Daphne Meadmore

Getting tense about genealogy

The paper responds to the growing interest in genealogical method as a means of inquiry in education research. The three authors bring together their collective understanding of the nature and purpose of genealogy as a method deriving from the work of Michel Foucault. The authors then indicate how such understandings were applied by each of them to a particular scholarly task. In elaborating the uses and the pitfalls of genealogical approaches by this means, the writers makeit clear that thereis no blueprint for genealogical use. Rather, working through genealogical methods demands from the researcher a strong grasp of the epistemological and theoretical tensions involved in asking how our present educational practices function as they do.

The Boundlessness of Performativity in Elite Australian Schools.

This paper examines how prominent private schools in Australia are performing in a market context according to the tenets of performativity. From a discourse analysis of promotional materials that include prospectuses, advertisements, and school publications, it considers the “value‐addedness” that these schools purport to offer. In this regard, ideas such as building self‐esteem and emotional intelligence are not only being used for market advantage but are also being nicely conflated with religious principles to produce the “whole” child with market edge. This paper draws on a recent research study of 30 elite Australian schools. As new practices of identity formation and self‐presentation are investigated, questions are raised about issues of fabrication in performativity‐inspired practices of marketisation.

Developing professional identities: remaking the academic for corporate times

Abstract This article posits the view that a new curriculum is being applied to professional identity formation as we enter the new millennium. The changing nature of academics’ life and work is used as a case study in how new knowledge is being applied in ways that represent a radical departure from the sort of knowledge traditionally associated with formal institutions of learning. The authors use one academic managers vision of excellence as an instance of the application of this new curriculum. They then broaden the focus to consider how this instance takes its place in a more widespread imperative to reshape work practices through the creation of enterprising cultures and enterprising individuals, within universities and outside them. The analysis concludes by returning to consider the tactics being used to re/form the Australian academic as an ‘excellent’ teacher.

The Production of Individuality through Examination

This paper explores how the Foucaultian concept of power/knowledge is central to an understanding of the production of individuality through the use of dividing practices in schools. Dividing practices include the examination and psychological testing procedures which, as technologies of modem power, combine hierarchical observation and normalising judgement in the process of individuation. An analysis of the discourse of two dividing practices used extensively in schools in Queensland, Australia provides a genealogy of the exercise of disciplinary power in schooling in the cause of governance.

Of Uniform Appearance: a symbol of school discipline and governmentality

The very garments that in some places are given them (children), and their maintenance in all of them by charity, are the constant badges and proofs of their dependence and poverty; and should therefore teach them humility and their parents thankfulness. (Samuel Harmar, 1642, cited in Pinchebeck & Hewitt, 1969) 1The research for this paper was conducted with the assistance of a QUT Meritorious Grant. This enabled us to employ Nicole Matthews whose impeccable research skills made possible the recovery from the more inaccessible lanes of the information highway out‐of‐the‐way clues to the nature of uniform practice in the past. We are grateful to the referees for their useful suggestions.

Keeping Up Appearances: Uniform Policy for School Diversity?

This paper analyses policies pertaining to school dress codes which have been formulated recently by all state education bureaucracies in Australia. It examines these policies and their implementation in the context of devolution, the marketisation of schools, and cognate social legislation. In doing so it seeks to understand the textual hiatus between government policy and schooling practices.

The corporate curriculum: Schools as sites of new knowledge production

This paper investigates the ways in which corporate ideas are impacting on Australian education, with a particular emphasis on secondary schools. We note the growing importance of a culture of enterprise in changing the practices of schooling, indicating how a performative organisational culture is producing different identities and relationships in educational work. The paper begins by considering the imperative for schools and individuals to be enterprising. It then moves on to examine more closely the impact of this discursive shift on teachers, students and school communities as they engage in enterprising practices. We draw on our research of over 50 state and private schools mainly in south-east Queensland to demonstrate how the newly emergent corporate ‘curriculum’ is producing a changing set of imperatives, responsibilities and outcomes for leadership in ‘enterprising’ schools.

Linking Goals of Governmentality with Policies of Assessment

abstract The Student Performance Standards policy in Queensland, Australia bears a resemblance to similar technologies currently employed in other countries to test children throughout their schooling. Drawing on the Foucauldian understanding of governmentality, assessment practices are positioned as technologies of government regularly used to achieve certain social and political goals, i.e. governing a school population by convenient means. Through a close investigation of the policy cycle of the Student Performance Standards, contradictions of policy making and interpretation are evident. Testing practices are shown to reflect a centralised thrust which presents a paradox in an educational bureaucracy which is presently involved in devolution. It is the political balancing act of keeping the language of policy making in accordance with what is in the childs best interests as well as satisfying the needs of government to ‘know’ a population so that it can act in ways which are considered to be appropri...

The Pursuit of Standards: Simply Managing Education?

This paper investigates the recent move by the federal government in Australia to manage more closely the primary sector of education through the use of national performance standards. The increasing importance placed on such benchmarks in Years 3, 5 and 7 raises questions about the perceived need to survey and thereby manage the education systems by using this technology as a means of achieving the goals of performativity - accountability and competition. Setting this agenda in a globalized context, it is acknowledged that although the mechanisms for setting and raising standards are very different across the world, the discourse resonates. The paper documents the specifically Australian, and more particularly Queensland, responses to the culture of performance. In this imperative to improve educational outcomes by using national tests, the paper raises persistent questions about the suitability of such tests for children who, for a host of reasons, are different from the monocultural able-bodied mainstream. Through its argument that inclusive practices in primary education are being jeopardized by creeping standardization practices, and despite policy rhetoric to the contrary, the paper demonstrates the seemingly unstoppable forces of performativity evidenced through national standards.

Devolving practices: managing the managers

Abstract Devolution is a management technology which is currently ‘transforming’ the State Department of Education in Queensland, Australia. This paper presents an analysis of the research findings of a study centred on the daily practices of one woman principal contextualised in the web of documentation in which she operates in this new corporate culture. A Foucauldian theoretical framework of ‘governmentality’ has been used in order to analyse the competing discourses of devolution as experienced at a particular site. The analysis positions practices of devolution not as a possible liberating technology, nor as a negative control mechanism, but rather as an administrative strategy which aims to ‘know’ schools and their populations in specific and calculated ways as a requirement of modern government. The paper considers the positioning of one particular school as subject and object of the discourse of devolution. It argues that while it is possible for a principal to mediate the discourse, there are par...