Revising rationality: the use of ‘Nudge’ approaches in neoliberal education policy

Abstract

This article argues that the concept of rationality is undergoing significant revision in UK education policy-making, influenced by developments in several academic fields. This article focuses on the take up of behavioural economics in policy as one aspect of this revision of the concept of rationality, discussing how this has happened and its implications. Framed by a wider debate regarding the significance of a ‘crisis’ in neoliberal approaches to social change, behavioural economics suggests that a reliance on rational choice is insufficient and individuals need to be ‘nudged’ to make good choices. This revision and its impact on the subject of policy, the policy-maker and policy technologies are examined, and the discussion is supported by two illustrations from school choice and youth service policy texts from the 2000s. The potential use of ‘nudge’ theory in education is also considered with respect to the Conservative–Liberal Democrat government’s use of behavioural economics. In conclusion, we argue that the use of these ideas in policy, alongside others, marks a revision of the neoliberal idea of a rational chooser as the aim of policy-making, of which education policy sociology should take account.

Keywords:

• rationality
• neoliberalism
• behavioural economics
• school choice
• choice advisers
• youth work

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [ES/1023771/1] and the Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina.

Notes

1. ‘Behavioural sciences’ is the term preferred in the Institute for Government Report Mindspace (Dolan et al. 2010) that draws on research from the fields of psychology and behavioural economics for the development of new policy technologies for the influence of the behaviour of individual subjects of policy. In this sense, it is broadly equivalent to ‘behavioural economics’.

2. Our use of the term ‘changing the game’ references Lyotard’s (1984) use of the metaphor in his description of the central importance of the performative in ‘language games’ that compose the ‘social bond’ in post-industrial society (Lyotard, 1984, 9–11), and in turn, Ball’s influential development of the concept of performativity as a technology of neoliberal education policy (Ball 2003).

3. Though, as Davies points out, the management of statutory youth work had been influenced by neoliberal reforms of local authorities and of other public services, and the changing ‘culture’ of public service provision that had accompanied it (Davies 2012).

4. The Thompson Report (DES 1982) was the only major review of the youth service during this period (Davies 1999a).

5. The voluntary sector is estimated to now be the largest provider of youth services in England (House of Commons Education Committee 2011, 38).

6. For example, the paper on ‘Adolescent Brain Development’ (DfE 2011) published by the Department for Education as part of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government’s Positive for Youth policy consultation process draws mostly on neuroscience and cognitive psychology to explain educational, health and social problems associated with young people, and then draws a series of ‘policy implications’ from this basis.