Making little neo-liberals
The production of ideal child/learner subjectivities in primary school through choice, self-improvement and ‘growth mindsets’
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12928895 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alice Bradbury (0000-0003-3269-6199, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 309-326 |
| Publication date | 2019-10-10 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Power and Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1757-7438 • E-ISSN: 1757-7438 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1757743818816336 |
| OpenAlex | W2980208812 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 20 |
| References cited | 32 |
This article aims to look at the intersection of policy and lived experience at the level of the individual child by dissecting how primary education policy in England demands and expects a particular learner subjectivity. The focus is on children in the first years of primary school, and how statutory assessments provide a model of the ‘ideal learner’ who is self-regulating and able to make choices which are self-improving. The article uses data collected through qualitative research projects conducted in the late 2000s and in 2017, involving interviews with teachers and school leaders and observation in classrooms, to consider how this model of the neo-liberal learner has evolved. Drawing on theoretical insights on the ‘neo-liberal subject’ and post-structural insights into subjectivity and acceptable/impossible learner identities, it is argued that despite some shifts towards valuing high attainment in ‘measurable’ subjects within a data-obsessed school system, there remains a broad conception of the ‘good learner’ in the early years, which includes attitudes to learning and self-regulation. This wider view is encouraged by the discourse of ‘growth mindset’ and the recent focus on character education, and has social justice implications
Epistemology · Ideal (ethics · Mindset · Neoliberalism (international relations · Pedagogy · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Subjectivity · Early Childhood Education and Development · Global Educational Policies and Reforms · Law · Teacher Education and Leadership Studies
GlobalJustice
Postcritical discourse analysis
Bringing matter, to matter
Governing education, governing early childhood education and care practitioners’ profession
Embodied with data
‘There is something special between us’
Policy disruptors or entrepreneurs? The tensions emerging from a network of philosophy educators
Character education empirical research
Children’s technologies of the self within neoliberal governmentality at the educational transition to Gymnasium in Zurich
From employee voice to pupil voice
What’s Love Got to Do with It
The modern classroom chair
On the surface and below
Reshaping school discipline with metrics
The threat of three-fold failure
Knowing the (Datafied) Student
The Ideal Client
Abraham and Moses were entrepreneurs’
Cautious Capitals
A Interiorização Da Performatividade Pelas Crianças
Constructions of Neoliberal Reason
Transformative Change and Real Utopias in Early Childhood Education
Race, Ethnicity and Education
Testing Times
Reassessing Gender and Achievement
Datafied at four
Education Policy and Social Class
The Datafication of Primary and Early Years Education
Consumption and Identity at Work
Ethics and Politics in Early Childhood Education
Powers of Freedom
Deploying Foucauldian genealogy
Reclassifying Upward Mobility
Revising rationality
Creating an Ofsted story
Education policy and the ‘ideal learner’
Revisions to rationality
The reluctant state and the beginning of the end of state education
Social-Class Variations in the Teacher-Pupil Relationship
The Return of Character
Following Policy
Introduction
(Re)sourcing the Character and Resilience Manifesto
Tensions in Teaching Character
The Politics of Life Itself
| Unique citing works | 20 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3,33 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 20 |