The Entanglement of Thinking and Learning Skills in Neoliberal Discourse

Determinants of 21st-century digital skills: A large-scale survey among working professionals

“…Selfregulating learners maintain an active and ongoing awareness of task demands, the effectiveness of learning strategies, and their progress toward task completion (Wolters, 2010). Effective self-directed learners evaluate the limitations of their knowledge and skills and strategically respond to new learning challenges (Vassallo, 2014). We hypothesize: H4.…”

“Do Some Wondering”: Children and their Self‐Understanding Selves in Early Elementary Classrooms

“…Becker (:3) describes an “age of human capital” in which individual success and national economies depend on “how extensively and effectively people invest in themselves” throughout life. Individualization proceeds in various social realms, including formal schooling where the curriculum is seen to help integrate future workers into a knowledge economy (Patrick ; Spring ; Vassallo :148). We began this study by asking how a widely shared pedagogical goal (cultivating children's enterprising selves) might comprise an expressive part of teacher‐student encounters in early elementary classrooms.…”

“…This pedagogical orientation aims to help in levelling the playing field for children from various socioeconomic backgrounds. Intended to mirror the economy—i.e., the supposed problem‐solving nature of work, requirements for collaboration, unpredictability of market conditions—twenty‐first century schooling focuses on developing responsibilized neoliberal selves; children should be taught what it means to be self‐aware problem solvers (Bonnett ; Olssen ; Peters ; Popkewitz ; Rose ; Vassallo ). A 2007 press release from the influential advocacy group Partnership for 21st Century Skills reflects this view with its assertion that “a 21st century education must incorporate a different set of skills that reflect changing economic demands” (Partnership for 21st Century Skills ).…”

ChatGPT: towards AI subjectivity

“…As far as the connected person 6 is concerned, for example, the present may be characterised by an overarching obligation to document ourselves, exchange privacy for services, quantify the self and express ourselves-thereby recreating ourselves-in digital spaces. This obligation is influenced by narratives pitting privacy against security (Van Dijck 2014), the success of mathematical sciences (Van Dijck 2014), the corporate practice of bloated clickwrap agreements (Zuboff 2019), the invisibility of the algorithmic mechanisms (Weiskopf 2020), the neoliberal mantra to "be yourself" (Vassallo 2014), and also online-social factors of virtue signalling (Richey 2018); i.e. by coercive as well as emancipatory factors.…”