Dialectics and dilemmas: psychosocial dimensions of ability grouping policy

Abstract

Ability grouping in schools and classrooms constitutes something of a policy hiatus in the Australian context, in contrast to the conspicuous visibility of equity and quality as explicit policy goals. This article examines what I am calling the dialectics – i.e. moments of negation that allow for creation – and dilemmas inhering in the complex and contradictory relationship between policy priorities of quality and equity, and practices of ability grouping, in Australian schooling. I explore these dialectics and dilemmas between these dimensions both at a macro, social level of policy and at a micro, psychological level of the teacher as a policy worker, exploring the latter through a vignette of one pre-service teacher grappling with issues of ability grouping in schools and classrooms. The article concludes with an argument for the value of generating continual dialectical exchange between the conscious and the unconscious, between the imaginary and symbolic registers, between psychotherapeutic and educational discourses and between policy and practice, as an essential element in ongoing formation of ethically and politically agentive teacher identities that are capable of holding policy to account in a climate that often positions teachers as educational technicians and curricular transmitters.

Keywords:

• educational policy
• neoconservatism/neoliberalism
• philosophy of education
• poststructural/postmodern/critical theory
• psychoanalytic theory
• teachers’
• work and identities

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Ray Misson and Kalervo Gulson, and to three anonymous reviewers, for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

^1. Rothenberg gives the example of the Wordsworthian expression of understatement, ‘I am not unwilling’, which is subtly different from its formally logical equivalent, ‘I am willing’, as an illustration of the ‘paralogical’ qualities of double negation, which leaves an indeterminate remainder of excess (2010, p. 38).

^2. Ability grouping is being used here as a superordinate term covering a range of practices such as ‘setting’ and ‘streaming’. As ability grouping is being used here as part of a larger discussion about policy and its relationship to practice and to teachers, I do not provide an extended discussion of the forms ability grouping takes and the debate surrounding these. For such a discussion, see, for example the work of Ireson and Hallam (2001).

^3. Malcolm Bowie (1991, p. 112) notes that ‘the would-be truth-seeker will find that the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real are an unholy trinity whose members could as easily be called Fraud, Absence and Impossibility’.

^4. In contrast to the totalizing and rivalrous nature of imaginary identification, symbolic identification involves identifying with a particular trait or aspect an-other and is hence partial and limited rather than all-consuming (Rothenberg, 2010, pp. 137–138).

^5. Brenda is unlikely to have read – but could be said to be unconsciously echoing – Connell’s 2012 piece, Just education, where social justice education is defined in terms of ‘classrooms that emphasize mutual aid in learning and development’ (p. 682).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matthew Clarke

Matthew Clarke is currently a senior lecturer in the School of Education at the University of New South Wales, where he is a member of the politics and policy research group. His current research interests include the interface of political and psychoanalytic theory as a space for critical policy analysis, particularly in relation to the implications of neoliberal education policies for equity and for teachers’ professional identities. His forthcoming book, The other side of education: A Lacanian engagement with politics and policy, will be published by Sense Publishers in 2014.