When learning becomes a fetish: the pledge, turn and prestige of magic tricks

It is our contention that the process of higher education could be read as a commodity and in both Marxian and Freudian assumptions, a fetish. Instrumental in this discussion are; Marx’s theorising of the commodity fetish (1867) that deceives by conflating the distinction between use and exchange value, and Freud’s (1927) re-visiting of his theory of fetishism, where he considers the fetish in the context of dealing with separation and loss in everyday life. This paper highlights how the consequence of fetishised behaviour has led to violent outcomes, such as the policy decision to introduce a ‘Teaching Excellence Framework’ (TEF). We argue that the TEF may bring about the death of learning in HE and diminish the role of academic staff. Nevertheless, influenced by Winnicott, Cixous and Biesta, we offer a more hopeful ‘Teaching that is Good Enough Framework’

Recognizing and Escaping the Sham: Authority Moves, Truth Claims and the Fiction of Academic Writing About Adult Learning

This paper seeks to explore the meaning of the sham with regards to academic writing. It challenges the fundamental assumptions that underpin conventional academic writing and suggests that such writing is actually less honest than the other forms of writing that it sets itself against. It is precisely the reliance on what Laurel Richardson calls the “authority moves” (1997, p.167) of academic language that undermines its claim to represent reality in an open and honest way. It is, in fact, a sham.The rejection of the superior truth claims of academic writing is illustrated with reference to two interview transcripts from a completed study and the issues raised are explored theoretically in the light of the work of Hélène Cixous. It is argued that the adoption of Hélène Cixous’ notion of l’écriture feminine provides a way out of the dilemma. Inspired by Cixous, it is argued that it is possible to escape the limitations of conventional academic writing firstly through the incorporation of a kind of writing practice which has more in common with poetry than rational argument and secondly through the incorporation of generically diverse texts within the social science research text

'Chasing literacy: reading and writing in an age of acceleration' by Daniel Keller : review

Review of 'Chasing literacy: reading and writing in an age of acceleration' by Daniel Keller. University Press of Colorado, 201

Doing Time in Social Science and Humanities Research: Working with Repetition and Re-Reading

This chapter sets out an account of a project set in a men’s prison in 2014–2015. The stated aim of the project was to explore the ways that science fiction can support the development of plural reading techniques among the participants, particularly in relation to their futureconcepts. Time and temporality functioned as fundamental constituents of the methodology in three ways in the project:1) Time was the context for the project. It took place in a prison where the participants were ‘doing time’ for offences committed in the recent past.2) Science fiction films which used queered time as a plot device, were employed as objects from which to elicit contemplative discussions about ontological positions in relation to the present and the future.3) Time was explicitly used as investigative method throughout the project. Participants were asked to imagine plural versions of personal and global futures and hold them in play as part of the interviews and discussions.It is argued that employing time and temporality as an investigative focus provides rich insights but poses complex ethical questions for the researcher and the participants. The effects of using time as method are reflected on, including how it worked in practical terms, what the benefits were, as well as its limitations. Finally, it is suggested that time has functioned in a fourth, unanticipated way in the intervening gap between the conclusion of the empirical work and this writing because it has allowed for deeper meaning to be made from the data. It is therefore suggested that building in a methodological delay between execution and analysis leads to more depth of understanding. Finally, it is suggested that future research might also focus on time as a healer, unmediated by any other intervention