19 ARTICLES Language Issues • Volume 23 • Number 2 Introduction This paper takes a critical look at practices used in delivering ESOL in UK institutions. Drawing initially on concepts from philosopher Michel Foucault’s work on techniques of control, it explores a global rationale for practices which have signifcant impact within ESOL provision. Focusing on individual learning plans (ILPs) as examples of common practices in ESOL provision, I examine the relevance of concepts drawn from Foucault’s corpus, before reversing the process to shed light on these concepts themselves. Because the many aspects of the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault (1925–1984) are well-documented (see, for example Fejes and Nicoll, 2008), this paper starts by examining some of its implications in specifc practices which frame ESOL delivery as a kind of case study, before exploring the ways in which these concepts evolve with today’s ESOL context. ESOL and Foucault At a time of great change for ESOL across the country, it’s worth looking closely at how ESOL provision has been managed in institutional contexts in order to establish how far the current gloomy outlook for state-funded ESOL provision implies a change, and how far it represents continuity and a predictable next step in a particular rationale. Barton (2007), in the context of literacy practices, makes a number of points which echo some of the concerns in ESOL. If, as he suggests, practices in literacy education and training entail a tendency to “plan, record, control and infuence” (Barton, 2007:41), learners clearly become instrumentalised for institutional ends via technologies of surveillance. Tools, such as ILPs, are designed ostensibly to promote the wellbeing and achievement of learners, but the question immediately arises as to precisely why well-being (for instance) should be attached to these particular tools at this particular time. Foucault’s genealogical analyses ask these questions of a range of social phenomena, including health, justice and sexuality and focus on education as a key part of the evolution of certain techniques in Discipline and Punish (1991). For Foucault “technologies” of power, including a wide range of techniques used for the purposes of normalization and subjectifcation, existed to provide the concrete coercive basis necessary for control: it’s not just about “discourse”. In particular, this text identifes the development of “Panopticism”, a phenomenon which seems to apply to many of the practices in ESOL provision which teachers fnd most problematic. Conceptualising Bentham’s “Panopticon” (a circular prison in which a maximum number Beyond the Panopticon: changing gazes in ESOL Christian Beighton