The (hidden) injuries of NAPLAN: two standardised test events and the making of ‘at risk’ student subjects

ABSTRACT

Standardised testing regimes, including the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) in Australia, have impacted on relationships between and within schools, and on teachers’ work and on pedagogies. Previous analyses of the effects of NAPLAN have been generated outside of the test situation: frequently through attitudinal surveys and qualitative interviews. This article takes as its point of departure two intensely affective events associated with the NAPLAN test day itself. These events erupted in two qualitative studies of students’ schooling experiences: a study of students’ experiences of NAPLAN and a study of students’ experiences of student voice at school. We ask, after Deleuze and Guattari, What can a NAPLAN test do? Exploring the entangled corporeal (physical and embodied) and incorporeal (psychic and subjectivating) wounds effected in and through these events, we analyse the dynamic constitution and re-constitutions of ‘at risk’ categorisations. While the NAPLAN test is not claimed to cause physical and psychical injury, we argue that standardised test conditions, in these singular events, are inextricably entwined with the formation of particular students’ schooled subjectivities.

KEYWORDS:

• Standardised testing
• NAPLAN
• event
• at risk
• affect
• difference

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the anonymous reviewer and editors for feedback which enhanced this manuscript, and acknowledge the editorial support of Helen Nixon in the final stages of the manuscript’s preparation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on the contributors

Eve Mayes is a Lecturer in Pedagogy and Curriculum at Deakin University. She was formerly an English and English as Second Language teacher and Head Teacher in public comprehensive secondary schools. Her publications and research interests are in the areas of social justice in education, student participation, school reform, affective methodologies and participatory research. Her work has been published in the journals British Journal of Sociology of Education, American Education Research Journal, Higher Education Research and Development, Childhood, Curriculum Matters and English in Australia.

Angelique Howell’s research interests include incorporating arts-based research methods to account for children’s and young people’s experiences of their schooling, as well as facilitate their own explorations of their education. Recent publications include ‘Because then you could never ever get a job! Children’s constructions of NAPLAN as high stakes’ in the Journal of Education Policy (2017) and a book chapter entitled ‘Exploring children’s lived experiences of NAPLAN’ in National testing in schools: An Australian assessment (2016), edited by Bob Lingard, Greg Thompson and Sam Sellar.

ORCID

Eve Mayes http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6741-2489

Angelique Howell http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3192-2484

Notes

1. Jason’s drawing cannot be shown here because while he had provided his own consent for his drawing to published, consent to publish was not received from his parents.