Authority, Autonomy and Automation: The Irreducibility of Pedagogy to Information Transactions

"This paper draws attention to the tendency of a range of technologies to reduce pedagogical interactions to a series of datafied transactions of information. This is problematic because such transactions are always by definition reducible to finite possibilities. As the ability to gather and analyse data becomes increasingly fine-grained, the threat that these datafied approaches over-determine the pedagogical space increases. Drawing on the work of Hegel, as interpreted by 20th century French radical philosopher Alexandre Kojève, this paper develops a model of relational pedagogy which highlights three points of incompatibility with a datafied learning environment reduced to finite measures. Firstly: Kojève’s accont of authority in Hegel posits two aspects to the mimetic relation between teacher and student: recognition and realisation, which belong to the ipseity or about-self-ness of the subject, and are incompatible with a general definition of data. Secondly, the Hegelian approach to human historical time, in particular the assertion that time and desire are begun in the future, not the past, renders it incompatible with mathematical time as used in data processing. Finally, from these it is possible to derive a distinctive notion of the work of pedagogy, grounded in Kojève’s realist reading of Hegel, irreducible to information processing. In consequence of this threefold irreducibility, the paper draws attention to a need for relations of human pedagogical work to be inherent in the design of educational technologies and highlights the dangers of presuming a machine intelligence model in the design of learning environments.

Leadership, service reform, and public-service networks : the case of cancer-genetics pilots in the English NHS

In attempting to reform public services, governments worldwide have sought to effect change through policies aimed at both transforming structures of public-service provision and facilitating the agency of public servants working within these. Various obstacles have been found, however, to impede the effectiveness of such efforts. In this article, the authors examine the role of organizational networks and distributed leadership—two prominent policies aimed at structure and agency, respectively—in the establishment and consolidation of service reform in the English National Health Service. Using a comparative case-study approach, they contrast the trajectories of two attempts to introduce and gain acceptance for service reform, noting important differences of context, process, and outcome between the sites. The findings indicate the importance of dispersed, as well as distributed, leadership in achieving change in a networked public-service setting. Effective leaders may indeed achieve change through the structures and processes of the network. However, the coexistence alongside the network of other organizational forms constrains the ability of leaders to achieve change without complementary action beyond the boundaries of the network

Capital, culture and community : understanding school engagement in a challenging context

Engagement in learning is seen as a key to success at school. The article reports on a study into the ways in which one school has attempted to engage with its community in an area of multiple deprivation. Using Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital, the article explores the ways in which school management aims to boost students’ embodied cultural capital as a means towards achieving academic success, and looks at the perceptions of key informants and school students on these issues. The report shows the considerable efforts schools in such areas need to expend, the economic challenges, and the difficulties and dilemmas which students often encounter in trying to negotiate the cultural divide between home and school

The life of suggestions

Using the notion of a suggestion, or rather charting the life of suggestions, this article considers the happenings of chance and embodiment as the “problems that got away.” The life of suggestions helps us to ask how connectivities are made, how desire functions, and how “immanence” rather than “transcendence” can open up the politics and ethics that are at play. The text explores movements in thought, what it means to bring the unthought into thought, and how what is “not yet” thought might regenerate positive and creative freedoms that we could tentatively call “hope” in soldering new scenarios for inquiry and pedagogy. Claire Colebrook asks, At what point do we begin or cease to imagine a future? This article explores and experiments with what it might mean to affirm life as suggestion and to let go of the allegiances and attachments that prevent us from seeing alternative

Unlocking contested stories and grassroots knowledge

Digital storytelling is a form of engagement that enables people to share personal stories and to produce new knowledge(s). Digital stories reveal unexpected connections across different communities of interest, places, and time periods. They reflect shared and conflicting values, feelings, and concerns surrounding a particular place. Digital storytelling as a process can guide us during a journey over time, by enabling storytellers to use their creativity to trigger memories from the past and to stimulate critical thinking around current situations and possible future scenarios. It also reconnects storytellers and story-listeners to physical and emotional journeys, while they are disconnecting themselves from places that, after dramatic transitions, can’t exist anymore as they were.Reflecting on some examples of practice-led research projects, this chapter will consider questions such as: How to connect individual stories to community narratives? How to unlock grassroots knowledge and bring unheard voices into a debate? What kinds of social impacts can personally meaningful stories – especially if they are contested – produce?Since co-design and co-production have been identified as key elements of the digital storytelling process, this chapter intends also to inquire if and how this methodology can be enriched by contaminations with other creative approaches absorbed from the visual arts and music.Comparing digital stories and other forms of narratives may represent an additional way of uncovering conflicts and also discovering unexpected common ground in the dialogue between lay and experts’ knowledge, due to the authenticity of personal stories and the natural “mess” of storytelling (Wilson, Narrative Culture 1(2):125–144, 2014).<br