Session Information
23 SES 03 B, New Forms of Governing in School Education (Part 3)
Paper Session continued from 23 SES 02 B
Contribution
This is the first of a series of papers whose aim is to provide a genealogical analysis of the evaluation turn in the field of European education, using the oeuvre of Michel Foucault as a source of inspiration. With the term ‘evaluation turn’ we refer here to the ongoing displacement, at different times, scales and paces, of a vast array of evaluative bodies of knowledge (e.g. Statistics, Economics, School Improvement or School Effectiveness), technologies (e.g. OECD-PISA and the other technologies of the spectacle of comparison) and subjects (e.g. professional evaluators, consultants, advisors) that are giving a key contribution to the changing of how education is thought and done as well as to the way its qualities are conceived and appraised.
Being this our topic, as a first step this paper addresses the archaeological level of this analysis. In effect, we aim to:
- disclose the rules of formation constituting the episteme (Dean, 2010) that have created the possibility of existence of such an evaluation turn;
- understand the way in which those rules have made possible the emergence on the surface of history of evaluative technologies such as international testing and league tables or the diverse neo-managerialist models to evaluate organizational and individual performance, to make just few examples.
With the term episteme we do not intend here a form of knowledge in se, but rather the ‘totality of relations that can be discovered, for a given period, between the sciences when one analyses them at the level of discursive regularities’ (Foucault, 2002, p. 211).
To accomplish this task, we adopt as analytical strategy the archaeological (anti)method outlined by Michel Foucault in his early works. We refer in particular to The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969) as the reference to develop an interpretative framework that enable us to grasp the conditions of possibility of the contemporary evaluation turn, i.e. the ‘total set of relations that unite […] the discursive practices’ (ivi, p. 211) that have given rise to the epistemological figures and the formalized systems which constitute the texture of the contemporary evaluation machinery in the field of European education.
The value of such an account lies, in our view, in two distinct traits. First, it goes beyond a mere critique of the contemporary obsession for evaluation in the field of education, showing how and to what extent it is rooted in the deeper categories of Western thought and the processes of rationalization that are a key driver of modernity. What it allows to focus on are the wider domains of validity, normativity and actuality (Foucault, 2002a, p. 68) within which truth and falsehood of any statement about education and its qualities is discussed, certain educational statements are excluded or marginalised as well as educational problems and their solutions are thought (and hierarchized) and enacted by policy-makers, professionals and technicians.
On the other hand, it represent a crucial step, although an initial and non sufficient one, to grasp: a) the processes through which the objects, the subjects and the concepts of the education space are shaped; b) the social construction of actors’ answers to evaluation policies themselves (i.e. the forms of enactment of the educational practice).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Dean, M., 2010. Governmentality. Power and rule in modern societies. 2nd edition. London: Sage. Deleuze, G., 1988. Foucault. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Foucault, M., 1966. Les mots et les choses. Paris: Editions Gallimard. Consulted version: 2002. The Order of Things. London: Routledge. Foucault, M., 1969. L’Archéologie du savoir. Paris: Editions Gallimard. Consulted version: 2002. The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Routledge.
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