This paper explores how the Foucaultian concept of power/knowledge is central to an understanding of the production of individuality through the use of dividing practices in schools. Dividing ...practices include the examination and psychological testing procedures which, as technologies of modern power, combine hierarchical observation and normalising judgement in the process of individuation. An analysis of the discourse of two dividing practices used extensively in schools in Queensland, Australia provides a genealogy of the exercise of disciplinary power in schooling in the cause of governance.
This study is an attempt at better understanding the education choices of top-performing students in elite schooling. It applies a 'glonacal' framework (Maxwell 2018, "Changing Spaces - The Reshaping ...of (Elite) Education Through Internationalisation." In Elite Education and Internationalization: From the Early Years Into Higher Education, edited by C. Maxwell, U. Deppe, H. Kruger, and W. Helsper, 347-367. London: Palgrave Macmillan.) and focuses on the case of academically elite students who have graduated from an elite secondary school in Singapore, and their attitudes toward a scheme of undergraduate state scholarships. Drawing on life history interviews and focus group discussions with such individuals, I uncover how Singaporean informants portrayed aspirations of moving abroad for university education, and of returning to Singapore, commensurate with the state's strategy of tying them to the local through contractual bonds. Their characterisation of the scholarship in terms of 'comfort' and 'stability' must be contextualised within a nationalistic regime linking an elitist education system via scholarships to the local sphere of social and political power. The discussion serves to demonstrate relations between transnational mobility, the school and the local political economy, and how these have an influence on student subjectivities regarding education choices.
