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Assessment Policy and “Pockets of Freedom” in a Neoliberal University: A Foucauldian Perspective

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Resisting Neoliberalism in Higher Education Volume II

Part of the book series: Palgrave Critical University Studies ((PCU))

Abstract

Guided by a Foucauldian theorisation, this chapter conducts a discourse analysis of assessment policy documents in one neoliberalised UK university. Furthermore, it traces the ways in which academics and graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) as assessors negotiate this policy space. The findings demonstrate that the assessment policy has become increasingly restrictive but also ambiguous in the university. It includes a high number of policy documents, a wide range of assessment stakeholders and increasingly abstract language of instruction. However, the findings also suggest that this policy ambiguity is not utterly negative but can be exploited by academics and GTAs, allowing them to have some ownership over assessment processes and their own subjectivities as assessors.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Russell Group includes 24 “research-intensive” universities from the UK. More information is available at: http://www.russellgroup.ac.uk/

  2. 2.

    Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” in Power. Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, ed. J. D. Faubion (London: Penguin Group, 1982), 331.

  3. 3.

    Mark Olssen and Michael A. Peters, “Neoliberalism, Higher Education and the Knowledge Economy: from the Free Market to Knowledge Capitalism,” Journal of Education Policy 20, 30 (2005): 47.

  4. 4.

    Kathleen Lynch, “Neo-liberalism and Marketisation: The Implications for Higher Education,” European Educational Research Journal 5, 1 (2006).

  5. 5.

    Natasha Jankowski and Staci Provezis, “Neoliberal Ideologies, Governmentality and the Academy: An Examination of Accountability through Assessment and Transparency,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 46, 5 (2014): 477.

  6. 6.

    Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978–1979 (New York: Picador USA, 2004).

  7. 7.

    Trent H. Hamann, “Neoliberalism, Governmentality, and Ethics,” Foucault Studies 6 (2009).

  8. 8.

    Rohit Chopra, “Neoliberalism as Doxa: Bourdieu’s Theory of the State and the Contemporary Indian Discourse on Globalization and Liberalization,” Cultural Studies 17 (2003): 432.

  9. 9.

    Olssen and Peters, “Neoliberalism, Higher Education and the Knowledge Economy”.

  10. 10.

    Rille Raaper, “Academic Perceptions of Higher Education Assessment Processes in Neoliberal Academia,” Critical Studies in Education 57, 2 (2016).

  11. 11.

    Sue Clegg and Karen Smith, “Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategies in Higher Education: Contradictions of Genre and Desiring,” Research Papers in Education 25, 1 (2010).

  12. 12.

    David Boud and Elizabeth Molloy, “Rethinking Models of Feedback for Learning: The Challenge of Design,” Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 38, 6 (2013).

  13. 13.

    Lynn Clouder and Christina Hughes, “Introduction,” in Improving Student Engagement and Development through Assessment. Theory and Practice in Higher Education, edited by L. Clouder, C. Broughan, S. Jewell, and H. Steventon (Oxon: Routledge, 2012).

  14. 14.

    Linda Hammersley-Fletcher and Anne Qualter, “From Schools to Higher Education – Neoliberal Agendas and Implications for Autonomy,” Journal of Educational Administration and History 41, 4 (2009).

  15. 15.

    Rille Raaper, “Tracing Assessment Policy Discourses in Neoliberalised Higher Education Settings,” Journal of Education Policy 32, 3 (2017).

  16. 16.

    Raw Rhodes, “The Hollowing Out of the State: the Changing Nature of the Public Service in Britain,” The Political Quarterly 65, 2 (1994).

  17. 17.

    Stephen J. Ball, The Education Debate (Bristol: The Polity Press, 2008). Stephen J. Ball, “What is Policy? 21 Years Later: Reflections on the Possibilities of Policy Research,” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 36, 3 (2015).

  18. 18.

    Ball, “What is Policy?,” 308.

  19. 19.

    Foucault, “The Subject and Power”. Michel Foucault, “Technologies of the self,” in Ethics. Essential works of Foucault 1954–1984, edited by P. Rabinow (London: Penguin Group, 1982).

  20. 20.

    Sine Lehn-Christiansen, “Health Promotion Viewed as Processes of Subjectification in the Education of Danish Social and Healthcare Workers,” Journal of Social Work Practice: Psychotherapeutic Approaches in Health, Welfare and the Community 25, 3 (2009).

  21. 21.

    Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997).

  22. 22.

    Tina Besley and Michael A. Peters, Subjectivity and Truth. Foucault, Education and the Culture of Self (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2007).

  23. 23.

    Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” 331.

  24. 24.

    Butler, The Psychic Life of Power, 2.

  25. 25.

    Fiona Patrick, “Neoliberalism, the Knowledge Economy, and the Learner: Challenging the Inevitability of the Commodified Self as an Outcome of Education,” ISRN Education (2013).

  26. 26.

    Foucault, “Technologies of the self”.

  27. 27.

    Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics.

  28. 28.

    Hamann, “Neoliberalism, Governmentality, and Ethics,” 53.

  29. 29.

    Foucault, “Technologies of the self,” 225.

  30. 30.

    Geoff Danaher, Tony Schirato and Jenn Webb, Understanding Foucault (London: Sage Publications, 2000), 128.

  31. 31.

    Danaher, Schirato and Webb, Understanding Foucault. Gail McNicol Jardine, Foucault and Education (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2005).

  32. 32.

    Michel Foucault, “History, Discourse and Discontinuity,” Salmagundi 20 (1972): 232.

  33. 33.

    Lehn-Christiansen, “Health Promotion Viewed as Processes of Subjectification”.

  34. 34.

    Margaret Walshaw, Working with Foucault in education (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2007).

  35. 35.

    Norman Fairclough, Discourse and Social Change (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992). Norman Fairclough, Language and Power (Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 2001).

  36. 36.

    The title “university teacher” refers to an academic position that mainly involves teaching and potentially pedagogic research.

  37. 37.

    Norman Fairclough, Analysing Discourse. Textual Analysis for Social Research (London: Routledge, 2003).

  38. 38.

    Fairclough, Analysing Discourse, 35.

  39. 39.

    Norman Fairclough, “Critical Discourse Analysis and the Marketization of Public Discourse: The Universities,” Discourse & Society 4, 2 (1993).

  40. 40.

    Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics.

  41. 41.

    Michel Foucault, “Subjectivity and Truth,” in The Politics of Truth, edited by S. Lotringer (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 1993).

  42. 42.

    Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison (London: Penguin Group, 1975).

  43. 43.

    Bronwyn Davies and Peter Bansel, “Governmentality and Academic Work. Shaping the Hearts and Minds of Academic Workers,” Journal of Curriculum Theorizing 26, 3 (2010): 9.

  44. 44.

    Jankowski and Provezis, “Neoliberal Ideologies, Governmentality and the Academy”.

  45. 45.

    Rajani Naidoo and Joanna Williams, “The Neoliberal Regime in English Higher Education: Charters, Consumers and the Erosion of the Public Good,” Critical Studies in Education 56, 2 (2015): 213.

  46. 46.

    Raaper, “Tracing Assessment Policy Discourses”.

  47. 47.

    Eivind Engebretsen, Kristin Heggen and Heidi A. Eilertsen, “Accreditation and Power: A Discourse Analysis of a New Regime of Governance in Higher Education,” Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 56, 4 (2012).

  48. 48.

    Royce D. Sadler, “Academic Freedom, Achievement Standards and Professional Identity,” Quality in Higher Education 17, 1 (2011).

  49. 49.

    Olssen and Peters, “Neoliberalism, Higher Education and the Knowledge Economy”.

  50. 50.

    Stephen Hay and Cushla Kapitzke, “‘Smart State’ for a Knowledge Economy: Reconstituting Creativity through Student Subjectivity,” British Journal of Sociology of Education 30, 2 (2009): 153.

  51. 51.

    Joelle Fanghanel, Being an Academic (London: Routledge, 2012): 15.

  52. 52.

    Engebretsen, Heggen and Eilertsen, “Accreditation and Power”. Leslie D. Gonzales, E. Martinez and C. Ordu, “Exploring Faculty Experiences in a Striving University through the Lens of Academic Capitalism,” Studies in Higher Education 39, 7 (2013).

  53. 53.

    Michel Foucault, “The Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice of Freedom,” in Ethics. Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, edited by P. Rabinow (London: Penguin Group, 1984).

  54. 54.

    Foucault, “Technologies of the Self”.

  55. 55.

    Michel Foucault, “The Risks of Security,” in Power. Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, edited by J. D. Faubion (London: Penguin Group 1983), 372.

  56. 56.

    Deesha Chadha, “Reconceptualising and Reframing Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) Provision for a Research-Intensive Institution,” Teaching in Higher Education 18, 2 (2013). Chris Park, “Neither Fish nor Fowl? The Perceived Benefits and Problems of Using Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) to Teach Undergraduate Students,” Higher Education Review 35, 1 (2002).

  57. 57.

    Mitchell Dean, The Signature of Power. Sovereignty, Governmentality and Biopolitics (London: Sage Publications, 2013): 63.

  58. 58.

    Foucault, “Technologies of the Self”. Foucault, “The Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice of Freedom”.

  59. 59.

    Olssen and Peters, “Neoliberalism, Higher Education and the Knowledge Economy”.

  60. 60.

    Foucault, “The Risks of Security”.

  61. 61.

    Foucault, “The Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice of Freedom”.

  62. 62.

    Foucault, “The Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice of Freedom,” 286.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, Durham University, Durham, UK

    Rille Raaper

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, University of the Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore, QLD, Australia

    Catherine Manathunga

  2. School of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Dorothy Bottrell

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Raaper, R. (2019). Assessment Policy and “Pockets of Freedom” in a Neoliberal University: A Foucauldian Perspective. In: Manathunga, C., Bottrell, D. (eds) Resisting Neoliberalism in Higher Education Volume II. Palgrave Critical University Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95834-7_8

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