ERIC Number: EJ1032933
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0159-6306
EISSN: N/A
Discourses of Education and Constitutions of Class: Public Discourses on Education in Swedish PBS Television
Reimers, Eva
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, v35 n4 p540-553 2014
Drawing on post-structural perspectives and analysis of television programs on education, the article investigates the public educational discourse in Sweden. It shows how a dominant neoliberal educational discourse is articulated together with a discourse of equal education, where the two discourses influence and subvert each other so that neither becomes totally hegemonic. Taking as its point of departure the neoliberal emphasis on the individual, especially as it relates to school choice and to the significance of class for educational success, the analysis focuses on the constitution of classed positions. The study reveals constitutions of class in which race, place, gender, economy and agency are intertwined, such that the schools and the students are attributed both different statuses and different subject positions in terms of future economic trajectories. The conclusions drawn are that, in the public conversation about the organization and goal of compulsory education, it is important to be aware of the discursive and political contexts in which the discussions take place. It is also important to realize that class matters in the educational assemblage in the form of economic subjectivities constituted in a web of intersecting notions about differing preconditions and outcomes of education.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Public Television, Discourse Analysis, Neoliberalism, Equal Education, Social Class, School Choice, Compulsory Education, Postmodernism, Programming (Broadcast), Social Mobility, Gender Differences, Rural Urban Differences, Educational Change, Public Education, Elementary Secondary Education
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Sweden
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A