Character and resilience in English education policy: social mobility, self-governance and biopolitics

ABSTRACT

In recent years, character education has enjoyed a resurgence of interest in different national contexts. In England, the publication of a ‘Character and Resilience Manifesto’ by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility in 2014 put character education on the government’s agenda, primarily as a means to improve social mobility. Drawing on Foucault’s notion of ‘problematisation’, this article examines how ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’ are constructed and legitimised through expert knowledges in the Manifesto. We find that by drawing on evidence from psychology and behavioural economics, ‘character’ is predominantly understood as a set of skills and dispositions to be developed in order to boost individual labour market outcomes and wider economic growth. Hence, social mobility is framed in (increasingly) biological and psychological terms following a logic of human capital enhancement. Contextualising the findings in Foucault’s work on ‘governmentality’ and ‘biopolitics’, we argue that the call for character education is part of a wider intensification of the demand for self-government and self-investment—a demand that is particularly pronounced for those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

KEYWORDS:

• Character education
• biopolitics
• governmentality
• education policy
• social mobility
• resilience

Acknowledgments

We are extremely grateful to Prof Carol Vincent, Prof Stephen Ball and Dr Naomi Hodgson for their thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this article. We are also indebted to several members of the Centre for Sociology of Education and Equity, at UCL Institute of Education, for their insightful comments on an earlier draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Character.org (formerly CEP) (see character.org) directs and certifies character education initiatives in schools, workplaces, sports and families. It runs the National schools of character programme, which validates schools’ character education initiatives based on the ‘11 principles of effective character education’ guide devised by Tom Lickona (1996).

2. We are also aware of a further use of this term within Foucault’s work, that of the reflexive (ethical) individual. However, this is not relevant for our specific purposes here.

3. The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility was formed in 2011 and declares as its aim to ‘discuss and promote the cause of social mobility; to raise issues of concern and help inform policy makers and opinion formers’ (http://www.socialmobilityappg.co.uk). Since 2015, its secretariat has been hosted by the Sutton Trust.

4. CentreForum was renamed Education Policy Institute in 2016. It describes itself as an ‘independent, impartial and evidence-based research institute that aims to promote high-quality education outcomes for all children and young people, regardless of social backgrounds’ (https://epi.org.uk).

5. Character Counts describes itself as a social research and innovation company. Its director Jen Lexmond, one of the authors of the Character and Resilience Manifesto, previously worked for think tank Demos on projects related to character, parenting and social mobility and is the author of a range of reports (seeLexmond, Bazalgette, & Margo, 2010; Lexmond & Grist, 2011; Lexmond & Reeves, 2009).

6. According to Gutman and Schoon (2013), the term ‘non-cognitive skills’, ‘refers to a set of attitudes, behaviours and strategies that are thought to underpin success in school and at work, such as motivation, perseverance, and self-control’ (p.3). The authors highlight that there is considerable disagreement about ways of differentiating between and classifying this ‘very broad range of characteristics’ (p.8).

7. See, for example Humphrey’s (2013) discussion of the origins of the notion of social and emotional skills in theories on multiple intelligences. In her analysis of the CRM, Burman (2018) highlights the imprecise use of psychological concepts, such as ‘resilience’ and the exaggerated claims attached to their impact on educational and other outcomes.

8. In several papers cited in the CRM, Heckman advances this paradigm rejecting the centrality of general intelligence (‘g’) in personality psychology and human capital theory for predicting behaviour and socio-economic outcomes (see, for exampleHeckman, Humphries, & Kautz, 2014). Problems of differentiating and measuring personality traits are largely glossed over in Heckman’s work and solved, in a behaviourist fashion, by measuring non-cognitive skills in terms of behaviours and actions (see, for exampleHeckman, 2011b).

9. The question whether and how ‘non-cognitive’ skills can be altered is largely ignored in the CRM. While citing Gutman & Schoon’s (2013) literature review, the CRM omits their cautionary claims that ‘robust evidence of a causal relationship is limited’ (Gutman & Schoon, 2013, p. 3). Furthermore, the Manifesto brushes aside caveats regarding the possibility to develop non-cognitive skills through interventions. According to Gutman & Schoon (2013, p. 3) there is evidence that this may be possible for some skills, but not for others.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Konstanze Spohrer

Konstanze Spohrer is a Senior Lecturer in Education at Liverpool Hope University, specialising in Sociology of Education. Her research interests are in inequalities and social justice in education, education policy and social theory. In her research, she is particularly interested in examining the interplay between neo-liberal discourses on social mobility and inequality, educational practices and young people’s subjectivities. Recent publications and research have focussed on discourses of ‘aspiration’ and debates and enactments of character education.

Patrick L.J. Bailey

Patrick L.J. Bailey is a Lecturer in Education Policy at UCL Institute of Education. He specialises in critical policy scholarship, with research interests in public service reform and new governance arrangements in education. He is interested in the relationships between education policy, inequality and social class, and post-structural approaches to policy analysis. Alongside his current research on the public discourse and enactment of character education in England, he is also researching the marketisation of teacher education and the emergence of post-Fordist teacher identities and practices.