Governing through parents: a genealogical enquiry of education policy and the construction of neoliberal subjectivities in England

In this paper we explore the various spaces and sites through which the figure of the parent is summoned and activated to inhabit and perform market norms and practices in the field of education in England. Since the late 1970s successive governments have called on parents to enact certain duties and obligations in relation to the state. These duties include adopting and internalizing responsibility for all kinds of risks, liabilities and inequities formerly managed by the Keynesian welfare state. Rather than characterize this situation in terms of the ‘hollowing of the state’, we argue that the role of the state includes enabling the functioning of the parent as a neoliberal subject so that they may successfully harness the power of the market to their own advantage and (hopefully) minimize the kinds of risk and inequity generated through a market-based, deregulated education system. In this paper we examine how parents in England are differently, yet similarly, compelled to embody certain market norms and practices as they navigate the field of education. Adopting genealogical enquiry and policy discourse analysis as our methodology, we explore how parents across three policy sites or spaces are constructed as objects and purveyors of utility and ancillaries to marketisation. This includes a focus on how parents are summoned as 1) consumers or choosers of education services; 2) governors and overseers of schools; and 3) producers and founders of schools.

Curriculum, content and controversy in higher education

Recent evidence suggest that academic staff face difficulties in applying new technologies as a means of assessing higher order assessment outcomes such as critical thinking, problem solving and creativity. Although higher education institutional mission statements and course unit outlines purport the value of these higher order skills there is still some question about how well academics are equipped to design curricula and, in particular, assessment strategies accordingly. Despite a rhetoric avowing the benefits of these higher order skills, it has been suggested that academics set assessment tasks up in such a way as to inadvertently lead students on the path towards lower order outcomes. This is a controversial claim, and one that this paper seeks to explore and critique in terms of challenging the conceptual basis of assessing higher order skills through new technologies. It is argued that the use of digital media in higher education is leading to a focus on student's ability to use and manipulate of these products as an index of their flexibility and adaptability to the demands of the knowledge economy. This focus mirrors market flexibility and encourages programmes and courses of study to be rhetorically packaged as such. Curricular content has becomes a means to procure more or less elaborate aggregates of attributes. Higher education is now charged with producing graduates who are entrepreneurial and creative in order to drive forward economic sustainability. It is argued that critical independent learning can take place through the democratisation afforded by cultural and knowledge digitization and that assessment needs to acknowledge the changing relations between audience and author, expert and amateur, creator and consumer.

The significance of restorative justice in schools

Este artículo trata de abordar el uso dominante de los enfoques punitivos a los problemas de comportamiento en las escuelas, y se propone un enfoque de justicia restaurativa. En los Estados Unidos, y especialmente después de 1994, las políticas de tolerancia cero han transformado los problemas de control social en una crisis de graves proporciones. Estas políticas («tolerancia cero») parece que han servido, principalmente, para sólo marginalizar más a los chicos latinos y afroamericanos y para agravar, a largo plazo, los retos políticos, económicos y sociales del país. Sobre la base de las tradiciones de justicia restaurativa internacionales y la experiencia de los pueblos indígenas en los Estados Unidos, el objetivo de la justicia restaurativa es devolver a la víctima a la situación anterior al delito y reconstruir la relación del agresor tanto con el ofendido como con la comunidad. El artículo establece los principios que rigen un proceso de restauración, así como sus componentes esenciales.

Sleep and school education

Sleep has emerged in the past decades as a key process for memory consolidation and restructuring. Given the universality of sleep across cultures, the need to reduce educational inequality, the low implementation cost of a sleep-based pedagogy, and its global scalability, it is surprising that the potential of improved sleep as a means of enhancing school education has remained largely unexploited. Students of various socio-economic status often suffer from sleep deficits. In principle, the optimization of sleep schedules both before and after classes should produce large positive benefits for learning. Here we review the biological and psychological phenomena underlying the cognitive role of sleep, present the few published studies on sleep and learning that have been performed in schools, and discuss potential applications of sleep to the school setting. Translational research on sleep and learning has never seemed more appropriate.

INFORMATION, LIBRARIES AND DEVELOPMENT Address at the Inauguration of-Manifests Central American Seminar on IFLA / Unesco Public Libraries, School Libraries and the Internet ‖. 26 to 29 March 2007

It is a matter of pride that Costa Rica and the National University, both with extensive experience in the development of library we are the headquarters for the first time, an event that brings together three different activities on this theme: the Central American Seminar, Workshops and Standing Committee of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, which will strengthen the monitoring and Manifestos on Public Libraries, Schools and Internet IFLA-UNESCO. Thank you very much to all of you for allowing us this honor and a double thanks to the comrades of the UNA university who took the initiative and made this opportunity possible.