Att styra i namn av framtid: Subjektskonstruktioner och tekniker för styrning

To govern in the name of the future: Construction of Subject and disciplinary techniques

The purpose of the dissertation is to problemize the stories about a gradual change and development of education governance. The study objects are steering, constructions of the subject, and disciplinary techniques. The focus is future as a disciplinary technology. Based on the story of a gradual development and change in educational governance three strands were chosen: the late 1970s, the mid-1990s and the first decade of the 21st century. Teacher education was chosen because it is to be found in all educational system. The empirical material consists of policy bills and text designed to create knowledge about teacher education, and text created in the educational community that focus on education and future.The questions asked relate the study to Foucault´s thinking about governmentality, genealogy, and bio-politics. The essence in governmentality, genealogy and bio-politicis is that that knowledge and knowledge production is a productive activity that generate possibilities that allow us to construct ourselves as subjects.A general feature in the empirical material is the structure of an overall and collecting concept. The time characteristic become visible through the way that people live, work, and study. The stories create an image of a national and the individual’s history, with a present, and a future with possibilities, and restrictions. Those constructions create the contexts that the subject is in and will be a part of. Regardless of story, the question and the task is to organize and provide for the individual as the creator of community, economy, health and future. In the documents it is mainly in the construction of ”the other” that the community appears. A hierarchical surveillance was made visible in the tree strands. It can be described as frames in which time is divided into intervals with requirements and objectives possible to examine and document. Confession as a technique for discipline is reused under different names. Confession activities are organized in the pedagogical practices and are referred to as dialogue pedagogy , didactics and performance assessment . Practices were the individual are invited to speak, in a need to speak whit some other who knows and can act and tutor. The educational practice creates network, actors and audiences who act and communicate with each other simultaneously. The network spreads and demonstrates society’s intentions and purposes whit the educational system. The networks and the talk of the future and education create the subjects ways to think and talk about herself and others.The educational and scientific discourse is part of a political rationality, where functions and practices create ways to coordinate and neutralize differences even though with different names. It is therefore not possible to say that one form of subject construction have been exchanged in benefit of another, it is rather a movement back and forth. The problem is about efficiency, control and to influence the individual’s choice, and coordinate individuals in the creation of opportunities for the individual and the nation.