Foucault News

Hodge, S.
Alienating curriculum work in Australian vocational education and training
(2015) Critical Studies in Education, 17 p. Article in Press.

DOI: 10.1080/17508487.2015.1009842

Abstract
Competency-based training (CBT) is a curriculum model employed in educational sectors, professions and industries around the world. A significant feature of the model is its permeability to control by interests outside education. In this article, a ‘Neoliberal’ version of CBT is described and analysed in the context of Australian Vocational Education and Training (VET). In this version of the model, a division of curriculum labour is instituted that, from the perspective of Neoliberal theory, allows the interests of educators to be limited in accordance with the belief that they will neglect the interests of students and other stakeholders if they have control over the whole curriculum construction process. But this version of CBT denigrates the expertise of educators by forcing them to set aside their own judgement about what is important to teach and implement a pre-existing picture of an occupation that may or may not be an effective representation. Empirical evidence is reviewed that suggests curriculum work in VET is indeed alienating for educators. Existing critiques of CBT are considered and found to have overlooked the specifically Neoliberal form of CBT in VET analysed in the article.

Author Keywords
adult education; curriculum; Foucault; teachers’ work and identities; vocational education and training

Sobe, N.W.
All that is global is not world culture: accountability systems and educational apparatuses
(2015) Globalisation, Societies and Education, 13 (1), pp. 135-148.

DOI: 10.1080/14767724.2014.967501

Abstract
This article explores why we see educational accountability systems circulating transnationally. It argues that researchers in the field of comparative and international education need to use the concepts of diffusion and translation to think about the formation, coordination and extension of networks and discursive formations through which heterogeneous, disparate objects are brought into relation. Approaching accountability in education as an ‘apparatus’ helps us engage with the research challenges presented by globalisation. This article proposes a way of seeing accountability as constitutive of the global and not as an after-effect. This approach helps us avoid the distracting and ultimately irrelevant fixation on a so-called ‘global/local nexus’ that is characteristic of much work in the field of comparative and international education. It also aims to improve on world culture theory explanations for why we are presently witnessing a global trend towards the increased ‘monitoring of monitoring’, i.e., increased self-organising reflexivity in the self-description and self-observation that school systems are called to engage in.

Author Keywords
accountability; Actor-Network Theory; Foucault; governmentality

Nordtveit, B.H.
Knowledge production in a constructed field: reflections on comparative and international education
(2015) Asia Pacific Education Review, 11 p. Article in Press.

DOI: 10.1007/s12564-015-9354-0

Abstract
Adopting Maria Manzon’s theoretical framework, which draws on Foucault and proposes that comparative education as an academic field is socially constructed, I suggest that the field is neither stable nor well defined. To demonstrate this, I conduct a content analysis of the Comparative Education Review, using Klaus Krippendorff’s methodological framework to study comparative and international education (CIE) researchers’ understanding of the national—and of their related knowledge production in the field. Many comparativists express interests in multiple countries, and their knowledge production takes the form of individual country studies. The countries are habitually studied using a “problem approach” focusing on one specific aspect of the country under investigation and using an associated social science methodology deemed appropriate. Few comparativists are making explicit use of or reference to any methodology that is unique to comparative education. Efforts to catalog and systematize CIE research have demonstrated that the field is becoming so inclusive that it hardly is distinguishable from educational studies as a whole. Hence, I suggest that instead of speaking about unifyingfeatures of the field, it may be more relevant to speak about frequent elements, such as a focus on the national, and a knowledge production characterized by the academic practitioner who desires to improve the education systems studied. A third frequent element may be the focus on educational development, thus justifying the label of “comparative, international, and development education.” One challenge of the field is its dependence on Western social science discourses, which may be marginalizing other voices.

Author Keywords
Comparative education; Comparative Education Review; Content analysis; Development; International education; Knowledge production