Foucault and Education Putting Theory to Work

Specially selected by Stephen Ball, this is a collection of the best and most interesting recently published papers that ‘use’ Foucault to analyse, destablise and re-claim educational ‘problems’. Arguably the best known social theorist in the western world, Foucault’s work is now widely used by researchers and writers in many fields of social science. These papers not only demonstrate the practical applicability of Foucault to things ‘cracked’ and things ‘intolerable’ in making them ‘not as necessary as all that’; they are also transposable, in that they offer forms and methods of analysis which can be taken up and applied and used in other settings, sectors, and policy fields.

Introduction: The use and abuse of Michel Foucault in Educational Studies Stephen Ball 1. The problem trap: Implications of policy archaeology methodology and drawing implications for anti-bullying policies Gerard Walton 2. Analysing policy in the context(s) of practice: a theoretical puzzle Emiliano Grimaldi 3. Governmentality and ‘fearless speech’: framing the education of asylum seeker and refugee children in Australia Pam Christie and Ravinder Sidhu 4. Care of the self, resistance and subjectivity under neoliberal governmentalities Stephen J. Ball & Antonio Olmedo 5. Regimes of performance: practices of the normalised self in the neoliberal university John Morrissey 6. Writing Genealogies: an exploration of Foucault's strategies for doing research Maria Tamboukou 7. Foucault and Special Educational Needs: A 'Box of Tools' for Analysing Children's Experiences of Mainstreaming Julie Allan 8. "Bodies are Dangerous": Using Feminist Genealogy as Policy Studies Methodology Wanda Pillow 9. Social anxiety, sex, surveillance, and the 'safe' teacher Alison Jones 10. Humanism, Administration and Education: The Demand of Documentation and the Production of a New Pedagogical Desire Maja Plum 11. Foucault, Docile Bodies and Post-Compulsory Education in Australia Peter J. Dwyer 12. Monumentalizing Disaster and Wreak-construction: A Case Study of Haiti to Rethink the Privatization Engin Atasay and Garrett Delavan

Stephen J. Ball is the Karl Mannheim Professor of Sociology of Education at the Institute of Education, University College London, UK.