STUDENTS AND SUBJECTIVITIES: DISCOURSES ABOUT THE NORM OF THE
“GOOD STUDENT” IN THE UNIVERSITY CONTEXT
José Manuel Coronel Llamas
Juan Carlos González Faraco
Universidad de Huelva (España)
Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of
Lisbon, 11-14 September 2002
In the university context, we put forward the setting out of a research on the process of
production of speech upon the norm of the "good student", taking the social postmodern
theories as conceptual referent. Starting from M. Foucault’s thoughts upon the relations of
power in the context of the educational practices, we present a plan of discourse analysis
based on accounts made by the students themselves.
The university and the students
For some time there exists a greater interest in exploring the university context as field
of study and investigation from a wide variety of approaches. However, the University,
despite being an institution of long tradition, has been payed less attention in relation to other
levels of the educational system, from the point of view of educational research.
In the past few years, in the field of university policies, as well as in other sectors, the
relations between the university and the quality of teaching has become a recurrent topic. In
harmony with these policies, the states governments have manifested their interest in doing a
"follow-up" of the funds destined to the universities for their financing. But it is also true that
the financial dependence of the universities with respect to the governments clashes more and
more with university autonomy.
Dependent of the public funds and having to provide reports and explanations of its
activities, the university sees itself particularly vulnerable to the pressures of an organizing
model originating from the private sector based on efficiency. And although to a general
level, the generalized opinion insists in the necessity of introducing assesment plans , there
exists a certain feeling of coercion since universities will be probably forced to introduce
changes.
All this situation seems to find not little resistance with a certain institutional logic
derived from two elements, as Townley indicates (1997;275): a) the institutionalized myth of
the autonomy, and b) the nature of the academic practice. However, this institutional logic
finds resistance against the needs of the different states and the criteria of a market that
questions the meaning of the own institution. The essence of the academic liberal model is
1
the development of the student as person or citizen and not so much as consumer or potential
worker. This commercialization of the universities is substituting the ideal of the student as a
cultivated person for the model of the student endowed with abilities and prepared for
working.
This work tries to explore how the university conceives the idea of "good student" and
the standardizing tendencies that they impose, reflected in the accounts made by the
university students themselves. We are interested in knowing how the structures are
influenced by the cultural influences, but above all, how the students are affected by a
network of values, norms, rules, opinions, thus increasing the probability that certain
behaviours appear.
Nevertheless, once inside the institution, our intention is to analyze the causes and
consequences of the conformity, the way in which the students are trapped by the institutional
logic, and how the "norm" of the good student, imposed by the institution, is introduced in
their bodies and minds, in what way the University intervenes in the construction of its
identities as subjects and "produces" students adapted and in agreement with the norm. But it
is also true that the spaces for the action, the opposition and the resistance will have to be as
well the object of research and permanent exploration.
The social postmodern theories and Foucault’s view of the students in the university.
The intention of this work is therefore, to explore the production of the discourse on
the "good student" in the bosom of determined university policies which imply the students,
the professors and the institution as such. This involves seeking an orientation for the most
sensitive research by the qualitative aspects of the students’ experiences (Ninnes, 1999;
McCabe, Trevino and Butterfield, 1999; Rau and Durand, 2000; Grant, 1997).
The impact of the educational institutions, and in particular the university, in the
identity formation processes seems to be evident. In this case, our intention is to approach the
experiences and practices of the university students from the point of view of the construction
of their identities in the bosom of some determined relations of power. Purposes of this nature
lead, sooner or later, to a theoretical framework constituted especially by the knowledge
which the postmodern social theories provide.
In order to center a little more this question, in Popkewitz and Brenan’s opinion
(1998) a contribution of the postmodern social theories has been that of questioning the ways
in which power acts through discursive practices and educational activities and that of
exploring how the discursive spaces have been built and the way they function as systems of
reclusion and confinement. Popkewitz and Brenan (1998; 293) use the term "social
epistemology" as a strategy directed to substitute the objects constituted by the schooling
2
knowledge inside historically configured patterns and relations of power in an effort of
understanding the conditions in which knowledge is produced.
In this way, when the students speak about the exams, we should consider that their
words and terms are not exclusive. When we speak of the "educated subject", of the "good
student" we cannot forget that these expressions are produced in a context which has
determined "ways of reasoning" at its disposition. These ways of reasoning are the ones we
are interested in knowing, the principles through which the knowledge in itself is structured.
These rules of reasoning give form and structure our actions, situating the subject in a
complex intersection of forces and discursive practices.
We justify the reference to M. Foucault inasmuch as this author helps us in the task of
suspending the validity of some of the great commonplaces constituting a given domain, so
that he permits the lighting of, until this moment, obscure spaces and at the same time the
creation of a different conceptual framework by means of differentiated analyses and spaces
of dispersion which substitute the uniform simplicities (" this is very clear"), the little thought
and credible oppositions (clever/clumsy, good/evil), the totalizing comprehensions (¡we work
this way here!) by a play of dependences.
There are many factors to puzzle out starting from lower sources and subordinated
knowledge which play havoc with the ideas of continuity. One must discover mistakes and
accidents which attempt against the ideas of order. The search for the ancestry does not
consist in a search for firm bases; on the contrary, it discovers shifting sands, fragmentary and
incoherent facts with defects, errors, omissions, faulty assessments and affirmations, and
pious aspirations. The idea is, in general, showing that the "historic truths" rest upon a
fragile, contingent, and complex land" (Marschall, 1993;22-23).
Foucault invites us to penetrate in this marshy land with shifting sands, open to
innumerable surprises but, at the same time, well articulated and organized and that, without
doubt, intervenes in the process of construction of the students as subjects. Subjectivity is a
central point in the analysis of the functioning of the University as institution, a subjectivity
narrowly linked to the practices of power –knowledge as far as the condition of being a
subject is produced by particular discourses and practices.
Methodological approach
We are interested, in particular, in knowing what norms, models and systems of ideas
construct what is a "good student". In what way the university constructs, develops and
regulates, using practices and techniques, the idea of the "good student". The task does not
rest so much on investigating who is successful or fails as student in the university, but the
systems of reasoning incorporated in our ways of speaking about success or failure, about the
"good" or "bad" student. To study the systems of reasoning drives us to the analysis of the
3
discourses used by the students to characterize the idea of the good student. The discourses
involve a meaning and certain social relations; they construct the subjectivity as well as the
relations of power. The possibilities of meaning and of definition are beforehand covered by
the social and institutional position of the ones who make use of them. The meanings arise
from the institutional practises, from the relations of power.
In the analysis of the discourses, the question is why, at a certain moment, among all
the things which could be told, they only tell some. The educational institutions control the
access of the individuals to the different types of discourse. Which are the discourses they
use? what do they speak about , and what do they hide?
It is, therefore, an exploration in the pedagogical discourses which they use as
members of a university community to characterize to the good student, discourses, on the
other hand-, historically built and that, in a way, reflect the view we have of education,
teaching, learning or schooling . A view assumed as natural, opinions founded on the
quotidian and logical activities upon the university, the student and teaching that permit the
access to the systems of reasoning.
All this draw us near, as you can imagine, the analysis of the relations of power. The
practices that with greater probability take us to a specific form of being of the students are
the disciplinary technologies that, in spite of their rhetoric referred to the autonomy, invade
the university as disciplinary block (Grant, 1997).
The interesting thing of the classifications as "good student" is that they are
incorporated in a discourse that functions to normalize the qualities of the people perceived as
different, to produce borderlines between what is possible and what is not possible, what is
inside or out of the norms. And we cannot be distracted thinking that this is only a matter of
"labels" applied. "Good student" is an expression historically linked with specific systems of
reasoning which differentiate and separate, which allow having an imaginary space, at last as
real as the geographical one, from which to see and act upon the population of university
students.
We have carried out a total of 48 interviews to the same number of students of the
University of Huelva1, coming from 9 different university degrees. We take as reference
Gore’s research (1994), since it represents an example of use of Foucault’s perspective in the
micro level analysis of the pedagogical practices and the relations of power, and its
functioning in different educational contexts. Some of the techniques used by this author are
employed with the purpose of organizing the data originating from the interviews. The
categories that have been used for the analysis of the data are the ones that are defined
immediately after:
4
The University of Huelva, situated in the Autonomous Community of Andalucía was created in 1993. Nowadays
it is formed by a population of 13.000 students, 700 professors and 32 university degrees.
· SURVEILLANCE: In this category, we include practices of supervision, systematic and
deliberate observations, questions, and everything that involves putting in practice a system of
"control" in a specific setting.
· NORMALIZATION: We include in this category the realization of comparisons,
invocations, requests, to mark or to conform taking a standard or model as basis. To define
what is normal.
· CLASSIFICATION: We include in this category the practices and mechanisms of
classification destined to differentiate groups or individuals, to classify them, or to classify
oneself.
· DISTRIBUTION: We include in this category the practices and mechanisms for the
distribution of people and groups in different spaces, to work, to have a good time..
· INDIVIDUALIZATION: We include in this category the practices and mechanisms to give
individual character to oneself or to another, trying to place the I opposite to...
· REGULATION: We include in this category practices and mechanisms by means of which
the control by rules is exercised, is submitted to restrictions, is invoked to norms. Sanctions
are imposed, rewards and punishments are given.
These categories have served to organize the discussion of the results obtained and to
allow a "mapmaking" of the discourse about the idea of the "good student". It is also true that
the students’ accounts reflect clearly the processes, practices and mechanisms of resistance
that they use. To speak of power is to speak of resistance. Both need the other to be
perpetuated, leaving spaces for the opposition and the alternatives. What do the students do
to act in "another way", to subvert the established order, to challenge the authority and escape
from the pressure exercised?; What do they do also, in this sense, to "endure" better the
"academic inclemencies"? In this work, we have been able to draw near these questions
verifying the potentiality of these approaches for the analysis of a different reality and in
constant creation.
References
BALL, Stephen J. (1993) (Comp.) Foucault y la Educación. Madrid: Morata.
5
BARLEY, S. y TOLBERT, P. (1997) Institutionalization and structuration: Studing the
links between action and institution. Organization Studies, 18 (1) 93-117.
BOURDIEU, Pierre y PASSERON, Jean C. (1969) Los estudiantes y la cultura.
Barcelona, Labor.
FOUCAULT, Michel. (1991) Saber y verdad. Madrid: La Piqueta.
FOUCAULT, Michel. (1995) Un diálogo sobre el poder y otras conversaciones. Madrid:
Alianza-Editorial (5ª reimp)
FOUCAULT, Michel. (1996) Vigilar y castigar. Madrid: Siglo XXI (10ª ed).
GARCÍA CALVO, Agustín. (1990) Desengaños acerca de universidad, enseñanza e
investigación. Revista de Enseñanza Universitaria, 1 (1) 13-23.
GORE, Jennifer (1994) Power and pedagogy: Within and beyond the schooling
institution. Annual Conference of Australian Asocc. for Research in Education.
Newcastle.
GRANT, Barbara (1997) Disciplining students: the construction of student subjetivities.
British Journal of Sociology of Education, 18 (1) 101 y ss.
LATHER, Patti. (1992) El postmodernismo y las políticas de ilustración. Revista de
Educación, 297 7-24.
MARSHALL, J. (1993) Foucault y la investigación educativa. En Ball, Stephen J. (1993)
(Comp.) Foucault y la Educación. Madrid: Morata 15-32.
McCABE, Donald L. TREVINO, Linda K. BUTTERFIELD, Kenneth D. (1999)
Academic integrity in honor code and non-honor code environments. The Journal of
Higher Education, 70 (2) 211-234.
NINNES, Peter. (1999) Acculturation of international students in higher education:
Australia. Education and Society, 17 (1) 73-101.
POPKEWITZ, Thomas S. (1998) La conquista del alma infantil. Políticas de
escolarización y construcción del nuevo docente. Barcelona: Pomares.
POPKEWITZ, Thomas S. y BRENNAN, Marie. (1997) Reestructuring of social and
political theory: Foucault and a social epistemology of school practices. Educational
Theory, 47 (3) 287-314.
RAU, William y DURAND, Ann (2000) The academic ethic and college grades: Does
hard work help students to "make the grade"? Sociology of Education, 73 19-38.
6
SCHEURICH, J. (1994) Social relativism: A postmodernist epistemology for educational
administration. En Maxcy, S. (Ed) Postmodern school leadership. Wesport: Praeger 1746.
TOWNLEY, Barbara (1997) The institutional logic of performance appraisal.
Organization Studies, 18 (2) 261-285.
7