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    Obliged to calculate: My School, markets, and equipping parents for calculativeness

    230967_230967.pdf (298.8Kb)
    Access Status
    Open access
    Authors
    Gobby, Brad
    Date
    2015
    Type
    Journal Article
    
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Citation
    Gobby, B. 2015. Obliged to calculate: My School, markets, and equipping parents for calculativeness. Journal of Education Policy. 31 (4): pp. 421-431.
    Source Title
    Journal of Education Policy
    DOI
    10.1080/02680939.2015.1083124
    ISSN
    0268-0939
    School
    School of Education
    Remarks

    This is an Author's Original Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Education Policy on 07/09/2015, available online at <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/02680939.2015.1083124">http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/02680939.2015.1083124</a>

    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/43830
    Collection
    • Curtin Research Publications
    Abstract

    This paper argues neoliberal programs of government in education are equipping parents for calculativeness. Regimes of testing and the publication of these results and other organizational data are contributing to a public economy of numbers that increasingly oblige citizens to calculate. Using the notions of calculative and market devices, this paper examines the Australian Government’s My School website, which publishes academic and organizational information about schools, including national test results. While it is often assumed that such performance technologies contribute to neoliberal reform of education through school choice, the paper argues the website is technically limited in its capacity to facilitate the economic calculations and calculated action of parents resulting in school choice. The paper instead opens My School to analysis as a technique of governmental self-formation. Using the theoretical resources of actor-network theory and Foucauldian scholarship, this paper complicates assumptions in the literature about the extent to which My School actually operates as a ‘market mechanism’. It argues My School attempts to cultivate a calculated form of parental educational agency, irreducible to economic market agency.

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