1st Edition
The Impacts of Neoliberal Discourse and Language in Education Critical Perspectives on a Rhetoric of Equality, Well-Being, and Justice
This edited collection combines quantitative content and critical discourse analysis to reveal a shift in the rhetoric used as part of the neoliberal agenda in education. It does so by analysing, uncovering, and commenting on language as a central tool of education.
Focussing on vocabulary, metaphors, and slogans used in strategy documents, advertising, policy, and public discourse, the text illustrates how concepts such as justice, opportunity, well-being, talent, and disadvantage have been hijacked by educational institutes, governments, and universities. Showing how neoliberalism has changed discourses about education and educational policy, these chapters trace issues such as anti-intellectualism, commercialization, meritocracy, and an erasure of racial difference back to a contradictory growth in egalitarian rhetoric.
Given its global scope, this volume offers a timely intervention in the studies of neoliberalism and education by developing a holistic vision of how the language of neoliberalism has changed how we think about education. It will prove to be an essential resource for scholars and researchers working at the intersections of education, policymaking, and neoliberalism.
Chapter 1. The Language of Neoliberalism in Education
Mitja Sardoč
Chapter 2. Politics by the Numbers
Theodore M. Porter
Chapter 3. Playing on Two Tables: Advertising and Science in OECD’s Educational Rhetoric
Vasco d’Agnese
Chapter 4. Neoliberalism and Laissez-Faire: The Retreat from Naturalism
Mark Olssen
Chapter 5. Neoliberalism as Political Discourse: The Political Arithmetic of Homo Oeconomicus
Michael A. Peters
Chapter 6. Entrepreneurial Learning and the Merging of Progressive and Economic Ideals
Johan Dahlbeck and Peter Lilja
Chapter 7. Hard Work, Growth Mindset, Fluent English: Navigating Neoliberal Logics
Katy Highet and Alfonso Del Percio
Chapter 8. Gauging Neoliberal Discursive Formations in the Russell Group’s Education Strategies and Long-Term Objectives
Rodolfo Leyva
Chapter 9. Resisting the Iron Cage of ‘The Student Experience’
Sarah Hayes and Petar Jandrić
Chapter 10. Meritocracy from a Liberating and Equalising Rationality, to an Oppressive and Inequality-Promoting Rationality
Veronika Tašner and Slavko Gaber
Chapter 11. Neoliberal Language, Outcome-Based Education, and Youth-at-risk in Rural Canada
Hyunjung Shin and Angela Csiki
Chapter 12. From Racial Equity to Closing the Achievement Gap: The Discursive "Whiting Out" of Race in Neoliberal Education Policy
Pamela Rogers
Chapter 13. European Neoliberal Discourse and Slovenian Educational Space
Urška Štremfel
Chapter 14. The Language of Neoliberal Education: An Interview With Henry Giroux
Mitja Sardoč
Biography
Mitja Sardoč is Senior Research Associate at the Educational Research Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
