This book develops a theoretically rich analysis of quantification and subjectivity, tracing new linkages between educational policy and everyday life in schools, diving deeper into ‘ordinary’ schools as they encounter and navigate quantified forms of recognition. With a focus on Chile as a critical case of neoliberal experimentation, this book investigates whether intense exposure to quantified forms of meaning and sense-making in school settings could develop into metrics-driven dispositions or attachments. Contemporary demands on schools for calculation, prediction, and comparison by the use of accountability tools like high-stakes testing, league tables, consequential inspection ratings and ‘progress’ measures evidence the relentless presence of quantification in teaching and learning. This book argues the importance of bridging political, sociological and anthropological literatures together with affect and subjectivity theories to understand the complex ways in which standardisation, optimisation, automation, and surveillance crystallise into quantification-based forms of intelligibility.
Innehållsförteckning
Chapter 1: Introduction.- Part I: the bigger picture.- Chapter 2: Measuring, Counting, Quantifying.- Chapter 3: Geographies of Quantification.- Chapter 4: Numbers, Markets and Meritocracy.- Part II: a closer look.- Chapter 5: The Quantified School.- Chapter 6: Scores, Bodies and Affect.- Chapter 7: Market Failure.- Chapter 8: Conclusion: Quantification, Schooling and the Self.
Om författaren
Diego Santori is Senior Lecturer in education and society at King’s College London, UK. His research interests include the relationships between education policy, economics and subjectivity and the ways in which their interpenetration produce new cultural forms and practices.