Making sense of the educational present: Problematising the 'merit turn' in the Italian eduscape

Abstract

This article problematises the recent 'merit turn' in the Italian education system. It addresses the analysis of how the global idea of 'merit as lever for modernisation' and its related technologies have flowed into a regional education space through a set of four policy trajectories. It explores how these have partially reframed the topology of the education space and its subjectivities, producing frictions, struggles and resistances. The article proposes a composite approach to education policy analysis that combines the interpretative lenses of Foucauldian 'governmentality' with the analytical tools offered by Callon's sociology of translation. The analysis shows the intertwining of paradoxical developments. On the one hand it presents how merit is acting as a lever for the establishment of a neoliberal governmentality, where competition, market and commodification regulate educational practice and the formation of its subjectivities. On the other hand, the exploration of the complexities of policy dynamics demonstrates how multiple foci and effective forms of resistance emerge against such an intentional but non-subjective project of 'modernising Italian education'. Thus, this analysis represents an attempt to propose a 'public story-telling', which sheds light on: (a) the messy and unpredictable dynamics of policy enactment, its devices and displacements; and (b) merit policies in the field of education as 'laboratory sites' for the understanding of how the neoliberal governmentality takes shape throughout the development of the action. In this respect, this work is critical in so far as the methodological disposition towards problematisation could be considered as a reflexive practice enhancing the awareness of researchers, professionals, policy makers and other subjects/agents of education about what is happening around them and how they cope with it.