Selvbestemmelse og selvregulering: Nye elevidealer for ungdomsskolen

In this chapter we investigate changes in ideas about pupils, learning and motivation over a period of 30 years. Our starting point is the longstanding public concern over young people’s lack of school motivation. We ask what ideas about young people, as pupils and with respect to learning and motivation, can be traced in educational reforms, curriculum documents, and parent-teacher conferences. Drawing on Foucault’s work on governmentality and pastoral power, we argue that there has been a shift from an idea of the pupil as driven by intrinsic motivation and capable of governing her own learning process, to an emphasis on external control and goal-oriented learning. Paradoxically, the aim of these external forms of control is to foster individualised, intrinsic motivation and self-discipline. In keeping with this ideal, parent-teacher conferences become an arena where pupils are steered towards particular individual goals through specific forms of soft power. In a final section, we discuss how Norway’s latest educational reform, with its ideal of self-regulation, may reinforce trends towards individualisation