Letting the ghosts in: re-designing HE teaching and learning through posthumanism

Abstract

Alongside the neoliberalisation of UK Higher Education (HE), the values of speed, competition, marketisation and individualism increasingly shape teaching and learning globally. This article takes seriously the feeling of unease expressed by lecturers and students in this context, proposing that posthumanism offers a theoretical, methodological and praxical means to challenge neoliberal logics and their effects. Through assemblages, diffractive analysis and an experimental film, we explore how module re-design and delivery around 'posthumanist projectbased learning' (PBL) attends to materiality, embodiment, affect, ethicality, social justice and political transformation. We argue that by de-centring the human, posthumanist PBL alerts students, teachers and researchers to the 'trouble' that haunts educational experiences and centres an ethics of community that reshapes the boundaries of accountability. Our work indicates how posthumanism might offer new ways to engage in HE knowledge productionand position materiality, care and our common future as the drivers for teaching and learning.

Researching Posthumanizing Creativity: Expanding, Shifting, and Disrupting

“…In the first instance, to maintain engagement with a thick present we focused on artifacts, images, processual activities, and human reflections. Prior experience (Chappell et al, 2019; Chappell et al, 2021) had taught me the power of working with assemblages and accompanying theoretical diffractions, and this has been a key way of recasting new ways of working (Taylor, 2017). Barad (2007) argues for building assemblages diffractively to disrupt and splay the object of study in productive ways, cutting theory through data (Mazzei, 2014), as well as data through other data to challenge anthropocentric viewpoints (Taguchi, 2016).…”

El individualismo como conducta sustentable respecto al trabajo en equipo en la educación superior

“…Aunque ambas concepciones pueden parecer convergentes, en realidad representan dos enfoques distintos, y se espera que la brecha que existe entre ellos no afecte la disposición cognitivo-conductual de los alumnos, aunque vale destacar que el individualismo se manifiesta en nuestra vida diaria y se destaca por su aplicación rápida y sencilla.En efecto, la autonomía del individualismo, al estar desvinculada de la responsabilidad de contraer compromisos que dependan de la capacidad y el comportamiento de otras personas, no afecta necesariamente la funcionalidad de este en la consecución de cualquier objetivo. Por tal motivo, es relevante mencionar que a nivel global el individualismo está ganando terreno como una tendencia que influye cada vez más en las actividades de enseñanza y aprendizaje(Chappell et al, 2021). De hecho, en el contexto de la enseñanza superior esta práctica se justifica, dado que todas las evaluaciones se realizan de manera individual(Marginson y Yang, 2021).En cambio, el trabajo en equipo implícitamente resalta la importancia del buen desempeño de cada uno de sus miembros, de ahí que se parta del supuesto de que todos los integrantes son competentes y se presupone que poseen las habilidades y destrezas fundamentales necesarias para lograr una interacción didáctica satisfactoria dentro de una estructura de trabajo.Ahora bien, al reflexionar sobre ambos conceptos, es evidente que el individualismo tiene un impacto significativo en el ámbito educativo como un factor integral en la formación…”

No More Nead Fugues: Singing the Praises of Problem-Based Learning in a Minor Agential Realist Key Slightly Out of Tune

“…Scholar for research in which agential realism is put to work in relation to PBL, I was able to locate just three texts in which agential realism and PBL are put into actual contact with each other: (1) Chappell et al (2021), (2) Jørgensen et al (2012), and (3) Jørgensen and Strand (2014). These texts are not representative of the broader field of research on this topic because there is no broader field of research on the specific topic of PBL and agential realism.…”

“…These texts are not representative of the broader field of research on this topic because there is no broader field of research on the specific topic of PBL and agential realism. In what follows, I only review two of the papers since the second and third papers make similar points regarding PBL and agential realism, and so I have limited my review to a discussion of the paper by Chappell et al (2021) and the one by Jørgensen et al (2012).…”

“…(Chappell et al,p. 2) In addition to the statement above, Chappell et al (2021) describe the purpose of their study as an exploration of "how module re-design and delivery around 'posthumanist project-based learning' (PBL) attends to materiality, embodiment, affect, ethicality, social justice and political transformation" (p. 1). While this purpose may appear to make their study similar to mine at first blush, owing to the fact that our studies seem to have a shared focus on PBL, to be explored from similar theoretical perspectives, and in similar higher education contexts, they are, in fact, vastly different.…”