Education policy-making and time

G. Thompson; I. Cook

doi:10.1080/02680939.2013.875225

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Journal article

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Peer reviewed

Education policy-making and time

G. Thompson and I. Cook

Journal of Education Policy, Vol.29(5), pp.700-715

2014

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2013.875225

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Abstract

This paper examines the global policy convergence toward high-stakes testing in schools and the use of test results to ‘steer at a distance’, particularly as it applies to policy-makers’ promise to improve teacher quality. Using Deleuze’s three syntheses of time in the context of the Australian policy blueprint Quality Education, this paper argues that using test scores to discipline teaching repeats the past habit of policy-making as continuing the problem of the unaccountable teacher. This results in local policy-making enfolding test scores in a pure past where the teacher-as-problem is resolved through the use of data from testing to deliver accountability and transparency. This use of the database returns a digitised form of inspection that is a repetition of the habit of teacher-as-problem. While dystopian possibilities are available through the database, in what Deleuze refers to as a control society, for us the challenge is to consider policy-making as a step into an unknown future, to engage with producing policy that is not grounded on the unconscious interiority of solving the teacher problem, but of imagining new ways of conceiving the relationship between policy-making and teaching.

Details

Title: Education policy-making and time
Authors/Creators: G. Thompson (Author/Creator) - Murdoch University
I. Cook (Author/Creator) - Murdoch University
Publication Details: Journal of Education Policy, Vol.29(5), pp.700-715
Publisher: Routledge as part of the Taylor and Francis Group
Identifiers: 991005542633207891
Murdoch Affiliation: School of Education
Language: English
Resource Type: Journal article

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Citation topics: 6 Social Sciences; 6.11 Education & Educational Research; 6.11.345 Educational Reform
Web Of Science research areas: Education & Educational Research
ESI research areas: Social Sciences, general