Theorizing the affective regime of “best practice” in education policy

Abstract

This paper theorizes the affective and moral grounding of “best practice” policymaking, particularly how best practice operates as an affective regime that encourages certain affective norms. To illustrate this, the author takes up the example of best practices promoted by the CoE’s Digital Citizenship Education Handbook for the acquisition of digital citizenship competences. It is shown that the distribution of best practices creates a set of affective conditions—especially through cultivating certain affective skills/competences and ethics/morals—that govern the ways in/though which best practices ought to be appropriately materialized. The paper discusses two implications of this analysis for education policymaking and policymakers. The first implication suggests that there needs to be work informing policymakers how affect works to create regimes of best practice; the second implication emphasizes the importance of working with policymakers to explore how they could challenge affective regimes of best practice.