Procedures of power as obstacles to change

Dr Gary Simpson Woodleigh School Baxter, Victoria, Australia

Introduction

In this paper I address the question of why it can be difficult to achieve positive curriculum change. I believe that the answer lies in a consideration of the procedures of power inherent in the educational setting of the school and within the political/bureaucratic milieu of education. Foucault focused much of his work on exploring the notion of power within society. He defined power as the systems that exist within the social body through a multiplicity of force relations (1989, p. 64). Foucault suggested that we are located within a matrix of force relations and that individuals act as the vehicles of power - not as its point of application (1980, p. 98). He prophesied that once the procedures of power in a discourse are discovered, one can find ways to fight the frames that bind us.

The central assertion of this paper is that the impact of the procedures of power on the ability of an innovator to successfully innovate is to negate the full attainment of that innovation. The procedures of power operate in such a way as to limit the innovator, in implementing positive curriculum change. The procedures of power also operate to limit students’ engagement (the participants in innovation) and the community’s participation in the process of change.

I begin by explaining Foucault’s thesis, especially how it may apply to blocking curriculum change. I then consider my own experiences with curriculum change and the procedures of power and I close with a final reflection on how this may help to reduce the obstacles to positive curriculum change.

The procedures of power

In the preface to his text, Procedures of Power and Curriculum Change: Foucault and the Quest for Possibilities in Science Education, David Blades retells the tale of how, as a young teacher, he expressed his surprise that the new curriculum guide he had just received from the educational bureaucracy was similar in tone, direction and topics to the previous curriculum guide. His reflection met with much mirth by the senior teachers present. They explained to him that: ‘curriculum change is a cyclical process involving the predictable repetition of topics every ten to fifteen years. The end result, they assured (him), was little – if any – change’ (Blades, 1997, p. xi).

Blades began a personal journey that was to expose him to the possibilities of change. On the journey he had three significant travelling companions who enabled him to unravel the challenge of change and to formulate a new direction. These companions were Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Each offers important insights to the manner in which modern society is structured to resist change.

Heidegger suggested that technology is the main cause of society's problems. He claimed that ‘the essence of technology lies in enframing. Its holding sway belongs within destining’ (1977, p. 307). That is, any discourse that is framed by technical thinking will experience a ‘destining’ that blocks possibilities for change. Heidegger coined the term ‘technism’ to describe a phenomena he had perceived, where technical solutions are sought to problems exposed by technical means that had been caused by the application of technology in the first place. We can see this today in our search for solutions to climate change. The problem has been caused by the manner in which we view our environment and interact with it through our technologies. The solution lies not in new technologies, but in the manner in which we, as a species, interact with our environment. Once we realise that each house takes responsibility for generating its own electricity, capturing its own water, reducing its waste production, rather than waiting for technology to offer us enormous solar collecting plants or building new dams, the better. This is not to suggest that science and technology do not have a role to play in the solution of global problems, but only after recognition and acceptance of the concept of technism and its effects.

Nietzsche (1887) offered Blades the concept of ‘exclusion’. He claimed that exclusion is a strategic effect of power to resist change. We have seen this in the incredibly slow response to the message of climate change. Scientists and others have warned of the impact of our technological lifestyle on the environment since the 1970s and yet, only now, when climate change effects the profit margins of big business, has an impetus for change taken effect (not change – just talk so far!) Foucault (1989) extended this insight by demonstrating how discourse marginalises the individual. It is Foucault who most informed Blades. In turn, Blades informed my work in a very powerful way and introduced me to Foucault (Simpson, 2005).

Foucault focused much of his work on exploring the notion of power within society. He defined power as the systems that exist within the social body through a multiplicity of force relations. If we consider the example of climate change again, then we can all be considered as nodes of influence in our social matrix able to cause change by our daily activities. Yet we are made to feel powerless by those with the most to gain and the most to lose from our changed consumption and waste production patterns. So far, the matrix has operated to work against changed consumer behaviours.

Blades had been involved in a failed attempt to cause major curriculum change in science education in the Province of Alberta, in Canada.The three philosophers helped him to realise a number of the factors that contributed to the failure.

‘There was no conscious conspiracy toward maintaining the status quo. No group or individual had power over the events that led to the demise of the original program; the events that had led to the demise of the program were expressions of power’
(Blades, 1997, p. 101).

How is this an obstacle to positive curriculum change?

In conducting the research for my PhD, I found myself exposed to the procedures of power within the social matrix of the school. I had made a decision to act independently of the normal approach to teaching and learning practiced within my previous school but, in fact, I was not completely free to do so. I was bound up within the structure of the school that set the amount of time for each class period, the number of lessons per week, when those lessons occurred, in which rooms, who would teach my class before me and after me, other events that occurred during the day to influence the manner in which my students behaved and how I must assess and report on the success of my students. To teach a class of students is not to act in isolation, but rather to act within a social context with many hidden and taken for granted procedures of power. I benefit from these implicitly and explicitly and I am also constrained by them.

‘New teachers face an institutional opposition or inertia to attempts that they may make to change. However, these new teachers have served an apprenticeship of observation of about 10 000 hours in the years of their own schooling. The awareness of the need to change and their role as agents opposing change is rarely experienced and when it is it is quickly squashed.’
(Blades, 1997, p. 188)

As Blades notes above, we are part of the problem. As nodes in the matrix encultured into a particular view of schooling, we act to support the status quo, whether we are aware of it or not. To wish to make change requires teachers who are reflexive and who are asking themselves how to improve their practice. But, importantly they need to feel capable of acting on their reflections, of trying new and different things and of not doing what every one else is doing because ‘that is what we have always done’.

Whitehead (1989) describes the process by which reflexive teachers may proceed. He describes it as a ‘living educational theory’, which is the product of a systematic reflective process on the nature of how to improve one’s personal practice. If one starts with the question: ‘How do I improve this process of education here?’ (Whitehead, p.43), then one follows the five steps in the cycle.

1. I identify a problem because some of my educational values are negated.
2. I imagine a solution to the problem.
3. I act in the direction of the solution.
4. I evaluate the outcomes of my solution.
5. I modify my actions and ideas in the light of my evaluations.

Whitehead sees this as a continuous cyclic process.

‘Any discourse is clearly framed by the larger discourse in society. It's nearly impossible to move beyond technicality in curriculum change when our culture is destined to think in modern ways. I realised that change was not a question of technique but that true change that makes a difference to the lives of people must explore questions of being. The personal responsibility in this prospect was initially terrifying for me.’
(Blades, 1997, p. 195)

The strength of conviction to act in a different way to the rest of the team is a real test and must be managed carefully. It is best to talk with colleagues and find those who are like minded and then take small steps together. This is probably most successful when set up as an action research project as part of one’s own professional learning. That is, using the system to seek opportunities for change. In Foucauldian terms, one is applying one’s power within the social matrix to achieve an end.

‘Students are marginalised from curriculum discourse and yet they are a major group within the discourse.  [Blades realised that] this was not accidental but a function of the present discourse practices.’ (Blades, 1997, pp. 211 & 212)

Interestingly, the group most often forgotten in this process is the students. The views of our students are often not considered when adult experts and non-experts (often the other forgotten group – parents) talk about what students need. Yet, these conversations are often about what we (the adults) needed for our future and really must take into account more what this generation needs for their future. A world that will see global communities and global employment opportunities with or without the global travel, a world that will see greater reliance on knowledge-based economies, a majority population, which will grow even larger making demands on the earth’s resources, and make demands on the minority world to relinquish, or at least share control, of those resources. The students must take part in planning how we teach and what we teach.

This list of hurdles to change may have defeated most people. Blades found, for him, a way forward; one that I was able to share and enable me to find a way forward in my own work. He realised that to seek to change curriculum is to remain within the trap of modernity - the belief in a technical solution. This is Heidegger's concern of the ‘enframing’ influence of technology. Blade’s answer is to seek a post-modern science education curriculum discourse. This is a conversation that critiques the discourse with all participants. That is, it is inclusive of all the participants' views and celebrates the diversity of these views. That means that change can occur when the students, their families and the communities in which they live are invited to participate with the teachers and administrators and the bureaucrats and politicians in open, ongoing discussions, in which the power of particular nodes within the matrix are made transparent and the views of all participants is openly accepted and considered.

Reflections

‘To discover the procedures of power in a discourse might expose possibilities to escape technism.' (Blades, 1997, p. 95)

As David Blades found for his own work, I wish to emphasise that what I have achieved for my educational practice is in no way a recommendation for others to follow. I have not found a replacement for the 'destining' of technical solutions that will solve the ills of educations. My practice remains critically reflexive and ever-changing in its attempts to improve. To quote Foucault, ‘Do not ask me who I am, and do not ask me to remain the same’ (1972, p. 17). 

Thus armed with Jacques Derrida's legacy of deconstruction, we may achieve the vision of Foucault, that is, to expose the procedures of power and expose the possibilities for change.

References

Blades, DW (1997). Procedures of power and curriculum change: Foucault and the quest for possibilities in science education. New York, Peter Lang.
Foucault, M (1972). The archaeology of knowledge and the discourse of language, trs Sheridan Smith, AM, New York, Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M (1980). Power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings 1972 – 1977, trs Gordon, C, Marshall, L, Mepham, J & Soper, K, New York, Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M (1989). Foucault live, trs Johnston, J, New York, Columbia University.
Simpson, GB (2005). Cosmic Galileo and the origin of the universe: a journey of discovery (an interpretive inquiry into constructivist science teaching)’. Thesis presented for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Curtin University of Technology.
Whitehead, J (1989). ‘Creating a Living Educational Theory from Questions of the Kind, ‘How do I improve my Practice?’. In Cambridge journal of education. Vol. 19, n1, pp41-52.