Search

This paper develops the pedagogical implications of xenolexia, a concept introduced as a phenomenon in the learning and teaching of academic writing (Beighton, C. 2020. "Beyond Alienation: Spatial Implications of Teaching and Learning Academic Writing." "Teaching in Higher Education" 25 (2): 205-222.). Complementing this theoretical base, this paper examines xenolexia's positivity and its ability to both analyse and propose specific academic writing pedagogies in today's challenging HE context(s). Drawing on data from students/teachers of academic writing (n = 33), this paper uses xenolexia aetiologically and practically. Aetiologically, I identify and categorise different sets of practices in terms of the way they respond to this positivity as two pedagogical tropes: the material and its affective counterpart. Practically, I discuss pedagogical practices associated with these tropes in the light of the data. My conclusions about the extent to which each contributes to the development of academic writing link the latter to the current context of teaching and learning in higher education, challenging approaches based on identity with more productive material, affective alternatives.

This paper examines emerging discourses and practices of quality assurance in English Further Education (FE), a sector currently undergoing significant change. Using a broadly ethnographic approach and Foucauldian theories of power, we discuss how 'documentisation' contributes to governance techniques in a specific institutional context. Documentisation, the transformation of concrete practice into discourse, reverses a common-sense view of the role of policy documentation and exemplifies a wide range of practices in both FE and the wider post-16 sector and includes the gamification of quality systems. Our analysis of the conditions and practices out of which the phenomenon appears identifies processes that are shaping present-day experiences and redefining the discourse of quality itself. Moreover, rather than situating compliance and/or resistance in practice "per se," we argue that it is within the conditions of possibility expressed by such processes that the intertwining of compliance and resistance can best be appreciated.

This paper critiques recent developments in educational discourse through an analysis of two UK Government White Papers and three specific problems. We argue that the latter herald forms of 'biocreep'. Echoing the analysis of such phenomena in the work of Michel Foucault, this gradual extension of 'biopolitics' into the field of education is a tendency which has accelerated with the Coronavirus pandemic and raises many questions for policy analysis. First, we show how the White Papers' approach to life and its related assumptions embody an attempt to further entrench the techniques of biopolitical population management in secondary and further education settings. Second, our analysis of the two Papers shows not just a deepening discursive shift towards ways of instrumentalising educational processes, but also identifies a triple problem of political assemblage: primo, this shift relies on the assemblage of a 'problematic subject'; secondo, it simultaneously assembles the problem of value extraction; and tertio, it obscures the problem of desire or unruliness of the assemblages created. Just as discursive practices of instrumentation, administration and evacuation try to manage these assemblages, they remain unable to contain the three problems they enshrine.

French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-95) was something of a cult figure among his university students in the 1970s and 1980s, "telling ghost stories with the voice of an ogre" (Jaeglé, 2005:10). More recently, academic interest in the educational possibilities of his work has grown considerably in Anglophone countries. Perhaps texts such as "A Thousand Plateaus" (Deleuze & Guattari, 2004b3), which discuss "things which, at the time, didn't fully exist, and which just seemed science fiction," have become more readable since 21st-century shifts in geo-politics, notably the events associated with 9/11 and their echoes in current affairs (Antonioli in Dosse, 2007, p. 583). Questions remain as to whether Deleuze's well-known suggestion in 1968 that his empiricism necessarily has affiliations with science fiction (Deleuze, 1994) can really shift attention from the current focus on outcomes to the "actual ontology" of practice (Strom, 2015, p. 10), thus informing more socially just teacher education and research. In this article, the author addresses this question by examining the potential of Deleuze's "science fiction" ontology, where being is expressed in the reciprocal determination of virtual and actual (Deleuze, 1996, 179-185), to enhance social justice.

Following a damning report into racism in United Kingdom Higher Education (EHRC, 2019), this paper discusses students' experiences of racism in HE. Focusing on the connections between lived experience and wider goals and trends in the Internationalisation of the university sector, we discuss accounts of racist practices on campus through the concept of xeno-racism highlighted in data from a small-scale, in-depth qualitative study. Three main findings are highlighted. First, we suggest that racism is a predictable -- even integral - feature of Internationalisation as it is currently pursued by UKHE. Second, we argue that our data provides evidence that the traditional forms of racism highlighted by the EHRC are part of a wider, deeper problem of xeno-racist treatment and troubling narrative practices. Finally, our analysis connects these practices to a degree of angelism in the Internationalised institution's self-image, portraying Internationalised HE in an idealistic but disingenuous way for financial gain. Together, these three phenomena undermine UKHE's altruistic claims by subordinating the issue of discrimination to questions of process, brand management, and reputational damage limitation. Tackling the problem of racism on campus cannot be successful without also tackling these issues.

This paper argues that a shift in discourse about the nature and purpose of Further Education is under way in England. A recent White Paper, 'Skills for jobs: lifelong learning for opportunity and growth', issued by the UK government, is couched in terms which suggest that a prior reliance on the ideology of neoliberalism is now moving towards the objectives and instruments of what Michel Foucault termed biopolitics or the exploitation of life itself. I analyse the White Paper and related recent texts to show how a form of vitalist discourse accompanies attempts to accelerate potentially problematic processes of value-extraction. While these developments respond partly to the societal changes resulting from the threats to life of the Coronavirus pandemic and other existential crises, their likely impact suggests a shift in the discourses of lifelong learning: an existing apparatus of normalisation and control is now turning to biopolitical exploitation.

Despite existing work on the situated and sometimes alienating nature of academic writing practices, the implications of the specifically spatial nature of these practices continue to pose questions for teaching and learning in higher education. This paper addresses these questions through a study of the views and experiences of students and teachers of academic writing in postgraduate teacher education (n = 33). Specifically, it introduces a concept, xenolexia, which complements that of alienation by recognizing the dynamic nature of academic writing, texts and practices without reifying them. Discussing the fundamentally spatial nature of this dynamism, the concept of xenolexia is used to analyse perceptions of academic writing practices as 'foreign'. The features of this 'foreignness' are examined from the point of view of both teaching and learning, and lessons about identity and dynamism in academic writing are drawn for writing pedagogies in postgraduate teacher education contexts.

This paper examines the implementation of the "Prevent Duty" to actively promote fundamental British values in English Further Education (FE). After critically reviewing the history of "Prevent" and the 2015 "Duty" to identify evidence of radicalisation in FE, data from interviews of strategic decision-makers in two distinct cases is analysed. The identification, interpretation and recirculation of verbal, graphic and behavioural signs of radicalisation is highlighted. Pinpointing a 'semiotisation' of the "Prevent" agenda, practical and conceptual implications are discussed. First, we identify a practical preoccupation with signs, specific beliefs about how they work, and how decision-makers deal with them. Second, we divide these beliefs conceptually into univocal and polyvocal semiotisation, referring to the degree to which signs are understood as unequivocal indicators of meaning. We underline significant variations in practice in this context and implications which, we argue, link practice and research to inform the fields of (edu)semiotics and policy enactment.

This paper analyses how teacher identity is shaped by professional standardisation and regulatory apparatuses in the context of English Further Education from a specifically spatial perspective. We focus on how these apparatuses erode teachers' sense of identity and, paradoxically, quality by establishing what anthropologist Marc Augé (1935–2023) calls 'non-places'. Drawing on interview data and Augé's spatial anthropology, we discuss how places can define, foster and erode identity and, thus, practice. Our data shows how teachers' accounts of their changing spatial experiences reflects the transient nature of their own interpretations of how identities are shaped in these shifting contexts of 'dis/placement' wherein the process of identity construction frequently places individuals in contact with another side of themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new discourse is being deployed by the English learning and skills sector's new professional body, the Education and Training Foundation (ETF). This discourse repositions learning within a specific vision of corporate expectations. With a focus on deregulation in the sector and employer engagement, this repositioning deploys the terminology and mindset of a particular type of industrial process. This repositioning involves an important change, replacing a culture of micro-management with more decentralised techniques of control following changes at the national level of policy and beyond. Here, learning is analogous to the management of liquid, a move which is naturalised in texts which present education as an unavoidable and unassailable process or closed circuit of flow. Paul Virilio's work on the effects of speed is used to pinpoint ambivalence and incipient nihilism as central to this shift, critiquing the ETF's claims to represent the sector.

This paper critically examines Equality and Human Rights Commission's (EHRC) 2019 report into racism in United Kingdom Higher Education. After outlining the context of the report, the paper is situated within discourses of internationalization in higher education (HE)and those of investment, excellence and social mobility. Using transversality, an analytical tool developed by Gilles Deleuze, as a means of critiquing these connections, two groups of findings are presented. First, the report misrepresents the role of racism in HE as an isolated phenomenon rather than as an integral part of the discourse, logic and practices of internationalized HE. Specifically, it masks the discourses of investment, mobility and excellence that underpin it. Second, the report evidences, but fails to identify, the negative consequences of internationalization in higher education discourse. Specifically, discourses of investment, excellence and mobility are linked to the threat of decomplexification, securitization and, ultimately, ethical vacuity in HE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]