Between student voice-based assessment and teacher-student relationships: teachers’ responses to ‘techniques of power’ in schools

Abstract

This paper draws upon Foucault’s problematisation of governmentality analysis to explore teacher interviews from Australian secondary schools, where student voice was ‘enacted’ within a teacher assessment reform strategy. By bringing teacher voices into relation with theory, it illustrates how the current ‘sociality of performativity’ is situating student voice-based assessment initiatives as power apparatuses of teacher surveillance that shape teacher-student relationships. The analysis portrays teachers’ responses to such ‘techniques of power’, employing forms of auditable commodification, physical proximity, and reflective practice as a means of managing student voice ‘risk’. In so doing, the teachers relegated teacher-student relationships to the margins, struggling to profess an ethic of care; paradoxically disadvantaging students through voice initiatives intended to advance them. Demonstrating how affective fundamentals are eclipsed by performative-invested practices, the analysis highlights the discursive policy contestations of rapport and performance that should be taken into consideration in future implementations of student voice-based assessment initiatives.