Neoliberal governmentality, schooling and the city: Conceptual and empirical notes on and from the Global South

ArticleThis paper applies ideas that emanate from the Global North, concerning neoliberalism and neoliberal governmentality, to the case of marketisation in South Africa. It also attends to the limits of Northern ideas that are both intellectual undertakings and policy manifestations. in the first part of the paper, we identify how rationales for school choice, many of which have been introduced in countries like England, the USA, and Australia, have also been introduced in post-apartheid South Africa. Despite the introduction of markets to address apartheid era racial segregation, we suggest that in South Africa marketisation operates as part of racial neoliberalism. in the second part of the paper we explore in more detail how neoliberal governmentality operates in relation to education policy more generally, and specifically in South Africa. © 2011 Taylor & Francis

Responding to sociotechnical controversies in education : a modest proposal toward technical democracy

The use of automated decision-making systems is increasing in education. While the potential impacts of ADM are becoming widely known amongst experts, the perspectives of those impacted by ADM remain peripheral. To broaden expertise and participation, this paper proposes that ADM needs to be considered as a sociotechnical controversy, as part of a technical democracy approach that utilises hybrid forums. Following Callon and colleagues, in this paper, technical democracy refers to the process of learning through uncertainty about sociotechnical controversies, and hybrid forums refer to the specific sites of democratisation. This paper first identifies key uses and concerns with ADM in education. Second, it proposes that restricted capacity for participation can be addressed through technical democracy. Last, it proposes that hybrid forums can create moments of democratisation through shared uncertainty, material politics, and collective experimentation

Geographies of education and the significance of children, youth and families

This paper engages with Hanson Thiem's (2009) critique of geographies of education. Accepting the premise that education warrants fuller attention by geographers, the paper nonetheless argues that engaging with research on children, youth and families reshapes understanding of what has been, and might be, achieved. Foregrounding young people as the subjects rather than objects of education demands that attention be paid to their current and future life-worlds, in both inward and outward looking geographies of education. It also requires a broadening of our spatial lens, in terms of what 'count' as educational spaces, and the places where we study these