Pub Date : 2021-08-02DOI: 10.1177/17577438211041468
M. Clarke, Charlotte Haines Lyon, Emma Walker, Linda Walz, Jordi Collet-Sabé, K. Pritchard
Education is usually considered a force for good, associated with hope and optimism about better individual and social futures. Yet a case can be made that education and education policy in recent decades, far from being a force for good, has had nefarious effects at multiple levels. This can be seen in the growing alienation of significant numbers of teachers and students in disparate global contexts and in the growth of authoritarian models of schooling, involving ‘zero-tolerance’, ‘no excuses’ disciplinary approaches, that have undermined notions of the common school as a public good. Against this background, and drawing on philosophical literature and our own empirical research, this study interrogates the practice in schools in England of placing students in ‘isolation’. In considering this practice as an instance of banal education policy, our study makes obvious reference to Hannah Arendt’s characterization of evil in her account of Adolf Eichmann’s trial. But it also draws on the work of moral philosophers, Elizabeth Minnich and Simona Forti, in relation to the distinction between intensive and extensive evil, in order to analyse the nature and effects of school discipline policies and practices such as isolation in the neoliberal era as a contemporary form of evil.
{"title":"The banality of education policy: Discipline as extensive evil in the neoliberal era","authors":"M. Clarke, Charlotte Haines Lyon, Emma Walker, Linda Walz, Jordi Collet-Sabé, K. Pritchard","doi":"10.1177/17577438211041468","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17577438211041468","url":null,"abstract":"Education is usually considered a force for good, associated with hope and optimism about better individual and social futures. Yet a case can be made that education and education policy in recent decades, far from being a force for good, has had nefarious effects at multiple levels. This can be seen in the growing alienation of significant numbers of teachers and students in disparate global contexts and in the growth of authoritarian models of schooling, involving ‘zero-tolerance’, ‘no excuses’ disciplinary approaches, that have undermined notions of the common school as a public good. Against this background, and drawing on philosophical literature and our own empirical research, this study interrogates the practice in schools in England of placing students in ‘isolation’. In considering this practice as an instance of banal education policy, our study makes obvious reference to Hannah Arendt’s characterization of evil in her account of Adolf Eichmann’s trial. But it also draws on the work of moral philosophers, Elizabeth Minnich and Simona Forti, in relation to the distinction between intensive and extensive evil, in order to analyse the nature and effects of school discipline policies and practices such as isolation in the neoliberal era as a contemporary form of evil.","PeriodicalId":37109,"journal":{"name":"Power and Education","volume":"13 1","pages":"187 - 204"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46256821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-05DOI: 10.1177/17577438211024682
Christer Mattsson
As part of the general curricular ambitions of contributing to the development of a democratic society, Swedish schools are mandated to actively combat racism and extremism. This causes particular challenges when teachers encounter students who have been brought up in environments where racist and extremist worldviews dominate. This study analyses four Swedish neo-Nazi leaders’ experiences of schooling and how they have utilised these experiences when establishing an approach for their children’s schooling. The focal point of the analysis is the ideological dilemmas that arise from clashes of conviction among neo-Nazi leaders, their children and the teachers. The results show how neo-Nazi leaders use their own negative experiences of schooling to prepare their children on how to escape both democratic education and prevent social stigmatisation.
{"title":"Hiding in the classroom: How neo-Nazi leaders prepare their children for schooling","authors":"Christer Mattsson","doi":"10.1177/17577438211024682","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17577438211024682","url":null,"abstract":"As part of the general curricular ambitions of contributing to the development of a democratic society, Swedish schools are mandated to actively combat racism and extremism. This causes particular challenges when teachers encounter students who have been brought up in environments where racist and extremist worldviews dominate. This study analyses four Swedish neo-Nazi leaders’ experiences of schooling and how they have utilised these experiences when establishing an approach for their children’s schooling. The focal point of the analysis is the ideological dilemmas that arise from clashes of conviction among neo-Nazi leaders, their children and the teachers. The results show how neo-Nazi leaders use their own negative experiences of schooling to prepare their children on how to escape both democratic education and prevent social stigmatisation.","PeriodicalId":37109,"journal":{"name":"Power and Education","volume":"13 1","pages":"134 - 146"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/17577438211024682","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46946955","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-01DOI: 10.1177/17577438211021943
Kalle Mäkelä, Katariina Mertanen, Kristiina Brunila
There is general agreement overall about the desirability and importance of youth support systems as being crucial for young people ‘at risk’ to help them cultivate their subjectivities about employability. In this article, we take a closer look at these support systems and especially at outreach youth work in Finland. We focus on the construction of knowledge and subjectivities of young people related to it. We argue that among the good intentions in cultivating young people’s subjectivities, outreach youth work tends to operate as a practice for enhancing the construction of psycho-emotional vulnerabilities and employability of young people while translating wider societal questions of austerity, poverty and inequality into questions of individualised deficiencies.
{"title":"Outreach youth work and employability in the ethos of vulnerability","authors":"Kalle Mäkelä, Katariina Mertanen, Kristiina Brunila","doi":"10.1177/17577438211021943","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17577438211021943","url":null,"abstract":"There is general agreement overall about the desirability and importance of youth support systems as being crucial for young people ‘at risk’ to help them cultivate their subjectivities about employability. In this article, we take a closer look at these support systems and especially at outreach youth work in Finland. We focus on the construction of knowledge and subjectivities of young people related to it. We argue that among the good intentions in cultivating young people’s subjectivities, outreach youth work tends to operate as a practice for enhancing the construction of psycho-emotional vulnerabilities and employability of young people while translating wider societal questions of austerity, poverty and inequality into questions of individualised deficiencies.","PeriodicalId":37109,"journal":{"name":"Power and Education","volume":"13 1","pages":"100 - 115"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/17577438211021943","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41882867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-08DOI: 10.1177/17577438211020769
S. Walton
The critical race theory concept of ‘White supremacy’ continues to be a major locus of disagreement between Critical Race Theorists and Marxists regarding both how it operates as a general descriptor of racial power dynamics in the Western world and for its explanatory power in accounting for the multiple forms in which racism manifests. Criticisms of the concept of ‘White supremacy’ from Marxists often point to racisms that exist beyond the Black/White binary, or racism directed at minoritised White groups as counterexamples to explanations of racism that appeal to ‘White supremacy’. Marxists also often point to alternative theoretical constructs such as ‘institutional racism’ and ‘racialisation’ as better descriptions for, and explanations of, racism and the mechanisms that serve in its creation and perpetuation. However, examples of racisms that exist outside of a Black/White binary, or which appeal to the existence of racism directed at people identified as White, do not discredit ‘White supremacy’ as a descriptor or explanation of racism and can easily be accommodated within a framework for understanding racism that is consistent with both critical race theory and Marxism. Moreover, constructs such as ‘racialisation’ and ‘institutional racism’ do not have the theoretical utility of ‘White supremacy’ as characterised within critical race theory .
{"title":"A prolegomenon to a critical race theoretical Marxism","authors":"S. Walton","doi":"10.1177/17577438211020769","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17577438211020769","url":null,"abstract":"The critical race theory concept of ‘White supremacy’ continues to be a major locus of disagreement between Critical Race Theorists and Marxists regarding both how it operates as a general descriptor of racial power dynamics in the Western world and for its explanatory power in accounting for the multiple forms in which racism manifests. Criticisms of the concept of ‘White supremacy’ from Marxists often point to racisms that exist beyond the Black/White binary, or racism directed at minoritised White groups as counterexamples to explanations of racism that appeal to ‘White supremacy’. Marxists also often point to alternative theoretical constructs such as ‘institutional racism’ and ‘racialisation’ as better descriptions for, and explanations of, racism and the mechanisms that serve in its creation and perpetuation. However, examples of racisms that exist outside of a Black/White binary, or which appeal to the existence of racism directed at people identified as White, do not discredit ‘White supremacy’ as a descriptor or explanation of racism and can easily be accommodated within a framework for understanding racism that is consistent with both critical race theory and Marxism. Moreover, constructs such as ‘racialisation’ and ‘institutional racism’ do not have the theoretical utility of ‘White supremacy’ as characterised within critical race theory .","PeriodicalId":37109,"journal":{"name":"Power and Education","volume":"13 1","pages":"116 - 133"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/17577438211020769","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49500708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-06DOI: 10.1177/17577438211011637
Stefano Ba’
The ‘New Paradigm’ of Sociology of Childhood famously maintains that childhood is socially constructed and supposedly places a much greater emphasis on the agency of children: children should not simply be framed as the passive receivers of socialisation. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that such a ‘social construction’ of childhood is not concretely articulated and that the theoretical understanding of the ‘social construction’ of childhood is simply delegated to historiographical or ethnographic accounts. In doing so, it advances a new criticism of the New Paradigm and radicalises previous ones. Here, key is the theoretical engagement with the concept of ‘human capital’: foregrounding its critique, this article proposes the link between ‘human capital’ as a neoliberal version of labour power and the concept of socialisation. The aim is to show that the ‘social construction’ of childhood is central, but the New Paradigm uses categories that are at the same time founded on neo-liberal views and abstracted from concrete social relations. This article maintains that a concrete critique of processes of socialisation (which is here understood as the socialisation of childhood as human capital) is needed instead of abstract critique of reified childhood. Two alternative pedagogical practices are used to provide an example of such a concrete critique.
{"title":"The critique of Sociology of Childhood: Human capital as the concrete ‘social construction of childhood’","authors":"Stefano Ba’","doi":"10.1177/17577438211011637","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17577438211011637","url":null,"abstract":"The ‘New Paradigm’ of Sociology of Childhood famously maintains that childhood is socially constructed and supposedly places a much greater emphasis on the agency of children: children should not simply be framed as the passive receivers of socialisation. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that such a ‘social construction’ of childhood is not concretely articulated and that the theoretical understanding of the ‘social construction’ of childhood is simply delegated to historiographical or ethnographic accounts. In doing so, it advances a new criticism of the New Paradigm and radicalises previous ones. Here, key is the theoretical engagement with the concept of ‘human capital’: foregrounding its critique, this article proposes the link between ‘human capital’ as a neoliberal version of labour power and the concept of socialisation. The aim is to show that the ‘social construction’ of childhood is central, but the New Paradigm uses categories that are at the same time founded on neo-liberal views and abstracted from concrete social relations. This article maintains that a concrete critique of processes of socialisation (which is here understood as the socialisation of childhood as human capital) is needed instead of abstract critique of reified childhood. Two alternative pedagogical practices are used to provide an example of such a concrete critique.","PeriodicalId":37109,"journal":{"name":"Power and Education","volume":"13 1","pages":"73 - 87"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/17577438211011637","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41511264","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-06DOI: 10.1177/17577438211011631
Kali Thompson, Stephanie Jones
A teacher’s ability to feel successful – some might even say good – in today’s education system relies on a particular conception of academic success. We argue neoliberalism, as it operates in education, is a normalized trauma enfolded in the individual and collective bodies of women teachers producing overwhelming feelings of never being good enough while also not feeling entitled to do what is right – in the moment – for the children they teach. But this is not new; women have historically been positioned as others through whom educational directives should flow without question. Using the lived experience of the first author, teaching in the south-eastern United States, we describe some of the tolls neoliberalism has on the physical and emotional well-being of the woman teacher body in the search of being good enough. We argue it is time for teacher education to become a feminist project where women have access to the intellectual and analytical tools to make sense of what is being done to them and to give testimony and be a critical witness of these everyday traumas that are being inflicted upon them, their students and others collectively in schools.
{"title":"The everyday traumas of neoliberalism in women teachers’ bodies: Lived experiences of the teacher who is never good enough","authors":"Kali Thompson, Stephanie Jones","doi":"10.1177/17577438211011631","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17577438211011631","url":null,"abstract":"A teacher’s ability to feel successful – some might even say good – in today’s education system relies on a particular conception of academic success. We argue neoliberalism, as it operates in education, is a normalized trauma enfolded in the individual and collective bodies of women teachers producing overwhelming feelings of never being good enough while also not feeling entitled to do what is right – in the moment – for the children they teach. But this is not new; women have historically been positioned as others through whom educational directives should flow without question. Using the lived experience of the first author, teaching in the south-eastern United States, we describe some of the tolls neoliberalism has on the physical and emotional well-being of the woman teacher body in the search of being good enough. We argue it is time for teacher education to become a feminist project where women have access to the intellectual and analytical tools to make sense of what is being done to them and to give testimony and be a critical witness of these everyday traumas that are being inflicted upon them, their students and others collectively in schools.","PeriodicalId":37109,"journal":{"name":"Power and Education","volume":"13 1","pages":"88 - 99"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/17577438211011631","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48662963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-26DOI: 10.1177/17577438211011623
Shauna Kingston
The Ontario Ministry of Education (2010) puts forth parent involvement as a solution for underachievement and as a resource for building better schools. A Foucauldian discourse analysis of school newsletters reveals that efforts to engage parents also function as a neoliberal strategy designed to govern parents. Using Foucault’s theory of governmentality, I show how the newsletters compel parents to invest in their children’s schooling and judge their value as parents in relation to their ability to produce good neoliberal citizens. I discuss how the newsletters depict ‘good’ parents as those who: (1) do not offer input into schooling; (2) make education a parenting priority and (3) raise good neoliberal citizens. The newsletters represent a strategy for cultivating neoliberal parents who do not ask more from schools and instead demand more of themselves in terms of preparing their children for school and for life. Problems with this approach are that: it asks parents to take up their children’s schooling in ways that push out other family priorities and it shuts down potential collaborations between parents and schools that could challenge neoliberal subjecthood. I call for reformulating discourses of ‘good’ involvement in ways that allow for more equal parent–school partnerships.
{"title":"Parent involvement in education? A Foucauldian discourse analysis of school newsletters","authors":"Shauna Kingston","doi":"10.1177/17577438211011623","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17577438211011623","url":null,"abstract":"The Ontario Ministry of Education (2010) puts forth parent involvement as a solution for underachievement and as a resource for building better schools. A Foucauldian discourse analysis of school newsletters reveals that efforts to engage parents also function as a neoliberal strategy designed to govern parents. Using Foucault’s theory of governmentality, I show how the newsletters compel parents to invest in their children’s schooling and judge their value as parents in relation to their ability to produce good neoliberal citizens. I discuss how the newsletters depict ‘good’ parents as those who: (1) do not offer input into schooling; (2) make education a parenting priority and (3) raise good neoliberal citizens. The newsletters represent a strategy for cultivating neoliberal parents who do not ask more from schools and instead demand more of themselves in terms of preparing their children for school and for life. Problems with this approach are that: it asks parents to take up their children’s schooling in ways that push out other family priorities and it shuts down potential collaborations between parents and schools that could challenge neoliberal subjecthood. I call for reformulating discourses of ‘good’ involvement in ways that allow for more equal parent–school partnerships.","PeriodicalId":37109,"journal":{"name":"Power and Education","volume":"13 1","pages":"58 - 72"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/17577438211011623","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47567659","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-03-01DOI: 10.1177/1757743821989380
Ola Flennegård, Christer Mattsson
The present article focuses on teaching and learning about the Holocaust in Sweden, conducted as study trips to Holocaust memorial sites. Although about a quarter of Swedish teenagers visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum each year, this study is the first to examine these Swedish study trips. Since there are no centralised systems for arranging these study trips, this study regards dedicated teachers as the main stakeholders. By deploying critical discourse analysis of transcripts of nine in-depth interviews with teachers, the study terms the discursive order of the teachers’ talk about the study trips ritual democratic catharsis. The teachers’ two main purposes are the use of the study trips as a vehicle for the social dynamics in the group to evolve in order to promote personal growth among the students, and the students’ learning about democracy and human rights. Their overarching didactic strategy of focusing on the suffering of the victims is meant to evoke empathy among the students, but lacks an explanatory aim. The study critically points out the teachers’ unreflected relationship to historiographic Holocaust content as a subject, making their teaching vulnerable to contemporary political influences, jeopardising the democratic purpose of these trips.
{"title":"Teaching at Holocaust memorial sites: Swedish teachers’ understanding of the educational values of visiting Holocaust memorial sites","authors":"Ola Flennegård, Christer Mattsson","doi":"10.1177/1757743821989380","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1757743821989380","url":null,"abstract":"The present article focuses on teaching and learning about the Holocaust in Sweden, conducted as study trips to Holocaust memorial sites. Although about a quarter of Swedish teenagers visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum each year, this study is the first to examine these Swedish study trips. Since there are no centralised systems for arranging these study trips, this study regards dedicated teachers as the main stakeholders. By deploying critical discourse analysis of transcripts of nine in-depth interviews with teachers, the study terms the discursive order of the teachers’ talk about the study trips ritual democratic catharsis. The teachers’ two main purposes are the use of the study trips as a vehicle for the social dynamics in the group to evolve in order to promote personal growth among the students, and the students’ learning about democracy and human rights. Their overarching didactic strategy of focusing on the suffering of the victims is meant to evoke empathy among the students, but lacks an explanatory aim. The study critically points out the teachers’ unreflected relationship to historiographic Holocaust content as a subject, making their teaching vulnerable to contemporary political influences, jeopardising the democratic purpose of these trips.","PeriodicalId":37109,"journal":{"name":"Power and Education","volume":"13 1","pages":"43 - 57"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1757743821989380","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47380477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-03-01DOI: 10.1177/1757743820986835
M. Brännström
The education of newly arrived students is a debated global policy issue. Less attention has been paid to the sub-group of students with limited experience of schooling, referred to here as ‘newly arrived students with limited schooling’ (NALS). This article explores Swedish policy frameworks that inform the education of newly arrived students, comparing policy approaches from two time periods (1983–1996 and 2013–2016) during which the numbers of NALS were said to be increasing in Swedish compulsory schools. Framed within a poststructural approach to policy analysis and Foucault’s theorisation of heterotopian spaces, the analysis explores policies’ representation of separate teaching groups for newly arrived students, with a particular focus on what these spaces have to offer NALS. The findings indicate a shift between the two periods: from a focus on knowledge acquisition in policies of the 1980s and 1990s towards an emphasis on integration in those of the 2010s. This shift is particularly evident in relation to NALS, whose educational needs are discussed only to a limited extent in relation to subject knowledge in the 2010s policies. It is argued that this serves to homogenise the educational needs of the category newly arrived, thereby potentially obscuring the conception of NALS.
{"title":"From subjects of knowledge to subjects of integration? Newly arrived students with limited schooling in Swedish education policy","authors":"M. Brännström","doi":"10.1177/1757743820986835","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1757743820986835","url":null,"abstract":"The education of newly arrived students is a debated global policy issue. Less attention has been paid to the sub-group of students with limited experience of schooling, referred to here as ‘newly arrived students with limited schooling’ (NALS). This article explores Swedish policy frameworks that inform the education of newly arrived students, comparing policy approaches from two time periods (1983–1996 and 2013–2016) during which the numbers of NALS were said to be increasing in Swedish compulsory schools. Framed within a poststructural approach to policy analysis and Foucault’s theorisation of heterotopian spaces, the analysis explores policies’ representation of separate teaching groups for newly arrived students, with a particular focus on what these spaces have to offer NALS. The findings indicate a shift between the two periods: from a focus on knowledge acquisition in policies of the 1980s and 1990s towards an emphasis on integration in those of the 2010s. This shift is particularly evident in relation to NALS, whose educational needs are discussed only to a limited extent in relation to subject knowledge in the 2010s policies. It is argued that this serves to homogenise the educational needs of the category newly arrived, thereby potentially obscuring the conception of NALS.","PeriodicalId":37109,"journal":{"name":"Power and Education","volume":"13 1","pages":"14 - 27"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1757743820986835","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45841243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-03-01DOI: 10.1177/1757743820986173
John Welsh
The bulk of research on academic rankings is policy-oriented, preoccupied with ‘best practices’, and seems incapable of transcending the normative discourse of ‘governance’. To understand, engage, and properly critique the operation of power in academic rankings, the rankings discourse needs to escape the gravity of ‘police science’ and embrace a properly political science of ranking. More specifically, the article identifies three pillars of the extant research from which a departure would be critically fruitful – positivism, managerialism, institutionalism – and then goes on to outline three aspects of rankings that a critical political analysis should explore, integrate, and develop into future research from the discourses of critical theory – arkhè, dispositif, and dialectik.
{"title":"A power-critique of academic rankings: Beyond managers, institutions, and positivism","authors":"John Welsh","doi":"10.1177/1757743820986173","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1757743820986173","url":null,"abstract":"The bulk of research on academic rankings is policy-oriented, preoccupied with ‘best practices’, and seems incapable of transcending the normative discourse of ‘governance’. To understand, engage, and properly critique the operation of power in academic rankings, the rankings discourse needs to escape the gravity of ‘police science’ and embrace a properly political science of ranking. More specifically, the article identifies three pillars of the extant research from which a departure would be critically fruitful – positivism, managerialism, institutionalism – and then goes on to outline three aspects of rankings that a critical political analysis should explore, integrate, and develop into future research from the discourses of critical theory – arkhè, dispositif, and dialectik.","PeriodicalId":37109,"journal":{"name":"Power and Education","volume":"429 ","pages":"28 - 42"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1757743820986173","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41314569","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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