity systematically and identify inherent inequalities. Her proposal to utilise evaluation methods that focus on dialogue, solutions, and alternative modes of communication (visual modes) are connected with ideas described by Floya Anthias on intersectionality theory, and Anne-Marie Núñez, who proposed a multilevel model of intersectionality.
Analysis of lived experience data is increasingly advocated as an enabling strategy to inform ethical and effective policy and practice, particularly in the university mental health field. However, where Michel Foucault’s work is often drawn on to frame subjectivity of lived experience in the neoliberal university, this brings forth epistemological, methodological, and ethical tensions in using student voice to inform changes in mental health policy and practice. In Foucauldian terms, a double bind emerges wherein the power of student voice to destabilise existing forms of mental health knowledge and to reimagine the distress-inducing power structures within the neoliberal university are recuperated to (re)produce the same neoliberal structures and subjectivities. Drawing on data from 10 student focus groups, this study explores the epistemic, methodological, and ethical questions attached to analysis of student lived experience data in the context of a Foucauldian-informed understanding of the neoliberal university. It is argued that in pragmatist terms, whilst student voice must be contextualised within the socio-material and socio-psychological context of the neoliberal system to ensure beneficial consequences for student experience, a Foucauldian approach to interpreting lived experience data can also re-empower the subject with the freedom to resist and disrupt the reproduction of mentally unhealthy structures within the neoliberal system as part of a whole university approach.
Bullying remains a serious problem in schools in England and internationally despite the plethora of research, interventions and policies which aim to address it. The majority of research and interventions are based on a traditional approach where school bullying is constructed as involving a clear imbalance of power between individuals. Recently, there has been an increase in researchers using a Foucauldian approach where power is not held by individuals but operates through institutional and social norms which influence thoughts and behaviour and can contribute to bullying. Most of this research has focused on how the school culture contributes to bullying. This article initiates a critical discussion about the extent to which Foucault’s work can be applied to under- stand and tackle school bullying which previous research has not fully examined. The practical issues discussed include punishment and conflict between pupils and between pupils and teachers. Strategies include schools de-centralising decision-making centres for pupils to exercise their voice and pupils being enabled to transform themselves. Foucault has been criticised for not providing clear guidance on how to resist power and focuses primarily on resistance at the indi vidual rather than collective level. However, he provides implications for how individuals can resist power through their relations with others within an institution which many feel dominated. It is concluded that a Foucauldian approach is more nuanced, reflective and flexible than the traditional approach which can consider the influence of inequalities. Further research is needed to develop practical strategies for schools from Foucault’s work.
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