Engestrom et al. (1999) Perspectives on Activity Theory (2)

Further notes on Engestrom, Y., Miettinen, R.  and Punamaki, R. L. eds. (1999) Perspectives on Activity Theory,Cambridge,CambridgeUniversity Press.

Brostrom (1999) writes, ‘In play activity children very often go beyond the current contextual frame. Children not only appropriate the social surrounding world, they also make unexpected creative changes. Observations of play in preschools indicate that children not only adopt [sic] to and internalize the local institutional culture but expand beyond it as well. Through this activity new knowledge, skills, and actions often appear’ (p. 251). It would be interesting to substitute ‘people’ for ‘children’ in this passage, as creativity can emerge from seemingly aimless activity undertaken by children or adults. New knowledge and understanding can occur serendipitously, or when boundaries are weakened or removed. Therefore, while Activity Theory relates to activity that is purposeful, the process and development of play suggests that Expansive Learning (Engestrom 1987, 2001) can happen, and may happen more easily, without goal-directed action. As Hakkarainen (1999) notes, ‘There is no necessity to produce any concrete results or attain previously formulated goals in play’ (p. 234). The products of play, because they are not pre-figured, can be new, and revelatory,

Brostrom also writes, ‘If the teachers make room for children’s creative activities, they themselves will generate such expanding elements. The opposite will occur if the teachers put too much structure into the play. Expansive play will not appear’ (p. 261). Again, we can apply this to learning generally, rather than to the learning of children in particular. Expansive Learning requires an appropriate environment in which to flourish. The more learning is controlled, the fewer the outlets for creativity, though it is unlikely that it could ever be suppressed entirely.

Lompscher (1999) follows Brostrom’s analysis by summarising conventional learning: ‘in most classrooms students are objects of didactic actions aimed at the transmission of knowledge and skills (and norms and values, as well) from the teacher’s head (or from the textbook) to the pupils’ heads’ (p. 266). Conventional learning, therefore, obstructs creativity. By giving learners (and workers) more creative opportunities, educational institutions and workplaces create more opportunities for the creation of new knowledge and understanding. The implications for this approach, as far as Activity Theory is concerned, is that it challenges the role of the ‘Object’ node, and may encourage a new configuration of the structure.

References

Brostrom, S. (1999) ‘Drama games with 6-year-old children: Possibilities and limitations,’ in Y. Engestrom, R. Miettinen and R.-L. Punamaki (eds.) Perspectives on Activity Theory,Cambridge,CambridgeUniversity Press.

Engeström, Y. (1987) Learning by expanding: an activity-theoretical approach to developmental research.Helsinki, Orienta-Konsultit Oy. http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Paper/Engestrom/expanding/toc.htm (accessed 8 July 2011).

Engestrom, Y. (2001) ‘Expansive Learning at Work: toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization,’ Journal of Education and Work, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 133-156.

Hakkarainen, P. (1999) ‘Play and motivation,’ in Y. Engestrom, R. Miettinen and R.-L. Punamaki (eds.) Perspectives on Activity Theory,Cambridge,CambridgeUniversity Press.

Lompscher, J. (1999) ‘Activity formation as an alternative strategy of instruction’ ’ in Y. Engestrom, R. Miettinen and R.-L. Punamaki (eds.) Perspectives on Activity Theory,Cambridge,CambridgeUniversity Press.

Langemeyer (2006) ‘Contradictions in Expansive Learning…’

Langemeyer argues that technology has both changed the division of labour in work environments, and has fuelled the lifelong learning agenda: ‘For operating machines, physical strength and manual skills are required above all for the actual work process. However today, as a result of the implementation of information technologies (IT), work activities have become increasingly intellectual… [T]he former division of labour has become more or less obsolete… A new less hierarchical organisation of work gives more autonomy and responsibility to the employee and requires collaboration’.

Langemeyer argues the lifelong learning agenda is about maintaining employability, and the responsibility for lifelong learning falls to the individual learner. However, this new activity system creates its own contradictions for workers: ‘they have little or no influence on either the conditions (global competition, rationalisation processes and the tight labour market) under which they are supposed to learn, or the purposes for which they are supposed to learn. This means that although more familiar restrictions of institutionalised education… have more or less been abolished, other constraints have come up that affect these self-dependent forms of learning.’ Hence, lifelong learning is not necessarily liberating or autonomous, but is determined by the market for labour.

In addition, Langemeyer argues that assessment creates the conditions in which people learn to the assessment only: ‘Rather than seeking autonomy, the achievement of good grades becomes the priority objective. Thus, education, although it provides a wealth of possibilities to learn, often fails to generate sustainable learning.’ Hence, the context and purpose of learning are out of the learner’s control, and the structure of learning, focused on measurable outcomes, limits the potential, full value of learning.

Furthermore, learning within the context of employment imposes additional restrictions, because the employer holds proprietorship over the learning, and a learner who collaborates is potentially diluting the labour market value of their learning by sharing it with others, as Langemeyer found in her interviews with trainees: ‘Several trainees were able to benefit from collaboration and support in forums, newsgroups, and mailing lists in the Internet. But this was undermined by the fact that they had to consider everything they had learned as company-owned “know- how”. Otherwise they would have been violating an unwritten rule that one must be loyal to the firm and its strategies to compete in the market. Thus, they had to deal with knowledge as a form of capital rather than a common good, and so refused to share their knowledge and their experience with others.’

Hence, Langemeyer argues, workplaces are nominally more cooperative, with technology (the tool in Engestrom’s terms [1987, 2001]) causing a change in the traditional division of labour. However, cooperation serves the purpose of work productivity, and hence learning is targeted towards this end, thus generating new contradictions within a new activity system, as subjects may be less inclined to pool knowledge, as the rules of the community (the workplace) dictate, and thereby limit, the content of the purpose of the learning. Hierarchies in the workplace may be less explicit than before, but are no less pervasive.

References
Engeström, Y. (1987) Learning by expanding: an activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki, Orienta-Konsultit Oy. http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Paper/Engestrom/expanding/toc.htm (accessed 10 June 2011).

Engestrom, Y. (2001) ‘Expansive Learning at Work: toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization,’ Journal of Education and Work, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 133-156.

Langemeyer, I. (2006) ‘Contradictions in Expansive Learning: Towards a Critical Analysis of Self-dependent Forms of Learning in Relation to Contemporary Socio-technological Change,’ Forum: Qualitative Social Research, vol. 7, no. 1.

Allman et al. (2003) ‘After the Box People…’

Allman et al. argue, from a Marxist perspective, that education plays a key role in perpetuating capitalist society. They see the underperformance of working class students, relative to their middle class peers, as an inevitability given the function of education in capitalist society, and see research that identifies the relative underperformance of working class students as ‘non-research’ (p. 2).

Where Allman et al.’s analysis overlaps with Activity Theory (Engestrom 1987, 2001) is in relation to dialectics, but Allman et al. centre their analysis on the primarily economic and political concept of class. They argue, ‘All dialectical contradictions are internal relations’ (p. 6) which links with Activity Theory in the sense that Engestrom argues conflicts occur internally between nodes in an activity system. Allman et al. develop their argument by suggesting that one of the antagonists in a dialectical relationship benefits from the status quo and will thus have an interest in sustaining it, whereas the other party can only marginally improve its circumstances within the existing relationship and will therefore have an interest in getting rid of the relationship. Engestrom’s analysis is less interested in the balance of power in conflicts between individual nodes.

Allman et al., citing Rikowski, also see tension within the subject: ‘We are social beings incorporating antithetical social drives and forces’ (Rikowski 2001, p. 20, cited in Allman et al. 2003, p. 18). Where Engestrom sees the subject as a node within a system in which conflict is inevitable, Allman et al. see conflict inhering within the subject. Moreover, Allman et al. cite Merrifield’s analysis, which argues that ‘class is always a dynamic process, an intricate battle of roles and relationships’ (Merrifield 2001, pp. 74-75, cited in Allman et al. 2003, p. 21). Applying the Activity Theory framework to Merrifield’s analysis, class itself becomes an activity system, with its own social nodes and inevitable conflicts.

Allman et al. argue conflict between labour and capital is inevitable, as the wealth generated by people in their labour exceeds what they obtain for their labour, with the surplus being retained by the capitalist. They cite Marx in Volume 1 of Capital who, writing before the advent of mass state education, identifies a structural feature of work which prevails irrespective of the kind of work being undertaken: ‘a school master is a productive worker when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his pupils, he works himself into the ground to enrich the owner of the school. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of a sausage factory, makes no difference to the relation’ (Marx 1867, p. 644, cited in Allman et al. 2003, p. 8).

Viewing education and society through an explicitly political lens, Allman et al. see the expansion in higher education as serving an end of capitalism: ‘One of capital’s needs, on a global scale, is millions of young people with a similar skill level – often a very high level. This is not because there are jobs for all of these people. Rather, their level of skills will make them eligible to compete with one another for the jobs that do require this level of skill, thereby, as is true of all competition, driving down the value of their labour-powers expressed as wages’ (p. 9).

Allman et al. argue that educators can present alternative value systems to students, calling their approach ‘revolutionary critical education.’ However, rather than lay down a template for how this new approach might look, they argue it is more ‘praxiological than prescored. The path is made by walking, as it were’ (p. 19). There is a further, and presumably unintentional, overlap with Engestrom in this regard, as his theory of Expansive Learning (1987, 2001) is centred on constructing new knowledge out of existing conflicts, but without the end of learning being known a priori.

That there are similarities between Allman et al.’s Marxist reading of education and Engestrom’s Activity Theory is not surprising, as Activity Theory has its roots in research undertaken in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. The modern link between the two may be found in Avis (2009) who argues that Engestrom eschews the political implications of his own analysis.

References
Allman, P., McLaren, P. & Rikowski, G. (2003) ‘After the Box People: The Labour-Capital Relation as Class Constitution and its Consequences for Marxist Educational Theory and Human Resistance,’ in J. Freeman-Moir & A. Scott (Eds.) Yesterday’s Dreams: International and Critical Perspectives on Education and Social Class, Christchurch, NZ, Canterbury University Press. Also available at http://gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/pages/mclaren/Publications/afterthebox_AllmanMcLarenRikowski.pdf (accessed 7 June 2011).

Avis, J. (2009) ‘Transformation or transformism: Engestrom’s version of activity theory?’ Educational Review, vol. 61, no. 2, pp. 151-165.

Engeström, Y. (1987) Learning by expanding: an activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki, Orienta-Konsultit Oy. http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Paper/Engestrom/expanding/toc.htm (accessed 28 April 2011).

Engestrom, Y. (2001) ‘Expansive Learning at Work: toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization,’ Journal of Education and Work, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 133-156.

Marx, K. (1867 [1976]) Capital: a critique of political economy – Volume 1, Harmondsworth, Penguin.

Merrifield, A. (2001) ‘Metro Marxism, or Old and Young Marx in the City,’ Socialism and Democracy, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 63-84.

Rikowski, G. (2001) ‘After the Manuscript Broke Off: Thoughts on Marx, Social Class and Education,’ a paper presented at the British Sociological Association Education Group, King’s College London, 23 June.

Literature round-up

Awaiting the reports on the pilot study, I’m catching up on reading. I’m also preparing my paper for the European Conference on E-Learning.

The subject node in an activity system is particularly problematic because contradiction can be inscribed within it. If there is a gap between the subject’s use value, the functional value of what they produce, and the subject’s exchange value, the wealth their labour creates for their employer (which exceeds the subject’s rewards for their labour), then some contradiction is created for the subject. Daniels and Warmington (2007) argue the subject node in the activity system is under-theorised, as the system takes insufficient account of the relations within and between subjects.

Part of education’s function is shaped by the economic and political context within which education occurs. Hence, for example, the Education Act of 1870 existed primarily to make UK subjects functioning units within a fully-fledged industrial economy (regulated hours of attendance, regulated conduct within the institution, punishment for transgression). Rikowski (2002) argues, ‘General education… nurtures those attitudes and personality traits pertinent to working in capitalist enterprises in general’ (p. 20).

Activity Theory presupposes that activity is purposeful. There is no activity system without an object. Engestrom and Kerosuo (2007) argue that Activity Theory ‘is strongly committed to pedagogical and interventionist actions to facilitate and change learning’ (p.337). Hence, as a practical approach to learning it is not about waiting for change to happen via the internal pressures of contradictions, but, instead, provoking change through an analysis of activity systems and the contradictions between their various nodes.

Activity Theory argues that human activity is mediated through tools, a term broadly defined to include signs and codes as well as physical artefacts. However, and as with subjects, the tools node is complex, as Engestrom and Blackler (2005) argue (using objects to signify tools, not objects to signify outcomes): ‘First, it would be a mistake to assume that objects are “just given”; objects are constructed by actors…. Second, at the same time it would also be a mistake to assume that objects are constructed arbitrarily on the spot; objects have histories and built-in affordances, they resist and “bite back”’ (p. 310). On the one hand, meanings for objects (tools) are constructed by users through usage, but on the other hand objects have a back-story created by their previous uses, which are likely to exert an influence on how they are used subsequently. Using an object in an unfamiliar way can provoke resistance.

A significant value and potential of Activity Theory is that it can expose contradictions in existing human activity, and posit alternatives. In this sense it is empowering, and can, potentially, resolve contradictions experienced within subjects. Rikowski (2002), placing his analysis within an explicitly political context, defines Marxism as a ‘promethean scream: we are everything, there are no gods, no superhuman forces. People are the sole creators, it is labour alone which constitutes social reality’ (p. 1).

References
Daniels, H. and Warmington, P. (2007) ‘Analysing third generation activity systems: labour-power, subject position and personal transformation,’ Journal of Workplace Learning, vol. 19, no. 6, pp. 377-391.

Engestrom, Y. and Blackler, F. (2005) ‘On the life of the object,’ Organization, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 307-330.

Engestrom, Y. and Kerosuo, H. (2007) ‘From workplace learning to inter-organizational learning and back: the contribution of activity theory,’ Journal of Workplace Learning, vol. 19, no. 6, pp.336-352.

Rikowski, G. (2002) ‘Methods for researching the social production of labour power in capitalism,’ University College Northampton School of Education research seminar, 7 March 2002.

Bringing in the Excluded?…

Nickson et al.’s article in the Journal of Education and Work (2003) contributes to the communities of practice discussion, because it explores potential barriers to entry to a community, before the individual can even be considered a peripheral participant: ‘A key consideration is the possibility that certain potential employees will be excluded from these “style” labour market jobs, and indeed more general employment involving interactive service work. This exclusion arises firstly because employers determine who is aesthetically acceptable during recruitment and selection processes’ (p. 186).

The authors’ focus is the service industry, and the idea that applicants have to hold particular persona attributes before they can be allowed entrance to the community (Wenger and Lave [1991] are interested in what happens within the community, but less interested in what the individual has to do in order to gain entry). In addition, the authors pick up on Nolan’s (2001) concept of the Hourglass Economy, characterised by ‘an expansion of high skill, high wage, high value added work at the top end of the labour market and the expansion of low skill, low wage, low value added work at the bottom end’ (Nickson et al, p. 187).

In common with Jewson (2007), the authors have a dystopian vision: ‘there will be cyber workers who enjoy their time musing in and able to afford high price lattes and cappuccinos at the style bars, cafes and restaurants. And they will want these places, its hardware (that is the physical environment) and software (that is the people serving them), to be pleasing to them’ (p. 191).

One of the questions explored in the article relates to who is most likely to gain entrance to these communities of practice. For the authors, following-on from the argument of Langlois and Lucas (2002) the role of higher education is important in this regard: ‘Students who have access to higher education, in particular, may undergo a process of socialisation that allows them to further refine and develop the cultural capital which may be inherent anyway from their largely middle-class backgrounds’ (p. 194).

The authors attempt a balanced conclusion, noting that ‘hospitality and retail can offer rapid career progression, often without formal qualifications’ and suggest that individuals would benefit from cultivating ‘masks for tasks’ (p. 201). Individuals adjusting their personae to suit particular contexts is probably as old as human civilisation, but possessing a niche set of attributes as a precursor to entering a certain employment sector is a marked feature of the Hourglass Economy, and the correlation between those attributes and a particular social class gives an advantage to the class that has been socialised in those behavioural patterns from infancy. Service sector communities of practice can offer rapid centripetal progress, but the gatekeepers to those communities exercise considerable power, leading to closed communities of practice, or maybe Lodges of Practice.

References

Langlois, M. and Lucas, R. (2002) ‘Knowledge and skill in the labour process: student workers in hospitality’ 20th Annual International Labour Process Conference, April, University of Strathclyde.

Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Nickson, D., Warhurst, C., Cullen, A.M. and Watt, A. (2003) ‘Bringing in the Excluded? Aesthetic labour, skills and training in the “new” economy’ Journal of Education and Work, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 185-203.

Nolan, P. (2001) ‘Shaping things to come’ People Management, 27 December, pp. 30-31.

Communities of practice in their place

Another chapter from Communities of Practice: critical perspectives (2007).

The impact of the internet on learning, teaching and working has been widely discussed, but in this chapter Nick Jewson is more interested in changes to physical working and learning environments as communities of practice, and what these changes might imply for the role of work in our lives as a whole.

Jewson points out that Lave and Wenger’s original formulation of the communities of practice model did not require the community to be a physical one; co-presence is not a necessary requirement for a community of practice. However, while acknowledging the importance of virtual environments, Jewson’s argument takes a different focus: ‘A major shift is occurring in the physical spaces of work alongside the emergence of virtual work space’ (p. 160). Drawing upon the work of Felstead et al (2005) he suggest that the panopticon is replaced by the polyopticon, where everyone is able to see everyone else in open plan offices (or, for that matter, rooms full of desktop computers in H.E.I.s).

Jewson argues that the underlying design vision is ‘intended to foster serendipitous cross-fertilization of thoughts and perspectives’ (p. 163). Networking becomes a more-or-less unavoidable consequence of inhabiting the same place and, while some exchanges may go nowhere, others may develop into new initiatives.

Within this framework ‘performance of personality’ becomes a ‘key career asset’, thereby linking Jewson’s argument with the aesthetic labour idea cited in a previous chapter of the same book.

The implications of Jewson’s argument are significant, because he suggests that individuals have to have ‘a chameleon-like quality, involving the capacity to switch between sharply contrasting locations, moving into and out of quite different ways of behaving’ (p. 167). He goes on to argue that work now permeates other areas of an individual’s existence: ‘after a long period in which employment relationships and tasks were largely confined behind the walls of factories and offices, work is now spreading out across time and space. It is intruding into, and even colonizing, other spheres of life, such as family and leisure’ (p. 167).

Demarcations between work and leisure were not pronounced in pre-industrial societies. In particular, leisure was not marked off into a particular space, nor commoditised as something to be bought with wages. Industrial societies need a firm demarcation between work and leisure, as people leave their homes and attend workplaces where their conduct is regulated, to an extent in some cases that toilet breaks are monitored. The advent of mass computer technology prompted a perception that people would have to work far less and manage greater leisure time, but this has simply not happened. Instead, people work on public transport and in their own homes, as well as at formal workplaces. It seems fair to say that work has permeated into other spheres.

Jewson’s is the most dystopian chapter in Communities of practice: critical perspectives. Private space is more difficult to attain at work and at home (though perhaps not for the over 30% of households in the UK that are now occupied by one person only [can this be linked to a need to attain some privacy in a socio-economic world that increasingly forbids it?]). Furthermore, in the public space of work, performance becomes a basis for career advancement. Consequently, Jewson’s chameleon-like quality becomes a necessary strategy to enable an effective work and non-work personae, capable of making emotional as well as economic decisions.

References

Felstead, A., Jewson, N. and Waters, S. (2005) Changing Places of Work, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Jewson, N. (2007) ‘Communities of practice in their place: some implications of changes in the spatial location of work’, in Hughes, J., Jewson, N. and Unwin, L. (eds.) Communities of Practice: critical perspectives, Abingdon, Routledge.

English apprenticeship from past to present

Another chapter from Communities of Practice: critical perspectives (2007).

Unwin identifies a tension inherent in the communities of practice model: ‘the survival and reproduction of communities of practice depends on newcomers but, at the same time, their arrival threatens the role of old-timers’ (p. 112). Therefore, communities of practice learning is not necessarily smoothly centripetal. Instead, tension is inscribed within it. Does it follow therefrom that the new entrant is axiomatically threatening? Not necessarily, but as the entrant to the community forms their identity within that community, a perception of their identity as, ultimately, either threat or asset will be formed by the other community members. The new entrant therefore needs to be mindful of the identity they are creating, in order to gain acceptance.

Unwin also nuances her discussion through inclusion of what Nickson et al (2003) call ‘aesthetic labour’, in which ‘“looking good” or “sounding right” are the most overt manifestations of aesthetic labour. In essence, with aesthetic labour, employers are seeking employees who can portray the firm’s image through their work, and at the same time appeal to the sense of the customer for those firms’ commercial benefit’ (p. 113). Acceptance into a community of practice is not simply a question of technical competence, but of cultural acclimatisation. Therefore, the new entrant either requires an a priori identity which is in harmony with the ideal identity desired by the institution, or the new entrant has sufficient flexibility to shape their identity to the context they find themselves in.

It seems, therefore, that a lot is demanded of the new entrant, who needs to be concerned about how they are perceived by established figures. A measure of acceptance by the wider community precedes a willingness to induct the new entrant effectively; the new entrant may spend a long time on the periphery, or may be excluded if they do not acquire an identity that the community finds acceptable. The entrant who does have an identity that finds favour with the institution is at a clear advantage.

It may seem, therefore, that the new entrant is best advised to ‘not rock the boat’ and to ensure they gain acceptance, but this makes innovation harder because there is pressure to conform to an existing culture, not challenge it. Maybe the edges of communities of practice need to be the most tolerant spaces, rather than the most well fortified.

References

Nickson, D., Warhurst, C., Cullen, A.M. and Watt, A. (2003) ‘Bringing in the excluded? Aesthetic labour, skills and training in the “new” economy’, Journal of Education and Work, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 185-203.

Unwin, L. (2007) ‘English apprenticeship from past to present’ in Hughes, J., Jewson, N. and Unwin, L. (eds.) Communities of Practice: critical perspectives, Abingdon, Routledge.

Private H.E. in the UK

I spent yesterday at a conference at Regent’s College: ‘The Growth of Private and for Profit HE providers in the UK: Competition or Collaboration?’ The conference was based on a report commissioned by Universities U.K..

The surprise of the conference was realising how much private provision already exists within the H.E. sector. Glynne Stanfield of the Eversheds legal firm pointed out that there are already 75 United Sates universities with sites in the UK and, while some of these presently cater only for US students on overseas programmes, the number is likely to increase. In addition, Polish universities have set up sites in London, enabling Polish citizens living and working in the UK to study.

The Principal of Regents College, Prof Aldwyn Cooper, argued for the removal of the fees cap altogether. I heard the same argument from a Vice-Principal at King’s College London when I worked there. This issue is not far off critical mass, but questions of fair and equal access to H.E. are not in the foreground of the discussion.

The last keynote was David Willetts, Tory Shadow Minister for H.E.. He stated that H.E.I.s would increasingly specialise, focusing on their strengths, and not offering every subject. Lord Mandelson said the same thing at the Dearing conference in February. So, whoever the government is, we’re likely to be looking at similar changes.

I came away from the conference thinking that H.E. buildings are starting to resemble portals or (pejoratively) supermarkets, in which the consumer purchases the college brand and product of their choice (assuming they can afford it). The metaphor is apt for a period when approaches to H.E., from governments and students alike, are predominantly utilitarian.

The alignment of H.E. with goods and services makes a lot of us feel uneasy (and education is distinct from goods and services in the sense that the outcome is dependent on the input of the purchaser), but are supermarkets necessarily bad? I like the thought of boxes of organic veg, but it’s quicker and far cheaper to go to Tesco’s, and the job still gets done. Piety looks good, but it’s Brecht who argues, ‘Give us bread first, ethics later.’

On seeing Lord Mandelson

I saw Lord Mandelson’s keynote address at the Dearing conference at Nottingham University (11/02/10.) My own feeling about his speech was that it had three key themes.

Specialisation: Lord Mandelson sees H.E.I.s pursuing distinctive missions. He elaborated on this point to suggest that not all universities should offer all subjects. Instead, universities should become more specialised, pursuing areas where they have established excellence.

Utility: Lord Mandelson stressed the quality of service to students, given that the user will be expected to contribute financially. He also emphasised the link between H.E. and employment. He stressed economically essential disciplines rather than a place at university per se. In the Q and A session after his speech he referred to the student as ‘the customer.’

Flexibility: According to Lord Mandelson, more students will get a degree while they are working, and must have opportunities to do so. Therefore, H.E.I.s will have to change. He made the point that students are getting older, demographically, and therefore the traditional, three year, conveyor belt style H.E. model will need to be more flexible. He mentioned, ‘Flexible and good value classes that can fit around work.’ In addition, he saw diversity in the sector taking numerous forms; foundation degrees, employer co-funding of courses, part-time study, and shorter, more intensive courses. He pointed out that demand for university places will exceed supply this year, and that some would-be students will not get a place. He suggested F.E. colleges and apprenticeships as an alternative educational route.

So that was that. He came, he spoke, he went. And not a whiff of sulphur.

The City and labour

I was at a Society for Research into Higher Education event yesterday, exploring the experiences of Business Studies students.

The most enjoyable speaker on the day was Prof Stefano Harney of Queen Mary, University of London. He posited an idea called ‘the exhausted student,’ whereby students have so many demands on their time, both economic and social, that deep learning becomes difficult, if not impossible. His idea was anchored in Althusser’s theory of over-determination.

In the Q&A session, I suggested that it was ever thus. In the UK, a main purpose of the Education Act of 1870, which made education compulsory for 5-13 year olds, was to prepare them to be functioning adults in an industrial economy. The outer manifestations of an education system linked to economic production change from generation to generation, but the structural principle replicates.

Prof Harney made another very interesting point, which is that business studies students are closer to labour than capital. The students come to degree programmes looking to gain skills which will prepare them for work. Personally, I am in charge of learning and teaching at an institution that prepares students for work in the City. In terms of self-perception, I would imagine that the students see themselves as part of capital, but if they could be encouraged to think of themselves as part of labour, then this basic shift could feed through into their conduct. If they think of themselves as part of labour, and networked to other people engaged in labour, they might be more likely to undertake actions which serve the interests of labour rather than a reified capital (the latter perception having arguably contributed to the recent crash). This won’t happen as simple cause and effect, but the perception change could take us somewhere interesting.

I will encourage lecturers to get their students to think of themselves as part of labour. I will also provide them with tin hats.