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Re‐deploying Techniques of PastoralPower by Telling Tales on StudentTeachersGeorgina Tsolidis a & Vikki Pollard ba University of Ballarat , Australiab Monash University , AustraliaPublished online: 26 Feb 2007.

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Teaching EducationVol. 18, No. 1, March 2007, pp. 49–59

ISSN 1047-6210 (print)/ISSN 1470-1286 (online)/07/010049–11© 2007 School of Education, University of QueenslandDOI: 10.1080/10476210601151540

Re-deploying Techniques of Pastoral Power by Telling Tales on Student Teachers

Georgina Tsolidisa* and Vikki PollardbaUniversity of Ballarat, Australia; bMonash University, AustraliaTaylor and Francis LtdCTED_A_215082.sgm10.1080/10476210601151540Teaching Education1047-6210 (print)/1470-1286 (online)Original Article2007Taylor & Francis181000000March 2007GeorginaTsolidisGeorgina.Tsolidis@Education.monash.edu.au

This paper draws on interviews undertaken with second year student teachers. They describe theirmotivations for wishing to enter the profession and imagine the type of teacher they wish tobecome. These student teachers express a desire to make a difference as strong motivation forwanting to enter the profession. This is not uncharacteristic. Here we explore this motivation aspossibly illustrative of an uncritical adoption of teacher subjectivities underpinned by notions ofpastoral power. The argument is made that current debates that reinscribe the binary betweenteacher as ‘moral’ and teacher as ‘market-orientated’ may make teacher subjectivities premised onpastoral power a more intuitive and attractive choice. The desire to make a difference can beworthwhile. However, if read as a non-reflexive expression of pastoral power, it can also riskconsolidating teachers as knowing what is best for students and students as disempowered. In thiscontext, these interviews are used as a means of telling tales on student teachers in order to reflecton our own practices as teacher educators. What do their words tell us about the ways theprofession is being imagined in the current social context? How do students’ tales reflect themessages transferred through our own classes? And finally, how can retelling these tales help tocreate practices that are more responsive to students’ motivations and imaginings and the currentprofessional contexts? We argue that it is important to explore techniques of pastoral power andthe potential for these to delimit rather than expand multiple subjectivities within teacher educa-tion. Telling tales on student teachers, in this context, is a means of reflecting on our own practicesas teacher educators and is an apt beginning and integral part of this redeployment of techniques ofpastoral power.

Introduction

I’m really looking forward to providing the kids with some sort of direction in life. Howthat works out I don’t know. (Daniel)

*Corresponding author. School of Education, University of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. Email:g.tsoldis@ballarat.edu.au

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The above quotation is characteristic of many made during the study on whichthis paper draws. For this study we interviewed students in their second year ofan education degree in order to explore how they considered the profession andwithin it, their future roles. The desire to make a difference in the lives of youngpeople was central in motivating these student teachers to join the teachingprofession. “Providing the kids with some sort of direction in life” is not neces-sarily a bad thing. However, in this paper we tell tales on student teachers inorder to illustrate how such a desire can imply an uncritical adoption of the typeof teacher subjectivities that reinscribe rather than challenge the binary wherebythe student is disempowered and the teacher knows best. The argument is madethat student teachers’ desires to guide or provide direction can be illustrative ofpastoral power and that in the current context there is more need to considerthese desires, what motivates them and how they reflect our own practices asteacher educators. The aim here is to read student teachers’ motivations forentering the teaching profession as a method of reading our own practice. Arewe teaching to the desire to ‘make a difference’ in ways that reinscribe ‘themoral’ teacher in opposition to the ‘market-orientated’ teacher? And further tothis, what is the relationship between the ‘moral’ teacher and techniques ofpastoral power?

In overall terms the student teachers interviewed believed that teaching wasdifficult, attracted a relatively low rate of remuneration and offered a stunted careerpath that led into administration, which was the antithesis of what they imaginedwere the most meaningful aspects of teachers’ work. Instead they understoodteaching as making a difference to young people’s lives and through this, to societymore generally. Other research confirms similar findings. O’Brien and Schillaci(2002) for example, found that the desire to make a difference to the lives of othersmotivated student teachers and argued that as teacher educators, we needed toteach to this desire. In this paper we explore the desire to make a difference as aforce that motivates young people to join the teaching profession and consider itthrough Foucault’s notion of pastoral power. The argument is made that pastoralpower is a technique which permeates the fabric of the modern western state(Foucault, 1983). As such it is readily available to educators and often deployed asthey attempt to ‘make a difference’. In this context, it is not surprising that itreceives considerable attention in educational research (Barrow, 1999; Boler, 1995;Caughlan, 2005; Gore, 1993; Howley & Hartnett, 1992; Levinson, 1995; Schutz,2004). Such research often highlights the dangers of deploying the technique ofpastoral power. Nonetheless, within this paper the aim is to argue that, while thetechnique of pastoral power has many dangers, it may yet prove to have efficacy forteachers who desire to make a difference if this is understood as the promotion of“new forms of subjectivity” (Foucault, 1983, p. 216). We argue that such newforms of subjectivity begin through reflection upon how the technique is deployedin the relationship of power between students and teachers. It is in this context,that telling tales on student teachers could help us to understand our own deploy-ment of pastoral power.

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Re-deploying Techniques of Pastoral Power 51

Teachers and Subjectivity

Our exploration of teacher subjectivities and available techniques of power is madein the context of debates about teacher professionalism and within these, the role ofteacher educators. Lingard, Hayes and Mills (2003) argue that there is a need toreconsider teachers’ roles in the context of discourses of public accountability andperformativity. Because these risks reduce the teacher to mere technician, they arguethere exists a need to consider teachers as public intellectuals in line with the shift tothe notion of a knowledge-based society. In this spirit we need ‘edifying conversa-tions’ within teacher education towards the production of transgressive teachers,that is teachers engaged with political projects related to social justice (Lingard et al.,2003). We understand the development of new subjectivities as one aspect of socialjustice.

For some, teaching is either a moral enterprise linked to individuals’ welfare orinstrumentalist, linked to entrepreneurship. In such a schema the market andattached to it, the raft of issues that threaten teachers’ professionalism and commit-ment, is positioned in opposition to teaching linked to doing good, understood inrelation to welfare.

As a teacher is one who helps to shape what a person becomes, so the moral good ofevery learner is of fundamental importance in every teaching situation. I am describing aview of teaching as primarily moral (i.e., dedicated to an individual’s welfare) ratherthan instrumental (e.g., for economic reasons). (Sockett, 1993, cited in Day, 2004,p. 13)

In this context, teacher educators are being implored to construct their ownendeavours as a moral enterprise (Day, 2004). In this way an overly neat dichotomyis established that links welfare to a moral imperative in opposition to a form ofeconomic instrumentalism. This dichotomy risks obfuscating the possibility thatteaching linked to welfare may not always and automatically be transgressive.

It seems fair then, to consider how those interested in being teachers may beconstructing their profession and describing their motivations to enter it. Lingardet al. caution us against the possible dangers implicit in transferring our attention toteacher subjectivities rather than pedagogies as this move may reinforce a focus onteachers as (effective) individuals instead of communities or institutions. Nonethe-less, it may be possible to gain insights about communities and institutions through afocus on individuals and how they understand the professional culture into whichthey are being inducted. As teacher educators we need to consider the possibleimpact of our own ‘moral enterprise’. How is our sense of the teaching professionbeing reiterated through the words of those describing their motivations to teach?We remain unconvinced that being moral in the sense of linking this to welfare isbeing transgressive. If we are encouraging our students to ‘make a difference’, with-out giving them an opportunity to critique the possible dangers implicit in thisdesire, we may be complicit in normalization efforts. In view of this we need toprovide student teachers with opportunities to explore the techniques of power avail-able to them through formal education and enacted upon them in our own classes.

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Together we can then begin to explore ways of utilizing these techniques in activeways that allow for multiple teacher subjectivities to be imagined and developed. Inthe following section we examine the technique of power most readily available toteachers: pastoral power.

Recognizing Pastoral Power

Pastoral power, as a technique for developing subjectivity, saturates the modernwestern state, and as such is a technique available in education. It is this pervasive-ness that makes pastoral power an object of study for educational researchers. It is atechnique, developed in early Christianity (Foucault, 1983) that relies upon a pastor‘knowing’ the individual in order to guide them towards certain actions. Foucaultdraws out four themes of pastoral power prevalent in early Christianity. The firsttheme concerns the shepherd being accountable for his flock, knowing which sheepwas straying and being able to bring it back to the fold. The second theme related tothe personal ties of submission to superiors exemplified in monastic relationships.“Monks live not through their own free will; their wish is to be done under theabbot’s command” (Foucault, 1988, p. 68). The third theme related to the individu-alized knowledge that existed between the shepherd and his sheep. “It isn’t enoughto know the state of the flock; That of each sheep must also be known” (Foucault,1988, p. 68). Applying these themes to humans means that the pastor must come toknow his flock through “self-examination and the guidance of conscience”(Foucault, 1988, p. 68). Individual thoughts must be confessed and atoned for. Thisrequired constant submission to the pastor. With regard to the fourth theme ofpastoral power, there is concern “to get individuals to work at their own ‘mortifica-tion’ in this world … a kind of everyday death” (Foucault, 1988, p. 70).

Foucault argued that pastoral power was adapted to the modern western statebecause it was a technique that could be useful for “both an individualizing and atotalizing form of power” (Foucault, 1983, p. 213). He argued that the modern stateis a form of power, which:

… applies itself to the immediate everyday life which categorizes the individual, markshim by his own individuality, attaches him to his own identity, imposes a law of truth onhim which he must recognize and which others have to recognize in him. (Foucault,1983, p. 212).

This form of power does not ignore individuals but rather pays attention to theintegration of individuals. Pastoral power, being an “individualizing power”(Foucault, 1988, p. 214) becomes useful for this integration.

In being adapted to the modern western state several changes were wrought uponthis technique. Salvation no longer meant other worldly salvation. Thus, “the wordsalvation takes on different meanings: health, well-being (that is sufficient wealth,standard of living)” (Foucault, 1988, p. 215, emphasis in original). Pastoral power isnow deployed not in relation to what will happen after death but in maintainingoneself in life. The role of the pastor however, that of a director of conscience in that

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Re-deploying Techniques of Pastoral Power 53

life, remains. It is to the pastor that we are expected to look as we manage ourselves.It is to this pastor that we must confess and confide in order to be guided in themanner of our conduct. As Foucault noted modern pastoral power:

… cannot be exercised without knowing the inside of people’s minds, without exploringtheir souls, without making them reveal their innermost secrets. It implies a knowledgeof the conscience and the ability to direct it. (Foucault, 1988, p. 215)

Another significant change to modern pastoral power is that, as industrial powerproliferated so too “the officials of pastoral power increased” (Foucault, 1988,p. 215). Officials of pastoral power are no longer strictly religious but include thepolice, medical practitioners, those associated with welfare bodies and educators.

Research into the deployment of pastoral power has usually focused upon thepossible dangers of deploying it in relation to subjectivity. Howley and Hartnett(1992) argued that pastoral power is used to delimit possibilities for subjectivity.Thus they conclude that this technique is “fundamentally normative” (p. 272).While we agree that pastoral power is amenable to being deployed in order to delimitsubjectivities, we cannot agree that it is “fundamentally normative”. We areinterested in exploring ways that it can be deployed by teachers to develop ‘newsubjectivities’. This is imperative because it is a technique of power that is pervasiveand therefore widely available for those who have a desire to ‘make a difference’ inthe lives of their students. The pervasiveness of this desire was reinforced throughthe words of student teachers interviewed for the study drawn on here. Intervieweesdescribed what motivated them to become teachers and projected themselves intoteacher subjectivities that evoked notions of pastoral power. Their responsesprompted this consideration of our own practices. As teacher educators, are wemindful of our students’ understandings of what it means to teach and the desiresthat prompt their professional choices? In the next section of the paper we provideinsights into these interviews and then explore how we can understand our ownpractice through the ethically messy (and hopefully productive) work of telling taleson student teachers.

‘Something Good’ About a Much Maligned Profession

It was evident that the student teachers interviewed constructed teaching as aprofession that required considerable amounts of work, received little status andrespect within the community and was not highly paid. The following comments arerepresentative of the way these interviewees described the profession they wereentering. These young people described a profession consistently maligned and alsoindicated their willingness to defend it against those perceived as on the ‘outside’.

It’s very competitive for a start, I mean for the top jobs … a lot of the time you’recompeting against other people … and it’s tough—I mean the rewards are few … youhave to work really hard to get the kids where you want to. (Kelly)

The lack of positive feedback from the client, or the students. You’re working to giventhem something, to help them and then for so much of it you cop talking back or

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indifference, or refusal to cooperate, and that is really hard putting all your energy everyday in helping these people … and then to get paper planes thrown at you at the end ofit. (Michelle)

There’s been a few people who’ve said “Why would you want to go into that prettycrappy job?” (Angus)

My feeling is that the profession is probably not as highly regarded as it should bebecause as far as status goes. … I think the community only sees the bad aspects ofteaching. (Conrad)

The student teachers interviewed were constantly faced with the need to justify, totheir parents, their own teachers, university peers and friends, their decision andcommitment to becoming teachers. “The comment that my sister always brings upis ‘you’ve just spent 13 years in the education system, why on earth would you wantto go back there again?’” (Angus).

Michelle’s decision to study to be a teacher was poorly received by both herparents, who used to be teachers. “I’m not stupid—I know it’s a really hard job. …They [her parents] both got out of it for very negative reasons and as a result likethey spent all this money on a private education—‘you’re going to be a teacher, Idon’t think so’”.

Daniel had very little support from teachers with whom he discussed his teachingaspirations. “Every teacher that I spoke to going into teaching when I was thinkingabout going into it, they all said no, steer clear of it. It’s shocking—no rewards andthat sort of stuff”.

Generally, the teaching profession was perceived as one that offered little reward,lack of respect, time away from families due to long hours, physical and mentalstress and lack of status within the community. Nonetheless, the overwhelmingmajority of interviewees were dedicated to the idea of being long-term and successfulteachers. In this way, they described an incongruent relationship between theirmotivation to teach and their perception of its rewards, which begged exploration.These student teachers explained this through reference to alternative rewards.

I guess it’s a role in society that has a real clear sort of benefit to it, like it’s even thoughit may have a low sort of status or something like that, or not a great salary, it’s some-thing you just feel, yeah it has something good about it. (Angus).

Providing a Direction in Life

For many of those interviewed, giving young people direction in life was a compel-ling reason for becoming a teacher—it became the ‘something good’ about teaching.The opportunity to ‘help’, to ‘guide’ to ‘mentor’ young people, was deemed alterna-tive reward enough to make up for all the problems of the profession. These studentteachers were hoping to develop working relationships with their own students,which impacted upon the actions of their students. This is the very meaning of arelationship of power, the ability to act upon the actions of others. “What defines arelationship of power is that it is a mode of action … an action upon an action, or

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Re-deploying Techniques of Pastoral Power 55

existing actions or on those which may arise in the present or future” (Foucault,1983, p. 220).

In the following section of the paper, we consider two interviews in detail. Aretechniques of power implicit in understandings of teaching and is ‘the teacher’constructed in ways that allow for possibilities of new subjectivities? What dostudent teacher tales tell us about our practice as teacher educators and how itconstructs teaching?

At the time of the interview, Daniel was a very active Christian. Daniel was aged21-years-old and was initially enrolled in a business course but decided to changedirection because “business was not where I wanted to be headed”. Youth work hehad been doing with his church inspired him to study education. “I do a lot of youthwork at my church and I really enjoy that and find it rewarding and also because itsgood for the people I’m helping as well, so someone suggested teaching and Ithought, ‘yes’”.

Daniel wanted to direct students away from the material successes in life, to “go touni, get a job, sort of thing” and instead direct them towards salvation.

I believe in God and I believe that everyone should get a chance to meet their creator sothat is one of my aims to allow people to sort of have the same experience and hope thatI have. I don’t know what the school will say about that. I think if I was thinking aboutwhat I want to get out of teaching it’s to show people my faith. I think there’s definitelyobstacles as in sometimes it’s not professionally legal to do that sort of stuff or youknow, you’re not allowed to speak about God and all that sort of stuff so I think there’sthose sort of restrictions on it.

When asked to describe some of the aspects of the profession he was not lookingforward to Daniel replied:

I think getting caught up in teaching. I don’t want to get caught up in being a teacher. Isort of want to get more role model aspect of it. … I don’t want to get stuck in a rut ofjust—oh, it’s just another 20 kids you know, just teach them this and that’s all. I want togo far beyond that and these are 20 people who I can have an impact on.

Daniel had decided to work with secondary school students because “high school,it’s more about teaching them about life which sparks my interest a little bit more”.He had very definite ideas about his place in the teaching profession. Whilst he wasmoderately interested in teaching mathematics he was far more excited aboutbecoming a ‘role model’ who gave direction.

I’m really looking forward to providing the kids with some sort of direction in life …there’s so much more to life than being able to do well at school and I guess that’s whatI’ll sort of want to get across to the kids. I want to say; “Do well in this for sure, but thisisn’t your life”.

Daniel’s faith in God and the opportunity to bring people to God was the reasonhe gave for wanting to become a teacher. “I see a lot more than actually teaching.It’s building lives”. Daniel positioned himself not only as a teacher of a particularcurriculum but also as a teacher who would guide students towards a certain faith.He has decided the ‘best’ way of life for students and was intent on seeing them

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conform. In this way, Daniel’s vision of teaching fits neatly with understandings ofhow pastoral power can be deployed strategically and in a normative sense. This isparticularly evident given the link to Christianity. Unlike Daniel, Ryan did notadhere to a particular belief system that guided his vision of teaching. Nonetheless,we would argue that there are some similarities in the ways both student teachersconsidered what it meant to be a teacher.

Ryan was aged 22-years-old at the time of the interviews and had begun hisuniversity studies in the business faculty. This was in spite of his long-held desire tobe a teacher. “I wanted to be a teacher when I was a little bloke”. At the end of Year12 he decided that being a teacher was “a bit of a dorky [unfashionable] kind ofthing”. As well as being “dorky”, Ryan reasoned that teacher education did notmake use of his very high end of school results.

I got like 90, so at that stage education was sort of like the 70s kind of area. It’s sort oflike … well your family says you should do something as high as you can but now I’verealized it doesn’t really matter. You just do what you want to do.

After two years in a business course Ryan “hated it” and at that point he decidedto transfer to education and pursue what had been his childhood ambition. Educa-tion also provided a clear-cut career goal.

In education like, when you come into the course you actually know what you’regoing to do at the end, and that … keeps you going…whereas in the other stuff it wasjust sort of like I don’t really know what I’m doing this for, sort of like there is no goalat the end.

Ryan held teaching in much higher regard than Business; “it is just sort of a nobleprofession … because I did commerce stuff I could just see myself being a pencilpusher”. For Ryan teaching was “noble” because it linked directly to individuallives. “Like instead of just going to a business and making money for some dude thatyou don’t even know, you actually are like doing something and it’s sort of moreproductive in people’s lives”.

The desire to be ‘productive’ in people’s lives had influenced Ryan, like Daniel, tochoose secondary school teaching.

Because primary is primary. … Students at the younger age you’re sort of seen as amum or a dad whereas at secondary you’re seen as more like a mentor, being a mateand sort of help you along and teach you stuff about life, things like that. While inprimary school it’s more like babysitting.

Ryan believed that the older students would be the ones most likely to conform tohis ideal of the teacher as friend.

When you reach Year 7–10 it’s sort of like fight against the system kind of thing, so thenit seems like the enemy, tuck your shirt in and things like that, but in Year 11 and 12you sort of become more friends with them.

He believed that a teacher can, and ought to be a “friend” to students. This beliefwas perhaps prompted by his negative experience of teachers while in school. “Idon’t think I really liked teachers” (Ryan).

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Re-deploying Techniques of Pastoral Power 57

Ryan and Daniel are very similar in their attitudes to teaching despite the cleardifference that Daniel is motivated by strident Christian beliefs. Both are deeplycommitted to teaching young adults and have chosen this age group because of theirbelief that teaching is linked to providing students with role models to guide themthrough life. This role is equal to, if not more important than, the transfer of partic-ular knowledge. Both adhere to the adage of teaching students rather than subjectslike maths or business studies and given this, set as a high priority knowing andcaring for their students. In both cases, their inspirational teachers reflected thesepriorities and were described as those who respected them as students, cared aboutthem and provided guidance. Daniel and Ryan had actively chosen teaching relativeto alternative careers and Ryan, in particular, was typical of many students inter-viewed who described the negative reaction to their choice. Both suggest that there ismeaning in teaching that extends beyond remuneration and status and that this islinked to the opportunity to contribute to young people’s sense of themselves. Thisdesire to ‘model’ and ‘guide’ students may well depend upon deploying pastoralpower. It is this possibility that makes it necessary to reflect not only on the dangersof this technique but also to consider how it may be used by teachers interested innew forms of subjectivity.

Deploying Pastoral Power to Create New Subjectivities

In this paper we have argued that many student teachers may express a strong desireto impact upon the actions of their future students. We have considered this desire inrelation to pastoral power as it is expressed in the context of debates that position the‘moral’ teacher in opposition to the ‘market-orientated teacher’ and argue that multi-ple subjectivities challenge such a binary. Being fully aware that pastoral power is mostoften deployed to limit subjectivities we ask how can it be deployed otherwise? Webelieve this redeployment of the technique is ethically necessary in education. This isbecause the relations of power we develop as educators have effect on actions, andthus the subjectivities of our selves and our students. We believe that an ethical rede-ployment of pastoral power begins from a consideration of the effects of our powerrelations. Levinson (1995) writes that such reflection is an ethical project because itinvolves considering our ‘responsibility towards others’ (p. 2). She argues that effectsof power are not merely reductive of possible actions but also structure possible futureactions. There is always an element of freedom in relations of power and it is thiselement that educators need to focus on. Caughlan (2005) also moves us towardsrethinking the productive possibilities in deploying pastoral power when she argues:

Educators must insist on talking about multiple and interlocking systems of power rela-tions and must investigate the consequences of the psychologized discourse of redemp-tion and personal responsibility through which pastoral controls are imposed.(Caughlan, 2005, p. 16)

As educators we need to foreground the effects of the relations of power that wedevelop with our students, through the modeling of reflexive pedagogies that openpossibilities for dialogue across difference. In this way the classroom becomes a site

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for diagnosing effects, for understanding “power as domination … and relations ofpower which have [a] more open-ended effect” (Levinson, 1995, p. 2). Such adialogue across difference premised on a deep acknowledgement of the effects ofpower avoids entrapment by liberal discourses of respect and tolerance of difference.Instead it allows for multiple teacher and student subjectivities to develop and in sodoing, challenges welfarist notions of ‘good’—in relation to how the ‘good’ teacher isconstituted and what is ‘good’ for students is understood by student teachers andteacher educators alike.

Conclusion

The paper draws on interviews with second year student teachers. Intervieweesdescribed their motivations for joining the teaching profession. Their tales about theprofession and their place within it, illustrated dramatically the significance of pasto-ral power in representations of the profession and their projected teacher subjectivi-ties. While there is an ethical messiness that surrounds telling tales about studentteachers, we have argued that this can be done in a way that stimulates reflection onour practices as teacher educators. How might our work be creating and reinscribingthe normalizing techniques of power evident in such student teachers’ views? Wehave argued that in the context of teachers being constructed as either ‘moral’ or‘market orientated’ there is a greater temptation to understand teacher subjectivitiesas moral. Through the work of Foucault we have considered how the constitution ofteachers as ‘moral’ relies on normalizing techniques of pastoral power. Instead wehave advocated the re-deployment of such techniques as a possible way forward. Bymaking evident techniques of pastoral power and their persistence within thestructures of formal education, we can open up for exploration with students, thepossibility of recognizing these techniques, their potential pitfalls and possibilities.This work needs to begin in our own teacher education classes.

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