‘The space that claws and gnaws at us’: deviance and distribution in heterotopic classrooms

This paper explores the spatial dimensions of classroom observations as tools of educational governance. Focusing on interview data from teachers and education inspection policy in the English Further Education sector, we use Foucault’s concept of heterotopia to critically discuss the fundamental challenges of current quality assurance practices. We specifically identify three functions of heterotopia (what Foucault refers to as their ‘illusory’, ‘compensatory’ and ‘mirror’ functions) to discuss how the much-documented performativity of classroom spaces is itself illusory. While performative classrooms are undoubtedly fabricated spaces, we argue that current quality assurance frameworks actually misrecognise the ontological nature of classrooms by treating them as ‘compensatory’ rather than ‘illusory’ heterotopia. On this view, observed classroom spaces distribute wider logics of illusion and reality by ‘mirroring’ both the constructed order of educational space and its enactment in classroom contexts.