Power and Education
ISSN 1757-7438

CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text]

John Preston. Concrete and Abstract Racial Domination, pages 115‑125
Damien Page. Power and Resistance in Further Education: findings from a study of first-tier managers, pages 126‑139
Shirley R. Steinberg, with Joe L. Kincheloe. Power, Emancipation, and Complexity: employing critical theory, pages 140‑151
Alan Cottey. The Shadow of the Bomb: a study of degree-level nuclear physics textbooks, pages 152‑166
Laurette Bristol. Practising in betwixt Oppression and Subversion: plantation pedagogy as a legacy of plantation economy in Trinidad and Tobago, pages 167‑182
Katherine R. Evans, Jessica Lester & Amy D. Broemmel. Talking Back to Scripted Curricula: a critical performance ethnography with teachers’ collective narratives, pages 183‑196
James Avis. Education, Governance and the ‘New’ Professionalism: radical possibilities?, pages 197‑208
Andrew Lambirth. Class Consciousness, Power, Identity, and the Motivation to Teach, pages 209‑222

BOOK REVIEWS
Habermas, Honneth and Education: the significance of Jürgen Habermas’s and Axel Honneth’s critical theories to education (Rauno Huttunen), reviewed by Mark Murphy, pages 223‑224
Racially Equitable Teaching: beyond the whiteness of professional development for early childhood educators (Mary E. Earick), reviewed by Laurie Carlson Berg, pages 224‑226
Going Beyond the Theory/Practice Divide in Early Childhood Education: introducing an intra-active pedagogy (Hillevi Lenz Taguchi), reviewed by Barbara McNeil, pages 226‑229
Reflexive Research and the (Re)Turn of the Baroque (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the University)(Cate Watson), reviewed by Ian Stronach, pages 229‑232 doi:10.2304/power.2010.2.2.223 VIEW FULL TEXT

Concrete and Abstract Racial Domination

JOHN PRESTON Cass School of Education, University of East London, United Kingdom

doi:10.2304/power.2010.2.2.115

The debate between Mike Cole and David Gillborn which has raged in Power and Education and elsewhere is indicative of a widening schism between Marxism and critical race theory. To describe this debate as orientated around the status of ‘race’ or ‘class’ as the central object of social theory, such as in the current debate about the ‘white working class’ in education, is unhelpful. Rather than see race and class as interdependent systems of concrete domination (where one group, or class, oppress another), this article examines how capitalism brings about an abstract system of domination by race (abstract racial domination). Using the work of Marx, Postone and Du Bois, the article considers that race as capital rather than humanity as racialised labour, is specific to capitalist modes of production. Racialised bodies are already capitalised as ‘tertium quid’ – a Du Boisian ‘third thing’ rather than solely as labour or capital. Whites are the ‘small masters’ of ‘sham capital’ (whiteness) but are dominated by their own (perceived and socially constructed) phenotype. In terms of praxis, the article argues that critical pedagogies from both critical race and Marxist strands should work towards the abolition of whiteness as a manifestation of capital.

Power and Resistance in Further Education: findings from a study of first-tier managers

DAMIEN PAGE School of Education, University of Greenwich, United Kingdom

doi:10.2304/power.2010.2.2.126

This article presents findings from a study of first-tier managers in four further education colleges as they attempt to manage perpetual change within a context of performativity and mistrust. It begins with a discussion of power in the sector before presenting findings of routine resistance against ever increasing control and surveillance within colleges. First-tier managers were found to be primarily the audience for routine resistance rather than the target and so faced the dilemma of colluding with resistance to maintain cooperation, or challenging the behaviours. The article concludes that despite the demonisation of critical opinions in the lifelong learning sector, resistance in further education, far from contravening the principles of academic citizenship, is a form of educational fundamentalism and an attempt to prioritise learners in the face of financial and managerial imperatives.

Power, Emancipation, and Complexity: employing critical theory

SHIRLEY R. STEINBERG, with JOE L. KINCHELOE Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

doi:10.2304/power.2010.2.2.140

Critical theory, if nothing else, is a moral construct designed to reduce human suffering in the world. In the critical theoretical context, every individual is granted dignity regardless of his or her location in the web of reality. Thus, the continuation of human suffering by conscious human decision is a morally unacceptable behavior that must be analyzed, interpreted and changed. In this context the genesis of this type of decision-making process is uncovered and new ways of thinking that would negate such activity are sought. As critical theorists have engaged in this process, they have come to describe a set of practices that contribute to forms of decision making that perpetuate human suffering. This article focuses on a few of these dynamics in order to situate the moral dimensions of a twenty-first-century reconceptualized critical theory. The authors’ notion of critical theory is described as ‘reconceptualized’ in that it is more sensitive to modes of domination that involve race and gender and to the complexity of lived experience than in the Frankfurt School’s original articulation of the notion in the 1920s in Germany. It is also informed by what they describe as the theoretical bricolage, which infuses numerous theoretical advances formulated in the eight decades since the inception of critical theory.

The Shadow of the Bomb: a study of degree-level nuclear physics textbooks

ALAN COTTEY School of Chemistry, University of East Anglia, United Kingdom

doi:10.2304/power.2010.2.2.152

The author presents a textual analysis of 57 nuclear physics textbooks for senior-level physics degree students. The work investigates how the textbooks relate to an aspect that is relevant and important but almost wholly avoided, namely nuclear weapons. Most of the books do, however, contain expositions of other applications, notably nuclear power reactors. These expositions are often enthusiastic and occasionally extravagant. When the existing apocalyptic arsenals are borne in mind, the textbooks’ asymmetry is seen to be problematic. The publication dates of the textbooks range from 1950 to 2010, yet for the question addressed in this study remarkably little has changed. This study emphasises the culture in which we all live, rather than individual specialists. The author concludes that a response to our nuclear situation, based on a rational programme for long-term survival, rather than on psychological defences, has to come from all. Experts do have special responsibilities but the author maintains that it is unrealistic to expect specialist groups, such as those involved in producing textbooks, to act independently of the wider culture.

Practising in betwixt Oppression and Subversion: plantation pedagogy as a legacy of plantation economy in Trinidad and Tobago

LAURETTE BRISTOL Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia

doi:10.2304/power.2010.2.2.167

The practice of the twentieth-century teacher has been entrenched within a rigorous concern for the manner in which her/his practice is being reshaped and imprisoned by neoliberal initiatives of accountability, governance and programmed performances. This article continues and extends this current debate by highlighting the historical antecedents of a teaching practice which simultaneously operates within the Trinbagonian educational context as a practice of oppression and a practice of intellectual subversion. In doing so, it introduces the notion of plantation pedagogy as an inherited educational practice which, in the practice of the teacher, can be manifested as a practice of hopelessness (oppression) and hope (subversion). Within the scope of this article teaching as an action of hopelessness, and teaching as an action of hope, can be constructed as practices of teacher anti-agency and agency. Data collected within an extended focus group session with 10 primary school teachers revealed that the practice of the teacher in the primary school can be constituted within and by two levels of agency. These agencies can be characterised as opposing views of plantation pedagogy, both of which emerge out of a process in which teaching is constructed as labour in service to a plantation society.

Talking Back to Scripted Curricula: a critical performance ethnography with teachers’ collective narratives

KATHERINE R. EVANS & JESSICA LESTER Educational Psychology and Research, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA
AMY D. BROEMMEL Theory and Practice in Teacher Education, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA

doi:10.2304/power.2010.2.2.183

Although research shows the importance of the teacher in effective instruction, there has historically been an underrepresentation of teachers’ voice in curricular decision-making. Some recent comprehensive reform programs include the use of mandated scripted curricula, which the authors argue often serve to further silence teachers, constraining their capacity to independently act within the classroom. The authors’ research seeks to speak back to such constraints as they attend to the lived experiences of teachers using scripted reading curricula, particularly Success for All. Situating this work as a critical performance, the authors viewed their in-depth interviews as performative, with each teacher narrating their own response to using and/or resisting the use of a scripted reading curriculum. Through a performative text, constructed as a three-act play, the authors interrogate relationships of power, knowledge, and political control at work within the context of teachers’ lives, as well as other stakeholders.

Education, Governance and the ‘New’ Professionalism: radical possibilities?

JAMES AVIS Centre for Research in Post-Compulsory Education, University of Huddersfield, United Kingdom

doi:10.2304/power.2010.2.2.197

The article considers arguments that address the changing forms of governance within which education and in particular English further education is set, focusing on the relationship of these to professionalism. Specifically the article draws upon and critiques analyses of the changing forms of governance which are considered to carry progressive possibilities. These changes are thought to prefigure new forms of inter-professionality that herald democratic relations with constituents. The danger with such arguments is that neoliberalism and its performative regime become conflated with capitalism. Any move away from neoliberalism towards a different education settlement is deemed progressive, rather than merely a different modality through which state power can be exercised and contested. At the time of writing a coalition of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats has assumed governmental power in the United Kingdom. Their policies represent some continuity with those of New Labour but place a greater emphasis on marketisation. All educational settlements carry limitations and possibilities for the development of radical practice, with these deriving from political struggle at the site of educational practice and beyond.

Class Consciousness, Power, Identity, and the Motivation to Teach

ANDREW LAMBIRTH School of Education, University of Greenwich, United Kingdom

doi:10.2304/power.2010.2.2.209

This article reports on a small-scale research project that explored the class-consciousness and working-class identities of a small group of student teachers in a university in south-east England. It describes and uses classic Marxist perspectives and sociological theory as an analytical framework to interpret the views of eight student teachers who provide their perspectives in a series of in-depth interviews. It is argued that these student teachers’ identities and class experiences have sculpted their motivations to become teachers and that the form of class-consciousness that they exhibit ultimately acts to mould attitudes and perspectives that suit the objectives of twenty-first-century primary education in a capitalist society. Power relations are played out through the struggle between the potential social power that working-class-conscious teachers possess and the forms of professional labour power that are fostered through initial teacher education courses and the habitus from which these students emerge.

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