Disciplinary regimes of ‘care’ and complementary alternative education

Abstract

In schools, the notion of ‘care is often synonymous with welfare and disciplinary regimes. Drawing on Foucault, and a study of alternative education (AE) across the UK, and looking in depth at two cases of complementary AE, we identify three types of disciplinary regimes at work in schools: (1) dominant performative reward and punishment, (2) team-building and (3) therapeutic. We argue that while all three regimes aim to steer identified students back to the norm, the two complementary approaches that we saw avoided the narrow instrumental behaviourist approaches of the dominant pattern. In so doing, they also opened up wider horizons of possibility and ways to be and become.

Keywords:

• classroom/school-based research
• discourse analysis/semiotics
• Foucault
• inclusive education
• inequality/social exclusion in education
• youth/adolescence

Additional information

Funding

The Prince’s Trust funded the project.

Notes on contributors

Pat Thomson

Pat Thomson, PhD PSM, is Professor of Education, Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies (faculties of Arts and Social Sciences) and Director of the Centre for Arts, Creativity and Literacies in the School of Education, The University of Nottingham. Her research focuses on equitable and creative pedagogies in schools, communities, galleries and museums. She blogs about doctoral and research education on patthomson.net, Email: tweets as @ThomsonPat. A full list of publications and research funding can be found on https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/education/people/patricia.thomson

Jodie Pennacchia

Jodie Pennachia is an ESRC-funded doctoral researcher in the Schools of Sociology and Social Policy and Education. Her PhD focuses on the academicisation of schools in a Midlands city. She was the researcher on the project reported in this paper.