Student Assessment as a Disciplinary and Governmental Technique in a Neoliberal Higher Education Context.

Author(s):

Rille Raaper(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

22. Research in Higher Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

22 SES 06 B, Policy, Management and Governance in Higher Education

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-03

15:30-17:00

Room:

B021 Anfiteatro

Chair:

Liudvika Leisyte

Contribution

This study aims to explore the ways in which assessment is experienced and understood by academics and students in a neoliberal higher education (HE) context. The study aims to bring in the voice of teaching staff, students and policies from two European universities: the University of Glasgow and Tallinn University. The research will address the questions: What are the dominant rationalities of student assessment in HE? How do power relationships relate to dominant rationalities? How are assessment practices constructed at universities? How do lecturers and students experience assessment practices and themselves as assessors or assessed?

The theoretical framework for this research is guided by Michel Foucault’s concepts of neoliberalism, governmentality, discipline and techniques of the self. Foucault (1980) argues that all practices exist within ’certain regimes of rationalities’. Every society has its dominant ’regime of truth’: those discourses it accepts and makes function as true (Foucault, 1976). Furthermore, he sees all human relationships as being underpinned by relationships of power (Foucault, 1983), where the self is influenced by what he calls techniques of domination and techniques of the self (Foucault, 1997). Discipline is a specific technique of power that ’makes’ people by approaching them both as objects and instruments of its exercise (Foucault, 1975). In addition, Foucault (1982, p. 225) sees techniques of the self as being important in making it possible for individuals to “influence a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, immortality”. This study follows these aspects of Foucault’s key arguments and considers disciplinary and emancipatory techniques as being present in neoliberal higher education contexts.

Higher education institutions exist in a context where accountability and market-driven demands are fundamental organising principles of institutions (Jankowski & Provezis, 2012). This context can be described as resting on performance-orientation, standards and auditing (Davies & Bansel, 2010). These aspects function ‘as a kind of panoptical tower’, making people ‘watchdogs’ of their own actions (Engebretsen et al, 2013). Furthermore, neoliberal governmentality has a tendency to make people feel that they are free and autonomous (Olssen, 2005) while, in actuality, attempting to govern their actions. Student assessment within this HE context exist in what Kvale (2007) argues to be a field of contradictions, surrounded by various and competing meanings, subjects and functions. In the context of neoliberal globalised higher education contexts, assessment needs to support learning while also certifying outcomes, providing data for quality assurance purposes (Yorke, 2008), guiding developments in teaching and curricula (Suskie, 2009), and – if taking a Foucauldian perspective – acting potentially to ‘discipline’ students (Harman & McDowell, 2011).

Assessment thus involves a clear element of power (Barnett, 2007). Foucault (1975, p. 182) sees examinations as „a normalising gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to punish“; examinations make individuals visible and help to differentiate between them and to judge them. As a result, an examination transforms students’ subjectivity: it renders the student as „a describable, analysable object“ (Foucault, 1975, p. 190). Teachers themselves are also subject to power and those who seek to confront the dominant perspectives of assessment may experience resistance and obstruction (Tan, 2004). As assessment as a ‘power of measurement’ is embedded into our educational systems (Crossouard, 2010), it also raises a discussion about student assessment as a disciplinary and governmental technique in neoliberal universities.

Method

This research is underpinned by a postmodern paradigm within which qualitative research methods are applied. Guided by postmodernism, the study rejects totalising narratives and universal concepts and emphasises “specific contextual power relations by observing the processes of meaning-making that function within specific situations” (Powers, 2007, p. 24). As truth is understood as ‘discursive construction’, reality can be reached only within discourses and therefore discourse becomes the key object of analysis (Jorgensen & Phillips, 2002). The analytic framework of discourse analysis in this study is guided by Foucault’s (1969, 1970, 1972) and Fairclough’s (1992, 2002, 2003) work. The study focuses on case studies of two European universities with different historical, political and structural backgrounds. The University of Glasgow was founded in 1451 and is the fourth oldest university in English-speaking world. There are approximately 24 000 students studying at the undergraduate and the postgraduate level from which around 26% are full-time international students. The University has 6197 staff members, including 2533 members of academic staff. (University of Glasgow, 2013). Tallinn University was founded in 2005 as a result of bringing together several HE institutions in Tallinn. It is the third biggest university in Estonia and there are approximately 10 200 students studying at the undergraduate and the postgraduate levels, from which 2.7% were full-time EU or international students. The University has 1002 members of staff, including 461 academic staff. (Tallinn University, 2012) In addition to assessment-related document analysis, interviews and focus groups are being conducted with teaching staff, experts and students in both universities. Influenced by Tanggaard (2009), the interview is seen as being polyphonic, where all language used in the interview situation is embedded in social discourses “in which there are many voices and discourses that cross each other simultaneously to produce knowledge about personal narratives” and where the interview functions as “a setting for the negotiation of meaning in social conversation” (Tanggaard, 2009, p.1500). Additionally, focus group as a research method takes place in the context of group dynamics (Frey & Fontana, 1993). Morgan (1996) argues that focus group is a method of data collection, where the participants have an opportunity and a need to query each other and to explain themselves to each other. However, focus group interactions may also reveal processes of domination within the groups, construction of the Other, tendencies toward normative discourse, and conflicts and arguments within the focus groups (Smithson, 2000).

Expected Outcomes

This presentation will explain the theoretical and methodological framework applied in the research, and it will introduce the preliminary results of the research conducted in the University of Glasgow and Tallinn University including assessment policy analysis and interviews with teaching staff and policymakers. The results aim to reveal the competing meanings and subject positions created by assessment policies and regulations but also to introduce how academics and policymakers perceive assessment and their own subject positions within the neoliberal HE contexts. Finally, the presentation will address the strengths and challenges of applying Foucauldian framework in assessment studies.

References

Barnett, R. (2007). Assessment in higher education: an impossible mission? In D. Boud & N. Falchikov (Eds.), Rethinking Assessment in Higher Education. Learning for the Longer Term. Oxon: Routledge. Davies, B., & Bansel, P. (2010). Governmentality and academic work. Shaping the hearts and minds of academic workers. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 26(3), 5-20. Engebretsen, E., Heggen, K., & Eilertsen, H. A. (2012). Accreditation and power: a discourse analysis of a new regime of governance in higher education. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 56(4), 401-417. Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin Group. Foucault, M. (1976). Truth and power. In J. D. Faubion (Ed.), Power. Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984 (Vol. 3, pp. 111-133). London: Penguin Group. Foucault, M. (1980). Question of method. In J. D. Faubion (Ed.), Power. Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984 (Vol. 3, pp. 223-238). London: Penguin Group. Foucault, M. (1982). Technologies of the self. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), Ethics. Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984 (Vol. 1, pp. 223-251). London: Penguin Group. Foucault, M. (1983). The risks of security. In J. D. Faubion (Ed.), Power. Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984 (Vol. 3, pp. 365-381). London: Penguin Group. Foucault, M. (1997). Subjectivity and truth. In S. Lotringer (Ed.), The Politics of Truth (pp. 147-167). Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). Harman, K., & McDowell, L. (2011). Assessment talk in Design: the multiple purposes of assessment in HE. Teaching in Higher Education, 16(1), 41-52. Jankowski, N., & Provezis, S. (2012). Neoliberal ideologies, governmentality and the academy: an examination of accountability through assessment and transparency. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1-13. Kvale, S. (2007). Contradictions of assessment for learning in institutions of higher learning. In D. Boud & N. Falchikov (Eds.), Rethinking Assessment in Higher Education. Oxon: Routledge. Morgan, D. L. (1996). Focus groups. Annual Review of Sociology, 22, 129-152. Olssen, M. (2005). Foucault, educational research and the issue of autonomy. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 37(3), 365-387. Powers, P. (2007). The philosophical foundations of Foucaultian discourse analysis. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines, 1(2), 18-34. Tan, K. H. K. (2004). Does student self‐assessment empower or discipline students? Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 29(6), 651-662. Tanggaard, L. (2009). The research interview as a dialogical context for the production of social life and personal narratives. Qualitative Inquiry, 15(9), 1498-1515. Yorke, M. (2008). Grading Student Achievement in Higher Education. Signals and Shortcomings. Oxon: Routledge

Author Information

Rille Raaper (presenting / submitting)

University of Glasgow

Glasgow

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