Deborah Youdell - Böcker

"This research should make us extremely sceptical that the constant search for 'higher standards' and for ever-increasing achievement scores can do much more than put in place seemingly neutral devices for restratification." - Michael W Apple, John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin, MadisonRecent educational reforms have raised standards of achievement but have also resulted in growing inequalities based on 'race' and social class. School-by-school 'league tables' play a central role in the reforms. These have created an A-to-C economy where schools and teachers are judged on the proportion of students attaining five or more grades at levels A-to-C. To satisfy these demands schools are embracing new and ever more selective attempts to identify 'ability'. Their assumptions and practices embody a new IQism: a simple , narrow and regressive ideology of intelligence that labels working class and minority students as likely failures and justifies rationing provision to support those (often white, middle class boys) already marked for success. This book reports detailed research in two secondary schools showing the real costs of reform in terms of the pressures on teachers and the rationing of educational opportunity. It will be important reading for any teacher, researcher or policymaker with an interest in equality in education.

The work of Judith Butler has been at the forefront of both theorising the subject as a product of power and explicating possibilities for political alliances and action that are available to such subjects. Mobilising a range of philosophical resources from Hegel and Foucault to Lacan, Levinas Wittig and Arendt, her work has held a core concern with the way that the subject is made in terms of sex, gender and sexuality and has been an invaluable resource in the development of queer theory and thinking about queer practice. Butler’s scholarly work has been aimed primarily at a philosophical audience, yet her insights into the constitution, constraint and agency of subjects are profoundly political and have become invaluable resources in feminist, queer, anti-racist and anti-capitalist work. Over the last two decades she has been a major influence on research concerned with social justice in education and has changed the ways that classroom practices and relationships can be understood, transforming the way we think about both ‘teacher’ and ‘student’. This collection brings together some of the most outstanding work in education that has developed and applied Butler’s work to empirical questions, translating her philosophy for an education audience and providing compelling analyses of the ways that the subjects of education are made, how inequalities are produced in the minutiae of practice and how education’s subjectivated subjects can act politically. The chapters in this book were originally published as articles in Taylor and Francis journals.

What is the trouble with schools and why should we want to make ‘school trouble’?Schooling is implicated in the making of educational and social exclusions and inequalities as well as the making of particular sorts of students and teachers. For this reason schools are important sites of counter- or radical- politics. In this book, Deborah Youdell brings together theories of counter-politics and radical traditions in education to make sense of the politics of daily life inside schools and explores a range of resources for thinking about and enacting political practices that make ‘school trouble’.The book offers a solid introduction to the much-debated issues of ‘intersectionality’ and the limits of identity politics and the relationship between schooling and the wider policy and political context. It pieces together a series of tools and tactics that might destabilize educational inequalities by unsettling the knowledges, meanings, practices, subjectivities and feelings that are normalized and privileged in the ‘business as usual’ of school life. Engaging with curriculum materials, teachers’ lesson plans and accounts of their pedagogy, and ethnographic observations of school practices, the book investigates a range of empirical examples of critical action in school, from overt political action pursued by educators to day-to-day pedagogic encounters between teachers and students. The book draws on the work of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Chantel Mouffe, and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to make sense of these practices and identify the political possibilities for educators who refuse to accept the everyday injustices and wide-reaching social inequalities that face us.School Trouble appears at a moment of political and economic flux and uncertainty, and when the policy moves that have promoted markets and private sector involvement in education around the globe have been subject to intense scrutiny and critique. Against this backdrop, renewed attention is being paid to the questions of how politics might be rejuvenated, how societies might be made fair, and what role education might have in pursing this. This book makes an important intervention into this terrain. By exploring a politics of discourse, an anti-identity politics, a politics of feeling, and a politics of becoming, it shows how the education assemblage can be unsettled and education can be re-imagined. The book will be of interest to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students and scholars in the fields of education, sociology, cultural studies, and social and political science as well as to critical educators looking for new tools for thinking about their practice.

What is the trouble with schools and why should we want to make ‘school trouble’?Schooling is implicated in the making of educational and social exclusions and inequalities as well as the making of particular sorts of students and teachers. For this reason schools are important sites of counter- or radical- politics. In this book, Deborah Youdell brings together theories of counter-politics and radical traditions in education to make sense of the politics of daily life inside schools and explores a range of resources for thinking about and enacting political practices that make ‘school trouble’.The book offers a solid introduction to the much-debated issues of ‘intersectionality’ and the limits of identity politics and the relationship between schooling and the wider policy and political context. It pieces together a series of tools and tactics that might destabilize educational inequalities by unsettling the knowledges, meanings, practices, subjectivities and feelings that are normalized and privileged in the ‘business as usual’ of school life. Engaging with curriculum materials, teachers’ lesson plans and accounts of their pedagogy, and ethnographic observations of school practices, the book investigates a range of empirical examples of critical action in school, from overt political action pursued by educators to day-to-day pedagogic encounters between teachers and students. The book draws on the work of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Chantel Mouffe, and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to make sense of these practices and identify the political possibilities for educators who refuse to accept the everyday injustices and wide-reaching social inequalities that face us.School Trouble appears at a moment of political and economic flux and uncertainty, and when the policy moves that have promoted markets and private sector involvement in education around the globe have been subject to intense scrutiny and critique. Against this backdrop, renewed attention is being paid to the questions of how politics might be rejuvenated, how societies might be made fair, and what role education might have in pursing this. This book makes an important intervention into this terrain. By exploring a politics of discourse, an anti-identity politics, a politics of feeling, and a politics of becoming, it shows how the education assemblage can be unsettled and education can be re-imagined. The book will be of interest to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students and scholars in the fields of education, sociology, cultural studies, and social and political science as well as to critical educators looking for new tools for thinking about their practice.

In this groundbreaking text, Youdell and Lindley bring together cutting-edge research from the fields of biology and social science to explore the complex interactions between the diverse processes which impact on education and learning.Transforming the way we think about our students, our classrooms, teaching and learning, Biosocial Education draws on advances in genetics and metabolomics, epigenetics, biochemistry and neuroscience, to illustrate how new understandings of how bodies function can and must inform educational theory, policy and everyday pedagogical practices. Offering detailed insight into new findings in these areas and providing a compelling account of both the implications and limits of this new-found knowledge, the text confronts the mechanisms of interaction between multiple biological and social factors, and explores how educators might mobilize these ‘biosocial’ influences to enhance learning and enable each child to attain educational success.By seeking out transdisciplinary and multi-factor answers to the question of how education works and how children learn, this book lays the foundations for a step-change in the way we approach learning. It is an essential read for researchers, teachers and practitioners involved in educational policy and practice at any level.

In this groundbreaking text, Youdell and Lindley bring together cutting-edge research from the fields of biology and social science to explore the complex interactions between the diverse processes which impact on education and learning.Transforming the way we think about our students, our classrooms, teaching and learning, Biosocial Education draws on advances in genetics and metabolomics, epigenetics, biochemistry and neuroscience, to illustrate how new understandings of how bodies function can and must inform educational theory, policy and everyday pedagogical practices. Offering detailed insight into new findings in these areas and providing a compelling account of both the implications and limits of this new-found knowledge, the text confronts the mechanisms of interaction between multiple biological and social factors, and explores how educators might mobilize these ‘biosocial’ influences to enhance learning and enable each child to attain educational success.By seeking out transdisciplinary and multi-factor answers to the question of how education works and how children learn, this book lays the foundations for a step-change in the way we approach learning. It is an essential read for researchers, teachers and practitioners involved in educational policy and practice at any level.

The work of Judith Butler has been at the forefront of both theorising the subject as a product of power and explicating possibilities for political alliances and action that are available to such subjects. Mobilising a range of philosophical resources from Hegel and Foucault to Lacan, Levinas Wittig and Arendt, her work has held a core concern with the way that the subject is made in terms of sex, gender and sexuality and has been an invaluable resource in the development of queer theory and thinking about queer practice. Butler’s scholarly work has been aimed primarily at a philosophical audience, yet her insights into the constitution, constraint and agency of subjects are profoundly political and have become invaluable resources in feminist, queer, anti-racist and anti-capitalist work. Over the last two decades she has been a major influence on research concerned with social justice in education and has changed the ways that classroom practices and relationships can be understood, transforming the way we think about both ‘teacher’ and ‘student’. This collection brings together some of the most outstanding work in education that has developed and applied Butler’s work to empirical questions, translating her philosophy for an education audience and providing compelling analyses of the ways that the subjects of education are made, how inequalities are produced in the minutiae of practice and how education’s subjectivated subjects can act politically. The chapters in this book were originally published as articles in Taylor and Francis journals.

Looking across national contexts and drawing on ethnographic studies of schools in the UK and Australia, the book explores the implications of the contemporary education policy context and processes and practices inside schools for students as learners and for educational inequalities. The book uses tools offered by post-structural theory to read ethnographic data and show how the discourses that circulate inside schools at once mobilise and elide gender, sexuality, social class, ability, disability, race, ethnicity, religious and cultural belongings at the same time as they open up and close down 'who' students can be as learners. In demonstrating these processes the book offers new insights into how these 'truths' about students and learners are created and how they come to be bound so tightly to the educational inclusions, privileges and successes that some students enjoy and the exclusions, disadvantages and 'failures' that other students face.