Jayne Bye

Foucault and the use of critique: breaching the self-evidence of educational practices

This paper poses methodological questions about the role and limits of Foucaults concept of governmentality in education research. Firstly, it argues for the utility of governmentality as a means of exploring questions of power regardless of domain or scale. Secondly, it explores the boundary between the tasks of formulating critique and articulating reform agendas while working within the Foucauldian ethos. It does this via the examination of a research project which used Foucault’s concept of governmentality to observe the ways young people are regulated and shaped through education and training at a senior college in Australia. The goal of the examination is to shift the focus from the original findings, which highlighted the powerful effects of governing agendas, to a closer examination of their points of failure in local contexts. This shift takes up Foucault’s idea that government is unpredictable and that within the complexity of the assemblages which make government possible, the possibility for unanticipated outcomes and indeed points of failure, is always present. The paper argues that the change of focus is productive and provides a more complex understanding of the interplay between government and resistance. A focus on points of failure of the regulatory and normative aspects of government is taken up with a view to considering the possible links between this aspect of governmentality critique and the development of emergent rather than imposed reform agendas, inspired by local examples of resistance and transgressive practices.

Governing School-to-Work Transitions: Shaping the Future Worker

The notion that post-compulsory schooling should serve the purpose of preparing young people for the world of work has become a commonplace in education today. In many parts of the world pathways, programmes and a myriad of institutional structures abound to facilitate these ends, with varying degrees of success. In Australia, the last twenty or so years have seen a concerted effort to increase the role of schools in preparing young people for successful transitions through the inclusion of employability skills into the general school curriculum, the availability of vocational courses within secondary schools and the forging of links between schools and Technical- and Further-Education (TAFE) institutions to allow students to move between the two sectors whilst still, effectively, at school. Thus at the structural level much has been done, and interventions continue to evolve to suit particular contexts. The central concern of this chapter, however, is less with the structures we might provide to support transitions and more about the way we conceive of the ‘successful’ transitioning subject and the processes and practices we engage in to shape and produce this subject. Specifically, how do teaching and learning practices in post-compulsory educational settings seek to shape young people so that they come to exhibit the particular traits and norms of behaviour thought to be commensurate with a successful transition from school to work? What do our practices reveal of our beliefs about what young people need from education and training? What types of agendas drive these beliefs?