This article explores the uses of Agamben’s philosophy for understanding the educational meaning of practices that typically take/took place at school, such as the collective rehearsal of the alphabet or the multiplication tables. More precisely, I propose that these forms of ‘practising’ show what schooling, as a particular and historically contingent institution, is all about. Instead of immediately assessing the ‘practice of practising’ in terms of learning outcomes, I turn to Bollnow’s attempt to analyze this phenomenon in a substantially educational (...) way, which for him essentially consists in opposing practising and learning. I show that his analysis is superficial and that we need Agamben’s notion of ‘potentiality’ in order to come to grips with the sense of this phenomenon. This will allow to see that practising concerns an uncommon way to relate to a subject matter that makes possible a transformation of individual and collective existence. The main objective of this investigation is not to hold a plea for reintroducing obsolete pedagogical methods, but to rethink the very meaning of education. (shrink)

This article challenges the assumption underlying most education reforms that constructivism is politically neutral and intrinsically democratic. It makes this argument by examining the curriculum reform in Spain during the 1980s and 1990s in light of the neoliberal politics that the country was experiencing at that time. This study employs the poststructuralist analytical lens of governmentality developed by Foucauldian scholars. Accordingly, it claims that, the psychological version of constructivism adopted by the official curriculum reform failed to deliver promises for democracy (...) because it was crafted within the same neoliberal political rationality that redefined the terms of government in the late 1980s, a redefinition that decontextualized the learner from his/her social context and adopted the logic of the market. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

The introduction of new accountabilities and techniques of government for the purposes of educational reform have created new complexities and tensions for school leadership. Policies such as the publishing of league tables in the UK, high stakes testing in the US and the introduction of the My School website in Australia are particularly significant for school principals. In this article I appeal to the work of Foucault and Deleuze to provide an alternate approach to understanding how principals are constituted as (...) subjects through a range of practices and discourses associated with the introduction of the My School website. I specifically draw upon Foucault’s notion of governmentality and Deleuze’s notion of societies of control to provoke new lines of thought into these government practices. I argue that it is through the performative in the education system that school principals are becoming perpetually assessable subjects. (shrink)