Engineering school markets, constituting schools and subjectivating students: the bureaucratic, institutional and classroom dimensions of educational triage

Abstract

This paper seeks to contribute to existing understandings of the impacts of education policy reform by drawing together analyses of state‐level policy reforms; institutional responses to these; and day‐to‐day school‐ and classroom‐level practises that constitute particular sorts of learners. The paper draws on data generated through a school ethnography, with detailed interview and observational data set alongside school‐ and state‐level documentary evidence. The paper suggests that, in a marketized context marked by hegemonic individualism, practises of educational triage become both acceptable and necessary. A preliminary refinement of the notion of educational triage is offered, with such practises identified at bureaucratic, institutional, and classroom levels. In addition, the paper draws on the notion of subjectivation to demonstrate how intersecting discourses of ability and conduct are deployed in the constitution of ideal, acceptable, and unacceptable learners—learner identities that are deployed and inscribed through practises of institutional and classroom triage. The paper concludes that deep connections exist between the macro‐ and meso‐level impacts of marketization and the ongoing constitution of students as learners at the micro‐level.