Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to explore the relationship between professional education, embodiment, and neoliberalism, focussing primarily on the practices of professional educators. The chapter draws on the theory of practice architectures to pose questions about how practices, and the bodies that make those practices possible, are being enabled, constrained, and transformed by neoliberalising forces that have pervaded many aspects of contemporary societies, including sites of professional education and the everyday lives of professional educators. Are bodies, through practices, becoming both “neoliberalised” and “neoliberalising”? What does/could this look like/feel like? What might this mean for the future of professional education? The chapter highlights the sense in which, in this neoliberal age, professional educators’ bodies are increasingly experiencing, performing, and perpetuating neoliberal ideals, and why promoting a sensitivity to this, and resistance, is so important. For illustrative purposes, the chapter draws on some lived experiences of professional educators gleaned from literature and the author’s own research and history as a teacher educator.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Indeed, Olssen, and Peters (2005) described New Public management as a form of “neoliberal governmentality” (p. 324).
- 3.
The neoliberalisation of society has also had major impacts on the professions and workplaces served by professional education. This is relevant to the discussion in this chapter, but is not its focus. For a poignant discussion, for example, of the capacity of social workers as caring professionals to be caring persons in the neoliberal context, see Moffat et al. (2018). For a discussion of market- or global competition-related changes to the teaching profession, see Furlong (2013), or to the nursing profession, see Foth and Holmes (2017).
- 4.
Casualisation in higher education has been felt on a dramatic scale in Australia. As much as 70% of the academic labour force was believed to be on casual contracts before the pandemic. I began my own career as a teacher educator on such a contract.
- 5.
This is not solely attributable to the neoliberalisation of society and educational institutions of course. However, the digitalisation of education has been linked to preoccupations with efficiencies (e.g., Moffat et al., 2018, p. 2).
- 6.
Or other activities to replace speech, for those whose speech is impaired.
- 7.
A contemporary practice theory drawing on Schatzki’s (2002) site ontology.
- 8.
To explain, cultural–discursive arrangements are resources (e.g., languages, profession-specific discourses, regulatory discourses) used in and about a practice that make possible particular sayings, constraining and enabling what it is relevant and appropriate to say (and think) (Kemmis et al., 2014). Material–economic arrangements are resources (e.g., classrooms, funding arrangements, technology, workload calculators) that make possible or shape the doings of a practice, constraining and enabling what it is relevant and appropriate to do (Kemmis et al., 2014). Social–political arrangements are resources (e.g., collegial solidarities, student–teacher relationships, line-management structures) that shape how people relate in a practice to other people, to things, and to the natural world (Kemmis et al., 2014).
- 9.
These audits are regulated at a national level by the Swedish Higher Education Authority (UKÄ).
- 10.
I am borrowing from Gill (2009) here. Gill was describing the higher education context more broadly, but I think the comments apply to professional education specifically as well – certainly in the contexts in which I have been a teacher educator.
- 11.
Reference to Levinsson et al., 2020 who cite Sleeter (2008) in saying that teacher educators need to be aware of what neoliberalism is, and its impact.
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Mahon, K. (2021). “Neoliberalised” (Human) Bodies and Implications for Professional Education. In: Loftus, S., Kinsella, E.A. (eds) Embodiment and Professional Education. Debating Higher Education: Philosophical Perspectives, vol 8. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4827-4_15
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