ABSTRACT
This chapter critically examines how tendencies within governance affect teachers with particular reference to recent inclusion policy in England, Europe and Australasia. Michel Foucault’s analysis of power, neoliberalism(s) and biopolitics informs the analysis of the ways in which teachers are ‘responsibilised’ into negotiating and fulfilling demands related to state-imposed accountability practices, social agendas and strategic change management. It is argued that the demands currently placed on teachers and schools serve to illustrate an inherent tension within governance in which an apparent decentralisation of state power coincides with greater centralised control. However, rather than conceptualising governance as a radically novel modality of power, the chapter traces continuities between governance, the German school of ordoliberal thought and the European social model or social market economy. Recent developments in inclusion policy are discussed in relation to divergences within ordoliberal thought itself and it is suggested that the ordoliberal privileging of the market, combined with social and educational policies intended to deliver social cohesion and support the market order, has given rise to a symbolic politics, in which teachers are left to negotiate inherent tensions between different educational discourses.
