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In this review essay we examine the consequences for education of the insights shared in the book Scarcity by Mullainathan and Shafir (2013). After a brief summary of the book, we describe three possible links between scarcity and 1) the creation of slack at school, 2) the student’s personal environment and 3) and the turning of learning into a production process. Based on these three possible consequences further avenues for research are presented.

This article reports of an ethnographic study conducted in two academic research centers. The article is centrally directed at the role of digital technologies and devices in contemporary academic work, and more particularly at the role of the screen in the daily composition of this work. Three central questions are raised. First, which positional relations do academics need to uphold with the screen in order for the screen to be able to operate? Second, in which forms do these digital devices come into being? Third, which sorts of (in)compatibility between activities are established because of the mutual interplay between academics and screens? By adopting a relational, sociomaterial approach, the study gives an account of the established choreographies that are enacted likewise, provides an overview of the role and operations of the screen in contemporary academic work, and analyzes which sorts of time and space are generated likewise.

Over the last two decades, a sense of awareness has arisen that universities are facing important challenges. This article focusses on the challenge that could be broadly termed as ‘the digitization of academic work’, yet without assuming that this digitization would be an explanatory factor clarifying the precise nature of contemporary academic work. On the contrary, and adopting a relational actor-network theory (ANT) approach, this contribution stresses the concrete composition of academic work without making any general presumptions regarding how the university is looking like nowadays. Furthermore, by introducing a specific interview technique as methodological approach and different visualizations as (qualitative) analytical approach, this article offers a threefold exploratory textual and visual analysis of academic practice in the making. First, the constitution of an academic practice is discussed, showing the prevalence of multifarious human and non-human actors, and how each of these actors is embedded in a network of interactions with other actors. Second, we show how academic practice is distributed into different regions of interacting actors. Third, the association of these different regions is analyzed with special attention for boundary actors (between different regions) and digital actors. The article concludes, firstly, that it makes not much sense anymore to talk about academic practice in terms of humans or non-humans, material or digital, etc. Instead, perhaps it makes more sense to speak of actors in academic practice as being humandigital. Secondly, the article concludes that sociomaterial approaches might constitute a fruitful addition to more traditional research about the university that is inclined to focus on epochal changes that are suggested or expected to alter the position of academics and the university. ispartof: European Educational Research Journal vol:13 issue:1 pages:89-106 status: published

This article takes a particular interest in the doings of educational standards. Accordingly, it does not discuss the contents, objectives or various states of implementation of educational standards. Rather, it follows a strange and peculiar thing and traces how it gets to work in localised practices. Building on Bruno Latour's exercises of socio-technical analysis, various modes to register and describe these practices are being put to the test. In so doing, the aim is to gather pieces of evidence on how standardising takes shape and what sorts of workings it generates. Undertaking such socio-technical exercises, this research argues, offers an entry point to readdress the ubiquity of educational standards today.

Contemporary research on the European policy space in education has paid much attention to decentralisation, deregulation and new modalities of privatisation and marketisation, but there is less focus on how these processes and policies are actually played out in education. It is argued that understanding the role of commercial actors, new local and global markets and public—private partnerships in the governing of education becomes increasingly important. The aim of the article is to introduce the special issue on commercialisation of the European Educational Research Journal by discussing some general issues: theoretical and methodological considerations when studying privatisation and commercialisation in the governing of education, conceptual clarifications, and finally, possible themes and topics for study, but also for further debate.

The ongoing development of mobile devices like cell phones, iPods, PDAs, and so on is seen by an increasing number of educationalists as a chance to focus on a new kind of learning. This mobile learning, as it is called, should enable students to learn while on the move. Rather than giving a genealogy of the use of mobile equipment in education, this article tries to add understanding to the processes that made possible the emergence of this new research domain. In doing this, the authors use one specific theoretical approach, actor-network theory, which will lead to a profound elaboration of the processes involved in new, emerging research fields. ispartof: E-Learning and Digital Media vol:8 issue:1 pages:8-18 status: published

Background/Context The article reflects on the public role of education on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Hannah Arendt's essay, “The Crisis in Education” and in facing the current transformation of public policy into “new public management.” Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study Based on Arendt's essay, “The Crisis in Education,” the article explores that peculiar setting and architecture between family and world that is called school. The leading concern for this investigation is the school's public meaning. The point of departure is that today, the public role of education is an urgent concern, that is, the school's public role is questioned in view of the current processes of privatization, and what is critically described as the “capitalization of life.” In this contribution, based on a reading of Arendt's essay and relying on the analysis of a specific school design by the architect Wim Cuyvers, two different ways of thinking the public meaning of school education are explored. One way of thinking takes the school as an infrastructure of “intro-duction,” while the other way of thinking regards the school as an infrastructure of “e-duc(a)tion.” Research Design This article is an analytic essay. Conclusions/Recommendations The article shows that it is impossible to think “a new beginning in our world” without thinking the school as public space. Drawing on some thoughts of Agamben and the school architecture of Cuyvers, the article offers an outline for elaborating the Arendtian thinking of the “perfect school.” This school is conceived of as a space where people are exposed to things, and being exposed could be regarded as being drawn outside (or as e-ducation), that is, into public space. Public space is a “free space” or the space of “free time.” This free time is precisely the sense that the Greek “scholé” seemed to indicate—a space where (economic, social, cultural, political, private …) time is suspended and where people have time at their disposal for “a new beginning.” Whereas the museum is the setting that accumulates time, the school could be seen as the setting for suspending time. The school as “public architecture,” then, is not a space/time of “intro-duction” and “in-between,” but a space/time of “suspension” and “e-ducation.”

This article explores how universities can function as spaces where a world citizenship takes shape. First, Kant's distinction between the ‘private use of reason’ and ‘domestic gathering’, on the one hand, and the ‘public use of reason’ and ‘public gathering’, on the other, is elucidated. This distinction is used, secondly, to argue that the actual university organises ‘domestic gatherings’. In the name of excellence, it requires an entrepreneurial ethos of its staff, i.e. an ethos of obedience to a permanent quality tribunal, implying a permanent (self-)mobilisation confining the entrepreneur to a domestic gathering and the private use of reason (‘private citizens’). Based on this understanding, the third section develops a proposal for a world university inhabited by ‘learned individuals' acting as world citizens. It is a habitat in which an experimental and attentive ethos is present and where the public use of reason is ‘finding (a) place’. This public use of reason is not just about making things known, but of making them present. The aim of the final section, then, is to make the proposal more specific, based on an exploration of ‘public lecturing’ as the time and space of public (world) gathering where things are made public.

With the growth of the European Union – both in terms of its size and in terms of its influence and importance – questions have emerged about the relationship between the European Union and the inhabitants of its member states. These questions are increasingly being framed in relation to the idea of citizenship. The issue here is not only whether such a thing as European citizenship can exist. The issue is also what we should understand by European citizenship and, in relation to this, how European citizenship can be promoted and advanced. These questions are first of all considered to be important in relation to the democratic legitimacy of the European Union on the assumption that the legitimacy of democratic governance crucially depends on the extent to which it is supported and ‘owned’ by its citizens. But they are also considered to be important in relation to wider questions about social cohesion and integration and the emergence of something like a sense of a European identity. Whereas many opportunities for civic participation and identification are located at national and sub-national levels, there is at least one area where over the past decade something with a more European identity has been emerging. This is the field of higher education.[1] While compulsory education and, to a slightly lesser extent, vocational education have largely remained tied to national priorities, agendas and policies, the field of higher education is rapidly evolving into a sector which transcends national borders and agendas. Although the economic imperative is central in the policies that drive these developments, particularly in relation to the ambition of the European Community to become ‘the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion’ (Lisbon European Council, 2000), policy makers are clearly aware of the wider potential of universities in relation to questions of social cohesion and European citizenship (see, for example, European Commission, 2003, 2006). This is also what has been emphasised by the European universities themselves, who have stressed that their role encompasses more than just the creation of the next generation of workers for the knowledge economy, but includes a responsibility for cultural, social and civic development at national and European level (see, for example, European University Association, 2003). There are indeed good reasons for focusing on the higher education sector in relation to questions about European citizenship. One reason goes back to the Humboldtian tradition, which has always given the university a special role in the development of the democratic nation-state, a line of thinking which is now extended to the European level. This line of thought traditionally stresses the unique role of ‘academic’ education, that is, the edifying potential of research-based education in institutions for higher education. A second reason for a focus on higher education has

Instead of asking how universities can contribute to active citizenship and democratic participation (and seeking for ways to improve their contribution), this article asks what it is that universities, due to their specific mission, have to offer. After describing the transition of the historical university (and its focus on modernisation) to the entrepreneurial university (focused on innovation), the authors discuss the current framing of the university's public role in terms of civic employability. The notion ‘strategies of immunisation’ is introduced to point to the implications of the current focus on citizenship. Finally, an alternative conception of the public role of the university is introduced: the university can be regarded as a space and time to constitute a public by gathering people around matters of concern, and to make something a public concern for people.

The aim of this article is to analyse the evident use of the notion ‘educational quality’ from the perspective of a critical ‘ontology of the present’ by focusing on governmental relations. Through mapping present discourses on educational quality and related technologies, the authors analyse how our present concern with quality is part of a particular regime of government and self-government. In this governmental regime the ‘quality apparatus’ seeks to assure an optimal relation between supply and demand. In conclusion, the perspective of a ‘creative ontology’ of the educational present is introduced in order to formulate alternative ideas on education and in order to indicate the limits of education policy.