Lecturer in Education Studies | Liverpool Hope University, UK Visiting Research Fellow | Laboratory for Education and Society | KU Leuven, Belgium Managing Editor | PES Yearbook Reviews Editor | Journal of Philosophy of Education Supervisors: Professor Paul Standish
The whole book is available at: https://punctumbooks.com/titles/manifesto-for-a-post-critical-ped... more The whole book is available at: https://punctumbooks.com/titles/manifesto-for-a-post-critical-pedagogy/ The Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy was written in September 2016 and first presented at Liverpool Hope University on 17th October 2016. At that launch event, we heard a keynote response from Tyson Lewis and further invited responses from Geert Thyssen and Olga Ververi. From the outset, having made the Manifesto available online in open access, we were encouraged by the enthusiastic response and the genuine interest shown by colleagues internationally. We therefore chose to invite further responses, to broaden the conversation, but did so specifically from early- to mid-career scholars. Hence, we also include here responses from Oren Ergas, Norm Friesen, and Stefan Ramaekers. We provide no commentary here on the Manifesto itself, or the responses that follow it in this book, other than to say that, as a manifesto it is intended to be short and to contain no references. The responses are more academic in style but still adopt a more conversational tone than a regular text, and they vary in length. The conversation form is taken up more fully in the final chapter in which we seek to address some of the questions they raise in ways that, we hope, provide further provocation and keep the conversation open.
I take up Mark Olssen's assertion that the radicalness of Foucault's thought is not grasped in ed... more I take up Mark Olssen's assertion that the radicalness of Foucault's thought is not grasped in educational research and question whether Foucault's adoption in to the field has effected the shift away from previous paradigms, and in particular Marxist theory, as claimed. The use of Foucault is often restricted to analyses concerned with power, and his own understanding is often misread, and thus the state-individual binary remains in place. Furthermore, it can be said that the failure to grasp the implications of Foucault's displacing of the state and the subject means that educational research fails to account for the conditions in which education, and the subject of education, are constituted today. A brief outline of Foucault's understanding of critique then indicates the more radical questioning his thought invites.
The article focuses on the way in which voice operates within the current discourse of democracy,... more The article focuses on the way in which voice operates within the current discourse of democracy, citizenship, and learning. Based on an analysis of «learning devices» and «citizenship devices» we will show that the individual is asked to articulate him or herself in particular ways as evidence of engagement, of inclusion, and of participatory democracy. It is someone’s «personhood» –issues related to identity, preferences, feelings of ownership– that comes to count as evidence of civic engagement and political involvement. This process of personalization –the inscription of the individual as a person that turns him or her into a European citizen– will be described as an important aspect of the current mode of governmental subjectivation. To address this we explore, in line with Jacques Rancière, the notion of «political subjectivation». While governmental subjectivation involves a process of identification with the order of society, political subjectivation is a paradoxical process...
A finales de 2016 se presentó en la Liverpool Hope University el conocido Manifesto for Post-Crit... more A finales de 2016 se presentó en la Liverpool Hope University el conocido Manifesto for Post-Critical Pedagogy elaborado por los profesores Naomi Hodgson, Joris Vlieghe y Piotr Zamojski. Posteriormente se publicó en 2017 con respuestas de Tyson Lewis, Geert Thyssen, Olga Ververi, Oren Ergas, Norm Friesen y Stefan Ramaekers, a las que se añadieron otras tantas contestaciones de los autores. Los cinco principios propuestos en el Manifiesto son: 1) Hay principios que defender. 2) De la pedagogía hermenéutica a una hermenéutica pedagógica. 3) De una pedagogía crítica a una pedagogía post-crítica. 4) Del optimismo cruel a la esperanza en el presente. 5) Desde una educación para la ciudadanía a un amor por el mundo. La revista Teoría de la Educación. Revista Interuniversitaria, en su voluntad de ofrecer a la comunidad académica una visión plural de las nuevas tendencias en los análisis teóricos de la educación, propone en este número monográfico la traducción al español del Manifiesto, un...
<b>8th Nov 4pm Dr Naomi Hodgson: Culture and Upbringing Studies, towards a philosophical-pe... more <b>8th Nov 4pm Dr Naomi Hodgson: Culture and Upbringing Studies, towards a philosophical-pedagogical account of raising children</b><br>
Fostering community cohesion is a seemingly perennial concern. The sense of urgency around the ne... more Fostering community cohesion is a seemingly perennial concern. The sense of urgency around the need for community has been recast as Western democracies have moved further away from a welfare state model of government and the implicit sense of solidarity this entails. This chapter traces how the language of community in contemporary forms of governance has been repositioned and the form of individuality this requires. It then considers what governmental notions of community leave out of sight, drawing on notions of community in the work of Robert Esposito and Stanley Cavell that acknowledge partiality and indebtedness as existential elements of our living together. Following Latour’s conception of political community, it moves towards a sense of community as always in the making, constituted in our gathering around what we care about.
Philosophical Presentations of Raising Children, 2019
The second film analysis, of Dogtooth, draws out how the depiction of childrearing in the film is... more The second film analysis, of Dogtooth, draws out how the depiction of childrearing in the film is allegorical of how we protect children from, and initiate children in to, the world. To further develop the affirmative account of upbringing, we focus on the very particular vision of language presented in the film, particularly, the specific teaching and learning of words and the world it constitutes that we see. We articulate this in relation to Stanley Cavell’s account of initiation as an expression of what we do when we ‘teach’ children about the world. We argue that the use of language in the film exposes something of our relationship to language and to our children that goes unnoticed in today’s predominant recasting of this relationship in terms of ‘parenting.’ The film asserts, albeit in a paradoxical way, the implications of the inevitability of the representativeness of the parent as a pedagogical figure.
The paper analyses the recent policy relating to open access publication as a requirement of fun... more The paper analyses the recent policy relating to open access publication as a requirement of funding councils and future research excellence assessments. This is considered in the context of the way in which the university and the researcher have been reconigured by and for the knowledge economy. Open access is explored in relation to both the opening up of the university and its constituent functions and the way in which new technologies and social media are constitutive of the researcher to explore how practices of visibility and transparency operate in modes of governing and self-governing. The principle of making research accessible to the public through open access publication opens the question of how the public is understood in this relationship. Drawing on the work of Bruno Latour a distinction is drawn between publication as making visible and publication as making public.
The notion of the entrepreneurial self describes how changes that have taken place at the level o... more The notion of the entrepreneurial self describes how changes that have taken place at the level of government – towards open competition, public participation, performance management based on outputs and feedback, for example – require us to understand and conduct ourselves in particular ways. In recent years it has come to feature in the way we understand the purposes of education, and ourselves in relation to it, in particular ways, and thus has become a focus of educational philosophy and theory. The term entrepreneurial in the entrepreneurial self comes not, or not only, from critical educational and social theorists, however; it is the language of policy itself. We are explicitly addressed as needing to be entrepreneurial. The focus here is on the entrepreneurial self as a particular form of subjectivation operative today. That is, the notion of the entrepreneurial self refers to particular discourses and practices according to which we are governed and govern ourselves. This s...
In recent years, educational philosophy has sought new modes of inquiry with which to respond to ... more In recent years, educational philosophy has sought new modes of inquiry with which to respond to our current conditions. In light of the diagnosis of our being immunized from the world and its problems, these experimental and empirical practices often take their cue from Arendt’s call to find a way to move in the gap between past and future. These experimental practices have used film-making and film-viewing, in particular, as means to attend to the present and to counter our immunization from it.1 The work of this article connects to this recent trend in educational philosophy. The inquiry this article is based on arises out of our viewing of the film The Seventh Continent,2 and the conditions of this viewing. We share with these other engagements with film a concern with the possibility of (personal) transformation and (societal) change and take seriously the idea of an “education of grown-ups”3 as expressed by Stanley Cavell, in which change is conceived as transformation of the ...
International Handbook of Philosophy of Education, 2018
The notion of the entrepreneurial self describes how changes that have taken place at the level o... more The notion of the entrepreneurial self describes how changes that have taken place at the level of government – towards open competition, public participation, performance management based on outputs and feedback, for example – require us to understand and conduct ourselves in particular ways. In recent years it has come to feature in the way we understand the purposes of education, and ourselves in relation to it, in particular ways, and thus has become a focus of educational philosophy and theory. The term entrepreneurial in the entrepreneurial self comes not, or not only, from critical educational and social theorists, however; it is the language of policy itself. We are explicitly addressed as needing to be entrepreneurial. The focus here is on the entrepreneurial self as a particular form of subjectivation operative today. That is, the notion of the entrepreneurial self refers to particular discourses and practices according to which we are governed and govern ourselves. This self-understanding is constituted not only in and through formal educational institutions but also through many facets of our daily lives. A shift in recent decades from the hierarchical government of the nation-state to the entrepreneurial governance of late neoliberalism not only constitutes but also requires the entrepreneurial self. This will be outlined with reference to three figures of the entrepreneurial self: the parent; the citizen; and the researcher.
On Education. Journal for Research and Debate, 2020
The recent Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy introduced a specifically pedagogical register ... more The recent Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy introduced a specifically pedagogical register into theoretical and methodological consideration of post-critique. Focusing on a specific aspect of the Manifesto – the view that the political concerns of much critical educational research position education as instrumental to politics to the extent that the “educational” in educational research is left out of the picture – I ask to what extent we can defend the view that education and politics should be separate in our enquiries? Drawing on a particular account of the separation of education and politics I suggest that what is at issue is not the political as such but the particular, sociological, register of politics at work in critical educational research. To bracket out the political is potentially to leave everyday flesh and blood experiences of education out of the picture.
Teoría de la Educación. Revista Interuniversitaria, 2020
A finales de 2016 se presentó en la Liverpool Hope University el conocido Manifesto for Post-Crit... more A finales de 2016 se presentó en la Liverpool Hope University el conocido Manifesto for Post-Critical Pedagogy elaborado por los profesores Naomi Hodgson, Joris Vlieghe y Piotr Zamojski. Posteriormente se publicó en 2017 con respuestas de Tyson Lewis, Geert Thyssen, Olga Ververi, Oren Ergas, Norm Friesen y Stefan Ramaekers, a las que se añadieron otras tantas contestaciones de los autores. Los cinco principios propuestos en el Manifiesto son: 1) Hay principios que defender. 2) De la pedagogía hermenéutica a una hermenéutica pedagógica. 3) De una pedagogía crítica a una pedagogía post-crítica. 4) Del optimismo cruel a la esperanza en el presente. 5) Desde una educación para la ciudadanía a un amor por el mundo. La revista Teoría de la Educación. Revista Interuniversitaria, en su voluntad de ofrecer a la comunidad académica una visión plural de las nuevas tendencias en los análisis teóricos de la educación, propone en este número monográfico la traducción al español del Manifiesto, un...
James Scott Johnston's book title might suggest a focus on substantive educational or conceptual ... more James Scott Johnston's book title might suggest a focus on substantive educational or conceptual problems in philosophy of educationcitizenship education, environmental education, digitisation, perhaps. Instead, Johnston's focus could be more accurately expressed as problems with philosophy of education as a field. These problems are long-created and endemic. Not the gender or racial imbalance, the scarcity of jobs, its disappearance from teacher education programmes, or the fact that most of it sits behind paywalls. Rather, the very conception and practice of philosophy of education itself: the questions we pursue are largely illegitimate. Our questions, and our approaches to answering them, are too often derived from other disciplines, Johnston argues:
Sharing with critical pedagogy the belief that there is no necessity in the given order of things... more Sharing with critical pedagogy the belief that there is no necessity in the given order of things, and that we can always begin anew with the world, the post-critical educational philosophy articulated here seeks to overcome the internal contradictions of this paradigm by positing an affirmative, educational approach to educational philosophy. This understands education not as political action, as in critical pedagogy, working in the name of emancipation, but rather, following Rancière, assumes an equality of intelligences as a starting point from which the world can be set free for the new generation. This entails a pedagogy founded on an attitude of unconditional love both of the world and of the new generation, in the Arendtian sense. In this article we formulate a set of principles that articulate what such an affirmative attitude consists of: striving for pedagogical hermeneutics (rather than defending a hermeneutical pedagogy); adhering to a principled normativity (rather than to a procedural one); taking education to be for education's sake (rather than for extrinsic goals such as global citizenship); and starting from a passionate devotion to what is good in the 'here and now' (rather than by a hatred of the world in expectation of a utopia that is never to come).
The whole book is available at: https://punctumbooks.com/titles/manifesto-for-a-post-critical-ped... more The whole book is available at: https://punctumbooks.com/titles/manifesto-for-a-post-critical-pedagogy/ The Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy was written in September 2016 and first presented at Liverpool Hope University on 17th October 2016. At that launch event, we heard a keynote response from Tyson Lewis and further invited responses from Geert Thyssen and Olga Ververi. From the outset, having made the Manifesto available online in open access, we were encouraged by the enthusiastic response and the genuine interest shown by colleagues internationally. We therefore chose to invite further responses, to broaden the conversation, but did so specifically from early- to mid-career scholars. Hence, we also include here responses from Oren Ergas, Norm Friesen, and Stefan Ramaekers. We provide no commentary here on the Manifesto itself, or the responses that follow it in this book, other than to say that, as a manifesto it is intended to be short and to contain no references. The responses are more academic in style but still adopt a more conversational tone than a regular text, and they vary in length. The conversation form is taken up more fully in the final chapter in which we seek to address some of the questions they raise in ways that, we hope, provide further provocation and keep the conversation open.
I take up Mark Olssen's assertion that the radicalness of Foucault's thought is not grasped in ed... more I take up Mark Olssen's assertion that the radicalness of Foucault's thought is not grasped in educational research and question whether Foucault's adoption in to the field has effected the shift away from previous paradigms, and in particular Marxist theory, as claimed. The use of Foucault is often restricted to analyses concerned with power, and his own understanding is often misread, and thus the state-individual binary remains in place. Furthermore, it can be said that the failure to grasp the implications of Foucault's displacing of the state and the subject means that educational research fails to account for the conditions in which education, and the subject of education, are constituted today. A brief outline of Foucault's understanding of critique then indicates the more radical questioning his thought invites.
The article focuses on the way in which voice operates within the current discourse of democracy,... more The article focuses on the way in which voice operates within the current discourse of democracy, citizenship, and learning. Based on an analysis of «learning devices» and «citizenship devices» we will show that the individual is asked to articulate him or herself in particular ways as evidence of engagement, of inclusion, and of participatory democracy. It is someone’s «personhood» –issues related to identity, preferences, feelings of ownership– that comes to count as evidence of civic engagement and political involvement. This process of personalization –the inscription of the individual as a person that turns him or her into a European citizen– will be described as an important aspect of the current mode of governmental subjectivation. To address this we explore, in line with Jacques Rancière, the notion of «political subjectivation». While governmental subjectivation involves a process of identification with the order of society, political subjectivation is a paradoxical process...
A finales de 2016 se presentó en la Liverpool Hope University el conocido Manifesto for Post-Crit... more A finales de 2016 se presentó en la Liverpool Hope University el conocido Manifesto for Post-Critical Pedagogy elaborado por los profesores Naomi Hodgson, Joris Vlieghe y Piotr Zamojski. Posteriormente se publicó en 2017 con respuestas de Tyson Lewis, Geert Thyssen, Olga Ververi, Oren Ergas, Norm Friesen y Stefan Ramaekers, a las que se añadieron otras tantas contestaciones de los autores. Los cinco principios propuestos en el Manifiesto son: 1) Hay principios que defender. 2) De la pedagogía hermenéutica a una hermenéutica pedagógica. 3) De una pedagogía crítica a una pedagogía post-crítica. 4) Del optimismo cruel a la esperanza en el presente. 5) Desde una educación para la ciudadanía a un amor por el mundo. La revista Teoría de la Educación. Revista Interuniversitaria, en su voluntad de ofrecer a la comunidad académica una visión plural de las nuevas tendencias en los análisis teóricos de la educación, propone en este número monográfico la traducción al español del Manifiesto, un...
<b>8th Nov 4pm Dr Naomi Hodgson: Culture and Upbringing Studies, towards a philosophical-pe... more <b>8th Nov 4pm Dr Naomi Hodgson: Culture and Upbringing Studies, towards a philosophical-pedagogical account of raising children</b><br>
Fostering community cohesion is a seemingly perennial concern. The sense of urgency around the ne... more Fostering community cohesion is a seemingly perennial concern. The sense of urgency around the need for community has been recast as Western democracies have moved further away from a welfare state model of government and the implicit sense of solidarity this entails. This chapter traces how the language of community in contemporary forms of governance has been repositioned and the form of individuality this requires. It then considers what governmental notions of community leave out of sight, drawing on notions of community in the work of Robert Esposito and Stanley Cavell that acknowledge partiality and indebtedness as existential elements of our living together. Following Latour’s conception of political community, it moves towards a sense of community as always in the making, constituted in our gathering around what we care about.
Philosophical Presentations of Raising Children, 2019
The second film analysis, of Dogtooth, draws out how the depiction of childrearing in the film is... more The second film analysis, of Dogtooth, draws out how the depiction of childrearing in the film is allegorical of how we protect children from, and initiate children in to, the world. To further develop the affirmative account of upbringing, we focus on the very particular vision of language presented in the film, particularly, the specific teaching and learning of words and the world it constitutes that we see. We articulate this in relation to Stanley Cavell’s account of initiation as an expression of what we do when we ‘teach’ children about the world. We argue that the use of language in the film exposes something of our relationship to language and to our children that goes unnoticed in today’s predominant recasting of this relationship in terms of ‘parenting.’ The film asserts, albeit in a paradoxical way, the implications of the inevitability of the representativeness of the parent as a pedagogical figure.
The paper analyses the recent policy relating to open access publication as a requirement of fun... more The paper analyses the recent policy relating to open access publication as a requirement of funding councils and future research excellence assessments. This is considered in the context of the way in which the university and the researcher have been reconigured by and for the knowledge economy. Open access is explored in relation to both the opening up of the university and its constituent functions and the way in which new technologies and social media are constitutive of the researcher to explore how practices of visibility and transparency operate in modes of governing and self-governing. The principle of making research accessible to the public through open access publication opens the question of how the public is understood in this relationship. Drawing on the work of Bruno Latour a distinction is drawn between publication as making visible and publication as making public.
The notion of the entrepreneurial self describes how changes that have taken place at the level o... more The notion of the entrepreneurial self describes how changes that have taken place at the level of government – towards open competition, public participation, performance management based on outputs and feedback, for example – require us to understand and conduct ourselves in particular ways. In recent years it has come to feature in the way we understand the purposes of education, and ourselves in relation to it, in particular ways, and thus has become a focus of educational philosophy and theory. The term entrepreneurial in the entrepreneurial self comes not, or not only, from critical educational and social theorists, however; it is the language of policy itself. We are explicitly addressed as needing to be entrepreneurial. The focus here is on the entrepreneurial self as a particular form of subjectivation operative today. That is, the notion of the entrepreneurial self refers to particular discourses and practices according to which we are governed and govern ourselves. This s...
In recent years, educational philosophy has sought new modes of inquiry with which to respond to ... more In recent years, educational philosophy has sought new modes of inquiry with which to respond to our current conditions. In light of the diagnosis of our being immunized from the world and its problems, these experimental and empirical practices often take their cue from Arendt’s call to find a way to move in the gap between past and future. These experimental practices have used film-making and film-viewing, in particular, as means to attend to the present and to counter our immunization from it.1 The work of this article connects to this recent trend in educational philosophy. The inquiry this article is based on arises out of our viewing of the film The Seventh Continent,2 and the conditions of this viewing. We share with these other engagements with film a concern with the possibility of (personal) transformation and (societal) change and take seriously the idea of an “education of grown-ups”3 as expressed by Stanley Cavell, in which change is conceived as transformation of the ...
International Handbook of Philosophy of Education, 2018
The notion of the entrepreneurial self describes how changes that have taken place at the level o... more The notion of the entrepreneurial self describes how changes that have taken place at the level of government – towards open competition, public participation, performance management based on outputs and feedback, for example – require us to understand and conduct ourselves in particular ways. In recent years it has come to feature in the way we understand the purposes of education, and ourselves in relation to it, in particular ways, and thus has become a focus of educational philosophy and theory. The term entrepreneurial in the entrepreneurial self comes not, or not only, from critical educational and social theorists, however; it is the language of policy itself. We are explicitly addressed as needing to be entrepreneurial. The focus here is on the entrepreneurial self as a particular form of subjectivation operative today. That is, the notion of the entrepreneurial self refers to particular discourses and practices according to which we are governed and govern ourselves. This self-understanding is constituted not only in and through formal educational institutions but also through many facets of our daily lives. A shift in recent decades from the hierarchical government of the nation-state to the entrepreneurial governance of late neoliberalism not only constitutes but also requires the entrepreneurial self. This will be outlined with reference to three figures of the entrepreneurial self: the parent; the citizen; and the researcher.
On Education. Journal for Research and Debate, 2020
The recent Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy introduced a specifically pedagogical register ... more The recent Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy introduced a specifically pedagogical register into theoretical and methodological consideration of post-critique. Focusing on a specific aspect of the Manifesto – the view that the political concerns of much critical educational research position education as instrumental to politics to the extent that the “educational” in educational research is left out of the picture – I ask to what extent we can defend the view that education and politics should be separate in our enquiries? Drawing on a particular account of the separation of education and politics I suggest that what is at issue is not the political as such but the particular, sociological, register of politics at work in critical educational research. To bracket out the political is potentially to leave everyday flesh and blood experiences of education out of the picture.
Teoría de la Educación. Revista Interuniversitaria, 2020
A finales de 2016 se presentó en la Liverpool Hope University el conocido Manifesto for Post-Crit... more A finales de 2016 se presentó en la Liverpool Hope University el conocido Manifesto for Post-Critical Pedagogy elaborado por los profesores Naomi Hodgson, Joris Vlieghe y Piotr Zamojski. Posteriormente se publicó en 2017 con respuestas de Tyson Lewis, Geert Thyssen, Olga Ververi, Oren Ergas, Norm Friesen y Stefan Ramaekers, a las que se añadieron otras tantas contestaciones de los autores. Los cinco principios propuestos en el Manifiesto son: 1) Hay principios que defender. 2) De la pedagogía hermenéutica a una hermenéutica pedagógica. 3) De una pedagogía crítica a una pedagogía post-crítica. 4) Del optimismo cruel a la esperanza en el presente. 5) Desde una educación para la ciudadanía a un amor por el mundo. La revista Teoría de la Educación. Revista Interuniversitaria, en su voluntad de ofrecer a la comunidad académica una visión plural de las nuevas tendencias en los análisis teóricos de la educación, propone en este número monográfico la traducción al español del Manifiesto, un...
James Scott Johnston's book title might suggest a focus on substantive educational or conceptual ... more James Scott Johnston's book title might suggest a focus on substantive educational or conceptual problems in philosophy of educationcitizenship education, environmental education, digitisation, perhaps. Instead, Johnston's focus could be more accurately expressed as problems with philosophy of education as a field. These problems are long-created and endemic. Not the gender or racial imbalance, the scarcity of jobs, its disappearance from teacher education programmes, or the fact that most of it sits behind paywalls. Rather, the very conception and practice of philosophy of education itself: the questions we pursue are largely illegitimate. Our questions, and our approaches to answering them, are too often derived from other disciplines, Johnston argues:
Sharing with critical pedagogy the belief that there is no necessity in the given order of things... more Sharing with critical pedagogy the belief that there is no necessity in the given order of things, and that we can always begin anew with the world, the post-critical educational philosophy articulated here seeks to overcome the internal contradictions of this paradigm by positing an affirmative, educational approach to educational philosophy. This understands education not as political action, as in critical pedagogy, working in the name of emancipation, but rather, following Rancière, assumes an equality of intelligences as a starting point from which the world can be set free for the new generation. This entails a pedagogy founded on an attitude of unconditional love both of the world and of the new generation, in the Arendtian sense. In this article we formulate a set of principles that articulate what such an affirmative attitude consists of: striving for pedagogical hermeneutics (rather than defending a hermeneutical pedagogy); adhering to a principled normativity (rather than to a procedural one); taking education to be for education's sake (rather than for extrinsic goals such as global citizenship); and starting from a passionate devotion to what is good in the 'here and now' (rather than by a hatred of the world in expectation of a utopia that is never to come).
Philosophy as translation, philosophy as mutual education The15 th Biennial Meeting of the Intern... more Philosophy as translation, philosophy as mutual education The15 th Biennial Meeting of the International Network of Philosophers of Education was held from August 17-20, 2016, at the University of Warsaw. The conference theme was "Philosophy as Translation and the Understanding of Other Cultures," and we take this as the title for this Special Issue of Ethics and Education. This conference embraced a variety of different subthemes: border crossing, immigrancy and home; global economies and global justice; translation, untranslatability and the (mis)understanding of other cultures; the internationalization of higher education; policy borrowing and transfer; cosmopolitanism, patriotism, and global citizenship; crossing philosophical divides; and changing identities, personal and cultural. The Programme
The changing governance of higher education in the European Union policy context has raised conce... more The changing governance of higher education in the European Union policy context has raised concerns over the erosion of the public role of the university. Seen in the need for universities today to compete in the marketplace with other providers of research and development, and the positioning of students as consumers, for example. Concurrently, practices of governance have been concerned to ensure transparency and openness, in the name of democracy, to ensure that the public of responsible choosers can make informed decisions and see that public funds for research provide a worthwhile investment. Recent policy changes such as the requirement for the researcher to publish in open access (particularly if in receipt of public funds, as seen in EU and many member-state policies) 1 are part of this restatement of the university's duty of public accountability. Both policymakers and advocates of open access publishing argue that it is right that the outputs, and often the 1 European Commission, 'COMMISSION RECOMMENDATION of 17.7
The notions of literacy and citizenship have become technologised through the demands for measura... more The notions of literacy and citizenship have become technologised through the demands for measurable learning outcomes and the reduction of these aspects of education to sets of skills and competences. Technologisation is understood here as the systematisation of an art, rather than as intending to understand technology itself in negative terms or to comment on the way technology is used in teaching and learning for literacy and citizenship. Technologisation is approached here in terms of the understanding of literacy and citizenship as things (qualities, sets of skills) that one has. Being literate and being a citizen are brought together here in order to consider the implications of their technologisation for academic writing in the university. Drawing on the phenomenology of Gabriel Marcel the understanding of literacy and citizenship in terms of having is problematized, as is the distinction between having and being. This opens the way for a richer understanding of being literate and being a citizen explored through the figures of the Hermit and the Poet in Thoreau's Walden. The question of what we write in the name of in the university is considered in the light of this and of a particular notion of the public.
This article considers how parents are asked to understand themselves, in the context of the turn... more This article considers how parents are asked to understand themselves, in the context of the turn to parenting, and the increasing expectation that parents will access various sources of expertise on how to optimally raise their children. Part of, and to some degree constitutive of, recent shifts in how we are governed and govern ourselves is digitisation and the ubiquity of digital devices in our everyday lives. By focusing on this aspect in particular in how parents are addressed in terms of their learning needs draws attention to the role of personalisation in what information and expertise we access and how we access and use it. The example of the organisation BabyBrains is used to illustrate the ways in which parents are asked to take responsibility for their brain function as a requisite for good parenting. The related app provides a personalised 'bridge' between baby and neuroscience lab that, it is argued, renders redundant the personhood of the parent.
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Books by Naomi Hodgson
The Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy was written in September 2016 and first presented at Liverpool Hope University on 17th October 2016. At that launch event, we heard a keynote response from Tyson Lewis and further invited responses from Geert Thyssen and Olga Ververi. From the outset, having made the Manifesto available online in open access, we were encouraged by the enthusiastic response and the genuine interest shown by colleagues internationally. We therefore chose to invite further responses, to broaden the conversation, but did so specifically from early- to mid-career scholars. Hence, we also include here responses from Oren Ergas, Norm Friesen, and Stefan Ramaekers.
We provide no commentary here on the Manifesto itself, or the responses that follow it in this book, other than to say that, as a manifesto it is intended to be short and to contain no references. The responses are more academic in style but still adopt a more conversational tone than a regular text, and they vary in length. The conversation form is taken up more fully in the final chapter in which we seek to address some of the questions they raise in ways that, we hope, provide further provocation and keep the conversation open.
Papers by Naomi Hodgson
The Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy was written in September 2016 and first presented at Liverpool Hope University on 17th October 2016. At that launch event, we heard a keynote response from Tyson Lewis and further invited responses from Geert Thyssen and Olga Ververi. From the outset, having made the Manifesto available online in open access, we were encouraged by the enthusiastic response and the genuine interest shown by colleagues internationally. We therefore chose to invite further responses, to broaden the conversation, but did so specifically from early- to mid-career scholars. Hence, we also include here responses from Oren Ergas, Norm Friesen, and Stefan Ramaekers.
We provide no commentary here on the Manifesto itself, or the responses that follow it in this book, other than to say that, as a manifesto it is intended to be short and to contain no references. The responses are more academic in style but still adopt a more conversational tone than a regular text, and they vary in length. The conversation form is taken up more fully in the final chapter in which we seek to address some of the questions they raise in ways that, we hope, provide further provocation and keep the conversation open.