Education and the Culture of Consumption: Personalisation and the Social Order

Does personalisation mark a new regulatory code for education, one which corresponds with both the new work-order of production and with the makeover-prone tendencies of consumers? For nearly 200 years the school has prepared the worker for the factory of mass production and the 'mass consumer' content with accepting what was on offer. But now a 'revised' educational code appears to be emerging which centres on the concept of 'personalisation', with its new mode of public service delivery and its new flexibilities of structure and pedagogical process. In this book, David Hartley raises many questions about this new interest in personalisation, including: Why now? What are the theoretical foundations of personalisation? What are its pedagogical, curricular and organisational consequences? Does it portend new (and virtual) pedagogical spaces to be opened up by digital technologies? What are the consequences for social justice of personalisation? Does personalisation diminish the socialising function of the school, or does it simply mean that the only thing we share is that we have the right to personalised service? Does personalisation have its intellectual roots in marketing theory rather than educational theory? Is it simply the facilitator of 'education for consumption', allowing for the insinuation of the 'market' to suffuse even more the fabric of education, albeit under the democratic-sounding clarion call of freedom of choice? The book will be of interest to postgraduate students and academics studying in the fields of education policy and the social foundations of education, and will also be relevant to students studying public policy, especially health care and social care, and public management.