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Troubling the Discourse of Both/And: Technologies of Neoliberal Governance in Community-Based Educational Spaces
- Source :
-
Policy Futures in Education . Feb 2017 15(2):202-220. - Publication Year :
- 2017
-
Abstract
- This article traces the work of community-based popular educators with an explicit commitment to "Freirean" popular education as they shifted from teaching in a community-based setting to an after-school program focused on standardized test-preparation. Drawing from ethnographic observation and interviews, it examines educators' pedagogical practice and the narratives they employed to explain, interpret, and justify their practice. It shows that they adopted a "discourse of both/and," asserting the possibility and virtues of doing Freirean popular education and high-stakes test preparation simultaneously, without sacrificing the integrity of either. It argues that this discourse was a pragmatic adaptation to structural imperatives but also a limiting one that facilitated the intensification of workload, individual responsibilization, and a shifting of organizational mission in ways that align with neoliberal reform. Drawing from Foucauldian analyses of audit culture, this article troubles the discourse of both/and by exposing how it operates as a technology of neoliberal governance even when cloaked in the language of social justice.
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1478-2103
- Volume :
- 15
- Issue :
- 2
- Database :
- ERIC
- Journal :
- Policy Futures in Education
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- EJ1141725
- Document Type :
- Journal Articles<br />Reports - Research
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1177/1478210317705739