ABSTRACT
The chapter examines teachers' discourses about discipline and locates these discourses in more systematic framework drawing on typology provided by Foucault on discipline. It discusses some aspects of literature dealing with ideology, knowledge and the curriculum in education. The chapter by drawing on Foucault's discussion of examinations, suggests that processes of domination in school can only be properly understood through analyses which draw out the relationship between the forms of discipline and the forms of control entailed in ideology, knowledge and the curriculum. The successful teacher is one who exercises successful classroom control and this depends on disciplinary techniques, not only on well prepared lessons. The acquisition of the necessary skills is seen to be the result of practical experience in the employment of disciplinary techniques and recipes handed down by experienced teachers. These disciplinary strategies vary enormously and in ways which may reflect the social conditions of the school – physical location, class composition, gender and so forth.
