Matthew Clarke
My work focuses on policy and politics in education particularly as it pertains to the work of teachers. Recent books include Lacan and education policy: The other side of education (Bloomsbury, 2019), Teacher education and the political (Routledge, 2017, co-authored with Anne Phelan) and Education policy and contemporary theory (Routledge, 2015, co-edited with Kalervo Gulson and Eva Bendix Petersen).
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Papers by Matthew Clarke
Divided into two parts, the first part explores theoretical frameworks and concepts, presenting theory and raising issues and questions, while the second shares diverse examples of practice, renewing and reanimating the links between education, leadership and democracy, and providing models of alternatives. Studying a number of global developments that can be seen as potentially threatening, such as a growing inequality in wealth and income and the declining participation and trust in democratic processes, this text is at the forefront of international innovations in educational theory and philosophy.
A fascinating and vital read for all researchers and students, Paradoxes of Democracy, Leadership and Education considers the opportunities and challenges that are confronting and threatening education in the modern world.
Reviews
“Matthew Clarke's book brings a new and devastating critical perspective to bear on education policy. His use of Lacan to address fundamental questions about what education has become in the context of neoliberalism enables us to begin to think creatively and with integrity about 'the other side of education'. This is a telling and timely book that skilfully deploys psychoanalytic insights to unpack the fantasies that haunt and inhibit education policy – it is exciting, challenging and important!” – Stephen Ball, Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology of Education, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, UK
“It is one of the horrifying ironies of our time that the dominance of university discourse would entail with it the death of education. This is but one of the incredible paradoxes that Matthew Clarke uncovers in his revolutionary Lacan and Education Policy: The Other Side of Education. By bringing psychoanalytic theory to bear on education policy, Clarke reveals that what appears as attention to education is actually nothing but the thorough imposition of the logic of capitalism on all our systems of learning. Calls for more education disguise the desire for more sites of accumulation. Packed with such insights, Lacan and Education Policy completely changes the deal for thinking about how we have been educating.” – Todd McGowan, Professor of Film and Television Studies, University of Vermont, USA
“Matthew Clarke's book provides an insightful and enjoyable foray into an analysis of neoliberal education policies now dominating education systems across the globe. His explication of Lacan's four discourses, Master, University, Hysteric and Analyst, is clear, insightful and accessible. He provides examples not only from schooling, but also public pedagogies to illustrate his argument. The book contributes to the growing interest in affect theory by providing an account of key concepts such as desire, trauma, and fantasy through the lens of Lacanian theory. These are slippery concepts, difficult to grasp, without a strong grounding in psychoanalytic theories. The beauty of Matthew Clarke's book is that he makes these concepts accessible and deploys them to provide insights into the politics of education.” – Parlo Singh, Professor, School of Education and Professional Studies, Griffith University, Australia
“If you want to think critically about education, get a good grasp of Lacan's conceptual language and its uses for social and political critique, as well as understand what all the fuss is about with neoliberalism, then this is the book for you. More than that, Matthew Clarke's book provides a devastating critique of contemporary educational policies that result in disciplinary regimes designed in the interests of the powerful rather than for democratic empowerment through forms of school organisation and practice that put people first.” – John Schostak, Emeritus Professor of Education, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Reviews
At a time when identity studies in ELT might seem conceptually exhausted, along comes this highly original and insightful work. Matthew Clarke creates an impressive theoretical framework with which to understand the complex formation of a community of English language teachers in a society re-assessing its own collective values within and against a globalizing world.
(Professor Brian Morgan, Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, York University, Canada)
Matthew Clarke's remarkable research in the United Arab Emirates provides a window on the intriguing relationship between language teacher identity, discourse, and community in diverse regions of the world. His insightful analysis, informed by a comprehensive review of literature, makes a timely contribution to a growing area of research. The book is clearly a 'must read' for scholars interested in contemporary debates on language and identity in applied linguistics and second language education.
(Bonny Norton, Professor and Distinguished University Scholar, University of British Columbia)
Clarke’s argument and design stand out as different and distinctive. What makes them new is the degree to which he is able to expose what is often invisible in the processes of individual and social learning, and the resources that seem to shape these processes. The context of his work brings together a unique constellation of gender and professional identity with the learning and exercise of pedagogy and subject-matter, all within a newly transforming society.
(Donald Freeman, Professor and Director of Teacher Education, School of Education, University of Michigan. From the Foreword)
The book assesses the implications of such policies for the work of teachers as well as for teacher educators and those undertaking initial teacher training. It is argued that these policy moves can be read as a depoliticising and de-intellectualising of teacher education. In this context, they illustrate how contemporary theory can provide a language for critiquing recent developments and imagining new trajectories for policy and practice in teacher education.
Drawing on the work of theorists from Derrida and Mouffe to Agamben and Lacan, this book argues for the need to maintain a space for intellectual autonomy as a critical dimension of the ethico-political work of teachers. Together these ideas and analyses provide examples of the power of negative thinking, illustrating its capacity to unsettle comfortable truths and foreground the political nature of teacher education.
Current teachers, teacher educators and school leaders will be particularly interested readers, alongside those concerned with policy in the wider educational landscape.
Reviews
"In this impressive compelling book, Clarke and Phelan demonstrate the unlimited (im)potential of negative thinking in teacher education today. Negating conjured crises, false consensus, standardized curriculum, and teaching as policy protocols, this book - like the Warburg library - is organised by affinities, allowing for the re-education of teachers toward ethical self-formation and political agency. See for yourself."
—William F. Pinar, Professor and Canada Research Chair, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
"Too much recent writing by teacher educators about the state of their trade is irredeemably pessimistic and defeatist. While equally critical of the superficial 'positivity' of dominant reform discourses, this clever new book suggests that some forms of 'negative thinking', drawn from contemporary social theory, may actually help protect the progressive spaces that recent reforms are seeking to close down."
—Geoff Whitty, Research Professor in Education, Bath Spa University