Six Key WordsStudent subjectivities, postmodern, Deleuze, quiet students, faciality, becoming.Quiet students are a feature of the organisation of secondary schools. Using qualitative methods and Deleuzean conceptualisations of modern subjectivity, this paper explores the ways that quiet students negotiate the terrain of their school. These negotiations often seem to produce a self that is trapped rather than a subject who seizes opportunities to be inventive, creative and experimental of their self. Understanding the faciality of quiet students provides opportunities to advance debate on how schools could encourage freer selves.
The paper examines the links between a recent focus in Australian universities on 'generic skills' or 'graduate qualities', and national employment policies directed at developing employment-related 'key competencies'. It examines the attempt by a team of teacher educators in Australia to develop curricula that would meet the goals of national workplace policy initiatives, while retaining the traditional university concern of teaching critical evaluation of information and social practice. The speci c example is the teaching of sociology within a teacher education programme. However, the examples and analysis offered here would be of interest to university teachers working with students in any professional degree programme where there is an expectation that students will be able to understand and apply sociological knowledge within their professional eld. The project was framed within the policy context of 'meeting students' needs'.
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