Pasts and futures that keep the possible alive: Reflections on time, space, education and governing

Abstract

Over the last years, the European Commission has heavily promoted various forms of digital education. In this article, we draw upon two recent European policy documents as key articulations of Europe's contemporary governing apparatus: Opening Up Education and the Digital Education Action Plan. The article more particularly conceives of both policy documents as offering a point of departure to analyze how this apparatus is presently seeking to enact a specific mode of existence of the contemporary learner. We argue that this educational mode of existence is being enacted by the fabrication of highly specific sorts of time and space. In order to highlight the particularity of the enacted sorts of time and space exemplified in the policy documents, we start this article with a discussion of how a traditional, modern governing apparatus aims to fabricate linear time and institutional space. The article proceeds by arguing that the present-day European governing apparatus that is concerned with digital education fabricates different sorts of times and spaces, namely potential (rather than linear) temporalities and ecological/networked (rather than institutional) spatialities. Likewise, the concrete instruments (such as platforms, portals, credits and certificates) presently adopted in order to do so largely differ from modern instruments. Conclusively, we argue that the presence of these newly emerging (often digital) instruments, and the times and spaces that are fabricated through these instruments, call for an opportunistic mode of existing as a contemporary learner.

Future jamming: Rhetoric of new knowledge in Finnish educational policy texts

“…It is rather general skills, mindsets and attunements such as creativity and flexibility that can enable individuals to adapt to different situations. Here, Finnish educational policy documents trace similar characteristics to the rhetoric of the OECD and the EU (Simons and Masschelein, 2008;Decuypere and Simons, 2020).…”

Referentiality mechanisms in EU education policymaking: The case of the European Education Area

“…The literature specifically on the EEA is limited. The EEA has been explored from the following angles in the scholarship: digitalisation of education in the EU (Decuypere & Simons, 2020; Salajan, 2019) and student mobility within the EEA (Grinberga‐Zalite et al., 2018), national responses to the initiative illustrated by the case of Croatia (Kasap et al., 2018), the governance of the EEA which resembles the governance of the EU through the creation and expansion of interest groups that coordinate stocktaking and benchmarking (Cone & Brogger, 2020). The first two topics are similar in the sense that they focus on two policy initiatives within the EEA, linked to its action lines.…”

The Role of the European Education Area in European Union Integration in Times of Crises

“…The literature on the EEA, which is of interest in this article, is limited. The EEA is explored from the following angles in the scholarship: the digitalization of education in the EU (Salajan 2019;Decuypere and Simons 2020), student mobility within the EEA (Grinberga-Zalite et al 2018), a national response to the initiative illustrated by the case of Croatia (Kasap et al 2018), and the governance of the EEA which resembles the governance of the EU through the creation and expansion of the interest groups that coordinate stocktaking and benchmarking (Cone and Brøgger 2020). These standardization tendencies are often presented as examples of the integration of the EU policy field in the area of education, although they are not placed within a wider EU integration process and not discussed in relation to EU integration aspects, such as strengthening the relationships among its MSs, candidate countries and exiting countries.…”

“…The studies about the EEA imply deepening, but never discuss it explicitly. For instance, Salajan (2019) and Decuypere and Simons (2020) discuss the growing digitalization of education in the EEA and relevant standardization trends in education in the EU countries; Grinberga-Zalite et al (2018) analyse the convergence of student mobility opportunities around the EU in the EEA. Additionally, Cone and Brøgger (2020) analyse the international mechanisms in the EU and Kasap et al (2018) look at the national mechanisms that are used to promote the cooperation among the MSs in their development of the EEA.…”