Doing competence: On the performativity of literacy and numeracy from a post-structural viewpoint
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Doing competence: On the performativity of literacy and numeracy from a post‑structural viewpoint Lisanne Heilmann1
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract International large-scale assessments like the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC) assess literacy and numeracy proficiency as abstract competences, assuming they are cognitive skills and therefore objectively and universally measurable. However, research into how people’s lives are affected by notions of literacy and numeracy has shown that both are influenced by social conventions and expectations which are embedded in power relations and ideology. Competences and practices are situated in their social context, and they are products of historical processes which include their construction through the way they are referred to by both experts and the general public. The purpose of this article is to look at literacy and numeracy from a post-structural point of view, questioning the individualised understanding of literacy and numeracy as abstract competences which people simply “have”. The author explores the possibility of viewing these basic competences as constructed through how they are actively performed (e.g. when someone engages in reading, writing or calculating for a particular purpose in a particular context) and referred to (e.g. when someone is pronounced “literate” or “competent”). The author points out that being acknowledged and addressed as competent and literate opens up possibilities, just as being viewed as lacking these competences can allow access to (learning) opportunities. Simultaneously and ambivalently, constructed notions of competence both liberate and subordinate individuals. They create power relations and vulnerabilities which often remain unacknowledged. Keywords literacy as social practice · New Literacy Studies · performativity · competence · subject theory · poststructuralism
* Lisanne Heilmann lisanne.heilmann@uni‑hamburg.de 1
Department for Lifelong Learning, Faculty of Educational Studies, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
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L. Heilmann
Résumé Exercer ses compétences : performativité de la littératie et de la numératie d’un point de vue poststructuraliste – Les évaluations internationales à vaste échelle comme le Programme pour l’évaluation internationale des compétences des adultes (PIAACProgramme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies) évaluent la littératie et la numératie en tant que compétences abstraites, supposant qu’elles sont des compétences cognitives et, par conséquent, objectivement et universellement mesurables. Toutefois, les recherches visant à illustrer la façon dont la littératie et la numératie agissent sur la vie des gens ont montré que ces deux concepts sont influencés par des conventions et attentes sociales intégrées dans des rapports de force et des idéologies. Les compétences et pratiques se situent dans leur contexte social et sont les produits de processus historiques entre autres construits sur la façon dont les expert
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