The Decentring of the Traditional University

The Future of (Self) Education in Virtually Figured Worlds

Russell Francis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781135161255
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Decentring of the Traditional University provides a unique perspective on the implications of media change for learning and literacy that allows us to peer into the future of (self) education. Each chapter draws on socio-cultural and activity theory to investigate how resourceful students are breaking away from traditional modes of instruction and educating themselves through engagement with a globally interconnected web-based participatory culture.

The argument is developed with reference to the findings of an ethnographic study that focused on university students' informal uses of social and participatory media. Each chapter draws attention to the shifting locus of agency for regulating and managing learning and describes an emergent genre of learning activity. For example, Francis explores how students are cultivating and nurturing globally distributed funds of living knowledge that transcend institutional boundaries and describes students learning through serious play in virtually figured worlds that support radically personalised lifelong learning agendas. These stories also highlight the challenges and choices learners confront as they struggle to negotiate the faultlines of media convergence and master the new media literacies required to exploit the full potential of Web 2.0 as a learning resource.

Overall, this compelling argument proposes that we are witnessing a period of historic systemic change in the culture of university learning as an emergent web-based participatory culture starts to disrupt and displace a top-down culture industry model of education that has evolved around the medium of the book. As a result, Francis argues that we need to re-conceive higher education as an identity-project in which students work on their projective identities (or imagined future selves) through engagement with both formal and informal learning activities.

1 From the Culture Industry to Participatory Culture

Deliberate learning involves engaging with the exposition, orchestrated discussion, research, systematic annotation, the focused reading of text, and a variety of other directed activities that many students may not always find easy to mobilize and manage independently. Sites of formal education have evolved structures that sustain and coordinate such activities with a scaffold of cultural resources: timetables, curricular, designed spaces, discourse rituals, and so on.

(Crook and Light 2002: 158)

But what happens when learners gain access to tools and resources that afford new opportunities to learn which are not dependent on the traditional structures of formal education? This book investigates the various ways learners are now appropriating digital tools and resources to break away from traditional modes of learning and instruction and advancing radically personalized learning agendas in quasi-virtual contexts of their own figuration.

Understanding Media Change: from the Culture Industry to Participatory Culture

To illuminate what I perceive as the central shift in the locus of agency for managing and regulating learning it is helpful to understand why the once-dominant trope of the culture industry (associated with mid-twentieth century conceptions of mass media culture) has given way to the trope of participatory culture (associated with new media). Used as conceptual tools, I believe these tropes can direct the attention of educationalists to some of the most significant implications of media change for learning, cognition and the future of education.

The culture industry is a term that acquired meaning in the work of Adorno and Horkheimer (1972) to describe a monolithic, centralized and top-down mode of cultural production.¹ For Adorno (1975), traditional expressions of popular culture such as the folk ballad percolated upwards from grassroots communities and, therefore, expressed the sentiments, anxieties and aspirations of ordinary people. In contrast, the products of the culture industry are ‘commodities through and through’, manufactured, marketed and sold, like hamburgers, at passive consumers ‘more or less according to a plan’ (p. 31). A model that has parallels in what Freire (1985) described as a transmission or ‘piggy bank’ model of education in which knowledge is deposited into empty vessels. From this perspective, the production and consumption of cultural products cannot be considered independently from strategies of power and control. Indeed, Adorno asserts that ‘the culture industry intentionally integrates its consumers from above’ (1975: 31). The implication is that post-industrial society is profoundly dehumanizing; a sentiment expressed in dozens of statements. For example, Adorno argues: ‘the concoctions of the culture industry are neither guides for a blissful life, nor a new art of moral responsibility, but rather exhortations to toe the line, behind which stand the most powerful interests’ (p. 36).

The grand theorizing of these Frankfurt School theorists engages in a political and ideological debate in which the mass media are conceptualized as obstacles to achieving a more democratic, just and equitable society. Today, with the benefit of hindsight, these somewhat melodramatic discourses – characterized by the recurrent themes of victimization, subjugation and manipulation – read like politically motivated post-Marxist ‘critical pessimism’, very much a product of its time, designed to highlight the enduring inequalities and exploitation of late capitalism. Nevertheless, whether one agrees or not with the anti-enlightenment invective, the work of the Frankfurt School theorists captures something essential about the centralization of power and state control over knowledge and culture that occurred in the mid-twentieth century.

Adorno’s critique of a top-down centralized culture industry resonates in a post-Marxist critique of centralized education systems and formal schooling. For example, in Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs, Willis (1978) depicts a group of working class ‘lads’ in a British secondary modern school resisting and rejecting the values of their middle class teachers. Instead they embrace the working class values of their lifeworld communities but thereby condemn themselves to a life of hard manual labour. Significantly, within the culture that Willis describes, access to knowledge, qualifications and the professions are regulated and controlled by a centralized establishment. Further, the hierarchical and regimented structures of forcm the ‘lads’ ’ ties with folk culture, craft apprenticeships and informal modes of community learning. In this respect, a culture industry model of education is profoundly dehumanizing and diminishes learner agency. Nevertheless, not all theorists – not even those working within a post-Marxist paradigm – have bought into the culture industry metaphor.

Enzensberger (2004 [1974]) argues that ‘Marxists have not understood the consciousness industry and have been aware only of its bourgeois-capitalist dark-side and not of its socialist possibilities’ (p. 82).² For Enzensberger, the ‘open secret of the electronic media, the decisive political factor – which has been waiting, suppressed or crippled, for its moment to come – is their mobilizing power’ (p. 69).³ He is referring to the first generation of electronic media: ‘news satellites, colour television, cable relay television, cassettes, videotape, videotape recorders, video phones, stereophony, laser techniques, electrostatic reproduction processes, electronic high speed printing . . .’ (p. 68). For Enzensberger the new electronic media are constantly forming new kinds of connections both with each other and with older media like printing, radio and film, and quite unlike the mass media that inform Adorno’s culture industry. The central thrust of his argument is to debunk the ‘possibility of total control of such a system’ (p. 70). For Enzensberger the new electronic media are making possible mass participation in a ‘social and socialized productive process, the practical means of which are in the hands of the masses themselves’ (p. 69).

From this perspective, the content and meanings transmitted are controlled from the centre through media like television and film deny the possibility of an exchange between transmitter and receiver. In radio, however, Enzensberger foresees the new possibilities:

Radio would be the most wonderful means of communication imaginable in public life, a huge linked system – that is to say, it would be such if it were capable not only of transmitting but of receiving, of allowing the listener not only to hear but to speak, and did not isolate him but brought him into contact.

(Enzensberger 2004 [1974]: 70)

His comments seem almost ludicrously utopian. However, these words appear to anticipate the vision that has inspired many attempting to develop social and participatory media forms that allow individuals to create, share and communicate with others around the world.

In Technologies of Freedom, Pool (1983) makes a similar case. For Pool the media itself is neutral. Yet, when the means of communication are ‘decentralized’ and made ‘easily available’, they can be appropriated by marginal groups to serve diverse agendas:

Freedom is fostered when the means of communication are dispersed, decentralized, and easily available, as are printing presses or microcomputers. Central control is more likely when the means of communication are concentrated, monopolized, and scarce, as are great networks.

(Pool 1983: 11)

In this respect, he foresaw that new media would become a site of struggle as different groups attempted to appropriate the means of communication and dissemination of information for their own ends.

The notion of a culture as a ‘site of struggle’ between the dominant and dispossessed is central to the thinking of Raymond Williams (1961, 1983, 2003) and the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies.⁴ For example, a group of cultural theorists collected in Resistance through Rituals (Hall and Jefferson 1976) highlight the diverse ways that the disempowered groups, particularly post-war youth subcultures, resisted being subjugated by a hegemonic establishment. These theorists attempt to understand how grassroots ‘folk’ cultures maintain a distinctive cultural identity, appropriating, subverting and resisting the available semiotic resources to resist the values of the establishment. Interestingly, in the work of media theorist Henry Jenkins, this mode of thinking has become important for understanding the role of new media, new technologies and community formation in the age of the Internet.⁵

Jenkins charts the evolution of the mediascape through successive phases of technological innovation that correspond to the titles of his three seminal works. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (Jenkins 1992) explores the practice of TV fans as they sample and remix video footage from popular TV series like Star Trek to retell stories from marginal or deviant perspectives. In this volume fan fiction is produced invariably for comic effect and remains confined to a niche subcultural practice. In Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture Jenkins (2006b) discusses how fans start to appropriate digital technologies to ‘poach’, rework, and share creative work over the World Wide Web. In this collection, we see grassroots activists appropriating blogging technologies to challenge the authority of traditional print-based newspapers and the emergence of new practices, such as ‘ad-busting’, that threaten the hegemony of corporate rule.⁶ In short, participatory culture signifies a world in which audiences start to play an active role in shaping, subverting and remaking the media they consume. In his latest work Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Jenkins (2006a) starts to conceptualize a media environment in which audience participation is recognized and embraced as valuable resource. In this respect convergence culture might be regarded as the dialectical synthesis of culture industry and participatory culture. From this perspective, the tensions and contradictions that characterize convergence culture are somewhat inevitable.

The central movement is to chart the rise of participatory culture from the margins to the mainstream, from the subcultural skirmishes with the culture industry, typically described using metaphors of ‘poaching’ or ‘pilfering’, to a ‘central resource’ that might be used to mobilize the voters in a presidential campaign. Indeed, as participatory culture moves from the periphery to the centre it becomes a cultural force to be reckoned with, a force that established institutions can no longer afford to ignore. Moreover, participatory culture threatens to disrupt the revenue streams, political structures and laws regulating media consumption upon which the power of these institutions depend. The devastating effect that the Napster and Kazaar file-sharing communities had on the record industry supports this thesis (Battelle 2006). Further evidence might be discerned through an analysis of the panicked reaction of the telecommunications industry to the sudden appearance of Skype.

The rise and enormous popularity of Web 2.0 technologies such as Wikipedia, My Space, Friendster, Flickr and Facebook tend to support Jenkins’ claims. These tools support the sharing of user generated content and the formation of thousands of online special interest groups. Statistics confirm that the use of Wikipedia (the free online encyclopedia produced and edited by its own users) have rocketed whilst use of Encarta (Microsoft’s leading commercial online encyclopedia) has gradually declined (Madden and Fox 2006: 3). Similarly, statistical data that illustrate the massive popularity of social software sites tend to confirm the trend. Indeed, Madden and Fox (2006: 5) argue that ‘the beating heart of the Internet has always been its ability to leverage our social connections’, adding ‘social networking sites like My Space, Facebook and Friendster struck a powerful social chord at the right time with the right technology’.

The broader impact of these cultural shifts is widespread yet uncertain. For Jenkins, no institution appears unaffected. He highlights the way digital technologies empower ordinary consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate and re-circulate media content. As a consequence he argues that: ‘Powerful institutions and practices (law, religion, education, advertising, and politics, among them) are being redefined by a growing recognition of what is to be gained through fostering – or at least tolerating – participatory cultures’ (Jenkins 2006a: 2). Jenkins’ conceptualization of the tensions driving media change provides a powerful model for thinking through the challenges confronting education. It leads one to understand media change as a site of struggle between an emergent web-based participatory culture that affords a variety of informal learning opportunities and the top-down hierarchical structures of formal educational institutions (including schools, libraries and universities) that are now attempting to take stock. The challenge, for the researcher, is to understand the various ways media franchises, governments, business and educational institutions are attempting to contain or assimilate the rise of participatory cultures.

Literature that explores some of the implications of media change for education reveals how some of the tensions and contradictions are now manifest in the everyday experiences and practices of learners of all ages.

Media Change and Learning

The debate about the implications of media change for learning has tended to move from celebratory treatments that highlight the new learning opportunities afforded by young people’s expanding access to the Internet to more measured treatments that emphasize the challenges and choices confronting learners. For example, in The Rise of the Net Generation Tapscott’s (1998) ‘N-Geners’ are constructed as a uniformly capable, responsible and resourceful generation. They are inquisitive and curious when venturing into the brave new online world that contains ‘much of the world’s knowledge’, ‘millions of peers’, and ‘thrilling, enchanting and bizarre new experiences’. Indeed, the ‘Net’ is constructed as a utopian medium that might be regarded as an educational ‘good’ in every respect: ‘Time spent on the net is not passive time, it’s active time. It’s reading time. It’s investigation time. It’s skill development and problem solving time. It’s time analysing and evaluating. It’s composing your thoughts time. It’s writing time’ (Tapscott 1998: 7).

Survey studies have debunked some of the more utopian claims made by advocates of a uniform digital generation. Indeed, they draw our attention to the need to treat many of the claims made with caution. For example, interpreting the findings of a national survey called UK Children Go Online, Livingstone and Bober (2004) argue:

Children and young people are divided into those for whom the Internet is an increasingly rich, diverse, engaging and stimulating resource or growing importance in their lives, and those for whom it remains a narrow, unengaging if occasionally useful resource of rather less significance.

(Livingstone and Bober 2004: 5)

Later White’s (2007) Spire Project Survey highlighted the fact that people (of all ages) are now exploiting the affordances of emerging technologies like Wikipedia, YouTube, Skype, MSN Messenger and Second Life for a mixture of work, study, socializing and fun activities (see Figure 1.1). A key challenge for educational researchers has been to better understand how and why learners actually use these tools and resources in everyday life to support learning.

The most powerful studies in this field draw attention to the complex relationships between learning, motivation, identity and play in an emerging media landscape. For example, Facer et al. (2003) draw attention to the way a schoolboy called David grew into the role of the family ICT expert and was frequently called upon at school by teachers to sort out computer problems, and describe Karen’s frustrated attempts to use the Internet to find out about ‘Welsh love spoons’ for her technology homework (p. 159). Significantly, children’s informal use of digital technologies appears driven by pre-existing interests. For example, Facer et al. (2003) describe how Jamilia an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. From the culture industry to participatory culture
• 2. Cognitive anthropology on the Cyberian frontier
• 3. The learner as designer
• 4. Creative appropriation, new media and self-education
• 5. Globally distributed funds of living knowledge
• 6. Learning through serious play in virtually figured worlds
• 7. The decentring of the traditional university
• Appendix: Data collection strategy and methods
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index