Session Information
19 SES 03, Learners' Perspectives of Performativity and Identity Construction (part 1)
Symposium, continued in 19 SES 04
Time:
2009-09-28
14:00-15:30
Room:
JUR, HS 17
Chair:
Bob Jeffrey
Discussant:
Patricia Thomson
Contribution
The development of policies of performativity in education across Europe is pervasive, if differentiated. Performativity is a mode of regulation that employs judgements, comparisons and displays as a means of incentive, control, and bringing about change – based on rewards and sanctions. The value of an individual is measured within that field of judgement. This field of judgement within education is contested as primary teachers struggle to maintain humanist relations and to reconstruct the performativity discourse (Ball 1998). It is used to drive up standards and as a means of achieving social justice but it also constructs both professional and learner identities through its practices although each policy situation and context is mediated and reconstructed to some extent through agency.
The authors of the papers in this symposium have researched the experiences of learners as they absorb, confront, manage and manipulate the construction of their identities as performative learners across Europe and by contrast in some cases the kinds of preferred learner identities made available, such as that through creative teaching and learning. (170)
Method
The ethnographic approach involved in these papers includes: reviewing the relevant policies; carrying out extensive fieldwork involving the recording of observational fieldnotes concerning school organisation, teaching and learning; the collection of relevant school documentation and the tape recording of conversations with management, teachers, learners and other relevant personnel. Data was then coded and further categorised, refined and saturated using a grounded theory approach in which negative comparisons were applied and sensitizing theories were used to produce our final analysis (Glaser and Strauss 1967). (83)
Expected Outcomes
The Wulf et al. paper shows the relevance of rituals to the development of performative identities and the Jeffrey paper shows how primary learners take on responsibility for their own performance. The Alexander paper shows us how 11-13 learners develop ‘age identities’ related to their academic success and the Beach paper indicates that success is limited by class. The Valente research uses secondary school students to investigate the impact of teachers’ evaluation practices on their progress and the Korp paper shows how teachers limit vocational students’ success. The Mick paper gives an insight into how children with different cultural and social backgrounds manage these performative situations and the consequences for their social identities. The Borgnakke paper shows how students cope with extensive evaluation and testing and the dilemmas they face whilst the Rea et al paper shows the dilemmas felt by students when offered creative practices in a performative culture.
References
Ball, S. J. (1998) Performativity and fragmentation in 'Postmodern Schooling'. J. Carter. Postmodernity and Fragmentation of Welfare. (London, Routledge): 187-203. Glaser, B. G. and A. Strauss (1967) The Discovery of Grounded Theory. (Chicago, Aldine).
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