Utopian spaces and the promise of education: a conceptual analysis

Argenton, Gerald

doi:10.1080/00131857.2018.1477046

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 8 publications

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“…As various authors have made clear, modern forms of educational governing precisely focus on fabricating the educational present in view of a projected desired future and -we should add -past (e.g., Argenton, 2019;Bennett & Burke, 2018;Simons, 2014b). That is to say, in view of this projected future and past, the present becomes a possible target for governmental intervention.…”

Section: Linear Timementioning

confidence: 99%

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

Decuypère

Simons

2020

Educational Philosophy and Theory

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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.

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Section: Linear Timementioning

confidence: 99%

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

Decuypère

Simons

2020

Educational Philosophy and Theory

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Digital remix as a pedagogical platform intervention

Wright

2023

Learning, Media and Technology

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Topologies of desire: Fantasies and their symptoms in educational policy futures

Saari

2021

European Educational Research Journal

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This article studies topological reflexivity in educational policy discourse, when policy is considered in terms of eradicating the distances involved and increasing mobility and commensurability. Topological reflexivity is critically evaluated from a Lacanian point of view as a form of political fantasy which structures reality within the coordinates of desire. The article also unpacks two prominent symptoms of fantasy – dislocation and paradoxical elements – that subvert the functioning of these very same fantasies. First, while heralding imminent fulfilment and the promise of pleasure in new learning environments, these discourses are also obliged to keep the object of desire at a certain distance. Second, while educational policy discourse is founded on subjective autonomy and a freedom to develop learning environments, it implicitly requires teachers and schools to implement new learning environments and to take pleasure in doing so. Attempts to grapple with these symptoms of fantasy take the form of denying not only the repetition inherent in such discourses, but also the othering of teachers who express resistance to such changes.

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Utopian spaces and the promise of education: a conceptual analysis

Cited by 3 publications

References 8 publications

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

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

Digital remix as a pedagogical platform intervention

Topologies of desire: Fantasies and their symptoms in educational policy futures

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