"Through Growth to Achievement": Education Policy, Personalized Learning, and the Control Society

• In Event: 34.076 - Genealogical Tours and Control Societies: Threads of Truth and Power in Educational Research

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine Australia’s latest government report into education, ‘Through Growth to Achievement’. Pulling together scholarship on policy and educational technology, with a specific focus on Deleuze’s notion of control societies, this paper provides a critical analysis of key aspects of this report. The argument put forward is that the policy push for personalised learning articulated in this report, represents a means by which the shift towards power as control can be further realized within education. Given that educational jurisdictions globally are increasingly advocating this type of education, this research is significant as it provides a basis for further critique of both the technologies and the policy moves that facilitate this push for personalized learning.

Author

• Rachel Buchanan, University of Newcastle, Australia