Kenneth Petersson
Linköping University
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Educational Philosophy and Theory | 2006
Thomas S. Popkewitz; Ulf Olsson; Kenneth Petersson
The ‘learning society’ expresses principles of a universal humanity and a promise of progress that seem to transcend the nation. The paper indicates how this society is governed in the name of a cosmopolitan ideal that despite its universal pretensions embodies particular inclusions and exclusions. These occur through inscribing distinctions and differentiations between the characteristics of those who embody a cosmopolitan reason that brings social progress and personal fulfilment and those who do not embody the cosmopolitan principles of civility and normalcy. Mapping the circulation of the notion of the ‘learning society’ in arenas of Swedish health and criminal justice, and Swedish and US school reforms is to examine the mode of life of the citizen of this society, the learner, as an ‘unfinished cosmopolitanism’ and also directs attention to its ‘other(s)’—those that are outside.
Discourse: Studies in The Cultural Politics of Education | 2007
Kenneth Petersson; Ulf Olsson; Thomas S. Popkewitz
This article provides a genealogical perspective on narratives about the past and the future as governmental discourses in teacher education, public health, and criminal justice in Sweden. Contemporary governmental strategies bring nostalgic memories of the past and visions and fears about the future back to life in the present. The past (history) is a technology of the present to re-memorialize who “we” are and have been. The future is a spatial concept, a technology to shape and nurture the “future oriented” subject bent on the pursuit of lifelong learning. The notions of history and future in the construction of the lifelong learner function to link and harmonize the interest of the individual with that of society. As technologies of government these are not new. Similar technologies were operating in the discourses about the future, society, and the citizen in the first part of the 20th century. What is new is the particular capabilities and capacities of the individual as an agent of the future and the collective principles in which life is lived.
Archive | 2005
Ulf Olsson; Kenneth Petersson
Deweys figures of thought have been inscribed into the Swedish political context since the end of the nineteenth century. His ideas of democracy, community, and communication have been used, direc ...
European Educational Research Journal | 2011
Ulf Olsson; Kenneth Petersson; John Benedicto Krejsler
This article problematizes the construction of youth as a ‘driving force’ in the contemporary configuration of the European Union (EU) as an educational and political space. The study draws empirical nourishment out of documents that are central to the ongoing formation of the Union, be it White Papers, scripts or memos concerning political arenas such as youth and education policies and the Bologna process. Theoretically the article draws on insights from post-Foucauldian traditions with a focus on mentalities, subject constructions, technologies and practices operating within the ongoing governmentalization of Europe. Central questions are ‘who’ and ‘what’ the problematization of youth as political technology is about. Drawing on homologies in the coding of citizen, independent of age, the authors claim that problematization of youth is directed to all of us. We are all, in the name of youth, expected to constantly ‘adapt’ ourselves in compliance with the aim of the Lisbon process. Furthermore, as the Union itself is coded in a similar way, we may even claim that the EU, literally speaking, appears as a youth project in itself. Thus, the notion that youth can be seen as political rationality that becomes a powerful driving force in the ongoing European project.
Archive | 2018
John B. Krejsler; Ulf Olsson; Kenneth Petersson
This chapter traces how national teacher education policy discourse in Denmark and Sweden is being transformed by opaque, albeit often inclusive, processes in transnational policy forums, such as the Bologna Process, OECD, and EU. This is facilitated by “soft law” surrounding the imagined needs of modern nations, if they are to succeed in “an increasingly competitive global race among knowledge economies.” In the case of the Bologna Process, the transformative effects are often rather direct. More often, however, effects touch upon national educational agendas in indirect ways, in terms of an emerging, overarching logic and governance technologies like comparisons, stocktaking, standards, performance indicators, benchmarking, and best practice. These transnational templates make national teacher education programs comparable. They are fueled by mutual peer pressure among competing nations. Consequently, Danish teacher education discourse has emerged from a distinctly national vocational seminary (teacher training) tradition, into a modernized university college discourse that increasingly fits the transnational templates of comparability, albeit at a slower pace than her Swedish neighbor. It is often difficult to notice the pervasive impact of transnational policy, as reforms of culturally sensitive school and teacher education areas are often discursively reinscribed in heated national debates. The EU and OECD are not popular figures to pull out in public political debate, in either Denmark or Sweden. The Bologna Process is largely unknown to the broader public. Theoretically, this chapter draws on post-Foucauldian governmentality studies. Empirically, it draws on discourse analysis of European (EU), Danish and Swedish national documents, and literature on policy reform.
Archive | 2018
Ulf Olsson; Kenneth Petersson; John B. Krejsler
The overall aim of this chapter is to problematise the contemporary transnational discourse about learning and pupil-centred learning which during recent decades have become givens or, perhaps it could be said, have become established as dogmas in the conversations, writings and thinking about ourselves, others, education, work and society. The purpose of this approach is to shake up what is to a greater or lesser extent taken for granted at the present. We do this by showing that ideas such as student centredness can be seen in other ways than is the case in contemporary narratives. Theoretically, we draw on Foucault’s concepts of genealogy and history of the present. This means that we reflect contemporary conceptions, in this case the ideas of student centredness, in relation to how similar phenomena have been practiced within other narratives about education/training. Empirically, we use different types of education texts such as policy documents, investigations, textbooks and scientific reports. We start with contemporary documents from transnational as well as Swedish sources, followed by documents from three different historical periods: (1) the 1940/1950s, (2) the 1970s and (3) the narrative of the French teacher, Joseph Jacotot, from the beginning of the nineteenth century about teaching for intellectual liberation as retold by Jacques Ranciere. The genealogical analysis shows that contemporary narrative about learning is neither more nor less pupil or student centred than that of yesteryear. It is rather that this phenomenon is given different meanings within the framework of different historical discourses about education. In the present time, the concepts are given meaning in the context of educational policy work and reforms in an era of transnational governance.
European Education: Issues and Studies | 2013
Kenneth Petersson; Thomas Popkewitz S.; Ulf Olsson; John B. Krejsler
In our introduction to the previous issue of this special double issue, we sought to situate the contributions by exploring and playing with Foucault’s notion of governmentality as it worked through the corpus of work in this guest-edited collection. Let us briefly refer back to those arguments in framing this second issue. The background to the contributions is a research seminar held in April 2011 at the School of Education, University of Wisconsin–Madison organized around the notion of governmentality. Our focus is to reverse the concern with the “author” as the origin of reflection and the actions for change. In contrast, it is to use governmentality as a style of reasoning about the complex movements of practices about what is “seen,” thought about, and recognized for illumining our own predicaments. Governmentality in this double issue, then, enters into a conversation with other readings as epistemological principles are translated and assembled in different cultural spaces. The contributions offer an intervention in thinking about the problematics of research in at least two dimensions. The first is to offer questions and insights into the educational practices that are alternative to those
Archive | 2006
Thomas S. Popkewitz; Kenneth Petersson; Ulf Olsson; Jamie Kowalczyk
Archive | 2003
Kenneth Hultqvist; Ulf Olsson; Kenneth Petersson; Thomas S. Popkewitz; Dan Andersson
Vocational and Technical Education | 2012
John B. Krejsler; Ulf Olsson; Kenneth Petersson