Eileen Gillen forsvarer sin ph.d.-afhandling
Kom og h?r Eileen Gillen forsvare sin ph.d.-afhandling: "The constitution of creativity as an object of higher education policy: a governmentality perspective"
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Forsvaret foreg?r p? engelsk
Efter forsvaret er Institut for Mennesker og Teknologi v?rt for en lille reception
Vejledere og bed?mmelse
Bed?mmelsesudvalg:
- Stephen Carney, tt备用网址 (MSO) of Educational Studies, Roskilde Universitet (Forperson)
- Marianne Larsen, Emeritus tt备用网址, Western University Ontario Canada
- Lejf Moos, Associate tt备用网址 Emeritus, DPU
VEjleder:
- Simon Warren, lektor, Institut for Mennesker og Teknologi, Roskilde Universitet
Abstract
Having lived for many years in awe of creativity and creative people and having felt for many of those years that creativity was not something that I could personally aspire to, I was intrigued to see creativity appearing with more regularity in Irish higher education policy. On investigation, I saw a discourse emerging which related creativity to innovation and enterprise. This discourse was present at both national and international level. International organisations such as the European Union (EU), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) tell us that creativity is an indispensable skill in the 21st century. While there is little doubt that the development of creativity across the curriculum would be positive, the discourse of creativity appeared to pay little heed to the role creative self-efficacy or cultural and social capital play in its development. This discourse of creativity in higher education policy did not appear neutral and therefore required scrutiny. While an economised creativity may serve the academic subjects of policy discourse conceived as units of human capital, it contrasts sharply with an expressive creativity oriented toward an aesthetic - arguably an emancipatory creativity – which may serve these academic subjects in their societal role in the production and expression of culture. Problematising the discursive framing of creativity and its effects therefore became the focus of this research.
This study examines the constitution of creativity as an object of higher education policy across three empirical spaces from supranational to national to local – the EU, Ireland and Institute of Technology, Sligo. It provides a contextual examination of the transformation of Irish higher education policy from an era of economic nationalism in the 1960’s to the rise of neoliberalism from the 1990s, from the economic crisis of 2007 to subsequent recovery. The role and influence of international organisations such as the EU and the OECD is shown to have played a significant role in the development of higher education in Ireland and exemplify the shift from the national determination of education policy to a system of supranational governance. This study demonstrates through an examination of the contribution of the economic theories of human capital and endogenous growth that economic theory plays a significant role in the determination of education policy. The development of the knowledge-based economy discourse from the 1990s is therefore highly significant as it arises at the nexus between economic and education policy.
This study questions the taken-for-grantedness of the economic framing of creativity in EU and Irish higher education policy. It asks how creativity became implicated in arts of governance; how creativity is constituted as an object of policy and how it has entered strategy and curricula at one Irish higher education institution. Creativity in this way acts as an exemplary object of policy to identify and make explicit the use of discourse and political technologies as strategic mechanisms of power across EU and Irish policy spaces and, subsequently, to question the reception of these discourses and technologies at one specific Irish higher education institution. The discourse of the knowledge-based economy, promoted by the OECD and the EU, is examined as a master discourse providing the epistemic foundation of the EU’s watershed Lisbon strategy and related education and training strategies. The Open Method of Coordination (OMC) introduced by the Lisbon European Council is examined as an exemplary technology of power to direct and shape the actions of the EU Member States.
Employing a Foucauldian governmentality perspective, the study provides insights into how the intersection of power, knowledge and discourse shapes education policy, practice and identity formation across three empirical spaces. Creativity acts as an exemplary object of policy to examine what Foucault termed conduct of conduct, or alternatively, government at a distance in higher education policy. Foucault’s understanding is not of a top-down power but one that is dispersed and is examined at its extremities “where it becomes capillary” (Foucault,1982, p.96). Foucault highlighted how political technologies, as mechanisms and techniques of power, serve to responsibilise, normalise and act as surveillance mechanisms. Technologies of power shape conduct at policy and institutional levels. Subsequently, through technologies of the self, the responsibilised individual acts on himself to shape his own conduct. Employing a Foucauldian informed methodology, this study therefore facilitates an examination of the nature of governance in the education domain and the relations of power flowing between the EU, a particular national context and individual higher education institutions and its academic subjects.
An archive of textual fragments extracted from EU and Irish policy documents was constructed which located and traced creativity in education policy. Genealogy was then used as a diagnostic tool to explore the material texts relating to education policy and practice across the supranational, national and local spaces. The genealogy identified and traced the discourses implicated in the constitution of creativity as an object of policy. It facilitated the diagnosis of a governing rationale by identifying symptoms present in the policy texts. In diagnosing a governing rationale and by identifying its discursive formation and technologies of power, the genealogy provided a basis for a complementary analytic of government. This analysis commenced with a problematisation of creativity, asking what problem creativity presented a solution to and, by extension, whose interests it served. Dean’s (2010) framework was used to analyse the regimes of truth and practices surrounding creativity across four dimensions – visibilities, episteme, techne and the formation of identities.
Through the genealogy and analytic of government it was determined that a neoliberal governing rationale, codified in the European Union’s Lisbon Strategy as a competitive growth strategy in the discursive frame of the knowledge-based economy, underpins the constitution of creativity within higher education policy. Creativity was located in policy in a discursive formation alongside innovation and enterprise. It was determined that EU policy, was to a significant degree, enthusiastically embraced and recontextualised in Ireland. Creativity therefore similarly became an object in Irish policy and appeared as an object within strategy and curriculum at the Institute of Technology, Sligo. The thesis demonstrates that creativity was constituted within a regime that brought together the EU’s Lisbon strategy and its knowledge-based economy master discourse, discourses of economic growth, human capital development and competition, supported and was operationalised by political technologies including the Open Method of Coordination and European reference frameworks. The genealogy and analytics of government demonstrate that this regime of truth and practice set the parameters for the field of possibility for creativity in early 21st century higher education.
This research contributes to knowledge in that in questioning the rationale for creativity in current education policy and practice, it demonstrates how an exemplary object of policy can be used to examine the strategic and constitutive role of discourse and political technologies in the conduct of conduct in higher education. In this sense it illustrates that power is not only repressive but is also productive; creativity is constituted alongside innovation and enterprise through the discourses that name it, technologies are activated which operationalise it and identities arise which personify it. Discourses of the knowledge-based economy, economic growth, competition and human capital development were key to the construction of the regime of truth and practice surrounding creativity. These discourses present in the policy texts of the European Union were recontextualised in Irish policy and at the Institute of Technology, Sligo. Recontextualisation is not a process of straight-forward policy transfer but a process of translation whereby discourse is decontextualised and subsequently recontextualised to align with the target context.
Three performative identities were evident. The first, articulated by the Lisbon Council for the European Union – that of the number one knowledge-based economy in the world. This competitive identity of global dominance was recontextualised in Ireland and is evident in the positioning of Ireland as an “Innovation Island” (Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, 2008, p..32) as “a global hub for knowledge, innovation and know-how” (ibid., p.33). Second, the entrepreneurial university became available as an identity to higher education institutions who “empower students and staff to demonstrate enterprise, innovation and creativity” (European Commission, 2017b, p.32). Third, the identity of the creative higher education student subject arose through the knowledge-based economy, human capital and related skills discourses. This subject, as a creative, innovative and enterprising homo economicus, is responsible for acquiring the skills, competences, attitudes and mindsets appropriate for his own economic success in the neoliberal knowledge-based economy. The research provides an understanding of how the creation of subject positions or identities freely impels those higher education subjects to become complicit in their subjectification. The study demonstrates that Irish higher education policy is significantly influenced by international organisations, principally the EU and the OECD and that this influence is also present at an institutional level at Institute of Technology, Sligo.
By locating and analysing discourse and political technologies, the research illustrates the mechanisms of power by which a neoliberalist rationale is operationalised. Political technologies played a significant role in translating political objectives into practice across multiple sites. This study highlights the role of the OMC as a technology which facilitates policy coordination across the EU. The OMC, together with the National Reform Programmes (NRPs) and the European Semester process, serve to shape the conduct of the EU Member States through a voluntary process which may be said to obscure power dynamics between the EU and its Member States. Frameworks developed by both the EU and the OECD including the EU Key Competences for Lifelong Learning European Reference Framework and the joint EU and OECD HEInnovate similarly act as technologies which coordinate the implementation of EU priorities across the Union.
Through the perspective of Foucault’s governmentality, this study reveals complex processes of policy development, recontextualisation and implementation marked by relations of power, knowledge and identity creation. The regime of truth and practice surrounding creativity raises questions about the autonomy of national education policy development given the significant influence exerted through coordination frameworks. The emphasis by the EU on the pivotal role both creativity and higher education play in the knowledge-based economy raises tensions between the economic objectives of both creativity and higher education and their social and cultural objectives.