Trott, Carolyn, and McDowall, Ailie (2026) What counts as learning? Competing discourses and the production of learners in Australian schooling policy. Critical Studies in Education. (In Press)

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Abstract

Simplistic assumptions about learning as neutral and universal fail to reflect how policy constructs what counts as legitimate knowledge and whose learning matters. This study examines Australian education policy through a Foucauldian archaeological approach, tracing how multiple discourses construct learning and learner subjectivities in competing ways. Analysing policy and practice documents, we trace five discursive patterns: learning, economic investment, policy, civics and diversity, intersecting within the educational system, each embedding different epistemological assumptions. Drawing on Pinar’s curriculum theory, our analysis suggests these competing constructions do not just obscure learning but show that learning in schools was always already entangled with questions of identity, power and whose ways of knowing are valued. Students are positioned through multiple subject positions: the legally participating, assessed, diverse, learning and industry-ready student, fragmenting their experiences in ways that fail to recognise them as whole, autobiographical beings. The crowding of policy discourses makes it difficult for teachers to approach students as learners given these competing constructions. While focused on Australia, this study highlights dynamics relevant to education systems worldwide navigating tensions between standardisation, equity and competing visions of educational purpose.

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