Producing a sovereign self: Portfolios and the 'ownership' of scholastic bodies (Kentucky)

This genealogical study focuses on the twelfth-grade writing portfolio in Kentucky as a place to interrogate the taken-for-granted practices of assessing the writing of secondary English students. Instead of focusing on whether portfolios "work", this study places writing and assessing practices within a historical trajectory. Using various discursive formations, such as legal, pedagogical, and administrative, this study compares current discursive formations of grading and assessing student writing to the discursive formations of the 1890s, such as military, psychological, pedagogical and administrative ones. Contrary to common held views about the influences of colleges and university on secondary English curriculum, this study demonstrates how various "subjugated knowledges" appeared during this time period around student writing. Furthermore, this study assembles methodological points from Foucault's lectures and interviews to build a genealogical method, and examines how certain scholars in education in the United States have used Foucault genealogical analytic. This study demonstrates that portfolio technology doesn't necessarily emancipate or liberate the student, but opens up the scholastic body for a greater intensity and plurality of power/knowledge.