Welcome#
First, welcome. If you’re reading this and you aren’t my professor or a classmate, thanks for stopping in. This blog entry is a brief analysis of the article “Power/Knowledge for Educational Theory: Stephen Ball and the Reception of Foucault” by Chia-Ling Wang.
Clarification#
Before moving on, I feel it’s important to define the main idea being discussed in both Ball’s article and Wang’s rebuttal: power/knowledge. The following definition comes from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: power/knowledge is a tool (such as an exam of some kind) that simultaneously provides data about a person and can be used to illicit certain behaviors from them. For example: an exam at school seeks to find out what a student understands about a subject (knowledge) and also is used as a tool to change their behavior (power) by enticing them to study.
Problems#
This article is a highly dense read, which relies heavily on quotes from a variety of philosophers. In fact, this dependence on so many isolated quotes from a wide variety of philosophers is a weakness of this article. The use of quotes causes the arguments being made to lose their cohesiveness. The quotes provide the weight of the philosophers being brought forward, but there is no cohesive argument through the number of quotes provided.
The second argument Wang puts forth is titled “Foucault is not a thinker of confinement.” This argument centers on Deleuze’s explanation of the concept of outside and how it applies to the concept of power/knowledge. While this section is clearer, it does not connect back to the discussion about Ball’s interpretation of knowledge/power.
Solutions & Fallacy#
For this article, the author would be better served by reducing the volume of quotes and instead taking the time to clearly explain the links between each step of an argument. The appeal to authority represented by the volume of quotes (including 4 block quotes) caused the writing to suffer from a lack of flow, which reduced the effectiveness of the arguments. This also undermined the effectiveness of the writer in creating their own authority, instead relying on the names of those they quoted.
Secondly, the author presumed a high, high level of knowledge about specific philosophical concepts (power/knowledge) and how Foucault described it over his career. The article set out to discuss how power/knowledge was discussed in educational theory, but the educational theory applications was not clear from the writing.
Difficulty & General Response#
I have a background in debate. I was a Lincoln-Douglas debater in high school, and judged Lincoln-Douglas debate for years. Having that background made this reading a bit easier, but it was by no means an easy article to get through. Secondly, my background prepared me for reading/listening to arguments that utilize a large number of small quotes (some of which are taken out of context) to build cases of various qualities.
I did make some connections to both Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model and Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed as I read this. The combination of Freire and Bronfenbrenner with the power/knowledge model allow us to look at the concept how power/knowledge tools in education - grades, required curricula, standardized testing - impact the practitioners and students as tools of social conditioning, but are the tools of themacro-, exo-, and mesosystems to strengthen social conditioning while prioritizing the prized knowledge of cultural in-groups.
Citations#
Gutting, G., & Oksala, J. (2022). Michel Foucault. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2022/entries/foucault/
Mcleod, S. (2024). Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory. https://www.simplypsychology.org/bronfenbrenner.html
WANG, C.-L. (2011), Power/Knowledge for Educational Theory: Stephen Ball and the Reception of Foucault.. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 45: 141-156. https://doi-org.libproxy.library.unt.edu/10.1111/j.1467-9752.2011.00789.x