Disciplinary regimes of ‘care’ and complementary alternative education (2015)

Thomson, P., Pennacchia, J.
Disciplinary regimes of ‘care’ and complementary alternative education
(2015) Critical Studies in Education, pp. 1-16. Article in Press.

DOI: 10.1080/17508487.2016.1117506

Abstract
In schools, the notion of ‘care is often synonymous with welfare and disciplinary regimes. Drawing on Foucault, and a study of alternative education (AE) across the UK, and looking in depth at two cases of complementary AE, we identify three types of disciplinary regimes at work in schools: (1) dominant performative reward and punishment, (2) team-building and (3) therapeutic. We argue that while all three regimes aim to steer identified students back to the norm, the two complementary approaches that we saw avoided the narrow instrumental behaviourist approaches of the dominant pattern. In so doing, they also opened up wider horizons of possibility and ways to be and become. © 2015 Taylor & Francis

Author Keywords
classroom/school-based research; discourse analysis/semiotics; Foucault; inclusive education; inequality/social exclusion in education; youth/adolescence