Pandemic panic: COVID and the claustropolitan university?

Expert opinion piece published on CCCU website in October 2020

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While some claim that “…Western philosophy, for which the subject-object dialectic, the Cartesian viewpoint, and the absolute I-know-it-all attitude still hold massive sway”, “Cartesian doubt is a systematic process of being skeptical about the truth of one's beliefs”. This presentation asks why Enlightenment thought continues to be so misrepresented

Beyond alienation: spatial implications of teaching and learning academic writing

Despite existing work on the situated and sometimes alienating nature of academic writing practices, the implications of the specifically spatial nature of these practices continue to pose questions for teaching and learning in higher education. This paper addresses these questions through a study of the views and experiences of students and teachers of academic writing in postgraduate teacher education (n=33). Specifically, it introduces a concept, xenolexia, which complements that of alienation by recognising the dynamic nature of academic writing, texts and practices without reifying them. Discussing the fundamentally spatial nature of this dynamism, the concept of xenolexia is used to analyse perceptions of academic writing practices as “foreign”. The features of this “foreignness” are examined from the point of view of both teaching and learning, and lessons about identity and dynamism in academic writing are drawn for writing pedagogies in postgraduate teacher education contexts

Creativity in lifelong learning: events and ethics

This thesis proposes a critical enquiry into the issue of creativity, focussing on teacher education in the English Lifelong Learning (LLL) sector. I examine the role of creativity in this context and link sector research and practice to an alternative, immanent, form of ethics. My thesis has three parts, the first of which identifies and contests current approaches to creativity and redefines it from the perspective of teacher education in LLL. To tackle this complex problem, I draw on recent literature in the field in conjunction with the work of philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995). I recast the notion of lifelong learning as an event in order to explicitly relate practice, creativity and ethics. Drawing on this analysis, the second part of my argument describes an alternative, “operative” model of creativity and provides examples of its implication in practice. The films and creative practices of acclaimed director Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007) are used to exemplify the sort of “shock to thought” which Deleuze equates with certain types of cinema, and which, I suggest, can contribute to creative teaching and learning practices. I bring together Deleuze’s ideas about how creative “stutters” and “interstices” function, providing a set of interlinked parameters with which to think about creative teacher education practices in LLL. Improvisation, chance and error are investigated from the viewpoint of the ethical practices immanent to them. These parameters structure the third part of my thesis, which critically examines the extent to which research and practice in LLL might actually achieve the ambitious goals this implies. Drawing on Deleuze’s positions on moral and ethical behaviour, I develop an ambitious re-statement of ethical practice which aims to better relate to practices of teacher education in LLL and their creative potential

Language learning in crisis: A dangerous question?

This blog post discusses attitudes towards language learning in the light of a recent HEPI report (2021

“A cumulative and alienating pattern of repeated slights and insults”: racism, internationalization and ethical vacuity in UK Higher Education

This paper critically examines Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) 2019 report into racism in United Kingdom Higher Education. After outlining the context of the report, the paper is situated within discourses of internationalization in higher education (HE) and those of investment, excellence and social mobility. Using transversality, an analytical tool developed by Gilles Deleuze, as a means of critiquing these connections, two groups of findings are presented. First, the report misrepresents the role of racism in HE as an isolated phenomenon rather than as an integral part of the discourse, logic and practices of internationalized HE. Specifically, it masks the discourses of investment, mobility and excellence that underpin it. Second, the report evidences, but fails to identify, the negative consequences of internationalization in higher education discourse. Specifically, discourses of investment, excellence and mobility are linked to the threat of decomplexification, securitization and, ultimately, ethical vacuity in HE

Telling ghost stories with the voice of an ogre Deleuze, identity, and disruptive pedagogies

This article puts the ideas of philosopher Gilles Deleuze to work theoretically and practically in tackling questions of social justice in teacher education. Writing as a teacher educator in the United Kingdom, I situate this work in local, strategic interventions and recent calls for an “ontological turn”. The article has two parts. I first link Deleuze’s differential ontology to an approach to identity and its critique of the impact of neo-liberal discourses on (teacher) education. Second, I examine how Deleuze’s ideas can foster specific practices, focussing on the area of planned pedagogy. I show how non-linear pedagogies and disruptive interventions imply from radical shifts in the operation of thought which Deleuze links to an immanent ethical commitment to events. This new image of thought, I argue, is the most useful thing in Deleuze’s toolbox, helping us to think and act differently in teacher education

Knowing narratives: challenging the spectacle of racist discrimination

The controversial recent report by the Commission for Race and Ethnic Disparities (CRED) continues to attract criticism for its apparent disavowal of institutional racism in the UK. Accused of manipulative gaslighting, it follows Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s declarations about “changing the narrative” on race

Payback time? Discourses of lack, debt and the moral regulation of teacher education

This paper analyses recent policy and discourse in the UK lifelong learning sector toidentify a tension in discourse which positions teacher educators as essential to theknowledge economy while simultaneously insisting on the deficits they represent.Drawing on critical analyses from Friedrich Nietzsche, Maurizio Lazzarato and GillesDeleuze, I challenge altruistic views of professional motivation and situate individual pro-fessionalism under a construction of an indebted subject. Examining recent attempts toredefine professional standards in the sector, I argue that teachers are positioned as subject to homogenisation and ethically indebted to a higher ideal. Ethical commitments to adult learning, I suggest, are a cost-effective instrument of social control because of their imbrication in this discourse of irredeemable moral debt to the sector. Responses to thissituation, I argue, are likely to include forms of professional mobility which undermine it

Why so surprised? A very brief history of sexual harassment in schools

Chief Ofsted inspector Amanda Spielman is openly “shocked” by the “alarming” results of a recent report into sexual harassment in schools. Such abuse, Ofsted announces, has become so prevalent in schools that children, especially girls, no longer see the point of reporting activities that they have come to accept as just “part of growing up”