This article aims to analyze how the so-called ‘pedagogy of work’ attempts to answer the challenges of unemployment and job insecurity characterizing the labor market in contemporary society. The authors reflect on the concepts of nihilist pedagogies and the ‘end of work’ by distinguishing two approaches: an active and a passive nihilist pedagogy. The passive approach, based on resignation, is opposed to an active attitude in which labor pedagogy offers tools to address current challenges. The authors support the idea that (...) pedagogy as a human-improving science cannot adopt the position of passive nihilism in interpreting work in contemporary society. To better understand the dynamics related to job insecurity and corrective solutions by pedagogy, the authors analyzed the thoughts of three contemporary philosophers: Zygmunt Bauman, Jeremy Rifkin, and Dominique Méda. These authors redefined the concept of work in connection with the transformations because of globalization, the advent of new communication technologies, and digital work. These changes have redefined not only the concept of work but also the models of work pedagogy in the Western world: capitalism and Marxism. Considering the current challenges, the pedagogy of work needs to be rethought, starting from the problem of employability and focusing on the new occupations in demand in the Internet age. By integrating ideas on interpreting work from the theories of Bauman, Rifkin, and Méda, it is possible to propose a pedagogy of work in the age of change and to outline possible values of education inspired by it. (shrink)

This essay reviews three books that engage the writings of Michel Foucault. It examines to what extent and in what ways Foucault has been made to ‘work’ in educational practice and research. It suggests that Foucault has been narrowly appropriated in a way that is, ultimately, ironic—namely, as either liberating us from or entrapping us within our culture’s structures and practices. This essay concludes by suggesting that Foucault’s work was an attempt to avoid and subvert exactly such binaries.

As contemporary universities become increasingly deregulated and neoliberalised structures, how is grassroots student political organising to adapt? What role could student organisers, working in coalition with academics, unions and communities, play in shaping the Future University? We argue that student organising has an even more crucial place in the site of the neoliberal university, working against both the corporatisation of the contemporary university, as well as rising neoliberal conditions in the broader communities within which tertiary education is embedded. These conditions, (...) without doubt, have the potential to stultify student movements by burdening students with ever-increasing debt, and packaging degrees as a commodity with a market-determined value. However, we argue, the neoliberalisation of education also engenders an opportunity for students in shaping the Future University, through grassroots advocacy for staff working conditions, and for critical pedagogies that enable the integration of transformative social justice movements with academic theory. For us, the Future University is a space that nourishes critical and creative thinking, and produces students that are able to integrate theory with radical praxis. However, for this to be realised, the ideological function of the university, in justifying and naturalising hegemonic power structures, and the very meaning of public education, must be exposed and critiqued from the ground up. (shrink)

What is it about conspiracies that make them so attractive and easy to believe yet difficult to debunk? Is the epistemological process of debunking the best or only pedagogy for dislodging conspiracies? Are all conspiracies irrational and/or unverifiable? To what extent, if at all, do today’s social media conspiracies differ from conspiracies in the past?

This article explores issues associated with schooling and political justice. Such issues are understood in light of the contention surrounding howWestern schooling contexts might best represent marginalised groups—in ways that accord them a political voice. The significance of group identity politics is explored drawing on international debates associated with ethnically segregated schooling. A postcolonial theorising of group identity highlights the ways in which segregated schooling can both support and undermine politically just representation for marginalised students. This theorising draws attention to (...) the problematic notion of voice in linking representation to identity in reductionist ways. The arguments presented point to the significance of people and their politics, rather than their membership to a particular identity group, in pursuing equity for marginalised groups. The article argues the imperative of understanding group identity as an aspect of negotiated social practice that can be drawn on in strategic and critical ways to address matters of political injustice. (shrink)