Bunn, Matthew (2019) Education as Agency: Challenging educational individualisation through alternative accounts of the agentic. International Education Journal, 18 (1). pp. 7-19.

Preview

PDF (Published Version) - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution No Derivatives. Download (208kB) | Preview

Abstract

In this paper, we problematise current conceptualisations of agency in education. Firstly, we consider how the construction of the hyper-individual, one that is entirely determined by its own internal capacities, has become the norm within Australian educational policy. We propose that this conceptualisation produces undemocratic educational possibilities, built on assumptions that individuals have the capacity to rationally choose pathways that will maximise their own interests, ignoring the contextually bound ways in which this produces, makes durable and reproduces trajectories of disadvantage and advantage within the educational system. We experiment with how education could be understood if the ontological assumption of the individual was unsettled, with a focus shifting to relations rather than intrinsic entities. To do this, we draw from New Materialist literature, and Karen Barad’s agential realism, to suggest that the assignment of ‘interactive’ agency between fully interiorised individuals, especially through competitive logics, confuses the basis, and possibility, of democratic action. We consider how educative spaces are the enactments and realisation of knowledge and, thus, how an enactment of education is not reducible to separate or separable individuals.

Item ID:	83976
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	2202-493X
Keywords:	education policy, democracy, agency, individualisation, agential realism
Copyright Information:	In relation to intellectual property, the International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives claims only first publication rights; copyright of all work published in the journal remains with the authors under Creative Commons copyright license CC-BY-ND (4.0). Author(s) retain all rights to their works, ensuring that reference to the International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives is clearly stated on any copies made or distribution. If you republish the work, you must acknowledge its first publication in the IEJ: CP. Submissions must not involve third parties with a claim to copyright, and be the sole work of the author(s). It is the responsibility of the author(s) to secure permission to reproduce photographs, illustrations, figures or tables.
Date Deposited:	05 Nov 2024 07:39
Downloads:	Total: 4 Last 12 Months: 4
	More Statistics