Skip to main content

Governing Learning Practices: Governmentality and Practices

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Practice, Learning and Change

Part of the book series: Professional and Practice-based Learning ((PPBL,volume 8))

Abstract

Workplace learning practices, once primarily the domain of specialist trainers, have become embedded and embodied in workers’ everyday practices, constituting workers with new identities as worker-learners and reconstituting their work. In this chapter, we use an analytics of governmentality to explore how we might understand these shifts. Such an approach contributes to practice-based perspectives on professional learning by foregrounding relations of power and governmentalities constituted in regimes of practice. Through a study of professional child protection workers, we illustrate how this shift in learning practices has been assembled through changed regimes of practice linked to neoliberal reform programmes associated with new public management.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Barry, A., Osborne, T., & Rose, N. (1996). Introduction. In A. Barry, T. Osborne, & N. Rose (Eds.), Foucault and political reason: Liberalism, neo-liberalism and rationalities of government. London: UCL Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boud, D., & Solomon, N. (2003). I don’t think I am a learner”: Acts of naming learners at work. Journal of Workplace Learning, 15(7/8), 326–331.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cashmore, J., Dolby, R., & Brennan, D. (1994). Systems abuse: Problems and solutions. Sydney: NSW Child Protection Council.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dean, M. (2010). Governmentality: Power and rule in modern society (2nd ed.). London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dean, M., & Hindess, B. (1998). Introduction: Government, liberalism, society. In M. Dean & B. Hindess (Eds.), Governing Australia. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Donzelot, J. (2008). Michel Foucault and liberal intelligence. Economy and Society, 37(1), 115–134.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Du Gay, P. (1996). Consumption and identity at work. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Du Gay, P. (2009). Organizing identity: Persons, and organizations ‘after theory’. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edwards, R., & Usher, R. (2008). Globalisation & pedagogy: Space, place and identity (2nd ed.). London/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fenwick, T. (2001). Questioning the concept of the learning organization. In C. Paechter, M. Preedy, D. Scott, & J. Soler (Eds.), Knowledge, power and learning. London/Thousand Oaks: P. Chapman in association with Open University and Sage Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fenwick, T. (2006). Tidying the territory: Questioning terms and purposes in work-learning research. Journal of Workplace Learning, 18(5), 265–278.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1991a). Governmentality. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault effect (pp. 87–104). London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1991b). Questions of method. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault effect (pp. 73–86). London/Toronto/Sydney/Tokyo/Singapore: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (2007). Security, territory, population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–1978. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Girdwood, J. (2007). Reforming the World Bank: From social liberalism to neoliberalism. Comparative Education, 43(3), 413–431.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gordon, C. (1991). Governmental rationality: An introduction. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault effect (p. 307). London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hacking, I. (1986). Making up people. In T. C. Heller, N. Sosna, & D. E. Wellberg (Eds.), Reconstructing individualism. California: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hopwood, A. G., & Miller, P. (Eds.). (1994). Accounting as social and institutional practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lemke, T. (2001). The birth of bio-politics: Michel Foucault’s lecture at the Collège de France on neo-liberal governmentality. Economy and Society, 30(2), 190–207.

    Google Scholar 

  • Li, T. M. (2007). Practices of assemblage and community forest management. Economy and Society, 36(2), 263–293.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Malloch, M., Cairns, L., Evans, K., & O’Connor, B. (Eds.). (2011). The SAGE handbook of workplace learning. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, P., & Rose, N. (2008). Governing the present. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Munro, E. (2008, March 25). Protecting children is like guessing whether a headache is a tumour. The Sydney Morning Herald, p. 11.

    Google Scholar 

  • NSW Child Death Review Team. (1997). Annual report 1996–1997. Sydney: NSW Child Death Review Team.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parton, N. (1998). Risk, advanced liberalism and child welfare: The end to rediscover uncertainty and ambiguity. British Journal of Social Work, 28, 5–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Power, M. (1997). The audit society: Rituals of verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reckwitz, A. (2002). Toward a theory of social practices: A development in culturalist theorizing. European Journal of Social Theory, 5(2), 243–263.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reich, A. (2002). Learning organisations and child protection agencies: Post-fordist techniques? Studies in Continuing Education, 24(2), 219–232.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reich, A. (2008). Intersecting work and learning: Assembling advanced liberal regimes of governing workers in Australia. Studies in Continuing Education, 30(3), 1–16.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reich, A., & Girdwood, J. (2010). Theoretical knowledge, education and regimes of government: An analytics of government perspective. First international conference of the Laboratory for Education Theory, Institute of Education, University of Stirling, Scotland.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose, N. (1993). Government, authority and expertise in advanced liberalism. Economy and Society, 22(3), 284–299.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rose, N. (1999a). Governing the soul (2nd ed.). London/New York: Free Association Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose, N. (1999b). Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Rose, N., O’Malley, P., & Valverde, M. (2006). Governmentality. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 29, 83–104.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tomison, A. M. (1997). Overcoming structural barriers to the prevention of child abuse and neglect – A discussion paper. Sydney: NSW Child Protection Council.

    Google Scholar 

  • Usher, R., & Edwards, R. (2007). Lifelong learning – Signs, discourses, practices. Dordrecht: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wood, J. R. T. (1997). Royal Commission into the New South Wales police service: Final report, Vols. IV – VI: The paedophile inquiry. Sydney: Royal Commission into the New South Wales Police Service.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ann Reich .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Reich, A., Girdwood, J. (2012). Governing Learning Practices: Governmentality and Practices. In: Hager, P., Lee, A., Reich, A. (eds) Practice, Learning and Change. Professional and Practice-based Learning, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4774-6_10

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics