The calculated management of life and all that jazz: gaming quality assurance practices in English further education

Journal article

Beighton, Christian and Naz, Z. 2023. The calculated management of life and all that jazz: gaming quality assurance practices in English further education. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. 44 (6), pp. 844-858. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2023.2192907

Publication dates
Authors	Beighton, Christian and Naz, Z.
Abstract	This paper examines emerging discourses and practices of quality assurance in English Further Education (FE), a sector currently undergoing significant change. Using a broadly ethnographic approach and Foucauldian theories of power, we discuss how ‘documentisation’ contributes to governance techniques in a specific institutional context. Documentisation, the transformation of concrete practice into discourse, reverses a common-sense view of the role of policy documentation and exemplifies a wide range of practices in both FE and the wider post-16 sector and includes the gamification of quality systems. Our analysis of the conditions and practices out of which the phenomenon appears identifies processes that are shaping present-day experiences and redefining the discourse of quality itself. Moreover, rather than situating compliance and/or resistance in practice per se, we argue that it is within the conditions of possibility expressed by such processes that the intertwining of compliance and resistance can best be appreciated.
Keywords	Education; Quality assurance ; Foucault; Complexity; Normalisation ; Documentisation
Year	2023
Journal	Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education
Journal citation	44 (6), pp. 844-858
Publisher	Taylor & Francis
ISSN	0159-6306
	1469-3739
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)	https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2023.2192907
Official URL	https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01596306.2023.2192907
Online	04 Apr 2023
Publication process dates
Deposited	13 Apr 2023
Publisher's version	beightonnaz.pdf License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Output status	Published
License	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Page range	1-15

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