Currently a great deal of public discourse around health is on the assumed relationship between childhood inactivity, young people's diets, and a putative steep rise in obesity. Children and young people are increasingly being identified as a population at 'risk' in relation to these health concerns. Such concerns are driving what might be described as new 'health imperatives' which prescribe the choices young people should make around lifestyle: physical activity, body regulation, dietary habits, and sedentary behaviour. These health imperatives are a powerful force driving major policy...

This book examines the emergence of psychologised discourses of the self in education and considers their effects on children and young people, on relationships both in and out of school and on educational practices. It undertakes a Foucauldian genealogy of the discourses of the self in education in order to scrutinise the 'focal points of experience' for children and young people. Part One of the book offers a critical analysis of the discourses of the self that operate within interventions of self esteem, self concept, self efficacy and self regulation and their incursions into...