Sarah Hayes

Who is Really in Charge of Contemporary Education? People and technologies in, against and beyond the neoliberal university

Abstract This article reflects on the position of people in, against and beyond information and communication technologies. Firstly, using Jandrić and Kuzmanić’s work on digital postcolonialism, Raymond Williamss work on residual and emergent cultures, and Deleuze and Guattaris insights into the dynamics between territorialization, de-territorialization and re-territorialization, it develops a theoretical framework for inquiry into the hybrid identity of the contemporary university. Then, through critical discourse analysis (CDA), the article moves on to analyse the ways in which technology discourse resides in the dominating ideology of technological determinism and co-opts with neoliberal agendas by omitting humans from explicit mention in UK policy documents. It shows that true counter-hegemonic practice against dominating social practices is possible only through reinvigorating the central position of human beings in regards to information and communication technologies. Within the developed theoretical framework, it seeks openings to intervene subversively into current relationships between technologies, people, and (higher) education, and to identify opportunities for building a non-determinist identity of the contemporary university that reaches beyond the single-minded logic of techno-scientific development. In the process, it situates Paulo Freires insights into critical pedagogy in the context of the network society, and places the relationships between human beings, language and information and communication technologies amongst central questions of todays (higher) education and society at large.

Postdigital science and education

We are increasingly no longer in a world where digital technology and media is separate, virtual, ‘other’ to a ‘natural’ human and social life. This has inspired the emergence of a new concept—‘the postdigital’— which is slowly but surely gaining traction in a wide range of disciplines including but not limited to the arts (Bishop, Gansing, Parikka, & Wilk, 2017 ; Monoskop, 2018), music (Cascone, 2000), architecture (Spiller, 2009), humanities (Hall, 2013 ; Tabbi, in press), (social) sciences (Taffel, 2016), and in many inter-, trans-, and post-disciplines between them (Berry & Dieter, 2015). Through this research, the term postdigital is slowly entering academic discourse. The University of Edinburgh’s Center for Research in Digital Education is seriously considering rebranding toward the postdigital (Bayne & Jandric, 2017, p. 204, see also Jandric, 2017, p. 201) ; Coventry University recently established the Center for Postdigital Cultures (Coventry University, 2018) ; authors of this editorial are editors for the forthcoming journal Postdigital Science and Education

Counting on Use of Technology to Enhance Learning

In global policy documents, the language of Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) now firmly structures a perception of educational technology which ‘subsumes’ terms like Networked Learning and e-Learning. Embedded in these three words though is a deterministic, economic assumption that technology has now enhanced learning, and will continue to do so. In a market-driven, capitalist society this is a ‘trouble free’, economically focused discourse which suggests there is no need for further debate about what the use of technology achieves in learning. Yet this raises a problem too: if technology achieves goals for human beings, then in education we are now simply counting on ‘use of technology’ to enhance learning. This closes the door on a necessary and ongoing critical pedagogical conversation that reminds us it is people that design learning, not technology. Furthermore, such discourse provides a vehicle for those with either strong hierarchical, or neoliberal agendas to make simplified claims politically, in the name of technology. This chapter is a reflection on our use of language in the educational technology community through a corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). In analytical examples that are ‘loaded’ with economic expectation, we can notice how the policy discourse of TEL narrows conversational space for learning so that people may struggle to recognise their own subjective being in this language. Through the lens of Lieras’s externality, desubjectivisation and closure (Lieras, 1996) we might examine possible effects of this discourse and seek a more emancipatory approach. A return to discussing Networked Learning is suggested, as a first step towards a more multi-directional conversation than TEL, that acknowledges the interrelatedness of technology, language and learning in people’s practice. Secondly, a reconsideration of how we write policy for educational technology is recommended, with a critical focus on how people learn, rather than on what technology is assumed to enhance.

The curious promise of educationalising technological unemployment: What can places of learning really do about the future of work?

Abstract University education is full of promise. Indeed universities have the capacity to create and shape, through staff and students, all kinds of enthralling ‘worlds’ and ‘new possibilities of life’. Yet students are encouraged increasingly to view universities as simply a means to an end, where neoliberal education delivers flexible skills to directly serve a certain type of capitalism. Additionally, the universal challenge of technological unemployment, alongside numerous other social issues, has become educationalised and portrayed in HE policy, as an issue to be solved by universities. The idea that more education can resolve the problem of technological unemployment is a political construction which has largely failed to deliver its promise. In this article, we look at educationalisation in hand with technologisation and we draw on a Critical Discourse Analysis of HE policies, to demonstrate the problems arising from taken for granted visions of neoliberal social development related to education, technology, and employment. To disrupt the tired visions of ‘techno-fixes’ and ‘edu-fixes’ we identify in these texts, we call for a radical re-imagining of HE policy. Instead of attributing responsibility for social change to abstract notions of education, market and technology, a new shared vision is needed where more agency is explicitly attributed to the researchers, teachers, and students who are the genuine human future of work.

The effects of family support and gender on mature student engagement in higher education

While the factors driving the engagement of female mature students in the higher education sector (HE) have been extensively studied, e.g., Carney-Compton and Tan (2013) little work, if any, has been carried out examining the factors that drive engagement of their male counterparts. In light of the recent calls by various government-based think-tanks to expand the mature student population within HE, there is an obvious and urgent need to address this gap in our understanding (Bekhradnia, 2007; Sastry and Bekhradnia, 2007). Here the experiences of mature students at university, and the unique impact gender may have in influencing their initial motivation to enter HE, the responsibilities they bear, and the support they enjoy, are examined. While gender may underpin significantly diverse experiences of men and women at university, such diversity may have implications for the sector and the subsequent redesign of effective pedagogy.

A sphere of resonance for networked learning in the ‘non-places’ of our universities

The logic of ‘time’ in modern capitalist society appears to be a fixed concept. Time dictates human activity with a regularity, which as long ago as 1944, George Woodcock referred to as The Tyranny of the Clock. Seventy years on, Hartmut Rosa suggests humans no longer maintain speed to achieve something new, but simply to preserve the status quo, in a ‘social acceleration’ that is lethal to democracy. Political engagement takes time we no longer have, as we rush between our virtual spaces and ‘non-places’ of higher education. I suggest it is time to confront the conspirators that, in partnership with the clock, accelerate our social engagements with technology in the context of learning. Through Critical Discourse Analysis I reveal an alarming situation if we do not. With reference to Bauman’s Liquid Modernity, I observe a ‘lightness’ in policy texts where humans have been ‘liquified’ Separating people from their own labour with technology in policy maintains the flow of speed a neoliberal economy demands. I suggest a new ‘solidity’ of human presence is required as we write about networked learning. ‘Writing ourselves back in’ requires a commitment to ‘be there’ in policy and provide arguments that decelerate the tyranny of time. I am, though, ever-mindful that social acceleration is also of our own making, and there is every possibility that we actually enjoy it.

Technology and the politics of university reform: the social shaping of online education. By Edward C. Hamilton. Pp 237. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2016. £66.99 (hbk). ISBN: 978-1-137-50350-3

At the centre of this far reaching, thoughtfully constructed and compelling book is a key argument that ‘the variability of the discursive field of online education results in wide differences in t...

Quantitative research methods for linguists: a questions and answers approach for students

Quantitative Research Methods for Linguistics provides an accessible introduction to research methods for undergraduates undertaking research for the first time. Employing a task-based approach, the authors demonstrate key methods through a series of worked examples, allowing students to take a learn-by-doing approach and making quantitative methods less daunting for the novice researcher. Key features include: Chapters framed around real research questions, walking the student step-by-step through the various methods; Guidance on how to design your own research project; Basic questions and answers that every new researcher needs to know; A comprehensive glossary that makes the most technical of terms clear to readers; Coverage of different statistical packages including R and SPSS. Quantitative Research Methods for Linguistics is essential reading for all students undertaking degrees in linguistics and English language studies.