The Learning Subject as Knowledge Producer

Today’s posting is the fifth in a summary and reflection on a 2008 Routledge book entitled

Foucault and Lifelong Learning:

Governing the Subject

and edited by Andreas Fejes and Katherine Nicoll.  I am posting every other day and each post will summarize one of the chapters in the book.

The fifth chapter is written by Ulf Olsson and Kenneth Petersson and is entitled

The Operation of Knowledge and Construction of the Lifelong Learning Subject

In this chapter, the authors wish to problematize knowledge and knowledge production as they compare discursive practices in

• ·         Teacher education
• ·         Public health, and
• ·         Criminal Justice

They summarize, as did the authors I’ve reviewed in previous blogs from this book, the notion of governance.  I will not summarize again, but one notion in particular is important to their arguments.  This notion is that governance has a particular relation to the ways in which we develop and organize knowledge about what (who) will be governed. They also wish to stipulate at the onset that knowledge must be seen as contextually and historically embedded. They remind us that subjects are (re)constituted continuously through discursive practices reflective of the governmentality of the day.  The 3 domains in which these authors explore in this paper have important roles in those practices and subjugation. Of particular interest is the production of knowledge itself. So, in their exploration of the relationship between knowledge and governance, they ask:

How do narratives about knowledge operate

in contemporary practices of governmentality

to design and responsibilize

learning communities, and educable LLL subjects?

They posit the following epistemological principle behind discourse about knowledge in the 3 domains:

1. ·         It is possible to order and control the future in the present.
2. ·         One does this by inculcating citizens with a commitment to a changing and fragmented world.

What the authors don’t say at this point, but has been illustrated by other authors in the same book so far, is that citizens also have to develop a commitment to adapting to this changing and fragmented world.  

They do explain that governmental practices formulate subjects who feel autonomous, responsible and oriented to the future.  I simply remind us that this is part of the epistemological premise as well.

For this study, the authors analyzed contemporary Swedish texts including:

• ·         Government reports
• ·         Scientific texts
• ·         Proposed reform programs
• ·         Text books
• ·         Project presentations and evaluations
• ·         Periodicals from political fields and democracy/LLL

They suggest that the Swedish experience is indicative of global trends.

The Governmentalities of the Modern Learning Subject

The emphasis on life-long and life-wide education in Sweden and elsewhere illustrate that learning is envisioned now as permeating all aspects of society and that

,..the boundaries between political, social and cultural sectors are removed (p. 62)

and encouraging that they all share responsibility for LLL. This is illustrated in the current inclusion of pedagogical features and empowerment-oriented programs associated with criminal justice and law in Sweden. They provide an example from New Zealand and suggest that there is a similar trend in other European countries. They relate these to a view of knowledge as pragmatic. Foucault has explained that governance involves orienting individuals and collectives to see themselves in certain ways. The authors then summarize the concept of governmentality (a la Foucault) which has been summarized by other authors in this book in previous chapters, so I won’t summarize this present summary.  Suffice it to say that the authors conclude with the idea that knowledge has a political dimension and that one might well think of a political epistemology (Petersson, 2003, p. 23) as a

kind of epistemology that is organizing the production of knowledge (p. 63).

The authors ask us to consider health, criminal justice/law and schooling as educating and disciplining practices. They are implicated in the ways we govern ourselves and others. They are pedagogical technologies shaping individuals according to an embedded set of assumptions. It is the underlying assumptions that the authors consider as the political epistemology.

The authors are interested in how these technologies operate and are embedded in the practices of knowledge-formation (about things and about people) in political problems.

The Re-ordering of the Educable Subject

The authors say that the Swedish Criminal Institutions bill themselves as learning organizations with a mission of learning and people seen as learning subjects. Penal institutions are functioning more like schools.  The authors speak specifically of inmates as learners, but I have to wonder if the staff are also seen as learners. In any case, the learning subject is constructed as flexible, reflective, autonomous, self-regulating and responsible and there is an orientation to the future.

Knowledge Production as a Pedagogical Technology

The authors will argue that the future (or a vision of it) is being constructed by education, as a means of creating future-oriented subjects.  This will allow governance of a variety of diverse elements.

Knowledge as Subject Construction

Knowledge is positioned in Ministry of Education documents as a mechanism by which pupils can learn to handle their futures. Knowledge is a tool for creating and governing self-governing subjects. Within the education discourse, the world is painted as unpredictably changing and knowing about the future is seen as imperative. Schools feel the need to prepare for

a future we know less of but have to know more about (Carlgren & Marton, 2000, p. 25)

and to formulate subject-students and subject-teachers in certain ways in response. Both need broad competencies and the ability to adapt those competencies lifelong. In order for the teacher to respond appropriately to different and changing subject-students, he or she will need an understanding of them.  Thus, knowledge of the changing world is a constitutive aspect of both subject-pupil and subject-teacher formation.

The field of public health similarly emphasizes narratives of subject-construction paralleling those in education.

The conceptions of knowledge and thereby the imagination of the future

will become inscribed in the subject and

the subject will be inscribed in the notion of knowledge:

one cannot exclude the other.  (p 67).

The Responsible Subject as Knowledge Producer

• Subjects are created as responsible.
• To be responsible for the future, one needs knowledge about the future.
• We can’t have knowledge about the future.
• Responsible Subjects must develop the knowledge needed for the future.

This logic suggests the teacher’s role in organizing environments that support exploration. It is concerned, therefore, with the processes of knowledge generation, more so than knowledge as a product.  Similarly, the teacher is created as a knowledge-producer and is expected to self-develop similar explorative competencies, particularly through critical reflection on practice.

Within crime prevention discourse, citizens are similarly presented/constructed as engineers of community safety innovations and the authors describe an experiment in Hjällbo in which a citizen security group collaborated with community stake holders.  In the field of health promotion, they say that the construction of the knowledge-producing subject isn’t as strong as it is in education.  However knowledge is positioned as a technology for informed personal decisions and learners are positioned as knowledge-seekers. However, it is recognized that the lay-knowledge of the people is still important and it should be considered as well when exploring the governance of subjects in health promotion

In all of these areas, the authors argue that ‘expert’ (or perhaps relevant) knowledge is being shifted from formal expert to learner-subjects who are often situated as knowledge-producers in their own right, or at least, as those who are semi-professionals of their own local knowledge.

Governing Oneself through Knowledge Produced by Oneself

The teacher, seen as a reflexive knowledge-producer, is expected to involved in all the processes that are involved in governing/teaching.  This includes the governance of the self through critical self-reflection. The knowledge-maker is the knowledge-subject. It looks like this:

·         We need knowledge about ourselves as teachers/subjects

·         We need to create ways to produce knowledge about ourselves

·         We can design our own learning so that we can learn for the future.

Conclusion

In point form:

·         The subject is created as

o   Responsible

o   Future-oriented

o   A knowledge-producer

·         Education’s role is to empower subject-learners as such

·         Education is life-wide and life-long

o   Allows for broad governance

…………………………………………………………………………………………

The next blog will be posted in 2 days and will summarize and reflect on the 6^th Chapter in the same book.  Written by Thomas S. Popkewitz, that chapter is entitled:

The Reason of Reason: 

Cosmopolitanism, Social Exclusion and Lifelong Learning

In this chapter, the author focuses on

·         History of the lifelong learner and the learning society

·         Positions them as the cultural thesis of cosmopolitanism

·         Inherent Exclusion and Inclusion

For starters, Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality.   (Yes, I pulled that from Wikipedia! Shoot me!  *Grin*)

The author will start by overlapping the ‘reason’ of LLL with cosmopolitanism. 

I can’t wait!