Poststructuralism at Work with Marginalised Children

I sincerely thank the students and staff at the special school described in this book. Their humour, friendship and conversations provided great sustenance throughout the research. In particular, I am indebted to all the students with whom I have ever worked. I hope I can remember to learn from all they taught me about themselves and about myself.

There are many people to whom I am intellectually indebted—people whose work I have read, people with whom I have talked and people with whom I have engaged in many critical discussions. In particular, I thank the students of Professor Bronwyn Davies who share amazing insights; I am privileged to be a member of such a talented group of writers and thinkers.

Special thanks to Professor Bronwyn Davies, my editor and mentor, for her guidance and support. I appreciate the support of the Australian Catholic University, particularly Professor Marea Nicholson for her insights and support.

I wish to thank all my friends, particularly Lee, Alicia, Susan and Julie. Their patience, advice and humour provided great support throughout this journey.

To my sisters, Madeline and Patricia, I offer this work as a tribute to our lives.

To Ian, I offer my gratitude and my love—your support and partnership sustain me in so many ways.

This work involves developing the capacity to apply poststructuralism in a place where other discourses are dominant. I examine the educational practices used in a special school for those students who are read as unmanageable and too violent to be maintained in mainstream/regular schooling. In this chapter, I examine ways of collecting data in a poststructural frame, and ways of making the discursive practices of the special school more visible. I discuss the difficulties of working in a poststructuralist way and examine issues of anonymity for the students who were part of my study. I then discuss the theoretical framework, which is particularly informed by the work of Foucault. During the period of my study, I was the principal of the school in which the study was undertaken.

As detailed in Chapter 1, Researching special schools: a poststructuralist approach, this work explores the capacity to apply poststructuralism, in theory and in practice, in a setting where other discourses are dominant. I focus on my own work as principal in the context of a special education school where I worked with students categorised as ‘emotionally/behaviourally disordered’. I analyse the discourses that inform this kind of work, both from the position of one who inevitably took them up, even becoming expert in them, and from a Foucauldian position of critique which sets out to render these discourses less able to be taken up.

This chapter explores some of these discourses, in particular the ideas and practices around the management of students’ behaviour. I scrutinise the dominant practices at work in a special school, and in regular schools, to understand better the ways children and young people come to be subjected as ‘students’ and so come to desire to be the best possible students they can be. I then examine the educational/psychological processes used to inform the work of teachers who work with students who are read as failing to take up appropriate performances as manageable students.

As detailed in Chapter 1, Researching special schools: a poststructuralist approach, this work explores the capacity to apply poststructuralism, in theory and in practice, in a setting where other discourses are dominant. I focus on my own work as principal in the context of a special education school where I worked with students categorised as ‘emotionally/behaviourally disordered’. I analyse the discourses that inform this kind of work, both from the position of one who inevitably took them up, even becoming expert in them, and from a Foucauldian position of critique which sets out to render these discourses less able to be taken up.

This chapter explores the discourses and practices used with children at a special school who come to be read as/perform as ‘mad’. Using Foucault’s work on madness and civilisation, I examine the everyday educational practices through which these children are constituted, and tease out the dangers and chances created for teachers and students working at the margins. Through exploring the practices around ‘mad’ adults, as detailed by Foucault, I examine how these same practices are used with children in covert and complex ways, and I explore the dominant and marginalising discourses positioning children and young people as ‘mad’.

As detailed in Chapter 1, Researching special schools: a poststructuralist approach, this work explores the capacity to apply poststructuralism, in theory and in practice, in a setting where other discourses are dominant. I focus on my own work as principal in the context of a special education school where I worked with students categorised as ‘emotionally/behaviourally disordered’. I analyse the discourses that inform this kind of work, both from the position of one who inevitably took them up, even becoming expert in them, and from a Foucauldian position of critique which sets out to render these discourses less able to be taken up.

In this chapter I use Foucault’s work on discipline and punishment to make sense of the discipline practices that are at work in schools such that most students in mainstream schools ‘get it right’ at being good students and come to desire getting it right. I then explore the workings of punishment for those students in mainstream schools who perform ‘bad’ behaviour yet remain in mainstream/regular schools. This exploration is used to gain insight into the ways students in the special school, by contrast, perform ‘bad’ behaviour in such ways that they are read as ‘abnormally bad’ and confined even to the margins in a special school.

As detailed in Chapter 1, Researching special schools: a poststructuralist approach, this work explores the capacity to apply poststructuralism, in theory and in practice, in a setting where other discourses are dominant. I focus on my own work as principal in the context of a special education school where I worked with students categorised as ‘emotionally/behaviourally disordered’. I analyse the discourses that inform this kind of work, both from the position of one who inevitably took them up, even becoming expert in them, and from a Foucauldian position of critique which sets out to render these discourses less able to be taken up.

In this chapter I examine the discourses that have informed the way we think about children living in out-ofhome care who do not fit into the normal school system. I explore my own embeddedness in those discourses when I work with these children, and I subject the discourses to critique—to make them visible and analysable, showing the (often negative) effects they have on the children’s lives. These are powerful discourses with powerful effects, and what I set out to do here is show how we are inevitably constituted by them and constitute the children with them, even while learning to distance ourselves from them and no longer hold them as revealing ‘the truth’ about the individual children we work with.

As detailed in Chapter 1, Researching special schools: a poststructuralist approach, this work explores the capacity to apply poststructuralism, in theory and in practice, in a setting where other discourses are dominant. I focus on my own work as principal in the context of a special education school where I worked with students categorised as ‘emotionally/behaviourally disordered’. I analyse the discourses that inform this kind of work, both from the position of one who inevitably took them up, even becoming expert in them, and from a Foucauldian position of critique which sets out to render these discourses less able to be taken up.

By working in a poststructuralist framework, this chapter explores how there might be moments when students and staff at the special school are able to recognise students and themselves as already subjected and as having the kind of power that comes from that subjection. I examine the ways agency derives both from reading discursive practices ‘correctly’ and against the grain. These strategies contain the possibilities of resistance and of taking up positions other than those made inevitable within dominant discourses. The possibilities are explored in the context of students’ everyday lives, at the special school, playing sport and away on camps. Finally, I discuss both the binds and the possibilities of agency.

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