This book examines the emergence of psychologised discourses of the self
in education and considers their effects on children and young people,
on relationships both in and out of school and on educational practices.
It undertakes a Foucauldian genealogy of the discourses of the self in
education in order to scrutinise the 'focal points of experience' for
children and young people. Part One of the book offers a critical
analysis of the discourses of the self that operate within interventions
of self esteem, self concept, self efficacy and self regulation and
their incursions into education. Part Two provides counter-narratives of
the self, drawn principally from the arts and politics and providing
alternative, and potentially radical, ways of when and how the self
might speak. It also articulates how teachers may support children and
young people in giving voice to these counter-narratives as they move
through school.