The Production of Individuality through Examination.

This paper explores how the Foucaultian concept of power/knowledge is central to an understanding of the production of individuality through the use of dividing practices in schools. Dividing practices include the examination and psychological testing procedures which, as technologies of modern power, combine hierarchical observation and normalising judgement in the process of individuation. An analysis of the discourse of two dividing practices used extensively in schools in Queensland, Australia provides a genealogy of the exercise of disciplinary power in schooling in the cause of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]