- Title
- Excavating widening participation policy in Australian higher education: subject positions, representational effects, emotion
- Creator
- Southgate, Erica; Bennett, Anna
- Relation
- Creative Approaches to Research Vol. 7, Issue 1, p. 21-45
- Relation
- http://aqr.org.au/publications/creative-approaches-to-research/
- Publisher
- International Association for Qualitative Research (IAQR)
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2014
- Description
- Purpose: The massification of higher education is a definitive feature of the last fifty years. Widening participation policy is a recent manifestation of this phenomenon. This article uses Foucauldian discourse analysis to identify two subject positions within Australian WP higher education policy, those of the cap(able) individual and the proper aspirant. The article also traces the feeling-rules associated with these subject positions to ask critical questions about neo-liberal forms of social justice. Design/Methodology/Approach: A Foucauldian discourse analysis was conducted on a range of policy documents related to higher education during the period 2008-2013. Using Bacchi's (2012) 'what is the problem represented to be?' approach, two subject positions and their attendant feeling-rules were identified. Findings: The two subject positions, the cap(able) individual and the proper aspirant, represent a quintessential neo-liberal subject who possesses 'natural' ability, hope fore social mobility and has a highly individualised and entrepreneurial disposition. As a reinvention of social justice approaches to higher education, WP has wide emotional and common sense appeal derived from its links to older discourses on meritocracy and the redemptive promise of education and childhood hope. A new neo-liberal appropriation of social justice, WP neglects many critical historical, social and contextual factors related to educational inequity.
- Subject
- widening participation; higher education; policy; Foucault; discourse; subjectivity; emotion; aspiration; capability; meritocracy
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1302873
- Identifier
- uon:20564
- Identifier
- ISSN:1835-9442
- Language
- eng
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