Researcher
Sam Keast – MAppPsych (Community Psychology) – Assoc. MAPS College of Community Psycholog
Project Overview
This PhD by publication project is a genealogical analysis of the ways in which particular types of wellbeing have emerged around government schooling and education in Australia. It is premised on the fact that outcomes for students along a number of dimensions in government schools fall along lines of social class, and that increasingly schools have become sites of ‘therapeutic education’ which seeks to describe students in new psychologized ways. Through critical problematisations the project seeks to uncover the ways in which wellbeing subjectivities operate through particular moral codes and paint a specific background of selfhood around education. The project will also explore the role of psychology in (re)creation and maintenance of meritocratic ideals in schooling and the ‘technologies of the self’ that are deployed in the maintenance of neoliberal subjectivities.