Interrupting the Psy-Disciplines in Education

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

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2. Introduction

   • Eva Bendix Petersen, Zsuzsa Millei

   Pages 1-12

3. ‘Silences’ in the ‘Inclusive’ Early Childhood Classroom: Sustaining a ‘Taboo’

   • Karen Watson

   Pages 13-31

4. Binds of Professionalism: Attachment in Australian and Finnish Early Years Policy

   • Zsuzsa Millei, Maarit Alasuutari

   Pages 33-57

5. Becoming a ‘Learner’ in the Australian Primary School: An (Auto)ethnographic Exploration

   • Eva Bendix Petersen

   Pages 59-74

6. The Principal Is Present: Producing Psy-ontologies Through Post/Psychology-Informed Leadership Practices II

   • Dorthe Staunæs, Malou Juelskjær

   Pages 75-92

7. Positive Education as Translation and Conquest of Schooling

   • Antti Saari, Esko Harni

   Pages 93-110

8. Labouring Over the Truth: Learning to Be/Come Queer

   • Peter Bansel, Emma Keltie

   Pages 111-127

9. Re-thinking ‘Pointiness’: Special Education Interrupted

   • Cath Laws

   Pages 129-144

10. Confusions and Conundrums During Final Practicum: A Study of Preservice Teachers’ Knowledge of Challenging Behaviour

    • Samantha McMahon, Valerie Harwood

    Pages 145-166

11. ‘No, I’m Not OK’: Disrupting ‘Psy’ Discourses of University Mental Health Awareness Campaigns

    • Sue Saltmarsh

    Pages 167-183

12. The Risk Factors For Psy-Diagnosis? Gender, Racialization and Social Class

    • Julie Allan, Valerie Harwood

    Pages 185-202

13. ‘How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?’ Troubling the Psy-gaze in the Qualitative Analysis and Representation of Educational Subjects’

    • Matthew Wilson-Wheeler

    Pages 203-220

14. Back Matter

    Pages 221-225

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This book offers critical explorations of how the psy-disciplines, Michel Foucault’s collective term for psychiatry, psychology and psycho-analysis, play out in contemporary educational spaces. With a strong focus on Foucault’s theories, it critically investigates how the psy-disciplines continue to influence education, both regulating and shaping behaviour and morality. The book provides insight into different educational contexts and concerns across a child’s educational lifespan; early childhood education, inclusive education, special education, educational leadership, social media, university, and beyond to enable reflection and critique of the implications of psy-based knowledge and practice. 


With chapters by a mixture of established and emerging international scholars in the field this is an interdisciplinary and authoritative study into the role of the psy-disciplines in the education system. Providing vivid illustrations from throughout the educational lifespan the book serves as an invaluable tool for reflection and critique of the implications of psy-based practice, and will be of particular interest to academics and scholars in the field of education policy and psychology.

• Psy- disciplines
• Education
• Foucault
• Discourse analysis
• Childhood studies
• Educational leadership
• Education policy
• Governmentality
• Social work

“From silence to special education, from learners to leadership, from positive psychology to gendered, classed and racialized pathologisation, this engaging and creatively constructed book shows how psychological practices work to perpetuate and naturalise dominant hegemonic cultural assumptions. Not only is this a critical intervention, but it offers strategies for disrupting, interrupting and even queering or rewriting the role of the psy-complex in  contemporary technologies and rationalities of rule. A must-read for all critical educators and practitioners.” (Erica Burman, Manchester University, UK)

“This volume brings a welcome updating of the application of the analysis of the Psy-complex to contemporary education. It deserves to be widely read across the educational field.”  (Valerie Walkerdine, Cardiff University, UK)

• Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

  Eva Bendix Petersen

• Institute of Advanced Social Research and SPARG, University of Tampere, Tampere, Australia

  Zsuzsa Millei

Eva Bendix Petersen is Professor in the Department of People and Technology at Roskilde University, Denmark. Her research explores the formation of subjectivity in educational contexts in relation to local and global policy discourses. 

Zsuzsa Millei is a research fellow at the Space and Political Agency Research Group at the University of Tampere, Finland and Senior Lecturer in early childhood and comparative and international education at The University of Newcastle, Australia. Her research examines how children are positioned and participate as political subjects and how children’s political subjectivities are formed.   

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