Heather Brunskell-Evans When the shift hits the critical fan: A Foucauldian analysis

Academic Practice as an Object of Policy  The state has acquired new powers over HE  What are they?  Numerous policies relate to institutional practice  What messages do they portray?

Policy Discourses and Local Enactments Using learning and teaching as an example  How are policies reconstructed and enacted by academic staff?  How do students interpret and position themselves in relation to teaching and learning strategies?

Politics of Widening Participation  The re-configuration of learners and the learning environment  Learning to be, learning to do, learning to work learning to learn  The individualisation of responsibility

The Politics of Widening Participation Policy informed by neo-liberal assumptions:  The self-maximising, self- interested individual  Unproblematic connection between personal investment in education and the rewards obtained in paid work

Social Control Through Normalisation  Competency–based approaches to curriculum and learning  Compliance to standards  Push for on-going improvement of outcome as measured by student access, participation and retention, etc.

Broadening or Narrowing Education?  Reforms can be seen t consist of regulatory, supervisory and controlling mechanisms with regard to our own practices and the kinds of knowledge/learning we provide for the students  Lack of critical thought

Foucault and Governmentality  Social control in liberal democracy through normalisation  An inter-locking of the ‘tutor- subject’ and ‘student-subject’ as a local enacting of policy discourse