Empowerment in Education: Liberation, Governance or a Distraction? A Review

Abstract

In a review of scholarly articles about the concept of empowerment, the author argues that the idea of empowerment has been deployed in three main ways. The first is where empowerment is conceived as a liberatory idea, in which power is transferred in education from the traditionally powerful to subsidiary groups within the educative process. The second conceptualises empowerment as a technique of governance, a way of disciplining modern citizens into a regime of self-surveillance. The third identifies empowerment, divorced amongst educationalists from wider social and political movements, as a distraction, which dissipates the potential for real educational change. The article concludes that a re-connection with the political is a necessary pre-condition for the achievement of the transformative potential of empowerment programmes.