Postcolonial studies after Foucault : Discourse, discipline, biopower, and governmentality as travelling concepts

In the wake of Edward Said´s Orientalism, a substantial number of scholars have drawn on the work of Michel Foucault in their efforts to conceptualize both colonialism and the resistance against it. Postcolonial Studies After Foucault attempts to map this postcolonial engagement with Foucault, focusing on the use of four Foucauldian concepts in key postcolonial texts: "discourse", "discipline", "biopower", and "governmentality". Through a comparative analysis of the multiple meanings, functions, and effects of these concepts as they travel from one context into another, this study seeks to highlight the complex processes of transformation that underlie the recontextualization of these concepts. Moreover, by analyzing the patterns that appear in these transformations, Postcolonial Studies After Foucault aims to raise and address the question of whether the various postcolonial appropriations of Foucauldian concepts have given rise to a distinctively "Foucauldian" critique of colonial power, and how such a "Foucault Effect" relates to other conceptualizations and critiques of colonial power

Civil society and the 'commanding heights' the civil economy: past, present, future

Civil society associations can run businesses and they can run organisations that aim to influence businesses. Together, these two sorts of association help to grow a civil economy. This paper, written for the Commission of Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society in the UK and Ireland, reviews the history of the civil economy and looks ahead to how it may come to have a greater influence in the future

Using a digital library as a Māori language learning resource: Issues and possibilities

The development of electronic language learning resources, founded on digital library technology, is a capability that, to date, is largely unrealised. The Flexible Language Acquisition (FLAX) project is a digital library initiative at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. The current FLAX activities provide practice for students who are learning English as an additional language. The prospect of extending this resource to include te reo Māori is as exciting as it is groundbreaking. The outcomes of this research inform the issues and possibilities involved in creating such resources. The World Wide Web has allowed an everyday access to the Internet, but finding and retrieving pertinent information is often a convoluted and time-consuming exercise. The normal outcome is that users are unable to take full advantage of the available resources. Digital libraries have an unprecedented power in terms of organising and storing vast amounts of information and, with built-in retrieval functionality, serve as ideal repositories. The ability to focus the information within these repositories is extremely significant because there is no longer the chaff that normally results from Internet searches. Purposeful learning activities can be presented exploiting an assortment of media and drawing on stored information that can be assembled in a range of formats. Such capacity, flexibility and diversity is normally only encountered at traditional, physical libraries. The research includes an overview of digital libraries and some of the language learning resources that are currently available on the Internet. Since the target language is te reo Māori, a critical review on the features of kaupapa Māori theory, pedagogy and Māori pedagogy is undertaken. Using the concepts discussed in this review, the language learning activities associated with the FLAX project are analysed to determine their suitability for learning te reo Māori. Further feedback was provided by a sample group following their testing of a selection of activities that were based on text written in te reo Māori. The analysis suggests the current range of FLAX activities have more benefit to students as tools that allow practice of the learning that has been delivered in face-to-face classroom settings, rather than as a standalone language learning resource. In their present form, the main benefits of the activities predominantly rest in the way they were performed rather than in the activities themselves. Furthermore, commentary from the testing group regarded the activities as more beneficial for practicing sentence structures, grammar and punctuation, rather than actual language learning. The group generally agreed, however, that combining the activities with methods of oral and aural transmission, in te reo Māori, would certainly result in more effective language learning outcomes. The legitimacy of digital library-based language learning activities lies in designs that promote learner-centred interaction that is consistent with best practice communicative learning theory. When the target language is te reo Māori, it is of the utmost importance that the activities are tailored to embrace a Māori world view in ways that promote the learning rather than the activity or the content

Partnership through the lens of doctoral studies

This workshop will offer participants an overview of select methodologies and conceptual frameworks that can encourage deep reflection and critical analysis in two areas: student voice, and student-staff partnership. Firstly, we will discuss the conceptual and discursive constructions of the student-university relationship, questioning the drivers, actors, and decision-makers involved, through a combination of critical theory and post-structuralism. We will then consider the use of Situational Analysis (Clarke, 2003) which posits that understanding can be deepened through the use of three kinds of analytic maps: situational maps, social worlds/ arenas maps, and positional maps. This approach has potential to draw together studies of discourse and agency, action and structure, and other material elements, to analyse the complexity of partnership situations

Pedagogy of Difference 2.0:Introducing Interactive Documentary in the context of Critical Media Literacy

The rise of digital interactive technology in recent years has been accompanied by claims about the democratic promise of interactivity, placing emphasis on the empowering potential it holds for users. This research set out to explore the implications of introducing the tool of interactive documentary in a series of Critical Media Literacy interventions with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The rapidly evolving field of Interactive Documentary has been theorised as a new learning system, offering contemporary ways to engage with the representation of reality. Interactive Documentary could be seen as the ideal platform for addressing the purposes of Critical Media Literacy, such as foregrounding a democratic pedagogy, due to its potential to create “spaces in which individuals can speak for themselves” (Nash 2014a: 51). This thesis provides empirical evidence of the challenges of delivering the benefits of interactivity in a complex lived environment and offers a critique of some of the assumptions of the theoretical discourse of Critical Media Literacy, namely promoting student voice and empowerment. A qualitative multi-method approach was adopted for conducting this research. The methodology of Participatory Action Research (PAR) was used as the overarching framework for data collection, as this was in line with the theoretical underpinnings of this research, and provided the practical means guiding the series of Interactive Documentary workshops, which served as distinct cycles of action and reflection. I combined PAR with Visual Research Methods throughout conducting fieldwork and I deployed Discourse Analysis for analysing the data. This research was also influenced by Ethnography, in terms of foregrounding reflexivity and observing groups of young participants with an emphasis on their values and perspectives. The findings of this study contribute to a reconfiguration of a ‘Pedagogy of Difference’, a concept often found in Critical Pedagogy literature, which denotes “teaching for and about difference” (Luke 1994: 38, italics in original) in terms of gender, class, ability, race, ethnicity, religion and nationality. In reconfiguring this concept, I present a “Pedagogy of Difference 2.0” for teaching and learning with interactive documentaries and outline the technological, relational, experiential and discursive dimensions which would sustain this new approach to pedagogy. Pedagogy of Difference 2.0 embraces 11 the limitations of interactivity on young people’s media production and does not take young people’s familiarity with the technology for granted. It foregrounds the notion of engagement, taking into account the challenges that emerged from engaging participants in Critical Media Literacy interventions. This approach to pedagogy also acknowledges the development of positive relationships between educators and learners and among learners, thus encouraging a sense of empowerment through forging new social relationships. In this regard, Pedagogy of Difference 2.0 acknowledges the contextual nature of teaching and learning, moving beyond the often abstract discourse of Critical Pedagogy

Teacher's guide book for primary and secondary school

There is an urgent need for collective action to mitigate the consequences of climate change and adapt to unavoidable changes. The complexity of climate change issues can pose educational challenges. Nonetheless, education has a key role to play in ensuring that younger generations have the required knowledge and skills to understand issues surrounding climate change, to avoid despair, to take action, and to be prepared to live in a changing world. The Office for Climate Education (OCE) was founded in 2018 to promote strong international cooperation between scientific organisations, educational institutions and NGOs. The overall aim of the OCE is to ensure that the younger generations of today and tomorrow are educated about climate change. Teachers have a key role to play in their climate education and it is essential that they receive sufficient support to enable them to implement effective lessons on climate change. The OCE has developed a range of educational resources and professional development modules to support them in teaching about climate change with active pedagogy

Winking at Facebook: capturing digitally-mediated classroom learning

In this article I present an innovative combination of methods, used in a study of the use of Facebook as an educational resource by five dyslexic students at a Sixth Form College in north-west England. Through a project in which teacher-researcher and student-participants co-constructed a Facebook group page about the students’ scaffolded research into dyslexia, the study examined the educational affordances of a digitally-mediated social network. Combining multiple data-collection methods including participant-observation, semi-structured interviews, video recordings, dynamic screen capture (Cox, 2007), protocol analysis (Ericsson & Simon, 1993) helped to capture in detail multiple perspectives on the learning that happened in the classroom over the five weeks of the research project's lifetime. Aggregating the resulting data in turn enabled meticulous, comprehensive analysis and rigorous theorising. The article presents and analyses excerpts from the data which help to illustrate the insights gained into one participant's learning trajectory. I argue that the combination of methods employed could be used with any range of research participants in other studies exploring learning through Facebook and other Web 2.0 spaces. The article concludes by suggesting further refinements to the methods used

Forensic and ecological perspectives on insect succession on vertebrate remains

Entomological evidence is commonly used to estimate a post-mortem interval (PMI) in medicolegal investigations of deceased individuals. A PMI from insect-derived data can be estimated by either examining the thermal development rates of larvae or analysing the carrion insect succession process. The larval development method is well-established and reliable, while the succession method is less reliable as it depends on the predictable sequences of species arriving at a cadaver, which is a highly variable process. The effect of abiotic factors such as temperature and season on succession have been well documented, however the role of biotic factors has received far less attention. For the succession method to be reliably applied to forensic casework, a complete knowledge of all factors driving successional changes in insect communities needs to be known to identify and understand sources of variation. Parallel to developments in forensic science, carrion ecologists have begun to quantify the biological sources of variation in carrion insect succession and identify the role carrion plays in ecosystem function. Importantly, the carrion resource and associated necrobiome have been identified as important ecological drivers of variation in carrion insect succession. Yet these ecological approaches and techniques have yet to be transferred to forensic entomology. For example, pigs are often used as substitutes for human cadavers in forensic entomology despite the relatively unknown effect of cadaver type on carrion insect succession. There is great potential, therefore, to examine how developments in ecology might be used to advance forensic entomology. This thesis aims to learn from carrion ecology to advance forensic entomology by exploring ecological perspectives on how biotic factors such as cadaver type, carrion resource and species interactions drive variation in carrion insect succession. To do this, I conducted an innovative, multi-season experiment using pig and human cadavers at the Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research (AFTER)