Risky Choices – Autonomy and Surveillance in Secondary English Classrooms
Abstract
Achievement data from New Zealand secondary schools suggest that students from lower socio-economic communities have fewer opportunities to engage with complex content in subject English. This article examines this phenomenon by drawing on Foucault’s notion of governmentality and considers how a context of simultaneously increased autonomy and surveillance may shape curriculum and assessment choices. To explore these ideas, I use interview data from ten secondary English teachers in the wider Auckland region. I complement Foucault’s (1982) explanation of governmentality with Ball, Maguire, and Braun’s (2012) notion of policy enactment to explore spaces of both compliance and resistance.
Downloads
References
Amrein-Beardsley, A. (2014). Rethinking value-added models in education: Critical perspectives on tests and assessment-based accountability. Routledge.
Au, W. (2007). High-stakes testing and curricular control: A qualitative metasynthesis. Educational Researcher, 36(5), 258-267. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X07306523
Ball, S. J. (1990). Politics and policy making in education: Explorations in sociology. Routledge.
Ball, S. (1993). Education policy, power relations and teachers' work. British Journal of Educational Studies, 41(2), 106-121.
Ball, S. J. (1994). Education reform: A critical and post-structural approach. Open University Press.
Ball, S. J. (2003). The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of Education Policy, 18(2), 215-228. https://doi.org/10.1080/0268093022000043065
Ball, S. J., Maguire, M., & Braun, A. (2011). How schools do policy: Policy enactments in secondary schools. Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203153185
Besley, T. (2007). Foucault, truth-telling and technologies of the self: Confessional practices of the self and schools. In M. Peters & T. Besley, (Eds.), Why Foucault?: New directions in educational research (pp. 55- 70). Peter Lang.
Biesta, G. (2004). Education, accountability, and the ethical demand: Can the democratic potential of accountability be regained? Educational Theory, 54(3), 233-250. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0013-2004.2004.00017.x
Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative research in psychology, 3(2), 77-101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa
Braun, A., Ball, S. J., Maguire, M., & Hoskins, K. (2011). Taking context seriously: Towards explaining policy enactments in the secondary school. Discourse: Studies in the cultural Politics of Education, 32(4), 585-596. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2011.601555
Connell, R. (2009). Good teachers on dangerous ground: Towards a new view of teacher quality and professionals. Critical Studies in Education, 50(3), 213-229.
Connell, R. (2015). Markets all around: Defending education in a neoliberal time. In H. Proctor, P. Brownlee & P. Freebody (Eds.), Controversies in education: Policy implications of research in education (Vol. 3, pp. 181- 197). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08759-7_16
Davies, B., & Bansel, P. (2007). Neoliberalism and education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 20(3), 247-259. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518390701281751
Doherty, R. (2007). Critically framing education policy: Foucault, discourse and governmentality. In M. Peters & T. Besley, (Eds.), Why Foucault?: New directions in educational research (pp. 193-204). Peter Lang.
Dymoke, S. (2012). Poetry is an unfamiliar text: Locating poetry in secondary English classrooms in New Zealand and England during a period of curriculum change. Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education, 19(4), 395-410. https://doi.org/10.1080/1358684X.2012.736741
Education Review Office. (2019). NCEA observational studies. https://www.ero.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/NCEA-Observational- Studies3.pdf
Fimyar, O. (2008). Using governmentality as a conceptual tool in education policy research. Educate, 1(1), 3-18. http://www.educatejournal.org/index.php/educate/article/view/143/157 Foucault, M. (1979). On governmentality. Ideology & Consciousness, 6, 5-22.
Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), 777-795.
Holloway, J., & Brass, J. (2017). Making accountable teachers: The terrors and pleasures of performativity. Journal of Education Policy, 33(3), 361-382. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2017.1372636
Janks, H. (2010). Literacy and power. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203869956
Lauder, H., Young, M., Daniels, H., Balarin, M., & Lowe, J. (Eds.) (2012). Educating for the knowledge economy? Critical perspectives. Routledge.
Locke, T. (2008). English in a surveillance regime: Tightening the noose in New Zealand. Changing English, 15(3), 293-310. https://doi.org/10.1080/13586840802364210
Ministry of Education. (2013). New Zealand schools, nga kura o Aotearoa: A report on the compulsory schools sector in New Zealand 2013. http://thehub.swa.govt.nz/assets/documents/40709_Nga_Kura_o_Aot earoa_New_Zealand_Schools_2013_0.pdf
New Zealand Qualifications Authority. (2018). Annual Report on NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship Data and Statistics. https://www.nzqa.govt.nz/assets/About- us/Publications/statsreports/ncea-annual-report-2018.pdf
OECD. (2020). TALIS 2018 results (Volume II): Teachers and school leaders as valued professionals. https://doi.org/10.1787/19cf08df-en.
Olssen, M., Codd, J. & O'Neill, A. (2004). Education policy: Globalization, citizenship and democracy. SAGE. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446221501
Ormond, B. M. (2017). Curriculum decisions- The challenges of teacher autonomy over knowledge selection for history. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 49(5), 599-619. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2016.1149225
Ormond, B. M. (2018). The impact of standards-based assessment on knowledge for history education in New Zealand. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 26(2), 143-165. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969594X.2018.1432564
Perryman, J., Ball, S., Maguire, M., & Braun, A. (2011). Life in the pressure cooker – School league tables and English and mathematics teachers’ responses to accountability in a results-driven era. British Journal of Educational Studies, 59(2), 179-195. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2011.578568
Rabinow, P., & Rose, N. S. (2003). Introduction: Foucault today. In P. Rabinow, & N. S. Rose, The essential Foucault: Selections from essential works of Foucault, 1954-1984. (pp. vii-xxxv). The New Press. (Original work published 1994).
Robertson, S. L. (2016). The global governance of teachers’ work. In K. Mundy,
A. Green, B. Lingard, & A. Verger (Eds.), The handbook of global education policy (pp. 275-290). Wiley & Sons Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118468005.ch15
Thrupp, M. (1995). The school mix effect: the history of an enduring problem in educational research, policy and practice. British Journal of Sociology of Education, (16)2, 183-203. https://doi.org/10.1080/0142569950160204
Thrupp, M. (1999). Schools making a difference: Let’s be realistic! School mix, school effectiveness and the social limits of reform. Open University Press.
Thrupp, M. (2007). Education's 'inconvenient truth': Persistent middle class advantage. Waikato Journal of Education, 13, 253-272. https://hdl.handle.net/10289/6194
Thrupp, M. (2014). Deficit thinking and the politics of blame. In V. Carpenter & S. Osborne (Eds.), Twelve thousand hours: Education and poverty in Aotearoa New Zealand (pp. 88-101). Dunmore Publishing Ltd.
Thrupp, M., & Lupton, R. (2006). Taking school contexts more seriously: The social justice challenge. British Journal of Educational Studies, 54(3), 308-328. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8527.2006.00348.x
Weber, E. (2007). Globalization, “glocal” development, and teachers’ work: A research agenda. Review of Educational Research, 77(3), 279-309. https://doi.org/10.3102/003465430303946
Whitty, G. (2010). Revisiting school knowledge: Some sociological perspectives on new school curricula. European Journal of Education, 45(1), 28-45.
Wilson, A., Madjar, I., & McNaughton, S. (2016). Opportunity to learn about disciplinary literacy in senior secondary English classrooms in New Zealand. The Curriculum Journal, 27(2), 204-228. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585176.2015.1134339
Copyright (c) 2023 Claudia Rozas Gómes
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.