Motivation, Educational Policy and Achievement

A critical perspective

Sam Carr

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317692881
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Motivation, Educational Policy and Achievement seeks to theorise and critique current trends in education through the lens of key ideas from motivational theory. Its purpose is to argue that current educational trends on a macro level are a significant threat to the provision of classroom practices seeking to create an educational environment that motivational theorists would argue is best placed to develop motivational equality, optimal motivation, and wellbeing.

Linking major contemporary theories of motivation to wider educational and political debate, this unique resource will bring about two major benefits: it will vocalise and mobilise the substantial research evidence from motivational theory in order to ensure that it contributes more explicitly to a critique of current neoliberal trends, and motivation researchers will be better positioned to move the theory forward in relation to what is happening in the real world of education. Areas covered include:

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• developing a more critical space in relation to the field of motivational psychology and contemporary educational policy;

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• linking motivational theory to education policy and broader social and political structures;

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• the neoliberal educational landscape;

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• an overview of achievement goal theory and self-determination theory.

Motivation, Educational Policy and Achievement is a 'wake-up call' for educational practitioners and policy makers and essential reading for all advanced students and researchers in the fields of educational psychology and educational research.

1
The Neoliberal Educational Landscape

An ideological position can never be really successful until it is naturalized, and it cannot be naturalized while it is still thought of as a value rather than a fact. Accordingly, neoliberalism has sought to eliminate the very category of value in the ethical sense. Over the past thirty years, capitalist realism has successfully installed a ‘business ontology’ in which it is ‘simply obvious’ that everything in society, including healthcare and education, should be run as a business. . . . [E]mancipatory politics must always destroy the appearance of a ‘natural order’, must reveal what is presented as ‘necessary and inevitable’ to be a mere contingency, just as it must make what was previously deemed to be impossible seem attainable.

(Fisher, 2009, p. 16)

The age of neoliberalism

The concept of neoliberalism has, during the past twenty years or so, been popular in political and academic debate, and it is common for authors to suggest that we currently live in the ‘neoliberal society’ or the ‘age of neoliberalism’ (Thorsen and Lie, 2006). However, the popularity of the term does not imply that it is a clearly defined concept (Thorsen, 2010). Given the myriad of authors who have failed to outline their interpretation of neoliberalism and the almost exclusive appropriation of the term by critics (self-proclaimed neoliberals are a rare breed), the outcome has been the frequent reduction of neoliberalism to a synonym for ‘any negative effect caused by the free market’ (Boas and Gans-Morse, 2009; Thorsen, 2010).

Attempts to clarify the term (Barnett, 2010; Harvey, 2005; Thorsen, 2010) have centred particularly upon the idea that neoliberalism reflects a family of ideas and political beliefs associated with the revival of economic liberalism (taken to include the ideas of thinkers such as Friedrich von Hayek and Joseph Schumpeter of the school of Austrian economics and Milton Friedman of the ‘Chicago School’ of economics) in the mid-twentieth century. Authors (Read, 2009) have distinguished neoliberalism from what has been termed classical liberalism (Locke, 1689; Smith, 1776) on the basis of specific features of economic activity. In classical liberalism, economic activity is principally focused upon in terms of the exchange of private property and distribution of goods. From this perspective, classical liberalism naturalises the market ‘as a system with its own rationality, its own interest, and its own specific efficiency, arguing ultimately for its superior efficiency as a distributor of goods and services’ (Read, 2009, p. 27). Most importantly, under classical liberalism, the market is a space within which individuals are autonomous in their acts of exchange, and it is assumed that this space must be safeguarded by the state, enacting laws that protect individuals’ unconditional right to private property and market-based liberty. As Read (2009) has noted, classical liberalism makes exchange the general organising force for society. However, neoliberalism, according to Foucault (2008), represents an evolved, extended version of the idea that economic activity and exchange should serve as an organising social and political force. In neoliberalism, the right to exchange is preserved, but what is added is an emphasis on the necessity for competition. For Read (2009, p. 28), what is most important to note about the shift from classical liberalism to neoliberalism is:

this shift in ‘anthropology’ from ‘homo-economicus’ as an exchanging creature to a competitive creature, or rather as a creature whose tendency to compete must be fostered, entails a general shift in the way in which human beings make themselves and are made subjects.

Of course, like classical liberalism, neoliberalism holds that the only legitimate purpose of the state is to safeguard individual (especially commercial) liberty and strong private property rights (Hayek, 1979; Nozick, 1974). There has also been the belief that the state should possess minimal (or at least drastically reduced) power, strength and size, and that any transgression by the state beyond this sole, legitimate purpose (i.e. protecting individual liberty, market freedom and a competitive playing field) is unacceptable (Thorsen, 2010). Harvey’s (2005, p. 2) definition summarises:

Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices. The state has to guarantee, for example, the quality and integrity of money. It must also set up those military, defence, police and legal structures and functions required to secure private property rights and to guarantee, by force if need be, the proper functioning of markets. Furthermore, if markets do not exist (in areas such as land, water, education, health care, social security, or environmental pollution) then they must be created, by state action if necessary. But beyond these tasks the state should not venture. State interventions in markets (once created) must be kept to a bare minimum because, according to the theory, the state cannot possibly possess enough information to second-guess market signals (prices) and because powerful interest groups will inevitably distort and bias state interventions (particularly in democracies) for their own benefit.

This definition positions neoliberalism as an economic-political paradigm. However, Larner (2000, 2006) has outlined that it has also been thought of as a hegemonic ideology and a distinctive form of governmentality. For example, as Thorsen and Lie (2006, p. 14) have asserted, ‘free markets and free trade will, it is believed, set free the creative potential and the entrepreneurial spirit which is built into the spontaneous order of any human society, and thereby lead to more individual liberty and well-being, and a more efficient allocation of resources’. Neoliberal ideology then, in line with the aforementioned free market values, staunchly upholds individual freedom and responsibility (Larner, 2000). Akin to how the State should refrain from imposing constraints on the market, government should not hamper citizens’ freedom by inflicting on them the burdens of the welfare state (spending on social support and equality of opportunity – see Briggs, 1961, for a review). Margaret Thatcher (1987, p. 10) popularly encapsulated this notion when she claimed, ‘there is no such thing as society, there are individual men and women and there are families’. Responsibility, according to neoliberal discourse, is conceptualised in terms of subscribing to the free market’s values (Brown, 2003): survival of the fittest as determined by the accumulation of wealth in a competitive society, endorsing ‘ruthless competitive individualism’ to achieve one’s goals (Giroux, 2005, p. 8). Those individuals who deviate from this model are chastised for their failure to embrace personal agency and improve the financial, health or educational components of their lives (Coakley, 2011; Kendall, 2003). There is limited scope to appreciate that a person’s current situation is shaped by factors beyond individual choice, such as the amount of opportunities available to them, the quality of the opportunities and the environment in which they become available. Consequently, for example, it has been suggested that neoliberal rhetoric rationalises poverty one-dimensionally, as a personal failure to embrace the work ethic required to climb out of despondency (Harvey, 2007).

Of particular concern for critics is the idea that neoliberal values ever more pervasively shape and hijack everyday life, transforming practice in a number of social, cultural and institutional fields. Heynon, McCarthy, Prudham and Robbins (2007) have noted that there has been significant empirical work on the way in which neoliberal policy has been circulated, defined as a lofty panacea, slippery and difficult to justify as the basis for policy formation in a myriad of contexts, yet with entirely concrete and drastic effects on the lived experiences of people. The following section discusses some of the key features of the transformation of education under neoliberal society and explores the ways in which the literature has critiqued its effects.

Knowledge capitalism and education

In his description of the ‘crisis’ currently facing contemporary youth, Giroux (2003) outlines how a central principle of modernity has been the idea that youth embody a society’s hopes and dreams for its future. At the heart of democracy there has been an implicit expectation that governments and political systems would value, prioritise and safeguard the resources, social provision and education system necessary to nurture young people’s future and the future of democracy. This reflects the fact that we are committed to and believe in fighting for the rights of our children, developing policy that genuinely prioritises their future and offering them an educational platform that helps them to become critical citizens and simultaneously enhances their inner life. Clearly, educational provision is the ultimate reflection of a society’s commitment to youth and future democracy. In educational policy and practice, we are able to glimpse how we currently conceptualise young people and the ways in which they fit into our broader social, political and economic blueprint.

Critics (Patrick, 2013; Peters, 2003) have argued that we have firmly entered the age of ‘knowledge capitalism’, where intellectual and emotional labour (as opposed to physical) have attained significant importance in relation to economic growth and productivity. Fisher’s quote at the beginning of this chapter encapsulates what many academics, teachers, young people, and parents increasingly ‘feel’: that education (like most social institutions) is under threat from the ‘business ontology’ of the neoliberal agenda. Patrick (2013, p. 2) has suggested that neoliberalism in contemporary educational policy has tended to reflect ‘a technical rationalist approach to knowledge and its value’. That is, education has been incorporated into an agenda of economic productivity at the nation-state level and there has been an assumption that education will be a driver for economic growth, development and improved competitiveness for nations under globalised market conditions (Patrick, 2013). Accordingly, neoliberal reforms in education have nudged state provision towards privatisation and marketisation, and the language of ‘new managerialism’ has become increasingly prominent (Beckman et al., 2009). Whitty (2000) has suggested that the belief is now firmly that the private sector approach is superior to that traditionally adopted in the public sector.

Accordingly, intellectual and symbolic ‘goods’ matter more than ever to the economy and the intellectual and affective resources of ‘knowledge workers’ have become highly significant market resources in and of themselves (Peters and Reveley, 2012; Tsogas, 2012). As the idea of the ‘knowledge economy’ takes hold, it follows that individuals carry the mode of production within them, and that ‘shaping’ their intellectual and affective resources must take place to ensure optimal development of human capital and economic growth. The value of education and knowledge production within such a system becomes tied to its ability to foster human capital. As Patrick (2013, p. 2) has suggested, the role of schools and universities can now legitimately be thought of as the creation of the knowledge worker.

Paulo Freire (2000, p. 60) argued that ‘the oppressed, as objects, as “things,” have no purposes except those their oppressors prescribe for them’. Critics have argued that this has been particularly reflected in neoliberal educational policy. Changes imposed in the name of ‘efficiency’ and ‘excellence’ have been responsible for the narrowing of educational experiences and increasing production of uncritical thinkers (Giroux, 2002) who simply reflect the primary needs of the market, where people are treated as ‘knowledge workers’ and prepared for ‘jobs,’ with little space left for other important features of education and personal development (Beckman et al., 2009). For example, Noddings (2003, p. 260) has argued:

The best schools should resemble the best homes. What should we mean by best? The best homes provide continuity of caring relations, attend to and continuously evaluate both inferred and expressed needs, protect from harm without deliberately inflicting pain, communicate so as to develop common and individual interests, work together cooperatively, promote joy in genuine learning, guide moral and spiritual development (including the development of an uneasy conscience), contribute to the appreciation of the arts and other great cultural achievements, encourage love of place and protection of the natural world, and educate for both self-understanding and group understanding. The best homes and schools are happy places.

Brown (2015) recently critiqued a suite of authoritarian neoliberal policies in UK education that, she argues, have served to erode ‘care’ and ‘relationship’ in an education system that clearly values discipline and control above all else. Brown (2015) highlighted policy moves to ‘ban best friends’ and convert ‘troops to teachers’ as clear examples of the extent to which UK policy has sought to micromanage children’s educational lives to maximise control and production at the expense, she argues, of care and relationship. What is more, in neoliberal society care itself is now bought, sold and offered as a commodity (Hartford, 2010), and the nonmarket work of everyday care (in familial and extended contexts) has been explicitly excluded from most economic and political analyses of what matters (England and Folbre, 2006). There is a significant risk that such features of the educative process are increasingly marginalised in the neoliberal educational landscape.

On another note, Giroux (1988, p. 17) has suggested that education should

support students’ ability to act on and change personal conditions and social injustice. It should prepare young people to participate actively and critically in public life, support a sense of possibility, and arm young people with tools to survive and thrive in the face of multiple forms of oppression and marginalization.

Giroux (2002) argues that the neoliberal agenda has seduced academics, teachers and students into ignoring or devaluing issues such as social justice, care and empowerment, superseding democratic impulses and practices by completely overemphasising market-driven values. Ultimately, for many c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The neoliberal educational landscape
• 2 Creating a critical space
• 3 Discussing goal theory and contemporary educational policy
• 4 Discussing self-determination theory and contemporary educational policy
• 5 Some concluding thoughts
• Index