In the beginning of the 1990s a renewed Europe-wide debate about the quality of vocational education and training (VET) emerged. Since then a strong and growing interest in questions of quality combined with the claim of a systematic enhancement and assurance of quality in the area of VET is visible. The focus on quality has led to a significant change in VET systems. Increasing outcome orientations as well as a tendency towards greater standardisation evolve as organising ideas (Ball 2003: 216), which include the macro-, meso- and micro-level of VET. In line with this shift, the VET system in Austria has been subject of comprehensive reform measures in recent years. Curricular restructuring, implementing quality management systems in schools and changing demands on teachers mark central cornerstones of this process, which aims to serve the development of quality of VET.

The research interest of this paper is focused on investigating quality of VET from a dispositive analytical perspective. The ‘dispositive’ (le dispositive) is a key conception in Michel Foucault’s theoretical work (e.g. 1980, 2007). He describes it as ‘a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, law, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic proportions – in short: the said as much as the unsaid’ (Foucault 1980: 194). Furthermore Foucault understands dispositive as ‘the transversal set of connections between these components’ (Raffnsøe et al. 2016: 278).

A dispositive analysis is an extension of a discourse analytical way of proceeding and is regarded as ‘a potent analytical approach to social reality’ (Raffnsøe et al. 2016: 274). Discourse, in the sense in which it is used here, does not conform to common usage of this term. According to Foucault (2010: 49) discourses are understood as supra-individual ‘practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak’. They constitute and (re)structure reality by (re)producing knowledge. Discourses are previous to the actions of single subjects and establish the possibilities for any given statement (Lynch 2014: 122). Hence, they are performative and powerful. The basic research interest is to determine the relationship between discursively imparted knowledge about quality in VET and the practical effects of this knowledge or, in other words, to identify the network which can be assembled between the quality discourse, institutions, laws, objects and subjects, which are acting in this field.

Accordingly to the theoretical background, this study aims to ascertain which ‘real’ effects result from discursively conveyed knowledge structures if they become effective for collective or individual action. The crucial purpose of the project is to investigate the powerful relation between the quality discourse in VET, materialised quality practices and specific forms of subjectivation of VET teachers. Which self-understandings are articulated by teachers, on what elements of the dispositive are they referring to and in what way and to what extent preforms the quality dispositive teachers’ self-conceptions?

To answer the research questions, it is necessary to split the analysis in three parts: First of all a discourse analysis is carried out, to detect how quality in VET is negotiated on a discursive level: how is the current understanding of quality characterised, which ‘truths’ and rationalities have been entrenched in the VET area, and which logics and technologies are brought into play to solve the problem of lacking quality? For the specification of the methodical procedure the knowledge-sociological discourse analysis by Keller (2013, 2018) is used to investigate scientific and expert literature on quality of VET. In the second analytical step objectivations of discursive processes are examined. Objectivations are materialisations of regimes of knowledge and ‘truth’ which are produced in and through practices, e.g. observable action outcomes, policies, rituals, artefacts and so on – in short: objectivised knowledge. Through a document analysis of guidelines, handouts, documented procedures, feedback tools etc., the discursive effects of these objectivations are investigated to find out in what way the quality discourse is reproduced or modified through these documents. Finally, forms of subjectivation of teachers in vocational secondary schools are placed into relationship with the quality discourse and its objectivations. Dispositives establish not only the conditions of existence for discursive formations and their material objectifications, they also produce particular modes of subjectivations, i. e. they create possible self-conceptions and self-perceptions of individuals and consequently convey identity (Bührmann & Schneider 2007: 30). To examine different forms of subjectivation of VET teachers and to relate them with the quality dispositive the method of narrative interviews is applied. Narrations are discursive forms of ‘speaking of one’s self’ (Bender & Eck 2014: 12). Yet, they are technologies of the self and are entangled in dispositives. In the act of narrating subjects are (re)constituted. Through this analysis the mechanisms of a specific network of power can be reconstructed, which inter alia conduct the possible modes of subjectivation of individuals which act within this network. At the same time, strategies and attempts towards a disentanglement of this network of power may appear (ibid.: 9).

Findings of the dispositive analysis indicate that teachers integrate the requirement of being centrally responsible for quality work into their professional self-understanding almost smoothly. They internalise a ‘dynamic of permanent self-optimization’ (Bröckling 2016: xvii), which serves as an essential anchor point of their self-understandings. The dispositive analysed offers the prospect of extended and increased autonomy as well as extensive spaces for action and freedom. Contrary to this enabling vocabulary, teachers experience themselves as increasingly observed, monitored and controlled subjects whose scope for responsibility and action is strongly contoured and restricted. To be transparent is interpreted as an obligation to legitimately be able to provide information at any time, combined with a permanent obligation to document. The teachers problematise an erosion of authority as well as a restriction of pedagogical freedom. They refer to an experienced limitation of their professional self. In the quality dispositive a momentous transformation of the concept of ‘responsibility’ (Biesta 2010) becomes apparent. It addresses forms of accountability which demand answers in predefined categories and orient and legitimise actions along these categories. Subjectivation of teachers takes place within a network that makes ‘stubborn initiatives’, the emergence of ‘undefined spaces’ and transgressions less likely. It occurs in a quality dispositive that limits responsibility, channels creative potentials in a certain way, and ultimately tends to fix the dynamic and counteract the emergence of something that is ‘creative-new’.

Ball, S. J. (2003). The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of Education Policy, 18 (2), pp. 215-228. Bender, D. & Eck, S. (2014). Studentische Subjektivierungsweisen im Machtnetz des Bologna-Prozesses: Eine Dispositivanalyse narrativer Interviews, in: M. Nonhoff et al. (ed.) Diskursforschung: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, Band 2: Methoden und Analysepraxis. Perspektiven auf Hochschulreformdiskurse, pp. 4-31. Bielefeld: Transcript. Biesta, G. (2010). Good education in an age of measurement: Ethics, politics, democracy. Boulder/Colorado: Paradigm Publishers. Bröckling, U. (2016). The Entrepreneurial Self: Fabricating a New Type of Subject. London et al.: Sage. Bührmann, A. D. & Schneider, W. (2007). More than Just a Discursive Practice? Conceptual Principles and Methodological Aspects of Dispositif Analysis [51 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 8 (2), Art. 28. Web: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0702281 [15.10.2018]. Foucault, M. (1980). ‘The Confessions of the Flesh’, in: M. Foucault (ed.) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, pp. 194-228. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (2007). Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977-1978. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Foucault, M. (2010). The Archeology of Knowledge: And the discourse on language. New York: Vintage Books. Keller, R. (2013). Doing Discourse Research: An Introduction for Social Scientists. Los Angeles et al.: Sage. Keller, R. (2018). The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse: An Introduction, in: R. Keller, A.-K. Hornidge & W. J. Schünemann (ed.) The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse: Investigating the Politics of Knowledge and Meaning-Making, pp. 16-47. New York: Routledge. Lynch, R. A. (2014). Discourse, in: L. Lawlor & J. Nale (ed.) The Cambridge Foucault Lexicon, pp. 120-125. New York: Cambridge University Press. Raffnsøe, S., Gudmand-Høyer, M. & Thaning, M. S. (2016). Foucault’s Dispositive: The Perspicacity of Dispositive Analytics in Organizational Research. Organization, 23 (2), pp. 272-297.