Nesta Devine

Agency and social capital in Chinese international doctoral students’ conversion to Christianity

Abstract Chinese international students constitute the largest proportion of overseas students in several English-speaking countries such as the UK and New Zealand. Little research has been done concerning those undertaking doctoral study. This qualitative study explores how Chinese overseas doctoral students become involved in church communities and how some of them convert to Christianity in New Zealand. In-depth interviews were conducted with nine Chinese doctoral students from different social backgrounds. Five of these reported varying degrees of interest in and commitment to Christianity. Their narratives revealed that their conversion was a gradual and complex process as a result of the interplay between habitus, agency and contextual factors. These findings from a New Zealand context provide insights into non-academic experience of Chinese international students, particularly their religious experience.

Spectral Strangers: Charlotte Brontë’s teachers

Abstract In this article I attempt to engage with Charlotte Brontë as both a teacher and a philosopher. In her depiction of two impoverished gentlewomen as teachers Brontë is, as is often pointed out, drawing on her own history, but she is also exploring two conflicting contemporary philosophic notions: the romantic ideal and the ideal of rationality, as they are played out in the lives of women. Brontë uses the plot device of taking her teachers into new environments, from where as strangers they can report to the reader on the conditions they experience. But the teachers are also strangers in the teaching environments of their employment and, moreover, as individuals are stripped of all familial and social support. While her pedagogic strategies may not be appealing to twentieth century tastes, Brontë and her creations still have something to say about the issues, choices and constraints faced by young and inexperienced teachers, and the available subject-positions teachers may construct for themselves as they grapple with their own foreignness in their classrooms or other teaching situations.

Collective writing: An inquiry into praxis

This is the second text in the series collectively written by members of the Editors’ Collective, which comprises a series of individual and collaborative reflections upon the experience of contributing to the previous and first text written by the Editors’ Collective: ‘Towards a Philosophy of Academic Publishing.’ In the article, contributors reflect upon their experience of collective writing and summarize the main themes and challenges. They show that the act of collective writing disturbs the existing systems of academic knowledge creation, and link these disturbances to the age of the digital reason. They conclude that the collaborative and collective action is a thing of learning-by- doing, and that collective writing seems to offer a possible way forward from the co-opting of academic activities by economics. Through detaching knowledge creation from economy, collaborative and collective writing address the problem of forming new collective intelligences.

Reflections on Jonathan Boston’s paper

Jonathan Boston gives us an important overview of the statistics and regulations behind child poverty. This is an important basis on which to construct any further argument concerning child poverty. The figures both reveal and conceal a level of distress which can only be illustrated by finer-grained research drawing on more qualitative methodologies (see for instance Zhang and Devine, 2013). There can be no argument, now, I think, that child poverty exists in this country, and that it has reached unacceptable levels, especially since the Treasury has now discovered a ‘mistake’ in its calculations which, when corrected, puts child and (to a lesser extent) elder poverty at even greater levels (Collins, 2014). However, how it is understood, and consequently how we should approach/resist/relieve/reject it is a matter for argument. I want to respond to Boston’s position from two angles: one is to rehearse the point that these statistics are an inevitable result of the programme of economic rationalism which we have enjoyed or endured since 1984, in its various forms, the two most significant of which are public choice theory (Devine, 2004) and human capital theory (Stuart, 2011), both of which, I argue, have a significant (and to an extent contradictory) part to play in the production and conceptualisation of child poverty. The second angle is a discussion as to why we should focus on child poverty, in the face of the poverty and distress experienced by the families and whanau of which the children are part. The two viewpoints are inextricably linked, and I will not attempt to separate them here. Let me start with my concerns about the concept ‘child poverty’. I appreciate that this is a tactical move: that even the most hard-hearted of neo-liberals, wedded to a notion of absolute individual autonomy, will have difficulty ascribing responsibility for child poverty to the children themselves. There is a logical problem for economic rationalists embedded in this difficulty, as to whether a child is a person, by their definitions (rational, self-interested, consistent in their preferences) since children are often less than rational (by adult judgments), often but not always self interested, and far from consistent. Hayek disposes of this problem in relation to the insane by blithely announcing that the insane man ‘is not a man to us’ (O’Neill, 1973, p. 67), essentially because ‘... all mind must run in terms of certain universal categories of thought’ (O’Neill, 1973, p. 66). It is possibly in this denial of personhood that the charm of child poverty lies: here is an animal which is undeniably human, but to which the rigours of public choice theory

Ten theses on the the shift from (static) text to (moving) image

To cite this article: Michael A. Peters, E. Jayne White, Elizabeth Grierson, Georgina Stewart, Georgina Stewart, Nesta Devine, Janita Craw, Andrew Gibbons, Petar Jandrić, Michael A. Peters, Rene Novak, E. Jayne White, Richard Heraud & K. Locke (2018) Ten theses on the the shift from (static) text to (moving) image, Open Review of Educational Research, 5:1, 56-94, DOI: 10.1080/23265507.2018.1470768 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/23265507.2018.1470768

Is peer review in academic publishing still working

ABSTRACT Peer review is central to academic publishing. Yet for many it is a mysterious and contentious practice, which can cause distress for both reviewers, and those whose work is reviewed. This paper, produced by the Editors’ Collective, examines the past and future of peer review in academic publishing. The first sections consider how peer review has been defined and practised in changing academic contexts, and its educational significance in the development of scholarship. The paper then explores major historical and contemporary issues around identity, diversity, anonymity, and the review process, and the related power of editors versus reviewers in academic publishing. Finally, the paper discusses the case of new scholars as reviewers engaging in neoliberal labour, before concluding with some brief recommendations based on our analysis.

Beyond Truth and Non-truth

The insistence on the validity of ‘alternative facts’ can be seen as simply lying, and lying in the support of a particular form of interest—or it can be seen as a more significant reflection on the status of truth in a world that is neither entirely modern, nor entirely post-modern: a world in which education, science, economics and religion have all failed to deliver on their promised truths.

Women, philosophy, and education

Feminism is not exclusive: anyone can be a feminist. Anyone, apparently can be a woman, but not all women are feminists. Men can be feminists. The object of feminism is the welfare of women and girls. The object of ‘women in philosophy’ is women who are interested in philosophy. They are not the same thing (Thayer-Bacon, Stone, & Sprecher, 2013). This special issue is a result of the activities of a group of women PESA members in Aotearoa New Zealand, beginning with a two-day meeting held at Raglan in mid-2015, followed by a symposium at the PESA 2015 annual conference in Melbourne that December. Within PESA, women have been significant in inviting and encouraging more women to join and to take up leadership roles. What does the philosophy of women offer PESA and the wider university project today? (Furlong, 2013; Roberts, 2015). New social times present pressing new issues for women to tackle, while the old problems of patriarchy remain largely intact. Today, women are well represented within the membership and leadership of PESA, but the need for feminist thought in philosophy and in education is as urgent as ever. In Aotearoa New Zealand, the situation with regard to women in philosophy of education over the last three decades has been much more positive compared with the experiences of women in philosophy more generally (Thayer-Bacon, 2013). Marshall (1987), a seminal scholar in local philosophy of education, was also significant in opening up philosophy of education to people who would not traditionally have been welcome in philosophy. Women never felt disadvantaged in his company, and his intellectual legacy thrives today amidst the large circle of productive academics who were touched by his influence. This example shows how individuals in pivotal positions can make an enormous difference to the experiences, confidence and futures of women philosophers. Women and men who have that power need to exercise it with a view to the future. A woman in philosophy could be anti-feminist, anti-men or anti-women; or not interested in the gender binaries and complexities at all (Martin, 1981). Clearly the processes of socialisation are different for men and women: as Simone de Beauvoir says, ‘one learns to be a woman’ (de Beauvoir, 1993). An ethical difference from the world of men is not guaranteed, as shown, for example, by the debate over whether or not Margaret Thatcher was a role model for feminism (Lott, 2002). Women philosophers are nonetheless recognised as ‘different’: for example, UNESCO (2018) sponsors a network of specifically women philosophers. The messiness, the physicality of women’s lives—bleeding, pain, pregnancy, childbirth, feeding—all experiences generally known only to women—are seldom theorised by anyone, but when they are, it is usually by women (Lewis & Mills, 2003; Spivak, 1990). We might also be thinking about other physical phenomena relevant to women in education: the longer lives of women, lesser incomes, employment issues and so on, as part of a wider brief. No brief could be wider than the brute fact of physical danger at the hands of men, a universal fact of life with which women must contend. Dickson (1996) explored the very different ways in which men and women perceive their personal safety, noting how women learn early on that we must be constantly aware of being physically vulnerable, simply because of our gender. The media constantly reminds us of the danger, in our homes and in the streets, even just taking the rubbish bag to the kerb.

The perils of the archive, or: Songs my father sang me

Abstract Working at the commencement from Derrida’s ‘Archive Fever’ (Mal d’archive – une impression freudienne) this article explores Derrida’s definition of the archive – topographical, nomological, archontic – and alongside this official archive counters with an alternative archive, non-topographical, non-nomological, non-archontic forms of archive. The story of the accusations launched at Gerry Adams introduces some questions regarding the authenticity and authorisations of archives. This story evokes the competing archives of childhood and the possibility of critique arising from recognition of the tensions between competing archives. The article addresses the complications of archives, counter-archives, archaeology and genealogy as records and research materials. The writer uses Cixous’s notion of ‘ecriture feminine’ as a way of escaping the linearities of archivalism.

Self-cultivation and the legitimation of power: Governing China through education

Abstract A revival of Confucianism in post-Mao China helped the government legitimate its power in the face of a new socio-political and economic situation. This paper specifically explores the role of Confucian self-cultivation in China’s governance. Drawing on Beetham’s theory of legitimation of power and Weber’s tri-typology of authority, we argue that self-cultivation, appealing to ingrained cultural values and traditions, fulfils the criteria of legitimation of power through two principles, namely, differentiation and community interest. In the context of suzhi education (education for quality) and China’s national university entrance exam (gaokao), we interrogate tensions and paradoxes between the need for a presentation of modern and liberal authority and the CCP’s one-party rule. The paper illustrates the complexity of China’s authoritarianism and the intricacies and intrinsic relevance of self-cultivation in current practice.