ABSTRACT
The practice of grading in schools is mainly aimed at measuring student performance. In doing so, the homogeneity in the grading scale establishes and perpetuates the fiction of objectivity of grades comprised in that scale. This chapter focuses on the subjectifying mechanisms and strategies in performance evaluations. It also focuses on the power techniques surrounding the confession, which Michel Foucault has treated in general terms. In pursuing this task, the chapter describes a number of field protocols, which have been created in the course of a research project concerned with performance evaluations in German schools. Foucault shows that the delinquent's subjective interest increasingly amalgamates with a 'rational constitution of the subject'. Because the delinquent is systematically related to his deed by way of his orientation, the deed itself attains a new systematic status. The perspective of subjectification differs from the discourse on 'individualization' that has shaped recent discussions in school research.
