To follow a rule: The construction of student subjectivities on classroom rules charts

Rules charts are commonplace on classroom walls throughout the world. This article examines how such charts work to sustain discursive power relationships among teachers and students by mobilising idealised notions of the student within the classroom. The article reports on a discourse analysis of 50 rules charts and identifies three disciplinary and subjectivising discourses mobilised by charts: the Apollonian ‘good’, Dionysian ‘bad’ and Athenian ‘choice-making’ student. The article argues that awareness of the constitutive effects of discourse can enable practitioners to reflect on how their discursive practices might have material impacts on students’ capacity to move through educational spaces, and in particular can work to marginalise already disenfranchised students who do not fit the normative mould.