Between student voice-based assessment and teacher-student relationships: teachers’ responses to ‘techniques of power’ in schools

Abstract

This paper draws upon Foucault’s problematisation of governmentality analysis to explore teacher interviews from Australian secondary schools, where student voice was ‘enacted’ within a teacher assessment reform strategy. By bringing teacher voices into relation with theory, it illustrates how the current ‘sociality of performativity’ is situating student voice-based assessment initiatives as power apparatuses of teacher surveillance that shape teacher-student relationships. The analysis portrays teachers’ responses to such ‘techniques of power’, employing forms of auditable commodification, physical proximity, and reflective practice as a means of managing student voice ‘risk’. In so doing, the teachers relegated teacher-student relationships to the margins, struggling to profess an ethic of care; paradoxically disadvantaging students through voice initiatives intended to advance them. Demonstrating how affective fundamentals are eclipsed by performative-invested practices, the analysis highlights the discursive policy contestations of rapport and performance that should be taken into consideration in future implementations of student voice-based assessment initiatives.

Keywords:

• Assessment
• ethic of care
• student voice
• teacher-student relationships
• governmentality

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all the teachers who generously gave of their time and openly shared their experiences and thoughts with me.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Numerous nations, including the UK and the US incorporate student voice-based assessment instruments with the intention to enhance the teaching and learning processes in schools (e.g., GOV.UK, 2019; Steinberg and Donaldson 2016).

2 The panopticon (Foucault 1991) captures a physical and social space created for the observation and regulation of individuals’ activities. It is based on Bentham’s architectural design of a prison (1791)—utilised to monitor individuals (with them seen at any time but not seeing the guards or knowing whether they are under scrutiny). Foucault’s argument also applies to more figurative and nonvisual forms of surveillance. Specifically, the post-panoptic surveilling space is broadly seen as blurry, boundary-less, and ‘liquid’ space no longer governed by an autocrat, rather it is filtered through (in)visible and ‘democratised’ structures (e.g., Lyon, Haggerty and Ball 2014).

3 An online system that reports data from the annual National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) standardised tests, accompanied by up-to-date information such as schools’ missions and finance.

4 The My School website reports one of the schools has an enrolment of 1829 students, with over 60 per cent from non-English speaking background. The school is relatively socio-economically advantaged according to its Australian Index of Community Social Educational Advantage (ICSEA) of 1,095 (where the ‘average’ is set at 1,000; schools with an index below 1,000 are relatively disadvantaged, and schools with an index above 1,000 are relatively advantaged; see ACARA, 2015). The second school has an enrolment of 279 students, with 20 per cent from a language background other than English. This school is relatively socioeconomically disadvantaged, having an ICSEA index of 994.

5 The scale included four questions: ‘Do you feel that your teacher respects you?’; ‘If you walked into class upset, how concerned would your teacher be?’; ‘When your teacher asks how you are doing, how often do you feel that your teacher is really interested in your answer?’; ‘How excited would you be to have this teacher again?’

Additional information

Funding

I would like to thank the Faculty of Education at Monash University for the financial support (Innovations grant, 2019).