Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Performativity and pedagogising knowledge: globalising educational policy formation, dissemination and enactment

2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 30; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/02680939.2014.961968

1464-5106

Parlo Singh,

Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies

AbstractCritical policy scholars have increasingly turned their attention to: (1) the work of policy actors engaged in globalised and globalising processes of policy formation, (2) the global flows or movements of education policies across multifaceted, hybrid networks of public–private agencies, and (3) the complex politics of global–national policy translation and enactment in local school contexts. Scholars have emphasised firstly, the economic turn in education reform policies, a shift from a social democratic education orientation and secondly, policy convergence towards a dominant neoliberal political agenda. This paper suggests that Bernstein's concepts of the totally pedagogised society (TPS) and the pedagogic device, as the ensemble of rules for the production, recontextualisation and evaluation of pedagogic discourses may add to this corpus of critical policy scholarship. It does this by firstly reviewing the take up of Bernstein's concept of the TPS in the critical policy sociology literature, arguing that this interpretation presents a largely dystopian account of globalising educational policies. In contrast, the paper argues for and presents an alternative open-ended reading and projection of Bernstein's concept of the TPS and pedagogic device for thinking about globalised processes and devices of the pedagogic communication of knowledge(s).Keywords: performativityglobalising policypedagogic devicepedagogic discoursetotally pedagogised society AcknowledgementsThe author renders her thanks to Gemma Moss, Alan Sadovnik and Anna Tsatsaroni for comments on an earlier version of this paper.Notes1. Rizvi and Lingard (Citation2010, 4) define public policy as 'the actions and positions taken by the state, which consists of a range of institutions that share the essential characteristics of authority and collectivity … Public policies are … normative, expressing both ends and means designed to steer the actions and behaviour of people'.2. Ball (Citation1998, 122) writes of the new educational orthodoxy and the shifting 'relationship between politics, government and education in complex Westernised post-industrialised countries'. He identifies five elements of this new orthodoxy:(1) Improving national economics by tightening the connection between schooling, employment, productivity and trade.(2) Enhancing student outcomes in employment-related skills and competencies.(3) Attaining more direct control over curriculum content and assessment.(4) Reducing the costs to government of education.(5) Increasing community input to education by more direct involvement in school decision-making and pressure of market choice.3. Ball (Citation2009, 213) perhaps presents one of the most dystopian accounts of the 'learning society' project with his statement: 'Perhaps then what we are witnessing is a profound Epistemic shift from a modernist to postmodernist education paradigm – leaving behind the "authentic" modernist/welfare learner to create a depthless, flexible, lonely, responsive and responsible learner (collectively represented as human capital), devoid of "sociality", the ultimate commodification of the social'.4. Agencies and instruments of governmentality by which whole populations are governed or regulated by non-violent means, so that in fact, governance is internalised to constitute self-governing, self-regulating populations. Foucault (Citation1979, 20) traces the historical evolution of this mode of governance as the 'result of the process through which the State of Justice of the Middle Ages, which becomes the Administrative State during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, gradually comes to be "governmentalised"'. Bernstein (Citation2001a, Citation2001b, Citation2001c) suggests that liquid capitalism in the twenty-first century in the West is characterised by a specialised form of governance. This is governance by pedagogic means.5. Thompson and Cook (Citation2014, 6) draw on the work of Deleuze to write about 'the logic of a control society' which regulates whole populations through the 'increasing use of computers and digital language'. The logic of control does not attempt to discipline through normalisation, rather individuality is emphasised and becomes 'modulated as samples, data, markets or banks'. Importantly, control systems 'do not replace discipline', but are 'superimposed over disciplinary logics'.6. Bernstein's concept of the TPS has been used extensively in the field of critical policy studies, or sociologies of policy to examine the globalisation of education policies around (1) teacher professionalism (Beck Citation2009; Bonal and Rambla Citation2003; Robertson Citation2012); (2) health and physical education, and citizenship education curriculum (Evans et al. Citation2008, Citation2013; Evans and Rich Citation2011; Magalhaes and Soer Citation2003; Pykett Citation2009, Citation2010), (3) learning society, knowledge society and lifelong learning (Ball Citation2009; Gerrard Citation2013; Gewirtz Citation2008; Pasias and Roussakis Citation2012; Rønning Haugen Citation2010); (4) international testing regimes (Kanes, Morgan, and Tsatsaroni Citation2014; Tyler Citation2001, Citation2010), and (5) the impact of research on policy (Lingard Citation2011).7. From a different angle, Kleon (Citation2014) argues that pedagogic agency enhances visibility in a world saturated with information and ideas. How can specific ideas, information be heard in an era where knowledge grows exponentially, and so many ideas are clamouring for attention? Kleon (Citation2014) suggests that pedagogy is the answer – it adds value to new ideas, it connects people to knowledge work. Pedagogic relations are not a means of giving away ideas, but rather a means of connecting others to your knowledge work. The slogan adopted by Kleon (Citation2014, 68) is: 'get rich by out-teaching your competition'. From this perspective, pedagogy becomes the dominant mode of connectivity in a knowledge saturated society.8. Ball (Citation2000, 1–2) drawing on the work of Lyotard defines performativity as follows: 'Performativity is a technology, a culture and a mode of regulation, or a system of "terror" … that employs judgements, comparisons and displays as means of control, attrition and change. The performances (of individual subjects or organisations) serve as measures of productivity or output, or displays of "quality", or "moments" of promotion … or inspection. They stand for, encapsulate or represent the worth, quality or value of an individual or organisation within a field of judgement. … The issue of who controls the field of judgement is crucial. "Accountability" and "competition" are the lingua franca of this new discourse of power … A discourse which is the emerging form of legitimation in post-industrial societies for both the "production" of knowledge and its transmission through education'.9. The first TPS was 'that of the medieval period initiated by Religion' (Bernstein Citation2001a, 365). During this period, the Christian Church exercised power and control over the pedagogic device, that is, the rules for the distribution, recontextualisation and evaluation of pedagogic discourse, what knowledge was deemed valid for teaching purposes, who received what categories of educational knowledge (distribution rule), how educational knowledge was taught to which category of student (recontextualisation rule), and how educational knowledge was evaluated and students were recognised as having acquired this knowledge (evaluation rule). See also Depaepe (Citation2012) and Durkheim (Citation1969) on the evolution of educational thought. Crucially, Bernstein (Citation2000, 82) following Durkheim (Citation1969) describes the categories of educational thought in the first totally pedagogised society, the 'grouping of knowledge called the Trivium and that different specialisation of knowledge called the Quadrivium'. He then extends on Durkheim's work and suggests: 'there is another level below that of word and world. I shall propose that the Trivium is not simply about understanding the word, the principles which lie behind it, the mechanics of language and reasoning, but is concerned to constitute a particular form of consciousness, a distinct modality of the self, to set limits to that form of consciousness, to regulate the modality of the self. To constitute the self in the Word, yes, but the Word of God. A particular god. The Christian God. In other words, the Trivium is there to create a particular form of the outer (the world). The dislocation between the Trivium and Quadrivium, then, is a dislocation between inner and outer. A dislocation as a precondition for a new creative synthesis between inner and outer is generated by Christianity. Perhaps more than this. The Trivium comes first, because the construction of the inner, the valid inner, the true inner, is a necessary precondition that the understanding of the world will also be valid, will also be true, will also be acceptable, will also be legitimate in terms of the discourse of Christianity. The sacredness of the world is guaranteed or should be guaranteed by the appropriate construction of the inner, the truly Christian self'. (Bernstein Citation2000, 82)10. Bernstein (Citation2000, 37) distinguishes between rules of the pedagogic device: distributive, recontextualising and evaluative; fields in which these rules operate: production of discourse, recontextualising and reproduction; and processes: creation, transmission and acquisition. Like Foucault, these are not essentialised, fixed or static entities rather they are conceptualised as apparatuses, ensembles and as such are key sites of power struggles and conflicts by different class fractions.11. See the work of Hasan (Citation1999, Citation2002, Citation2006) for examples of pedagogical approaches sympathetic to the Bernstein sociological approach.12. Recent work in social and cultural geography (Biesta Citation2012; Loopmans, Cowell, and Oosterlynck Citation2012; Schuermans, Loopmans, and Vandenabeele Citation2012) presents yet another take on public pedagogy. For example, Biesta (Citation2012, 683) distinguishes between 'public pedagogy as a pedagogy for the public', 'public pedagogy as a pedagogy of the public', and 'public pedagogy as the enactment of a concern for the public quality of human togetherness'.13. Lyotard's (Citation1984) definition of a non-representational theory of knowledge and turn to performativity places too much emphasis on language games and the discursive. In contrast, (Bernstein Citation2001a) calls attention to social structures and material practices, particularly focusing attention on the agencies and agents producing, disseminating and evaluating the acquisition of new discursive codes.Additional informationFunding Funding. Funding for this study was provided by the Australian Research Council Linkage scheme [grant number LP0990585].