Responsibility and Responsibilisation in Education

Concerns with the nature of and relationship between responsibility and responsibilisation pervade contemporary social, political and moral life. This book turns the analytical lens on the ways in which responsibility and responsibilisation operate in diverse educational settings and relationships, and social, policy and geographical contexts in the USA, Europe, the UK, New Zealand and Australia. Scholars have sought to explain the genealogy and the mélange of rationalities, technologies, bio-politics and modes of governmentality that bring responsibility and responsibilisation into being, how they act on and are taken up by individuals, groups and organisations, and the risks and possibilities they create and delimit for individuals, social collectives and their freedoms. Contributors to this collection have diverse views and perspectives on responsibility and responsibilisation. This disagreement is a strength. It underlines the importance of unravelling both the differences and similarities across scholars and contexts. It also issues a salutatory warning about assumptions that reduce the complex concepts of responsibility and responsibilisation to simplistic, fixed categories or to generalising and universalising single cases or experiences to all areas of education. This volume was originally published as a special issue of Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.

Introduction. Responsibility and responsibilisation in education Christine Halse, Catherine Hartung and Jan Wright 1. Responsibility for racism in the everyday talk of secondary students Christine Halse 2. Global citizenship incorporated: competing responsibilities in the education of global citizens Catherine Hartung 3. Homophobia, transphobia, young people and the question of responsibility Mary Lou Rasmussen, Fida Sanjakdar, Louisa Allen, Kathleen Quinlivan and Annette Bromdal 4. Reframing responsibility in an era of responsibilisation: education, feminist ethics Julie McLeod 5. Growing up after the GFC: responsibilisation and mortgaged futures Peter Kelly 6. Ghostings, materialisations and flows in Britain’s special educational needs and disability assemblage Julie Allan and Deborah Youdell 7. Blaming the victim: assessment, examinations, and the responsibilisation of students and teachers in neo-liberal governance Harry Torrance 8. Academic responsibility: toward a cultural politics of integrity William G. Tierney and Daniel J. Almeida 9. The implications of contractualism for the responsibilisation of higher education Shaun Rawolle, Julie Rowlands and Jill Blackmore 10. Responsibilisation and leadership in the neoliberal university: a New Zealand perspective Mark Amsler and Cris Shore 11. From State responsibility for education and welfare to self-responsibilisation in the market Michael A. Peters

Christine Halse is Chair Professor of Intercultural Education in the Department of Education, Policy and Leadership, The Education University of Hong Kong. Her research focuses on the manifestation of sociological themes in bodies and biographies, particularly in interracial and intercultural relations. Catherine Hartung is Lecturer in Education Studies at the University of Otago College of Education, New Zealand. Her research draws on feminist poststructural theory to critically examine how various educational, cultural and political institutions govern children and young people, as well as the ways that children and young people negotiate and resist this institutional governance. Jan Wright is Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Her most recent research draws on feminist and poststructuralist theory to critically engage issues associated with the relationship between embodiment, culture and health.