Sporadic democracy: Education, democracy and the question of inclusion

In this paper I take up the question of the relationship between democracy and inclusion. I present the deliberative turn in democratic theory as an attempt to overcome ‘external exclusion’ and discuss Iris Young’s work as an attempt to overcome ‘internal exclusions.’ I argue that although attempts to make democracy more inclusive are laudable, they are ultimately based upon a colonial conception of democratisation, one in which inclusion is seen as a process where those who are already on the inside include others into their sphere. I use the work of Jacques Rancière to argue for an understanding of democratisation as the interruption of the existing political order from the outside in the name of equality. This can not only help us to think differently about the role of inclusion in democracy. It also urges us to see that there are opportunities for the democratisation of education that lie beyond the inclusion of ‘newcomers’ into the existing democratic order

How to use pragmatism pragmatically: Suggestions for the 21st century

First paragraph: I am never entirely sure what those who call themselves pragmatists or who declare an affinity with pragmatism actually believe in. Pragmatists would probably respond that this is the wrong question, as what matters is not what they believe in but what they do with their beliefs – or, to be more precise, what follows from their beliefs. After all, one of the founding insights of pragmatism is Charles Peirce's contention that different beliefs are distinguished solely “by the different modes of action to which they give rise” so that “(i)f beliefs do not differ in this respect (...) then no mere differences in the manner of consciousness of them can make them different beliefs, any more than playing a tune in different keys is playing different tunes” (Peirce 1955, p.29). Yet even if it is granted that we should focus first and foremost on the consequences of pragmatism, it cannot be denied that pragmatism also consists of a set of beliefs such as, in John Dewey's case, a belief in naturalism, in communication, in the scientific method, in intelligence and in democracy. The problem is that many critics of pragmatism have focused on these beliefs rather than on the particular arguments in which these beliefs function. This has led to much misunderstanding about pragmatism, not only amongst critics of pragmatism but sometimes also amongst those who are sympathetic to pragmatism

Theorizing learning through complexity: An educational critique

Ton Jörg has done a magnificent job in outlining a new way to understand the dynamics of learning and, more specifically, learning that results from “peer‐to‐peer” and “face‐toface” interaction. Jörg takes inspiration from Vygotsky’s ideas on the role of interaction in the development of higher mental functioning and uses ideas from complexity to highlight the nonlinear and “generative” character of human interaction. He introduces the notion of “bootstrapping” to better understand the dynamics of such processes and ends up with a view of learning as a process of “co‐creating each other in progressive experience.” Jörg’s main “target,” so to speak, consists of linear and non‐generative ways of understanding learning, education and human interaction. Jörg, on the other hand, presents learning and development as radically open processes and argues that because of their radically open character we should (re‐)organize our educational practices so that they will facilitate such open, undetermined and generative forms of learning and interaction

Encountering Foucault in lifelong learning

First paragraph: “The only important problem is what happens on the ground.” (Foucault 1991a, p.83) The chapters in this book stage a range of different encounters with the work of Michel Foucault. Through them we not only gain a better understanding of the potential of Foucault’s work. At the same time the chapters shed a different light on policies and practices of lifelong learning. There is, therefore, a double encounter in this book: we encounter Foucault in lifelong learning and we encounter lifelong learning through the eyes of Foucault. Both encounters are, of course, important. Whereas the stated purpose of this book is to gain a new and different understanding of lifelong learning and, through this, to contribute to a re-conceptualisation of lifelong learning, the book also functions as a ‘test’ of Foucault’s ideas. It reveals strengths and weaknesses of using Foucault to analyse and understand educational practices and processes and the wider strategies and techniques of governing in latemodern, neo-liberal societies. For this final chapter this raises two questions: What has this book achieved in understanding and conceptualising lifelong learning differently? And what does this tell us about the significance of Foucault’s work for this particular endeavour? To address these questions I will, in this final chapter, focus on three issues: (1) the nature of Foucauldian analysis; (2) the question of normativity; and (3) the opportunities for change. In what follows I will first try to characterise the main thrust of the chapters against the background of Foucault’s ideas on governmentality and power. I will then focus on what I see as one of the most interesting dimensions of this book, viz., the question as to what follows from Foucauldian analysis. I will first characterise how the different authors answer this question. I will then discuss what I see as the specific ‘nature’ of Foucauldian analysis, particularly with respect to the relationship between power and knowledge. This will provide the background for my reflections on the strengths and weaknesses of the contributions in this book which, finally, will bring me back to the question of normativity in Foucauldian analysis and the question as to how such analysis can support change

Classroom assessment and education: challenging the assumptions of socialisation and instrumentality

The opportunity offered by the Umea Symposium to probe the intersection of quality and assessment immediately brings into focus a wider issue – that of the quality of education which assessment aspires to support. Prompted by recent research into formative assessment in Scottish primary school contexts, the paper explores how formative assessment has become associated with an overly benign understanding of learning which misrecognises the possibility of undesirable learning and does not seem to address the inherently political nature of education. Having illuminated the potential inequities of formative assessment practices, the paper then asks what role formative assessment might play to support an understanding of education that is not simply about the transmission of traditional social norms, but also aspires to illuminate their social construction and their political nature

Bridging the gap between educational research and educational practice: The need for critical distance

The contributions to this special issue explore a range of different aspects of the relationship between research and practice in education. All start from the assumption that there is a gap between research and practice. Some authors take a descriptive approach in that they try to outline the nature of and reasons for the alleged gap between research and practice. Educational research is, after all, never simply research on education but always in some sense also research for education. This, in sum, reveals that it is as important to try to bridge gaps between research and practice as it is to keep a critical distance between the two, both from the side of educational research and from the side of educational practice

Learning from life in the learning economy: The role of narrative

From introduction: The shift from adult education to lifelong learning has not only impacted on the role and position of the adult educator, but has also had a profound effect on the legitimation of the learning of adults. Whereas adult education has historically been connected with learning for personal development and empowerment and learning for social inclusiveness and democratic understanding and activity (see Aspin & Chapman 2001), the rise of the ‘learning paradigm’ (Martin 2006; Biesta 2006a) has been accompanied by an emphasis on learning for economic progress and development. This is not only visible in policy discourse but has also influenced the allocation of public funding for the learning of adults and thus has had a real effect on the kinds of education adults are able to engage in. The rise of the ‘learning paradigm’ can be seen as part of a struggle over the definition of learning: a struggle over what counts as (worthwhile) learning and a struggle over who is allowed to define what (worthwhile) learning is (see Biesta 2006b). In this context an important task for adult education researchers is to highlight the significance of the broad range of learning processes and practices that occur in the lives of adults so as to show that there is more to learning than what is acknowledged in the economic definition of lifelong learning. Doing this has been one of the main ambitions of the Learning Lives project, a 3-year longitudinal study into the learning biographies of about 120 adults of 25 and older (see www.learninglives.org). The research was based upon a series of open-ended interviews in which we invited participants to talk about their lives and the role of learning in it, both retrospectively (using a life-history approach) and in relation to events in their lives over the duration of the project. In this paper we focus on one particular aspect of the learning we encountered in the project, viz., the way in which adults learn from their lives. Our interest in this was prompted by the fact that upon reading and analysing the life-stories of participants we found that in a significant number of cases these stories articulated that participants had reached some kind of insight or understanding about their lives, themselves and their position in the world. The stories evidenced, in other words, that the participants had learned something from their lives. We also found that this learning had had an impact on the ways in which the participants led their lives. We became particularly interested in the role of stories and storying in such learning processes and in possible relationships between the ‘narrative quality’ of life-stories and their potential for learning and action. For our analysis we engaged with literature on narrative in the human and social sciences (Polkinghorne 1988; Bruner 1990; Czarniawska 2004), with the emerging body of work on narrative learning in adult education (Rossiter 1999; Rossiter and Clark 2007), and with research and theory on biographical learning (Alheit 1995; Alheit & Dausien 2002). In this paper we present some of the findings from our analysis and reflect upon their significance for adult learning in the learning economy

Can Management Ethics Be Taught Ethically? A Levinasian Exploration

Courses in business ethics3 are part of most Higher Education programmes in Management and Business Studies. Such courses are commonly aimed at providing students with knowledge about ethics, usually in the form of a set of ethical and meta-ethical theories which are presented as ‘tools’ for ethical decision making. This reveals an approach to the teaching of management and business ethics which is based upon a cognitive view of moral education – one which sees ethical knowledge as at least a necessary condition for moral action – and in which it is assumed that ethical practice in management and business follows from the application of ethical knowledge. In this paper we ask whether the teaching of management and business ethics can be done differently and, more importantly, whether it can be done in an ethical manner, one which focuses on possibilities for being ethical rather than knowing ethics. Our explorations are informed by the work of Emmanuel Levinas and centre on the idea that responsibility is the first reality of the (ethical) self. Through a discussion of the notions of ‘the face’ and ‘the third part’ (le tiers) we explore how ethical subjectivity might be possible. We then ask what it might mean to organise a curriculum for management and business ethics around the ‘experience’ of responsibility-for-the-Other

Lifelong learning, identity and the moral dimension: The 'reflexive project of the self' revisited

From Introduction: In his book Modernity and Self-Identity Anthony Giddens has famously claimed that in the context of the post-traditional order of late-modern societies ‘the self becomes a reflexive project’ (Giddens, 1991, pp.32, emph. in original). According to Giddens this is not simply an option, i.e., something that individuals can decide to engage with or not. He takes the stronger view that in late-modern societies the self ‘has to be reflexively made’ (ibid, pp.3, emph. added). Self-identity is thus no longer seen as something that is given but appears as something ‘that has to be routinely created and sustained in the reflexive activities of the individual’ (ibid, pp.52). Although questions have been raised about the empirical adequacy of Giddens’s diagnosis, his views have contributed to the idea that late-modern societies require a new kind of lifelong learning that is concerned with the ongoing reflexive construction of the self in response to ongoing uncertainty and risk (e.g., Hake, 1998; 1999). Such learning is highly individualistic and individualised as it is focused on ‘selfactualisation’ and ‘self-realisation’ (Giddens, 1991, pp.214). Despite Giddens’s use of the phrase ‘life politics,’ the individualistic nature of such learning processes suggests that his depiction of the reflexive project of the self is rather a-political. Thus the work of Giddens and other sociologists (with the exception of Bauman) has contributed to an understanding of a dimension of lifelong learning in late-modern societies that seems to be at odds with the social purpose tradition of adult education in which learning about the self has always been conceived as a collective and hence a thoroughly political process. The work of Giddens can therefore be seen as one of the factors that has contributed to the rise of the ‘learning paradigm’ (Martin, 2006) and the ‘new language of learning’ (Biesta, 2006) in the field of adult education. In this paper we want to raise some questions about Giddens’s ideas about selfidentity and the reflective construction of the self and present the outlines of a different way to understand self and identity, one which emphasises continuity and permanence over change and adaptation and one which highlights the moral and relational dimensions of the self. We also indicate what this might mean for lifelong learning