Biopolitcs and education. Measurement, standardization and regularisation of the population

Abstract

This paper analyzes scholar standardized testing as a dispositif of educational biopolitics. It describes a theoretical review of biopolitics, an analytic of power of the economic agencies that legitimize global education policies and a socio- technical mapping of teacher control technologies. The dispositif of educational biopolitics causes the legitimizing of disciplinary logic in students, along with the perpetuation of dividing lines (normality/abnormality) and the hegemony of standardization as regularization of population sets. The effects brought about in teachers are presented with in-depth interviews of empirical research, including two qualities: «comparability», of which the characteristics are computing/center and relationship with everything, and «dividuality» where the properties are competitiveness and subjection.

Keywords

• biopolítica
• política educativa
• evaluación estandarizada
• dispositivo