Utilising the theoretical frameworks of theory of power and theory of performativity, this case study explored how learners exercised agency in the construction of their identity in school discourses. Data capture incorporated a mix of a survey, semi-structured interviews and field notes. Data was analysed using content analysis. A total of 90…

This research investigates how the Hong Kong state controls and disciplines the education sector through the regulation and manipulation of discourses. The authoritative narratives are that some schools are failing the students and parents for not being able to provide quality education, and that these schools are not subject to public scrutiny…

This article looks at one instance of a teacher attempting to discipline students for sexually profane heteronormative language and the resulting events that demonstrate a discipline over all discourses in the school. Using Fairclough's critical discourse analysis (2005) to analyze the narrative, I argue that the discourse in the school reinforces…

The intent of this article is to explore how No Child Left Behind (NCLB) emerges from a discursive frame that is also used in relation to neoliberal corporate conquests and, significantly, America's war on terror. The article first demonstrates through reference to online resistance discourses and NCLB, how NCLB is a product of and reproduces the…

A recent editorial in the "Scottish Educational Journal," the publication of the teacher trade union the Educational Institute of Scotland, headed "More action, not words needed on discipline," condemned the level of indiscipline, violence and aggression in Scottish schools--in particular that directed against teachers--and…

Michel Foucault sought to understand how and why it is that people in the West, in their arduous and incessant search for truth, have also built into and around themselves intricate and powerful systems intended to manage all that they know and do. While little of Foucault's work directly concerns itself with the historically recent phenomenon of…