Hanne Knudsen

Playful hyper responsibility: toward a dislocation of parents’ responsibility?

Over the past 10–15 years, state-funded schools have begun to require parents to assume an undefined and infinite personal responsibility. In this article, we investigate how schools organize responsibility games to respond to this challenge and how these games affect the concept of responsibility. We point to a dislocation in the way parents are assigned responsibility, because the definition of responsibility is not only a question of formulating rules or providing advice. We argue that what emerges is a kind of playful hyper responsibility that identifies responsibility as the participation in a process of public exploration by parents of the definition of their specific responsibilities. This has several consequences, one of which is that it becomes difficult to have a political discussion about what can reasonably be expected of parents.

Two ways to support reflexivity: Teaching managers to fulfil an undefined role: ‘A problem cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created it’ —Albert Einstein

A current challenge to public managers is the lack of a well-defined role. How can masters programmes prepare managers to live up to an undefined function? In this paper we argue that the lack of role description enhances the need for reflexivity and we show how it is done at Master in Educational Management (MEM). MEM provides the participating managers with a new language that can give them a critical distance to the overload of expectations they meet at work; and MEM teaches participants to translate this new language into practice. The pedagogy used for this is labelled ‘experimental management’. This requires participants to conduct experiments in their own organization, to reflect on and analyse their experiences with concepts from the curriculum. While the new language and the experimental teaching format are difficult, participants learn a reflexive practice that can enable them to live up to an undefined role.

John Hattie: I’m a statistician, I’m not a theoretician

The text you are about to read is an interview with the key figure behind the concept of ‘visible learning’, Professor John Hattie. Hattie’s books, ‘Visible Learning’ (2009) and ‘Visible Learning for Teachers’ (2012), as well as the concept and basic ideas regarding ‘visible learning’, and the programme Visible Learning (distributed under licence from Cognition Education Limited), have a great impact on everyday school life in many different countries. Visible learning as an idea and programme was developed in New Zealand and Australia, and is currently being implemented in schools and municipalities in 23 countries around the world. The ideas and programme have been vigorously discussed, both in international research and in local settings like Denmark, where I am located. Some of the discussions accept the basic assumptions and ambitions of visible learning regarding efficiency, while others dismiss them as almost morally wrong. These two positions are strongly defended by teachers and researchers alike. For instance, from a teaching practice point of view it has been argued that learning is not visible and that the risk of learning targets is that they may demotivate the pupils (e.g. Frederiksen, 2015). In education research, some of the discussions have focused on whether the factors pointed out are actually the ones with the biggest effect (e.g. Snook, O’Neill, Clark, O’Neill, & Openshaw, 2009), whether it makes sense to drive educational policy decisions based on standardized effect size studies (e.g. Simpson, 2017), and whether efficiency is the lens through which education ought to be viewed (e.g. Biesta, 2010). I am an educational researcher myself, and I find it important to go beyond both the efficiency discussion and the more normative discussions in order to see how visible learning works and what it does. My interest is parallel to current studies of the translation processes and performative effects of educational programmes (e.g. Staunæs, 2018), and of the performative effects of non-state policy actors like edu-businesses (e.g. Lingard, 2018). I have struggled with some very basic questions while reading ‘Visible Learning for Teachers’ in particular and while observing various forms of visible learning practices in Danish schools and municipalities. These questions relate to the meaning of the core concepts, the theoretical points of departure for visible learning and translations into teaching and political practices. Consequently, the interview given here is neither a research article nor a journalistic interview, but perhaps more of a conversation between researchers. It may be a little naive to pose these questions to John Hattie himself, as no single person controls the reception and translation of educational ideas and programmes. You could say that it is difficult to say where ‘John Hattie’ begins, and where he, his thoughts, his authority and responsibility end. Nonetheless, I find it interesting to gain insight into his reflections and views on his work and his own role. After all, Hattie is actively involved in all parts of visible learning: the production of data, the analysis, the development of concepts and teaching programmes, dissemination (through contracts with companies and by giving presentations himself), the evaluation of the effects of the programme and the corrections of the programme and scripts. John Hattie works constantly to support visible learning as a globally valid concept. This makes it interesting to learn more about his awareness of context and his view of concepts, and in the interview I have asked for his reflections on the following questions:

Seismic modelling of the Norwegian-Danish basin along a refraction profile in northern Jutland

Abstract The seismic velocity of the sedimentary structure of the Norwegian-Danish Basin and its underlying Precambrian basement have been modelled by 2D ray tracing interpretation of a 200 km section of a deep refraction seismic profile in northern Jutland (EUGENO-S Project, profile 3). A model is presented which satisfies the quite detailed prior geological information from wells and shallow reflection seismic interpretations for the upper sedimentary layers and the traveltime observations from three shotpoints along the profile. The model shows a basin thickness of about 7 km in the southern part of the profile, thinning to 1.5–2 km in the northern part towards the Fennoscandian Border Zone. In the central part, the model thickness is about 10 km. Sedimentary P-wave velocities vary from 1.9 to 3.8 km/s in the upper layers (Quaternary, Tertiary and Upper Cretaceous units) to about 5.5 km/s in the deepest Palaeozoic unit. The Precambrian basement shows velocities of 5.9–6.5 km/s. There is a clear indication of a basement reflector at depths of 11 km (velocity contrast 6.0 6.4 km ).

Experimenting with Practice – A Monstrous Pedagogy

Abstract Purpose Teaching executive courses always raises the challenge of how to deal with the tension between theory and practice. The present chapter analyses the use of experiments in practice as a pedagogical approach to deal with this tension in Master’s programmes. Design/methodology/approach The empirical data comprise eight qualitative interviews with former students, exam papers and participant observations during the course ‘Experimental Management Practice’ over a period of five years. Findings The course requires the participants to experiment with their (managerial) practice and make these experiments the learning material and stepping stone for formulating problems in new ways. We argue that it is fruitful to make a distinction between practical problems and knowledge problems, and that playful shifts back and forth between the two forms of problems can provide learning. We also argue that it is important to observe the distinction between the role of the manager and the role of the student in order to meet ethical challenges, inevitably raised by experimenting with practice. Finally we argue that the experimental teaching practice can be conceptualised as a monstrous pedagogy, as the pedagogy creates a liminal zone with hybrid characteristics. Research limitations/implications The chapter provides new conceptualizations of the tensions between theory and practice based on our experiences from one degree programme. It would have been interesting to study other executive programmes and which pedagogy they use fort dealing with this tension. Practical implications Many Master’s programmes draw empirical data from the students’ own practice into the teaching. We argue that using experiments is highly useful to identify some of the general challenges inherent in analyses of one’s own practice. It does not solve the tension between theory and practice but creates new challenges, potentialities, dilemmas and insights. Originality/value We suggest using ‘monstrosity’ as an umbrella term for ‘hybrid’ and ‘liminality’ of the complex relations that are at play in further education of practitioners. We compare the idea of the monstrous to the notion of educating ‘reflected practitioners’, and we argue that in a situation where the public manager is expected to define his/her own role, we might be better off educating a ‘monstrous practitioner’ instead of a ‘reflecting’ one.

Playful hyper-responsibility and the making of a performing audience

Abstract The citizen is currently presumed to lack both the will to take responsibility and the imagination to see what his or her responsibility may include. This »lack of responsibility« becomes an object of intervention because function systems see themselves as depending on the citizens: The educational system sees itself as depending on the student to succeed in creating learning; the health system sees itself as depending on the patient to succeed in promoting health. Responsibility games are one method used to make citizens responsible. In this paper we argue that these games and other present welfare politics striving to increase personal responsibility do not simply increase responsibility, they have at least two important effects: 1. With responsibility games personal responsibility is no longer presumed, and the form of personal responsibility is dislocated into a form of playful hyper-responsibility. To be recognized as responsible, the citizen should go second order and reflect on and investigate his / her potential responsibilities. 2. Responsibility games redistribute the roles in the function systems as the traditional distinction between performance roles (e.g. doctor or teacher) and audience role (e.g. patient or student) is challenged by a new hybrid, »the performing audience« . The citizen is both an object of treatment and investigation, - with the professional as the expert - , and a performer, regarding him / herself through the eyes of the system in order to take responsibility.