Linking Goals of Governmentality with Policies of Assessment

abstract

The Student Performance Standards policy in Queensland, Australia bears a resemblance to similar technologies currently employed in other countries to test children throughout their schooling. Drawing on the Foucauldian understanding of governmentality, assessment practices are positioned as technologies of government regularly used to achieve certain social and political goals, i.e. governing a school population by convenient means. Through a close investigation of the policy cycle of the Student Performance Standards, contradictions of policy making and interpretation are evident. Testing practices are shown to reflect a centralised thrust which presents a paradox in an educational bureaucracy which is presently involved in devolution. It is the political balancing act of keeping the language of policy making in accordance with what is in the child's best interests as well as satisfying the needs of government to ‘know’ a population so that it can act in ways which are considered to be appropriate to state building, that keeps assessment practices on the agenda of governmentality.