Neoliberalism, Human Capital Discourse and Education Practice

In the regime of neoliberal governmentality, teachers’ subjectivities are the focus of educational reforms because self serves as a crucial medium linking power and voluntarism. In this regard, human capital discourse functions as the infrastructure for performing neoliberal educational practices because this discourse is able to align international competitiveness with the national economic future of a given country particularly through the PISA program by which its quantified data can be compared, and this circumstance supports the ranking system that is able to correlate teaching quality to international competitiveness. As a result, teachers are responsible for the mission of national economic development, so that they need to make contributions to human capital quality in high-quality teaching. More importantly, in order to become enterprising subjects, they need to behave as self-improvers as evident in performance management policy that comes to refabricate their subjectivities through the tactic of performativity. Considering the interplay of neoliberal governmentality, human capital discourse, self and education practice, this panel sets out to explore related issues, as follows:

1. Neoliberalism and education reforms
2. The OECD and human capital discourse
3. Human capital and international competitiveness
4. Human capital, the PISA and teaching quality
5. Self, self-reformation and responsible teachers
6. Self-improver and teacher professional development
7. Performativity and teachers’ subjectivities
8. Excellent teachers and truth-telling

Theoretical analyses and empirical studies are all welcome.