Lacan and Education Policy draws on the rich conceptual resources of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Using Lacan's four discourses Matthew Clarke offers a sophisticated critique of recent education policy and the neoliberal model of political economy within which it sits, including the ways in which education has been diminished and trivialised through the economistic and depoliticising moves of policy. Clarke articulates possibilities for thinking differently about education and education policy beyond the reductive narratives of neoliberalism. He argues that psychoanalytic theory is valuable, not so much for allowing us to see what education 'really is', but for offering insights into what prevents education from 'being', enabling us to shift our focus instead into the possibilities education offers as a space of 'becoming'. The book suggests possibilities for conceptualising and creating 'the other side' of education.

All areas of education policy and practice are driven by unconscious investments in ignorance, or idealised images of transformation of the individual, society and economy. The promise of fulfilment and associated threats of disappointment or destruction tend to dominate conscious accounts of education. Other more vulnerable or unspeakable aspects of our engagements with education are covered over when we account for learning, and justify teaching as professionals, policy makers and researchers; but they leak out in slips, lapses, emphasis, paradox and contradiction. Freud’s account of resistance and repetition; Lacan’s theorisation of the role of language and desire; and Zizek’s elaboration of these ideas in a theory of ideology and enjoyment – all provide tools for exploring the vulnerable, uncomfortable and often surprising other side of education: the hidden, unconscious and unspoken desires that we invest in educational institutions and practices. This collection offers glimpses of this other side of education produced in empirical studies using a variety of methodological approaches: practice-based theoretical speculation, policy analysis, ethnography, interviews and free associative methods, as well as ideological critique of the field of critical educational practice and research. The book foregrounds political and unconscious aspects of investments in the fields of education and educational research. The chapters in this book were originally published as articles in Taylor and Francis journals.

This book aims to posit theory as a central component to the study of education and education policy. Providing clear, introductory entries into contemporary critical theories and their take up in education policy studies, the book offers a generative invitation to further reading, thought and exploration. Instead of prescribing how theory should be used, the contributors elaborate on a set of possibilities for researching and critiquing education policy. Education Policy and Contemporary Theory explores examples of how theoretical approaches generate a variety of questions for policy analysis, demonstrating the importance of theory as a necessary and inevitable resource for exploring and contesting various policy realms and dominant discourses. Each chapter provides a short overview of key aspects of a particular theory or perspective, followed by suggestions of methodological implications and recommended readings to extend the outlined ideas. Organized around two parts, the first section focuses on theorists while the second section looks at specific theories and concepts, with the intention that each part makes explicit the connection between theory and methodology in relation to education policy research. Each contribution is carefully written by established and emerging scholars in the field to introduce new scholars to theoretical concepts and policy questions, and to inspire, extend or challenge established policy researchers who may be considering working in new areas.

This is an introductory level text with emphasis on Lacan’s theoretical relationship to education and which uses Lacan’s theories as a springboard for a different educational discourse, one that forces us to assess inward rather than outward.

This unique collection of essays from researchers and teacher educators from around the world presents innovative approaches to education theory, critical policy analyses, de-colonializing reformulations of teacher education and a “standard of dissensus” for teacher education. This first volume from the International Teacher Education Research Collective (ITERC) illustrates common themes and problems in the politics of education, in particular, standardization, marketization, governance and policy in education, with both country-specific cases and generally formulated theoretical discussions. The book has three primary aims: to illustrate and critique the ethical, epistemological and political discourses shaping teacher education; to identify and unravel the entanglements of politics, knowledge and ethics in teacher education in a range of international settings; and to revitalize teacher education by proposing and exploring alternative modes of thought and practice. The volume contributes to further reflection and in-depth discussion in education, to the formulation of new areas for educational research and to critical resistance to hegemonic discourses of education. Making an important contribution to contemporary education discourse, this book is a useful guide for education researchers and theorists, teacher educators and postgraduate and higher degree research students in education.

The focus of this book is on building on current liberal understandings of democratic education as espoused in the ideas of SeylaBenhabib, Eamonnn Callan, Martha Nussbaum, Iris Marion Young and Amy Gutmann, and then examines its implications for pedagogical encounters, more specifically teaching and learning. In other words, pedagogical encounters premised on the idea of iterations (talking back) and reasonable and compassionate action are not enough to engender forms of human engagement that can open up new possibilities and perspectives. Drawing on the works of poststructuralist theorists, in particular the seminal thoughts of Jacques Derrida, Jacques Rancière, Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Lacan, Stanley Cavell, Maxine Greene, Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and Judith Butler, it is argued that a democratic education in becoming has the potential to rupture pedagogical encounters towards new beginnings on the basis that teachers and students can never know with certainty and completeness. Consequently, it is argued that teaching and learning ought to be associated with pedagogical activities in the making, more specifically a pedagogy out of bounds, in terms of which speech and action would remain positively free, sceptically critical, and responsibly vigilant – a matter of making teaching and learning more authentic so that students and teachers are provoked to see things as they could be otherwise through an enhanced form of ethical and political imagination. It is through pedagogical encounters out of bounds that relations between teachers and students stand a better chance of dealing with the strangeness and mysteries of unexpected, unfamiliar, and improbable action.

In the past decade, post-structural policy analysis in education has evolved, primarily focusing on disrupting dominant narratives about education policy research, development and implementation, and the aims and outcomes of the policy-research nexus. This book originates from an ‘Education Policy Analysis for a Complex World’ workshop held in conjunction with the University of British Columbia and sponsored by a Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Connection Grant. The workshop focused on one over-arching question: To what extent can post-structural theories offer innovative policy analyses, and contribute to new forms of policy development and implementation? The chapters in this collection provide responses from the participants of the workshop, and serve as illustrations of the broad range of scholarship that may be identified as post-structural policy analysis. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Studies in Education.

Presenting cutting-edge research from around the world, this book demonstrates how critical pedagogy is shaped by social-political contexts and ideological constructions of knowledge and power. The edited collection brings together a global author team using critical pedagogy to synthesise political and theoretical ambitions with the complex realities of classroom practice. The book addresses two key questions: what does critical pedagogy look like in educative work with young people around the globe? And how can critical praxis enacted in schools and classrooms push the core tenets of critical pedagogy so that they are more responsive to the complex power relations of the real world? Bringing together chapters that create a nuanced understanding of some of the challenges involved in the intersection of ideologies, systems and institutions, the authors offer a set of resources which respond to claims that critical pedagogy is often little more than emancipatory rhetoric with limited practical application. Spanning almost two decades of pedagogical thinking, practice, outreach, community development and activism, this robust volume will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduate students investigating critical education, curriculum, creative thinking and pedagogies.

This volume presents a distinctively Lacanian psychoanalytic approach to the theorizing, understanding, and critique of curriculum in higher education. In this work, the author presents the main theories of curriculum in the current discourse, develops a notion of critique, and applies it to existing global guidelines for curriculum reform. Relying on the architectonic of the subject as developed across the work of Jacques Lacan—expressed in the registers of the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real—the author provides a new approach to understanding curriculum in terms of the psychic dynamics that explain its workings.

Research on Becoming an English Teacher considers the process of becoming a teacher from a variety of perspectives, where the ambition is to consider how people can change themselves within that process. By pursuing an approach influenced by the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, the authors consider practitioner research as an approach to professional and personal development, and how it might be understood as a strategy within both teaching and teacher education. Taking English teaching as the main example, this book explores the processes and discourses that shape the experience of English teaching in schools. Chapters consider the origin and development of English education, practice and theory in English education, the process of becoming a teacher in school-based environments and creating an analytical space for learning narratives in teacher education. This book will be of interest to academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of teacher education, curriculum studies, educational theory and educational psychology.