Michel de Certeau, everyday life and policy cultures: the case of parent engagement in education policy

Abstract

This paper draws on theoretical insights from Michel de Certeau to formulate a response to questions of whether, and in what ways, poststructural policy analysis can ‘transcend critique to offer potential grounds for alternative social and political strategies in education’. The paper offers a discussion of how Certeau’s concern with how policies ‘work on’ everyday cultures and everyday cultures ‘work on’ policies, might speak to education policy analysts in useful ways. Taking the case of parent–school engagement in education policy as an example, I explore how Certeau’s commitment to policy work founded on an ethical demand for heterogeneity and a recognition of complicity offers fertile ground for understanding, unsettling and potentially remaking policy agendas, their enactments and lived effects. I argue that in order to move beyond critique we must first accept a position within its gaze, and to ask how policy might be put to use as a means of recognizing rather than regulating the subjects, practices and relations of culture.

Keywords:

• educational policy
• ethnography
• parent school engagement
• philosophy of education
• poststructural/postmodern/critical theory

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges with appreciation the support of this research by the NSW Parents' Council, Council of Catholic Schools Parents, and the NSW Federation of Parents’ & Citizens’ Associations.

Notes

1. Ahearne’s use of the term ‘popular culture’, as is the case with other contemporary scholars of the work of Michel de Certeau, refers not to the consumer cultures of contemporary societies, but rather ‘more broadly to cultures emerging from, imposed upon or appropriated by “popular” classes as variously distinguished from counter-posited elites’ (Ahearne, 2011: 422).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sue Saltmarsh

Sue Saltmarsh is Associate Professor of Educational Studies at the Australian Catholic University. Her research is informed by poststructuralist theories of subjectivity and culture, and she has undertaken a range of ethnographic, social semiotic and discourse analytic studies across early childhood, primary, secondary and tertiary educational settings. Her work focuses primarily on the connections between economic discourse, cultural practices and subjectivities. Sue serves on the National Executive Committee of the Australian Association of Research in Education, and is Executive Director of the Asia–Pacific Education Research Association, and International Advisor to the Centre for Childhood Research and Innovation at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. She is a founding Editor of the journal Global Studies of Childhood and Reviews Editor for The Australian Educational Researcher.