Hannele Pitkänen starts Finnish Academy funded 3-year postdoc project – Educating the Evaluative Soul? Enactments and Pupils’ Lived Experiences of the Politics of the Pupil Self-evaluation (EdSoul) at Tampere University.
EdSoul examines the current politics of pupil self-evaluation and the enactment of it in the daily practices of schooling and pupils’ experience. It claims that pupil self-evaluation is not a neutral part of the learning process, but an operation of a subjectifying power as well. It plays a role in the shaping of a subject made docile to the requirements of the western evaluation society. EdSoul studies ethnographically how this power is being enacted in schools and experienced by pupils. It will open a new scientific discussion on pupil self-evaluation, which provides significant knowledge and understanding for the reflexive development of educational theories, policies and practices acknowledging the ignored effects of pupil self-evaluation on pupils’ subjectivities and experiences.