Thursday 30 December 2010

‘...a creative line of escape that says nothing other than what it is....’

These notes are scrappy – they are the shards of thought, my rambling wandering through whatever I manage to focus on for a few minutes. The reading is by invitation only and usually by way of an introduction: this is who I am and this is what I am interested in.

But this is a post-traumatic recovery. In the face of ontological uncertainty a redefinition of the terrain I traverse, a reinvention of self and re-narration o possible biographies, re-defining and remapping of imaginary futures.

Barnet, R. (2007) A will to learn: being a student in an Age of Uncertainty, Series, Buckingham: Open University Press

I think the book struggles with the personal dimensions of learning; what it means to be a student and as such draws on Heidegger to explore notions in being and becoming.  This is a terrain most often traversed by self-help pop psychologist and while the only connection between this text and that genre the broad area of study, the book none-the-less has a slight therapeutic feel. And with it I think possibly can be accused of slipping into theories of the ‘diminished’ self . But this is a slight and subtextual possibility. Barnet is scathing of this genre (by implication) and dismisses ideas of ‘knowing one-self’ as facile while at the same time arguing in robust, muscular terms about authenticity, voice, courage, confidence, determination – these are words that whatever argument surrounds them, positions the reader and the text in very specific place: self-help.

But this is the beginning and end of any critique. And it is not critique as such – more of a confession of the possibility of being disarmed by this text.

And so my reading, fragmented, ad hoc & sensational – that is based on my sense – I collect phrases, tones and textures that resonate a day after dipping in and out – full reading of some chapters and re-reading of others.  Coupled with an inability to concentrate fully – other books whisper while I read & the slight embarrassment at what the text reminds me of.

Becoming is a verb with a consistency of its own; ... it is ... a creative line of escape that says nothing other than what it is. Deluze and Guattari, quoted in Guttari 2005: 75

Learning always takes place in and through the unconscious, Deluze 2001: 165

Our present age is one of ineradicable ontological uncertainty. In a situation in which there are no stable descriptions of the world, we cannot know with security who we are any more.    Barnett, 2007: 58                                                                                         

Passion is the way in which the will declares itself.

I think it’s Barnett’s declarations of becoming oneself anew and for the first time in this place that bothers me & I think it is the extent to which it seems to rely on the idea of the self as singular and central. It almost appeals to the Maslovian idea of self-actualisation: an ultimate and desirable state of being.  The achievement of this full authenticity – I suspect may equally involve not ‘self’ as an epiphanous becoming, but also loss and displacement, to drawn n post colonial theories – unhomeliness, luminality and transculturation.  That success may involve a claiming of a so far only imagined but wholly desirable self while simultaneously requiring the negation of a self that you know (or fear) to be unwelcome in the academy.

Wednesday 29 December 2010

Academic Research and Researchers

Brew and Lucas (2009) Academic Research and Researchers
  
Discussions around 'The End of Knowledge' and 'Death of the University' have been around for some time. And what the coalition government have achieved in their first few months was a process started by Thatcher, furthered by Blair and consummated by Cameron. It is hard to imagine what shape and form the University will take post-Coalition. 

There is so much that needs to be re-written.  What it means to be an academic and who can even think of pursuing this ambition – has changed. There is in this policy moment, even in the middle England Tory suburban press, the Daily Mail, a clear sense that if weighing up the cost of a University Education vs. a house to live in – many will question the affordability of a degree. If this small minded ‘vote Tory even if it’s a donkey’ rag is questioning this policy in this way; if they are appointing a Lib Dem to ‘sell’ the policy – then I think this might well still become the Poll Tax moment. It is one to watch.

In chapter 4, Brew and Lucas (2010) explore the tensions and contradictions of a middle manager in HE. A role that may be described as 'agent of control', 'corporate bureaucrat' or 'transmitter of core strategic values'.

I note here there are struggles to define what ‘research’ and ‘research active’ means.  The discussion is caught up with ideas of culture – a clash between academic and management cultures – and of course power.  There is a clash between meanings and value, what counts as ‘symbolic capital’. The social world is not a benign social space in which where common values are shared.

The chapter explore research cultures – in UK and Australia based universities. It draws on 4 aspects of research management:  research management, research nurturing, research indicators and research priorities. It makes extensive use of a template derived by Tierney (2008).  A framework for organisational cultures – to help analyse research cultures; the constituent parts include: mission, environment, leadership, strategy, information and socialisation. A nuanced understanding of these requires a clear power dimension. Here power is understand not as exertion, the capacity to enforce one will against and above another will, but power in its constitutive sense, the sense not of what it prohibits but what it produces: the construction of selves in a context that enables particular selves to be negotiated.


             This form of power applies itself to immediate everyday life categories of the individual, marks him [sic] by his own individuality, attaches him to his own identity, imposes a law of truth [...] it is a form of power that makes individual subjects: subject to someone else by control and dependence [...] that subjugates and makes subject to.’                                             Foucault, 1994 p331


How do departments constitute the research subject? 

Tuesday 21 December 2010

Most recent publication

Dennis, C.A (2010) Is the Professionalisation of Adult Basic Skills Teaching Possible, Desirable or Inevitable? Literacy and Numeracy Studies Vol 18 (2) p 26 - 42




http://www.education.uts.edu.au/lns/current.html

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Sunday 12 December 2010

Google Groups Hull Post 16 teachers


Google Groups

Post 16 teachers at University of Hull

Visit this group

formalised curiosity



Tweet from Gary Younge: 

"Research is formalized curiosity. 

It is poking and prying with purpose" 

Zora Neale Hurston

Gary Younge