Showing papers by "Thomas S. Popkewitz published in 1997"

Foucault's Challenge: Discourse, Knowledge, and Power in Education

Abstract: In this volume, the editors have brought together prominent international contributors to examine the relevance of Foucauldian thought on educational theory, practice and institutional life. The result is a diverse collection that offers broad and engaging analyses of how power and knowledge are configured in the practices and norms of schooling. This text not only provides a critical examination of the significance of Foucauldian thought for education, but also discusses how Foucault's theories are arrayed in the everyday life of schools. Contributors include: Bernadette Baker; David Blacker; Marie Brennan; Lynn Fendler; Jennifer Gore; Bill Green; Sakari Heikkinen; Kenneth Hultqvist; Ingolfur Asgeir Johannesson; Mimi Orner; Thomas Popkewitz; David Shaafsma; David Shutkin; Jussi Silvonen; Hannu Simola; Judith Rabak Wagener; and Lew Zipin.

Restructuring of Social and Political Theory in Education: Foucault and a Social Epistemology of School Practices.

Abstract: Our concern in this essay is with how Michel Foucault’s methodologies for the study of power are related to a more general reexamining and re-visioning of the “foundations” of critical traditions inherited from nineteenth century European forebears. Through his wide-ranging studies of knowledge, madness, prisons, sexuality, and governmentality, Foucault’s historical philosophy interrogates the conditions under which modern societies operate. His concern with how the subject is constituted in power relations forms an important contribution to recent social theory, providing both methodological and substantive challenges to the social sciences. These have been taken up in various projects across multiple settings, with particular implications for interdisciplinary work. The politics of “identity,” as witnessed in the theoretical and historical work within the feminist movement, is one such example, crossing nation-state barriers of European and Anglo-American intellectual work. Our essay moves between the particular contribution of Foucault and the more general intellectual movements to which he has contributed. The attention given to Foucault in the English-speaking world is part of a larger sea-migration of critical traditions of social science since the World War I1 period. By sea-migration, we mean the post-World War I1 mixing of European continental social theories that integrate historical and philosophical discourses with the more pragmatic (and philosophical/ analytic) traditions in the United States, Britain, and Australia.’ The translation and incorporation of European Marxist social philosophy such as that of the Frankfurt School of critical theory from Germany, the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, and more recently, French “postmodern” and French and Italian feminist theories are important to the production of a “critical” space in the education arena. Social theories since World War I1 have been important grounds on which educational debates, policies, and scholarship have focused. Our use of the term

The production of reason and power: Curriculum history and intellectual traditions

Abstract: Curricula are historically formed within systems of ideas that inscribe styles of reasoning, standards and conceptual distinctions in school practices and its subjects. Further, the systems of reasoning embodied in schooling are the effects of power. That power is in the manner in which the categories and distinctions of curriculum shape and fashion interpretation and action. In this sense, curriculum is a practice of social regulation and the effect of power. The question of what is curriculumhistory is also a question about the politics of the knowledge embodied in disciplinary work. Two enduring assumptions of the Enlightenment inscribed in contemporary educational history and research are explored. One identifies social progress as tied to an evolutionary conception of change. The second relates to the epistemological assumption that inquiry must identify the actors as causal agents who bring or suppress social change. Both of these assumptions are, I argue, grounded in a particular doctrine of modern...

A Changing Terrain of Knowledge and Power: A Social Epistemology of Educational Research

Abstract: In the past decade, important struggles about the production of knowledge have taken place in history, the social sciences, and education. These struggles involve more than the “knowledge interests” that Habermas pointed to in the 1970s; instead, they point to important epistemological ruptures in the doctrines of “reason” that have dominated social and political debates since the late 19th century. This questioning reaches into the presuppositions of progress and power underlying intellectual work.This article explores some of the main features of the controversies about knowledge by turning first to certain assumptions that guided social theory at least since the 19th century. The assumptions relate, for example, to the focus on human action (and agents) as purpose or explanation of theory, to the conceptualization of space and time, to the introduction of change as a problem of the administration of time (the control of process and development), and to the inscription of political and social doctrines ...

Educational Sciences and the Normalization of the Teacher and Child: Some Historical Notes on Current USA Pedagogical Reforms

Abstract: In the past decade, US==A reforms discourses link strategies of professionalizing teaching with pedagogical research practices. This article explores the different reform practices as the effects of power. It focuses on educational policy and research as governing through the reasoning inscribed in the knowledge generated for action and participation. Political rationalities are inscribed in pedagogy as “a culture of redemption. Pedagogy is to save the child for society and to rescue society through the child. The saving of the child embodies norms about social/cultural progress that makes the science/scientist as the prophet. The first section examines turn of the 20th century USA practices to professionalize the teacher and redefine pedagogy. Pedagogy embodies a concept of progress that revisions the child from a religious entity beholden to God to one that embodies certain collective social norms related to political rationalities. The child is to be a self‐motivated participant in a liberal democracy....

La profesionalización, el gobierno del profesor y conocimiento académico: algunas notas comparativas

Abstract: espanolLos profesionales y la profesionalizacion son palabras que circulan en los discursos internacionales acerca de la mejora de las escuelas y de la ensenanza. Este trabajo se centra en la profesionalizacion como una cuestion de poder. Explora historicamente la relacion que mantienen las profesiones y la educacion con la reestructuracion del Estado. Lo que es mas, la profesionalizacion es considerada como un conjunto de estrategias de regulacion dentro de la ensenanza. Las estrategias de regulacion guardan relacion con la funcion de la investigacion y los discursos academicos. Sostengo que los discursos academicos acerca de las profesiones son algo mas que meros sistemas de interpretacion y explicacion del mundo de la escolarizacion. Mediante un conjunto complejo de relaciones entre los campos politicos, ocupacionales y las ciencias educativas, los metodos de las disciplinas academicas organizan las identidades de los maestros y las de sus 'clientes'. Las ideas acerca de la ensenanza 'le dicen' a los maestros que son los ninos y que tienen que ser: los discursos acerca de la didactica y de la infancia generan principios sobre como tienen que administrar los maestros a los ninos. Los principales que ordenan la ensenanza son resultado del poder y por tanto tienen importancia politica. La pedagogia produce divisiones, distinciones y un continuo de valores cuyo efecto es excluir de y descalificar para la participacion a ciertos ninos. Esta cuestion de poder en las profesiones y en la profesionalizacion presenta una dualidad en los esfuerzos de reforma actuales. Por un lado, se consideran las estrategias profesionales a la hora de ganar estatus, privilegios culturales y ventajas economicas, especialmente en una profesion dominada por mujeres. Pero a la vez el profesionalismo es tambien una estrategia desde arriba que funciona a fin de regular la construccion de identidades dentro de la ensenanza EnglishProfessionals and professionalization are words that circulate within international discourses about the improvement of schools and teaching. This paper focuses on professionalization as an issue of power. The explores historically the relation of professions and education to the restructuring of the state. Further, professionalization is considered as a governing strategies within teaching. The governing strategies are related to the function of academic discourses and research. Academic discourses about professions, I argue, are more than systems to interpret and explain the world of schooling. Through a complex, set of relations among political, occupational fields and educational sciences, the problem-solving methods of academic disciplines organize the identities of teachers and their 'clientes'. The ideas of teaching 'tell' the teacher what children are and are to be: discourses about didactics and childhood generate principles about how teachers are to administer children. The principles that order teaching are the results of power and therefore politically important. Pedagogy produces divisions, distinctions and a continuum of values whose effect is to disqualify and exclude certain children from participation. I pursue this issue through examining the idea of professions and professionalism at the turn of the century and in contemporary educational reforms, particular efforts to make the constructivist, participatory teacher. This issue of power in professions and professionalization has a duality in current reform efforts. Professional strategies are considered to gain status, cultural privilege and monetary advantages, particular in an occupation dominated by women. But professionalism is algo a strategy from above thar functions to govern the construction of identities within teaching