Regulating truths, indeterminate practice and ways of being

A biopolitics of Professional Standards in UK Higher Education

Bibliographic Data

ID2935822
AuthorsChris Beighton (0000-0003-3265-3105, Queen Mary University, corresponding author), Zahid Naz (0000-0003-2180-4764, Queen Mary University)
Year2025
Volume47
Issue1
Pages1-16
Publication date2025-03-31
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDiscourse Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0159-6306 • E-ISSN: 1469-3739
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/01596306.2025.2483199
OpenAlexW4409018607
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited50

This paper critically examines the professional frameworks for teaching and supporting learning in UK higher education. Applying the concept of biopolitics from Michel Foucault's work, we discuss the Professional Standards Framework [Advance HE. (2023a). Professional Standards Framework (PSF 2023), accessed 11.2.24 at https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/teaching-and-learning/psf] and Education Inspection Framework [Ofsted. (2019). Inspecting the curriculum at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/inspecting-the-curriculum retrieved 26.11.24; Ofsted. (2023). Education Inspection Framework (EIF) retrieved at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/education-inspection-framework/education-inspection-framework-for-september-2023 accessed 6.12.24] as part of a discursive dispositif which create specific forms of being in higher education with a distinctive biopolitical objective. By aligning and marginalising global objectives and ways of being through indeterminate practice, they extend governance beyond the classroom and into the biopolitical regulation of educational truth itself. By examining the exclusions and silences within these frameworks – particularly those of alternative pedagogical voices and approaches – we underline the paradoxes inherent in these frameworks’ proclaimed values of neutrality, inclusivity and equity, as well as their role in the complex dynamics of knowledge production

Aesthetics · Biopower · Epistemology · Indeterminate · Pedagogy · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Gender Studies · Law · Legal Education and Practice Innovations · Management and Organizational Studies · Philosophy

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