Educational Utopia Research Articles

Educational Utopianism beyond the “Real versus Blueprint” Dichotomy

AbstractMuch educational utopianism revolves around the “real versus blueprint utopia” dichotomy and the prescriptive normativity that utopian education involves. In this paper, I suggest that the “real and blueprint” distinction should not be dichotomized and that a richer set of normativities, apart from prescription, should operate in educational utopias. Ethico-politically and educationally, it is crucial to have affirmative rather than incriminatory utopias, regardless of their being real or blueprint. To argue this out, first I introduce the concepts of incriminatory and affirmative utopianism. Next, I sketch the educational-theoretical setting and discuss the current reliance on the “real versus blueprint utopia” dichotomy. Then I use the conceptual tool of incriminatory utopianism to show that risks of totalitarianism threaten all visions (even liberal anti-utopian ones) and not only blueprint utopianism. Therefore, we need not dichotomize real and blueprint utopias and embrace the former unconditionally. I conclude with some illustrations of why utopian thought involves multiple normativities rather than prescriptivism alone.

About the published content on each section

About the published content on each section

Meritocracy, Financial Investment, and Education Equity in Higher Education in China

Objective: This study explores how the ideas of meritocracy are reflected in the government officials’ financial investment in higher education in China, and how this relates to education equity. Methods: Given the important position of higher education in the occupational ladder and social structure, and the fact that higher education and diplomas have become one of the main criteria for promoting educational officials, this study uses meritocracy as the theoretical framework to conduct an analysis regarding the educational backgrounds of members of the leadership teams of the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Finance, and various provincial government departments of education and finance in the People’s Republic of China. It adopts content analysis as a method, which can quantitatively analyze the proportion of official education composition and qualitatively reveal the potential meaning of the proportion. Results: Findings show that merits have been internalized into value pursuits in various fields of society, especially in the promotion of officials and the education ecosystem that this study focuses on, which impedes education equity in Chinese higher education. Conclusion: Nowadays, universities are no longer lofty ivory towers. Their pursuit of rankings, reputation, and performance has its urgency and rationality. However, excessive attention to achievements and efficiency will vacillate the traditional academic, cultural, and educational nature of universities, making their essence increasingly numerous and jumbled. The pursuit of merit should be directed towards a more noble destination to cultivate new generations with ontology and self-consciousness for the realization of educational utopia. The role of governments at all levels should not be as stakeholders, performance reviewers, or spectators from afar, but as supporters, contributors, and leaders in rebuilding a fair, pure, and united education ecosystem.

Less talk, more action

Abstract Despite the growing size of the academic precariat in the tertiary sector, this exploited group of workers lacks a voice in either their universities or their national union. In this article we draw on our experiences of transitioning from a small activist group to a broader research collective with influence and voice, while forging networks of solidarity. Through reflecting on developing the Precarious Academic Work Survey (PAWS), we explore how action research is a viable way of structurally and politically (re)organising academic work. We argue that partnering with changemakers such as unions as co-researchers disrupts their embedded processes so that they may be (re)politicised towards pressing issues such as precarity. Further, we highlight how research can be used as a call to action and a tool to recruit powerful allies to collaborate on transforming universities into educational utopias.

Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning

Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning

Utopia in environmental and sustainability education: imagination, transformation, and transgression

This article explores the cognitive aspects of utopia in environmental and sustainability education. Utopia here is understood as the imaginary transformation of society, entailing a critique of society and its imaginary reconstruction aligned with the ideal of just and flourishing communities. To gain insight into the processes at play, I develop a pragmatist semiotic framework and highlight five characteristics of utopia in the context of environmental and sustainability education: dystopia, modifications, existing beliefs, transfer of concepts, and missing alternative concepts. At the core of these features are two other phenomena—dissonance and vagueness—that can serve as a springboard for extended exploration and a deeper understanding of society, as well as of held beliefs and ideals. When working with utopia, I conclude that students themselves may become minimal utopian spaces. This process may be accompanied by adverse feelings, such as confusion, frustration, or anxiety, which implies that working with utopia as a means to empower learners may also make them vulnerable.

Seeking an educational Utopia: an alternative model for evaluating student Learning Gain

ABSTRACT Across the Higher Education sector, there is growing interest regarding the ‘value for money’ of a university education, and in response to this, universities may need to consider how to evaluate the perceived learning of students alongside their actual learning. Learning Gain maybe helpful in this regard, but there is currently no agreed method for evaluating the Learning Gain achieved, or perceived, by any particular student. This paper discusses a new model that can be used for evaluating such student perceptions. The model itself considers both the Distance Travelled (explicit knowledge) and the Journey Travelled (tacit knowledge) reported by students. The model employs a self-certified reflective survey method. A study, using a cohort of final year undergraduate dissertation students is undertaken to evaluate the potential usefulness of this model. The primary results obtained from this study provide an interesting perspective on how students perceive their own learning, which in turn has implications for understanding how our own teaching is viewed by students. The outcome of this research is that further testing is recommended using a wider variety of courses, and larger cohorts of students.

OPÇÃO DECOLONIAL E ANTIRRACISMO NA EDUCAÇÃO EM TEMPOS NEOFASCISTAS

This article is an epistemic and political reflection based on the new neoconservative Brazilian reality installed in 2016 and deepened with the election of an ultra-right government in 2018. In this new conjuncture, we present the possible political risks of the end of an anti-racist legislation in Brazilian education (Law 10.639/03) and the possible paths of a political and epistemic insurgency to reaffirm that the production of anti-racist knowledge in education depends fundamentally on political and epistemic engagement in concrete struggles against Brazilian structural racism. Ultimately, the perspective that we will aproach in this text is that the horizon of the egalitarian utopia in education is always present, since we learned from history that what was impossible and unimaginable one day, came about through the insurgent political action of collective subjects that took on the task of transforming their reality.

Speculative Fictions and Curricular Futures: Envisioning Rural Educational Utopia

Situated within the local context of New Brunswick—a small, mostly rural, Canadian province with an aging population and a steady influx of new residents from other countries—this article speculates new curricular possibilities beyond the post-industrial and neoliberal structures of current curriculum and schooling. The authors approach their speculation creatively through a collectively-authored narrative meant to engage the idea of educational utopia within their shared place. In a subsequent discussion of the narrative, the authors reflect on the global phenomenon of neoliberal ideological intrusion into curriculum as manifest in New Brunswick, as well as the myriad forms that intrusion can take. Specifically, the authors discuss: the continued modeling of the school system on adult work, the rigid control of time and the dangers of flexibility in schooling, the desire to expand concepts of community involvement in education, and the urgent necessity of racial equity work in rural spaces. In concluding their discussion, the authors highlight the potential of dreaming new curricular possibilities to disrupt the status quo of education locally and globally.

A ratchetdemic reality pedagogy and/as cultural freedom in urban education

This article explores the dynamic between Black youth and their teachers through an exploration of an approach to teaching and learning embedded in the complex cultural knowledge(s) of this population. It interrogates the concepts of ratchedemics and reality pedagogy as both philosophy and practice for moving past the framing of particular populations as dystopian and non-academic in the pursuit of the mirage of urban educational utopia.

Review of Hope, utopia and creativity in higher education: Pedagogical tactics for alternative futures

Review of Hope, utopia and creativity in higher education: Pedagogical tactics for alternative futures

ETHICAL COMPOSITION OF THE SOCIAL MISSION OF THE UNIVERSITY

ETHICAL COMPOSITION OF THE SOCIAL MISSION OF THE UNIVERSITY

Against the humiliation of thought: The university as a space of dystopic destruction and utopian potential

My objective in this paper is to write a pharmacology of the university by thinking about its relationship to systemic stupidity, intelligence, and the possibility of becoming. Starting with an exploration of the contemporary dystopia of drive-based stupidity imagined by the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, which I seek to capture through the idea of the humiliation of thought, I look to deepen his response to this situation by suggesting a return to the work of two of his key sources, Martin Heidegger and Gilles Deleuze. My objective here is to use their work in relation to Stiegler’s in order to suggest a utopia of educational becoming. Following my exploration of Stiegler’s dystopia, in the second part of the article I read Heidegger’s philosophy in order to formulate a utopian theory of education becoming, which is sensitive to the possibility of authoritarianism contained in his catastrophic decision to become a member of the Nazi party. Against the dystopic humiliation of thought Heidegger’s turn to Nazism can be seen to represent, I turn to Deleuze in the name of a model of educational becoming that recognises difference in itself, before noting that this philosophical approach has similarly found humiliation in the contemporary neoliberal university dominated by a form of rhizomatic power. Finally, I look to develop a fusion of Heideggerian and Deleuzean approaches to deepen Stiegler’s pharmacological critique of the contemporary dystopia of systemic stupidity and its potential resolution in an educational utopia of invention on the other side of the humiliation of thought.

Utopian spaces and the promise of education: a conceptual analysis

This paper states that modern education and utopian discourse share one common trait, that of being structurally founded on the promise of human betterment. The changing relations between concepts of education and utopianism will be developed through conceptual analysis of the dynamics of the promise in their interweaving process. This shall be discussed through three main topics. The first is the appropriation of space in early modern education (sixteenth century onward), with particular emphasis on the influence of print technology on framing a new conception of educational spaces and practices. Second, the promise of the idea of progress in the Enlightenment period, which will become the further technological promise of a society-to-come, no longer spatially but temporally presented. Finally, the promise of autonomy through and against the modern subject, in which such autonomy is presented like the end of the journey through education, supposed that there is an end to such a journey. The key frame uniting the three topics is that utopian discourse journeying towards a normative conception of human society, as well as modern educational schemes journeying towards a normative conception of adulthood, are limited insofar as their respective promises, which are more impatient than the slow project of creation, more than often outruns it. The paper thus inquires whether or not there is a way to uphold the creative and imaginative possibilities of utopia in education, by acknowledging the pervasive effects of the promise on the social imaginary.

Finnish Education

Finland represents an educational utopia for many educators and decision-makers around the world. The Nordic country is known for its excellence in learning results and the emphasis it lays on equality/equity in education. This paper focuses on the way the latter has been presented and constructed in two popular commercial products on Finnish education: a book and a 60-minute documentary. Audiences for both include educational scholars and practitioners, decision-makers and the general public. The authors examine assumptions, ideologies, and silences in the discussions of equality and equity behind the discourse of excellence in Finnish education. As Finland is actively involved in marketing its education around the world, this calls for a review of the myths and realities of Finnish education.

Bezpieczeństwo jako podstawowy element realizacji utopii edukacyjnych XIX i XX wieku

This reflection is associated with unquestionable power of utopia in education. Education has always been associated with the implementation of social utopia. The intensity of this activity can be observed especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With utopia, education systems may take into account future scenarios, risk, and to disseminate the truth that knowledge and early solution to the problems is a prerequisite for social security.

Further education colleges and leadership: Checking the ethical pulse

In this paper, I check the ethical pulse of further education (FE) at the moment of its coming of age. Using a philosophical lens, I select and review post-2010 literature, to argue that FE colleges persist in a diminished form within a learning economy. In response to the managerial onslaught, the sector has adopted an ethics of survival, a necessary response to austerity and deregulation. Twenty-one years after incorporation, ethical fading has purged ethical desire from educational discourse, while the endless banality of college life has corroded the language with which it might be possible to speak about educational purpose, value, utopia, democracy, equity, and vision.

Prefacing as Educating: Building Educational Utopias and Barber’s Strong Democracy

Prefacing as Educating: Building Educational Utopias and Barber’s Strong Democracy

How Do New Critical Pedagogies Develop? Educational Innovation, Social Change, and Landless Workers in Brazil

Background Over the past 30 years, the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), one of the largest social movements in Latin America, has developed a series of pedagogical practices for public schools that support the movement's struggle for agrarian reform in the Brazilian countryside. The MST's educational initiatives can be viewed in terms of their place in the debate about how grassroots movements develop alternatives to dominant educational practices. Purpose This article examines the diverse pedagogies and educational theories that MST activists have drawn on, while also assessing the political implications of this participation in the public schools. Setting Research took place in Brazil, in several dozen public schools located in MST communities. Population Research participants included MST activists, students attending schools in MST communities, teachers working in these schools, administrators, and public officials. More than 150 people were interviewed. Research Design This research is an ethnographic, qualitative case study, examining the MST's educational initiatives in four different regions of Brazil. Field research took place over 15 months, between October 2010 and December 2011. Research methods included semi-structured interviews, classroom observation, participation observation, analysis of primary documents, and focus groups with teachers and students. Findings Although the MST initially invested only in informal, popular education, by the late 1980s activists began to realize that transforming public schools was necessary for the realization of the movement's social and political goals. By drawing on their previous experiences with popular education, as well as the theories of several outside intellectuals, activists developed educational utopias that allowed them to solidify their educational proposals in practice. Conclusions This article provides insights into the process of grassroots educational innovation, illustrating that communities draw on a diverse set of educational theories that resonate with local practices and beliefs to develop alternative proposals for their schools. The article also suggests that certain questions arise about the purpose of public education when social movements with particular visions of societal transformation demand participation in the public school sphere. The article argues that this social movement participation is appropriate if activists can mobilize parents, students, teachers, and other community members to implement this vision through a collective process of participatory governance.

Not just about gadgets: Habit, innovation and change in the design of learning technologies

While elements of Deleuze’s theory, notably the ‘geophilosophical’ concepts of ‘rhizomes’, ‘smoothness’ and ‘striation’ have been applied to educational technologies, his work on time has, to date, been comparatively neglected by educational theorists. This article explores practices and outcomes of educational technology design in terms of Deleuze’s dimensions of time in which habitual practices, trajectories of change and concerns about identities in flux are synthesised into a ‘present-becoming’. The article draws on empirical work carried out during a large, funded research project during which teachers, students, technologists and researchers were able to work together for extended periods in order to explore the potential of emerging ‘semantic web’ and ‘linked data’ technologies and approaches in higher educational settings ( Ensemble: Semantic Technologies for the Enhancement of Case Based Learning). Doing learning technology design and development in a way informed by ‘Deleuzian’ syntheses of time involves conversations not just about creating a technology-rich educational utopia or constantly specifying new ‘gadgets’, but the troubling of existing pedagogical practices and the multiplication of perspectives and subjectivities. By going beyond notions of ‘feature sets’, ‘use cases’ and ‘affordances’ it provides a richer conceptual framework that helps us understand why some educational technologies are adopted and abandoned, some are creatively appropriated and used in unexpected ways, and others sink without trace. The article concludes with suggestions as to how current conditions in higher education, rather than constraining the development of educational technologies, might provide opportunities for these broader explorations to be initiated.