Revising rationality: the use of ‘Nudge’ approaches in neoliberal education policy

Abstract

Revising rationality: the use of 'Nudge' approaches in neoliberal education policyThis article argues that the concept of rationality is undergoing significant revision in UK education policy making, influenced by developments in several academic fields. This article focuses on the take up of behavioural economics in policy as one aspect of this revision of the concept of rationality, discussing how this has happened and its implications. Framed by a wider debate regarding the significance of a 'crisis' in neoliberal approaches to social change, behavioural economics suggests that a reliance on rational choice is insufficient and individuals need to be 'nudged' to make good choices. This revision and its impact on the subject of policy, the policy maker and policy technologies are examined, and the discussion is supported by two illustrations from school choice and youth service policy texts from the 2000s. The potential use of 'nudge' theory in education is also considered with respect to the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government's use of behavioural economics. In conclusion, we argue that the use of these ideas in policy, alongside others, marks a revision of the neoliberal idea of a rational chooser as the aim of policy making, of which education policy sociology should take account.

Cultural and human capital, information and higher education choices

“…Economic analyses using human capital theory are contrasted with sociological analyses using, for example cultural or social capital (Allais 2012; Francis and Mills 2012). Analysis in terms of an 'individual chooser' (whether rational, bounded rational or systematically biased) is contrasted with analysis in terms of social groups or networks (Bradbury, McGimpsey, and Santori 2013). In contrast, this paper approaches education policy for higher education (HE) from the perspective that each of these theoretically distinct standpoints has something useful to tell us about policy problems in HE.…”

Assembling, disassembling and reassembling ‘youth services’ in Austerity Britain

“…As they assemble and reassemble children's and youth services, these expert knowledges are unmoored from the 'experts' and careful science that collectively creates them (Rose, 2013). Knowledges are mobile and malleable, and these are 'translated' (Bradbury et al, 2013), arguably transmuted into caricatures of themselves, as they are rearticulated in genres and forums for which they were not intended, and entered into political strategies. Wastell and White (2012) demonstrate this powerfully in their dissection of the use of popularised forms of neuroscience to frame government accounts of children, parenting and well-being in which parenting judged to be inadequate is identified as the cause of structural brain malformations in young children and in turn demands early intervention.…”

Nudging through Technology: Choice Architectures and the Mobile Information Revolution

“…Essentially, nudging is based on observations that decisions can be impulsive, irrational, and often based on limited, even lacking, domain knowledge [2]. It therefore relies largely on choice-architecture in an attempt to signpost ethical and rational routes through important decisions [7]. It has been widely applied in domains such as health [8], agriculture [9], education [10], transport and climate change [11].…”