Abstract
Educational reform and reformist research are not merely about school improvement. They embody a field of cultural practices that constitutes the objects of schooling – the teacher who administers the reforms to the child and the distinctions and differentiations about who the child is and should be. Our interest is in the rules and standards of reason assembled through the cultural practices of school reform. Reason is a cultural practice functioning to enact a change in the conditions of people but also invests people with particular capacities and capabilities. This investiture of capacities and capabilities produces particular human kinds or categories of the determinant qualities of the individuals schools administer. Using studies of educational governance and social inclusion/exclusion in Europe and on US educational reform, the discussion focuses on the overlapping practices of system management and curriculum reforms that map different human kinds. One human kind is the child as a lifelong learner, an individual whose qualities entail actively and flexibly participating in communities through problem-solving strategies. The characteristics and qualities of the lifelong learner are differentiated from those who do not embody the norms of participation –the child left behind. The study of the systems of reason that govern the objects of reflection and rectification in school reforms is a strategy to consider the politics of reform, change, and social inclusion and exclusion.
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Popkewitz, T.S., Lindblad, S. Historicizing the Future: Educational Reform, Systems of Reason, and the Making of Children Who are the Future Citizens. Journal of Educational Change 5, 229–247 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:JEDU.0000041042.53119.f5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:JEDU.0000041042.53119.f5