Exploring the key features of Governmentality in schools

Document Type : Qualitative Research Paper

Authors

1 دانش‌آموخته کارشناسی‌ارشد مدیریت آموزشی دانشگاه فردوسی مشهد، مشهد، ایران

2 .دانشیار گروه مدیریت آموزشی و توسعه منابع انسانی دانشگاه فردوسی مشهد، مشهد، ایران

3 استاد گروه مدیریت آموزشی و توسعه منابع انسانی دانشگاه فردوسی مشهد، مشهد، ایران

Abstract

By changing the face of societies, everything shifted from simplicity to complexity, and industrialism created public education to produce and educate the type of adults that are needed by society (Aries, 1960). then governments built (organized) new educational policies to be imposed on schools and described them as the proper discipline and education for children to make them ready to enter the community, and they considered these training necessary for the education of children (Aali, 2012). As a result, the school, as a child, was at the forefront of the ideals of modern industrial development (Toffler, 1393: 411-426), and nothing was hidden from modern sharp eyes, and crossed all geographical boundaries and countries of the world, including Iran and captured society by goals such as progress, prosperity, and happiness (Sadeghi, 2009). The history of today's Iranian educational system also shows the sowing of the seeds of modern education and the establishment of the modern school institution during the Qajar period (Irvani, 2013) and the signs of modernity in the education of the Islamic Republic of Iran are obvious (Ahanchian and Taherpour, 2011). According to Foucault, governance that has taken control of all aspects of life controlled schools too. Educational policies in Iran lead the minds towards specific government goals that can be understood through hidden discourse ideas and can be seen through school life (Habibpour Gatabi, 2013). What seems vague in the meantime is whether the signs of governance are clear and obvious in the real life of the school (school life) or not.
To discover the symptoms of governance in the studied schools, a qualitative method of descriptive phenomenology was used. In the descriptive phenomenological method, which includes three stages of direct comprehension, analysis, and description, the essence of governance symptoms in schools can be identified by using the lived experience of sixth-grade elementary school students. The boys' primary schools in the fourth district of Mashhad were selected as the research sample, and with the coordination of education, three schools whose principals were more flexible with the presence of female and young researchers were introduced. Targeted sampling was also used to select the desired individuals. The sample size was considered according to "theoretical saturation". To collect the required data, a semi-structured interview was used. Strauss and Corbin coding methods were used for analyzing the data. The coding was done in two phases, open and pivotal, and proceeded to the extraction of the main themes. The GABA and Lincoln evaluation criteria were used to validate the findings: credibility, dependability, transferability, conformability. Therefore, the researcher provided the documents in all stages of the research and the ability to track and evaluate the accuracy of the steps by the supervisors and consultants. Also, recording the statements of the participants, and writing them down during the research, long-term contracts with the research environment help make the results reliable. Also, to increase the transfer capability, interviews were conducted with a large number of students to develop the data, and to describe the rich data, many sub-questions, and supplements to the main research questions were discussed in the interviews. And in coding, the necessary care was taken and the text, footnotes, and interviews were read line by line and coded more than five times. Besides, the researcher sought to achieve consensus among participants and to use this criterion to continue theoretical saturation and the emergence of a new concept.
After analyzing data, ninth themes and sixty subjects were found as Wagnerian caring: imitating acquaintance (holy speech), temporal caring: temporal dungeon, environmental caring: rocky bricks, instructional-content caring: abacus minds, photography caring: physical caring, policy caring: clear walls, human telescopes, communicative caring: modern dialectics, Agora killing and political caring: technical Panak (imposed rules), and schools for the producing effective subjects. Furthermore, of producing effective subjects, sentence and submission, death of critical thinking, and non-considering the children’s rights were found as the result. It was concluded that silence culture, mug trust to educate members, and injustice rules of school were the sign of the only sound of modernism in schools. Thus, students were categorized by their personalities that were as: stuffy students, sun-worshipper students, genius students, deception of situation, rebellion forces, silent rebellions, and bootlicks.
The purpose of this study was to discover governmental signs in Schools from students’ perspectives. The study was based on descriptive phenomenology and concerning the goal was applied research. The population was students of the sixth class in schools. Three schools and 21 students were selected as participants by the purposive sampling method. Semi- structure interviews and documentary analysis were used as instruments. After analyzing data, ninth themes and sixty subjects were found as Wagnerian caring: imitating acquaintance (holy speech), temporal caring: temporal dungeon, environmental caring: rocky bricks, instructional-content caring: abacus minds, photography caring: physical caring, policy caring: clear walls, human telescopes, communicative caring: modern dialectics, Agora killing and political caring: technical Panak (imposed rules), and schools for the producing effective subjects. Furthermore, of producing effective subjects, sentence and submission, death of critical thinking, and non-considering the children’s rights were found as the result. It was concluded that silence culture, mug trust to educate members, and injustice rules of school were the sign of the only sound of modernism in schools. Thus, students were categorized by their personalities that were as stuffy students, sun-worshipper students, genius students, deception of situation, rebellion forces, silent rebellions, and bootlicks.

Keywords


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