A dangerous turn: The confluence of safety and citizenship discourses in educational scholarship

Abstract

In recent decades, calls to foster safe learning environments have proliferated in the educational scholarship related to citizenship. Examples range from demands to keep young citizens safe in the digital world through to calls to hold safe conversations around controversial issues. These invocations of safety, however, have raised little opposition and debate. Using a Foucauldian lens, this article examines the ‘truths’ that underlie the discourses of safety and citizenship in the educational scholarship published from 2012 to 2022. In the 103 articles discursively analyzed, assumptions such as safety as an educational right, students as vulnerable objects of protection and teachers as safety providers are identified. The (dangerous) implications of these assumptions are critically discussed.