Article

Psychodata: disassembling the psychological, economic, and statistical infrastructure of ‘social-emotional learning’

Taylor & Francis
Journal of Education Policy
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Abstract

Psychology and economics are powerful sources of expert knowledge in contemporary governance. Social and emotional learning (SEL) is becoming a priority in education policy in many parts of the world. Based on the enumeration of students’ ‘noncognitive’ skills, SEL consists of a ‘psycho-economic’ combination of psychometrics with economic analysis, and is producing novel forms of statistical ‘psychodata’ about students. Constituted by an expanding infrastructure of technologies, metrics, people, money and policies, SEL has travelled transnationally through the advocacy of psychologists, economists, and behavioural scientists, with support from think tank coalitions, philanthropies, software companies, investment schemes, and international organizations. The article examines the emerging SEL infrastructure, identifying how psychological and economics experts are producing policy-relevant scientific knowledge and statistical psychodata to influence the direction of SEL policies. It examines how the OECD Study on Social and Emotional Skills, a large-scale computer-based assessment, makes ‘personality’ an international focus for policy intervention and ‘human capital’ formation, thereby translating measurable socio-emotional indicators into predicted socio-economic outcomes. The SEL measurement infrastructure instantiates psychological governance within education, one underpinned by a political rationality in which society is measured effectively through scientific fact-finding and subjects are managed affectively through psychological intervention.

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... Decades of consistent findings from school violence research have taught us that the most effective programs and policies are those that (a) are data driven and address an identified issue or need in a community, (b) involve the entire school district or community through training and education, and (c) are assessed and evaluated regularly for effectiveness and areas of weakness (e.g., , 2019Reynolds & Astor, 2022). School safety programs work better when there is a districtwide strategy that includes training for students, teachers, staff members, and families so that the program is implemented consistently across the school district and community. ...
... At the same time, with an influx of state, local, and federal funding in the billions, "education technology" companies became more involved in the evaluation of schoolwide and districtwide approaches. We have seen recent movement back to measuring individual children's skills instead of whole-school outcomes, which raises ethical issues about individual privacy and data usage (Williamson, 2019). Based on the existing research, we urge practitioners to use an internal, whole-school and district-integrated approach that involves all school stakeholders (e.g., students, families, staff) in (a) identifying district-specific safety issues, (b) selecting programs and policies, and (c) deciding how data will be collected and utilized to demonstrate program effectiveness. ...
... We recommend that districts identify the most prevalent safety issues through regularly scheduled needs assessments and feedback from students, staff members, and parents to select an appropriate intervention strategy. Ongoing assessments are also critical to evaluate the effectiveness of the program or strategy, because safety issues in districts change over time, as do victims and perpetrators , 2019Astor et al., 1999;Irwin, Wang, et al., 2022). ...
Chapter
The School Services Sourcebook, third edition is a comprehensive reference guide that provides school social workers, other mental health professionals, and educators essential information on the various approaches to working with students in schools. The book covers a broad range of topics, including mental health services, school safety, trauma informed practices, work with families, and more. It also includes practical tips and strategies for implementing effective school services and supporting student success. With contributions from leading experts in the field, the School Services Sourcebook is an invaluable resource for anyone involved in education and seeking to ensure that students have access to the services they need to thrive in school and beyond. Readers will learn proven practices for helping students in easy-to-read chapters. A concise, user friendly format orients readers to each issue with a Getting Started Section, then moves smoothly to What We Know, What We Can Do, Tools and Practice Examples, and Key Points to Remember. Several case studies and original videos demonstrate practice approaches. Quick reference tables, charts, web, and further learning resources make it easy to continue to improve knowledge and skills. Each chapter has been crafted by experts in the field with the aims of giving school-based professionals the information and resources they need to deliver effective services in schools.
... Social-emotional skills can also serve the operationalization of adaptive readiness. Research, interventions, and policies targeting social-emotional skills have rapidly expanded in contemporary society, given its recognized importance in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous educational and work environments [17]. As various terminologies and perspectives can be found in the literature, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has advanced in an international and interdisciplinary efforts to consensually reach a definition and measure of social-emotional skills. ...
... As for practice, career education programs might be particularly useful to promote not only career competencies (e.g., career exploration, planning), but also personal and social competencies (namely social-emotional skills) that are jointly required to face the challenges of the current society [13,14,20,22,42]. By fostering these competencies, practitioners might help to better prepare students to adapt to life transitions [17,20,21,23], besides sustaining their engagement in school, which is critical for academic success [34,37]. These integrative efforts are aligned with a holistic and comprehensive view of the individuals [42] and can ultimately contribute to support their mental health and psychosocial adjustment [13,17,22,31,33], particularly in a challenging period such as those of implementing a career choice and starting high school. ...
... By fostering these competencies, practitioners might help to better prepare students to adapt to life transitions [17,20,21,23], besides sustaining their engagement in school, which is critical for academic success [34,37]. These integrative efforts are aligned with a holistic and comprehensive view of the individuals [42] and can ultimately contribute to support their mental health and psychosocial adjustment [13,17,22,31,33], particularly in a challenging period such as those of implementing a career choice and starting high school. ...
Article
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The transition to the first year of high school constitutes a critical moment because it corresponds to the implementation of a career choice, which can impact students’ satisfaction and psychosocial adjustment. The career construction model of adaptation holds potential to explain how students adapt to high school, by suggesting linkages among adaptive readiness, resources, responses, and results. However, research applying the career construction model to school transitions, combining social-emotional, career, and academic variables is still needed. This study explores the roles that social-emotional skills (an indicator of adaptive readiness) and career adaptability (an indicator of adaptability resources) play in explaining first-year high school students’ agentic school engagement (an indicator of adapting responses). Measures of social-emotional skills, career adaptability, and school engagement were completed by 136 students (63.2% girls; M age = 15.68). Results from the hierarchical linear regression analysis suggest that social-emotional skills and career adaptability explain 32% of the variance and significantly contribute to explaining agentic school engagement. These findings seem illustrative of the potential of the career construction model of adaptation to deepen knowledge and understanding about the transition to high school and the implementation of career choices. Aligned with the literature, this study supports the calls for integrative psychological practices that acknowledge social-emotional, career, and academic variables when fostering students’ psychosocial adjustment.
... However, the focus on emotion often deemphasizes its role in producing specific economic subjectivities and vice versa. Exceptions that specifically examine the feeling body, economic subjectivity, and biopolitical production in educational studies exist (Lewis & Kahn, 2010;Sellar & Zipin, 2019;Williamson, 2019). For example, when critiquing the habit to misperceive certain bodies as monstrous, Lewis and Kahn (2010) refer to Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's work to foreground the necessity of connecting the affective with capitalism: 'Any politics of affect today simply must confront the growing reality of transnational capitalism that, as Hardt and Negri argue (2000, 2004, 2009, is itself predicated on an immaterial, affective economy ' (p. ...
... For a study, how does the amount of emotion become measured? Analyzing the work by SEL experts, Ben Williamson (2019) notes that these experts 'embody a political economy in which human psychological qualities are translated into psychometric data as quantitative measures of potential economic value (human capital), and behavioural data has become a source for governmental "nudging" and control' (p. 8). ...
... Tying into biopolitics and affective labor, Williamson speaks of the evolving infrastructure being developed in order to assess and manage the emerging fount of affective labor. A diverse group of global actors including governments, markets, philanthropic organizations, and international economic organizations such as the OECD develops the new infrastructures (Williamson, 2019). ...
... In addition to enhancing economic productivity and academic success, SEL is increasingly viewed as having a vital role to play in the pursuit of social and global justice, with 'skills' such as mindfulness, empathy and compassion being touted as key to achieving global citizenship, and its alignment with the SDGs has been interpreted as a superficial yet strategic move to position itself as the organisation best placed to monitor progress toward SDG targets (e.g., Auld and Morris 2019; 2021; Engel, Rutkowski and Thompson 2019; Rappleye et al. 2020, 272;Williamson 2021). Notwithstanding the widely acknowledged difficulties the OECD's assessment of global competencies, this influential policy actor's newfound interest in the non-cognitive aspects of learning is likely to amplify the policy prioritisation of SEL over the next decade (Engel, Rutkowski and Thompson 2019). ...
... A complex SEL 'infrastructure,'-comprising academic 'gurus,' celebrities, think tank coalitions, entrepreneurs, philanthropic funders, software companies, investment marketplace and investment opportunity has emerged within an increasingly corporatist global governance regime, whereby concerns about market reach and profit-accumulation now influence the content, delivery and assessment of learning in education systems worldwide (Carney and Klerides 2020;Williamson 2021). With technological advancements radically enhancing the scalability and measurability of SEL, this new emotional paradigm is ideally suited to philanthropy's 'predisposition to quick, short term, "silver bullet" solutions to meet the "grand challenges" of development; to do more with less; and crucially, to insert the market in the public sphere' (Srivastara and Baur 2016, 437). ...
... international organisations-has played a major role in the emergence of a global consensus about the importance of SEL in addressing problems as varied and complex as behavioural problems, educational underachievement, bullying, conflict, violent extremism and climate change(Williamson 2021;Williamson and Piattoeva 2019). The scientific basis and perceived 'objectivity' of SEL research-which is highly visible (on brain scans), quantifiable, policy-relevant and easily translatable into curricular and programmatic intervention-has enabled a relatively small number of academics to wield considerable power over the direction of global educational policy, programming and practice(Williamson 2021, 135). ...
Article
Full-text available
This article analyses UNESCO’s advocacy of social-emotional learning (SEL) as key to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—particularly SDG target 4.7. It interrogates the agency’s growing emphasis on digital SEL and conscious ‘whole brain’ approaches as part of a wider neuroliberal turn towards the behavioural, psychological and neurological sciences and considers their implications for UNESCO’s status as the ‘conscience of humanity.’ It argues that ‘SEL for SDGs’ operates as a ‘flag of convenience’ hoisted by UNESCO to garner legitimacy in a global governance landscape increasingly shaped by private/corporate interests, new (tech-based) philanthropy, and neoliberal policies and funding infrastructures. It demonstrates how the privileging of biological or neuropsychological explanations for complex global problems is reconfiguring UNESCO’s global citizenship work towards a depoliticised, individualistic and neuroliberally-inflected ‘conscious human brain’ response to complex societal challenges which forestalls political dialogue and undermines an appreciation of their material and economic determinants.
... These trends are not primarily driven by educational theory and research (though they exist here as well). Instead, they are predominantly shaped by an increasing global political orientation towards children's so-called "social and emotional learning" (Williamson, 2021) (something also framed as necessary for democratic life) and by the economic interests of edu-businesses, which provide the supposed solutions (Williamson, 2021). This means that not only do a range of transnational agencies, think tanks, advisory bodies, and private corporations play a powerful role in shaping what counts as educational knowledge (Whitty & Furlong, 2017), but they also significantly influence knowledge about the "nature of the child." ...
... These trends are not primarily driven by educational theory and research (though they exist here as well). Instead, they are predominantly shaped by an increasing global political orientation towards children's so-called "social and emotional learning" (Williamson, 2021) (something also framed as necessary for democratic life) and by the economic interests of edu-businesses, which provide the supposed solutions (Williamson, 2021). This means that not only do a range of transnational agencies, think tanks, advisory bodies, and private corporations play a powerful role in shaping what counts as educational knowledge (Whitty & Furlong, 2017), but they also significantly influence knowledge about the "nature of the child." ...
Article
There is a strong tendency in both theory and practice to view education’s democratic role as that of equipping students with specific attributes presumed necessary for democratic life. Discussions thus center around identifying the required values, skills, and capabilities, as well as the types of educational endeavors that best foster them. What underpins such discussions is the assumption that the child is inherently lacking, which, I argue, leads to a conceptual dead end. In this article, I explore how the concept of childism can expand the epistemological framework for understanding and theorizing education’s democratic role. Using theoretical concepts from Biesta and Rancière’s sporadic democracy, along with Fricker’s theory of epistemic injustice, I discuss a case from a Danish state school where a teacher harasses a student. I argue that the perception of the child as a deficit being causes children to suffer systemic epistemic (and other) injustices, as incidents of adults harassing children can go unnamed and unrecognized. The potential long-term harm is a loss of trust in one’s ability to know, interpret, and understand the world. I argue that this is also a loss in potential claims for equality based on the perception of injustice, a loss that damages the democratic quality of society. The article advocates a childist turn in research on education’s democratic role. Childism enables a hermeneutical breakthrough that can spark new discussions of scholarly, social, and political norms regarding the question of democracy and education.
... The prevailing logic behind enhancing edtech with emotional AI is an emerging belief that the learning experience of youth should not simply focus on their academic skills but also on the development of their emotional and social intelligence. This is because these soft skills are vital to decision-making [16], social relations [1], and ultimately, learning [17]. However, a growing number of scholars point to the innate dangers and ethical risks [18,19] of such a techno-deterministic approach to pedagogy. ...
... However, a growing number of scholars point to the innate dangers and ethical risks [18,19] of such a techno-deterministic approach to pedagogy. For example, Williamson (2021) notes the unproven track record of emotion-sensing devices, their lack of accuracy in reading emotions, and the lack of inclusiveness of the training data in emotional AI edtech [17]. Following Williamson, McStay (2020) suggests that the panopticon nature of the technology may increase feelings of inhibition and excessive self-consciousness in students [20]. ...
Article
Full-text available
Emotional artificial intelligence (AI), i.e., affective computing technologies, is rapidly reshaping the education of young minds worldwide. In Japan, government and commercial stakeholders are promulgating emotional AI not only as a neoliberal, cost-saving benefit but also as a heuristic that can improve the learning experience at home and in the classroom. Nevertheless, critics warn of a myriad of risks and harms posed by the technology such as privacy violation, unresolved deeper cultural and systemic issues, machinic parentalism as well as the danger of imposing attitudinal conformity. This study brings together the Technological Acceptance Model and Moral Foundation Theory to examine the cultural construal of risks and rewards regarding the application of emotional AI technologies. It explores Japanese citizens’ perceptions of emotional AI in education and children's toys via analysis of a final sample of 2000 Japanese respondents with five age groups (20s–60s) and two sexes equally represented. The linear regression models for determinants of attitude toward emotional AI in education and in toys account for 44 % and 38 % variation in the data, respectively. The analyses reveal a significant negative correlation between attitudes toward emotional AI in both schools and toys and concerns about privacy violations or the dystopian nature of constantly monitoring of children and students’ emotions with AI (Education: βDystopianConcern = − .094***; Toys: βPrivacyConcern = − .199***). However, worries about autonomy and bias show mixed results, which hints at certain cultural nuances of values in a Japanese context and how new the technologies are. Concurring with the empirical literature on the Moral Foundation Theory, the chi-square (Χ²) test shows Japanese female respondents express more fear regarding the potential harms of emotional AI technologies for the youth's privacy, autonomy, data misuse, and fairness (p < 0.001). The policy implications of these results and insights on the impacts of emotional AI for the future of human-machine interaction are also provided.
... Some providers adopt a traditional, for-profit business model and therefore benefit greatly from widespread adoption of SEL products, particularly in the education technology sector (Williamson, 2021). Other market players are mission-driven, non-profit organizations who funnel profits back into product development and client support, although there is still accumulation of financial capital and participation in industrialized processes to continue their work (INCITE! ...
... Still other providers offer products and services for free and support their work with funding from foundations or philanthropists (Williamson, 2021). This model may seem appealing, but from where are the funds derived that enable free SEL products and services? ...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Social and emotional learning (SEL) has seen tremendous growth since its inception over 25 years ago. Despite now being in an era of widespread support, SEL is critiqued for its cultural appropriateness and role in sustaining the hegemony of Western normativity. As emerging researchers in this field, we find it important to engage with our work and its criticisms. Thus, the intent of this conceptual paper is to disrupt and complicate understandings of SEL. First, we review extant critiques of SEL. Then, we offer observations on SEL theory and influences of capitalism to expand the conversation. We hope our initial discussions encourage others to explore and contribute their own critical analyses of SEL to reimagine sociality, emotionality, and learning.
... The OECD's conceptualisation of global competencies has been heavily criticised for undermining the wider UN conception of global citizenship, and its alignment with the SDGs has been interpreted as a superficial yet strategic move to position itself as the organisation best placed to monitor progress towards SDG targets (e.g. Morris 2019, 2021;Engel, Rutkowski, and Thompson 2019;Rappleye et al. 2020;Williamson 2021). Notwithstanding the widely acknowledged difficulties of the OECD's assessment of global competencies, this influential policy actor's newfound interest in the non-cognitive aspects of learning is likely to amplify the policy prioritisation of SEL over the next decade (Engel, Rutkowski, and Thompson 2019). ...
... Cefai et al. 2018;Singh and Duraiappah 2020;Chernyshenko, Kankaraš, and Drasgow 2018;Guerra, Modecki, and Cunningham 2014;GPE 2020;UNICEF 2019;WEF 2016). SEL's positioning as both a technology-driven policy "solution" to long-standing educational problems and as a marketplace and investment opportunity has emerged within an increasingly corporatist global governance regime, whereby concerns about market reach and profit-accumulation now influence the content, delivery and assessment of learning in education systems worldwide (Carney and Klerides 2020;Williamson 2021). With technological advancements radically enhancing the scalability and measurability of SEL, this new emotional paradigm is ideally suited to philanthropy's "predisposition to quick, short term, 'silver bullet' solutions to meet the 'grand challenges' of development; to do more with less; and crucially, to insert the market in the public sphere" (Srivastava and Baur 2016, 437). ...
Article
Full-text available
This article analyses UNESCO's advocacy of social-emotional learning (SEL) as key to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)-particularly SDG target 4.7. It interrogates the agency's growing emphasis on digital SEL and conscious "whole brain" approaches as part of a wider neuroliberal turn towards the behavioural, psychological and neurological sciences and considers their implications for UNESCO's status as the "conscience of humanity ." It argues that "SEL for SDGs" operates as a "flag of convenience" hoisted by UNESCO to garner legitimacy in a global governance landscape increasingly shaped by private/corporate interests, new (tech-based) philanthropy, and neoliberal policies and funding infrastructures. It demonstrates how the privileging of biological and neuropsychological explanations for complex global problems is reconfiguring UNESCO's global citizenship work towards a depoliticised, individualistic and neuroliberally-inflected "con-scious human brain" response to complex societal challenges which forestalls political dialogue and undermines an appreciation of their material and economic determinants.
... Each of these features represents an analytical focus with promising lines of enquiry that can easily overlap. For example, highly relevant to a theory of the LA Gaze is research that examined 'datafication' as an overarching trend in educational governance (Decuypere & Landri, 2020;Gorur, 2011;Williamson, 2019b). For these authors, the emergence of Learning Analytics and data-based governance must be 'problematized': not a simple matter of disciplinary innovation in concepts and methods, but the result of the social, material, and political factors that 'underdetermine' (I will return to this term in the next section) the work of researchers. ...
Chapter
Full-text available
This chapter makes a distinction between two approaches to theory in Learning Analytics (LA). The first approach pursues the identification of suitable theories ‘for’ LA and requires a commitment to the scientific study of learning. The second approach rests upon a broader sociological outlook on Learning Analytics as a field of knowledge. The chapter is concerned with the second approach and proposes a sociological theory of the ‘LA Gaze’. It examines the underlying principles of a theory of the LA Gaze and explores, using a genealogical approach informed by the sociology of scientific knowledge, the social, historical, and material relations between Learning Analytics and contiguous epistemic fields: computer and data science, Educational Data Mining (EDM) and educational research. The chapter contributes to the LA field by encouraging a historical and critical reflection on its origins and its future directions.
... Regarding other previous reviews of ELA, Hooda (2020), Mu, Cui & Huang (2020), P. Ordóñez de Pablos et al. (2019) and Romero & Ventura (2013) focus on the current state-of-the-art in this field, including specific tools, benchmarks, and methods applied in the educational context. In Williamson (2021), ELA is investigated from social, emotional, and economic points of view, bringing new statistical knowledge to conclude with a better understanding of how education is perceived and how policies are designed. In Du Boulay et al. (2010), the authors study the emotions of learners during the learning process to present a conceptual framework that takes into account -in addition to cognition -the motivation, metacognition, and affect of learners. ...
Chapter
Learning Analytics (LA) are constantly evolving in the analysis and representation of data related to learners and educators to improve the learning and education process. Data obtained by sensors or questionnaires are processed employing new technologies. The emotional experiences of learners constitute a significant factor in the assimilation of knowledge about the learning process. The emerging technology of Emotional Learning Analytics (ELA) is increasingly being considered in educational settings. In this work, the significance and contribution of ELA in educational data processing are discussed as an integral part of designing and implementing computational models reflecting the learning process. In addition, a comprehensive overview of different methods and techniques for both LA and ELA is provided, while a conceptual model of ELA is proposed in parallel. Moreover, advantages, disadvantages, and challenges are highlighted. The final focus of the chapter is on ethical issues and future research directions.
... Finally, regular evaluations by educational management help monitor the progress and effectiveness of character education programs (Muralidharan & Singh, 2020;Williamson, 2021). By looking at the evaluation results, schools can optimally improve their strategies to form student character. ...
Article
Full-text available
This research aims to discuss educational management's role in improving graduates' quality through character education at MA Al Qodiri Jember and MBI Amantul Ummah Pacet Mojokerto. The discussion reveals the concepts and implications of the role of educational management in the context of two Islamic boarding school-based schools using multi-site qualitative research methods. Data was obtained through closed interviews, documentation, and discussion forums to fulfill the research, and then the data was analyzed through triangulation. Educational management at both schools plays a crucial role in emphasizing student character formation. Developing a curriculum oriented towards character education and implementing character education programs is the main focus in producing graduates who are academically superior and have good character. With a directed and integrated approach, MA Al Qodiri Jember and MBI Amantul Ummah Pacet Mojokerto emphasized that character education is not just an addition but the essence of education itself, which forms quality individuals who are ready to contribute positively to society. This research underlines the importance of character education in forming a young generation who is solid and responsible in facing future challenges.
... In the contemporary era, numerous countries are reassessing the purpose and value of education, prompted by novel paradigms in thinking, working, and living, as well as the necessity to adapt to a life paced faster and an environment more complex, all emerging from the information revolution [1][2][3]. Against this backdrop, the cultivation and development of adolescents' social and emotional skills have ascended to a position of priority in the formulation of educational policies worldwide [4][5][6]. 'Social and emotional skills' denote an individual's capacity to self-regulate thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, serving as a critical predictor of academic, career, health, and overall well-being outcomes [1,7]. Distinct from cognitive competencies, which focus on enhancing an individual's information processing and problem-solving abilities, social and emotional skills emphasize the management of emotions and the effective perception of one's existence and interactions with others [1, 8,9]. ...
Article
Full-text available
In light of the ‘double reduction’ policy, which affords adolescents increased time for extracurricular pursuits, the strategic organization of these activities’ form and content is imperative. Prior research has established a robust correlation between adolescent participation in extracurricular arts and sports and the enhancement in their social and emotional skills. Nevertheless, the relationship between extracurricular arts and sports activities and the various dimensions of social and emotional skills, as well as the connection between participation in different types of these activities and the enhancement in social and emotional skills, requires further investigation. Utilizing the Theory of Multiple Intelligence and data from the OECD-SSES2019 Suzhou (China) student survey, this study employs Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and coarsened exact matching (CEM) methodologies to address these gaps. In China, participation in extracurricular arts and sports activities is significantly positively associated with various dimensions of social and emotional skills, with a synergistic effect observed between these activities in enhancing these skills. Additionally, this study finds age-related heterogeneity in the relationship between participation in extracurricular arts and sports activities and the improvement in social and emotional skills.
... • assess non-cognitive psycho-emotional behavior qualities, such as persistence and grit, initiative and adaptability etc., through ambient intelligence (Stark and Hoey, 2021;Williamson, 2021); and ...
Chapter
Full-text available
In the vital context of education, the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to assessments necessitates a nuanced examination of the boundaries between ethically permissible and impermissible practices. In this chapter, the authors applied a systematic literature mapping methodology to scour extant research, so as to holistically structure the landscape into explicit topical research clusters. Through topic modelling and network analyses, research mapped key ethical principles to different assessment phases in a triadic ontological framework. The chapter looks to provide researchers and practitioners the insights into the ethical challenges that exist across an end-to-end assessment pipeline.
... The EPIS programmes are based on information systems and digital platforms, in a 'performance culture' that monitors quantitative results every semester, and at the end of the school year. This option is in line with the principles of learning engineering, since the scientific measurement of learning is prioritised (Williamson, 2021). ...
Article
This paper addresses the ways through which new philanthropy in education is being enacted in Portugal, focusing on one of its significant imaginaries: social inclusion. We analyse EPIS (Entrepreneurs for Social Inclusion), a top association dedicated to corporate philanthropy with a growing presence in the education system. Drawing on Popkewitz’s concept of fabrication, it examines EPIS’ programmes and deliverables as technologies that constitute social inclusion as an object of policy, knowledge and practice, targeting students (transforming ‘at-risk’ students into entrepreneurs), teachers and schools (transforming their cultures to become performance-oriented), and the relationship between State and non-State actors (fostering the State’s adoption of a rule-following role, dependent on knowledge generated by non-State actors). This paper suggests that new philanthropies’ social inclusion imaginary enacts a system of reason that promulgates results-oriented and evidence-based approaches to educational policy and knowledge.
... In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the interest in social-emotional learning (SEL), manifested in both the scientific literature and in shifts occurring in education systems throughout the world [1]. Underlying this tendency is a consensus on the need to expand the goals of education, while addressing several varied components, among them, the need to develop 21st century skills [2]. ...
Article
Full-text available
The use of social–emotional learning (SEL) practices in online literature teaching has not yet been sufficiently researched. This study addresses this lacuna by identifying SEL practices mentioned by lecturers and preservice teachers (PSTs) as they reported on their respective experiences of teaching and learning in online literature lessons. Data were collected using three research tools: questionnaires were completed by 28 lecturers from four different teacher education colleges and 90 PSTS; semi-structured interviews were held with 12 of the literature PSTs; and a focus group was held with six lecturers. A data analysis revealed six major SEL-related themes mentioned by lecturers and PSTs as essential practices of online learning and teaching: building relationships, working collaboratively, emotional involvement, effective communication, dealing with conflicting feelings, and techno-pedagogic skills. These findings contribute to our understanding of online learning and teaching versatility and complexity. Considering these findings in light of existing theoretical models demonstrates that while five themes coincide with the skills included in the CASEL model, the sixth theme regarding techno-pedagogical skills is not part of the original model. These findings expand the applicability of the CASEL model from its original face-to-face learning context to the interaction between learners and lecturers in an online platform.
... Osa-alueen kohteena esiintyy yksilöiden psykologiset ominaisuudet, käyttäytymistottumukset ja persoonalliset piirteet.(Mertanen ym., 2021;Williamson, 2021.) Samalla mitattavuus esiintyy keskeisessä roolissa myös sosioemotionaalisessa oppimisessa, kun huomioidaan, miten merkittävään asemaan data psykologisista ominaisuuksista ja inhimillisestä pääomasta työmarkkinoiden kannalta asettuu(Williamson, 2021, s.130).Brunila, Harni, Saari & Ylöstalo (2021) puhuvat terapeuttisesta vallasta, joka valjastaa ihmisen mielen kansallisen kilpailukyvyn ja työkulttuurin tehostamisen välineeksi.Tällöin yksilöille tarjotaan vapaaehtoisuuden kautta omaksuttavia tapoja päästä eitoivotuista tilanteista ja pahoinvoinnista irti tavoitellakseen henkilökohtaisia päämääriä ja tulevaisuuden menestystä korostaen kansalaisten vapautta ja hyvinvointia. ...
Thesis
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Tämän pro gradu- tutkielman aiheena on nuorten koulutuksen yksityistäminen. Aihe pohjaa yhteiskunnan markkinoitumiseen ja kansainvälisten virtausten mukana tuomiin uusliberaaleihin arvoihin osana koulutuspolitiikkaa. Tarkastelen aihetta tutkimalla nuorten koulutukseen toimintansa suuntaavien yksityisten yritysten verkkosivuja. Aikakaudella, jossa koulutus nähdään yhteiskunnan tulevaisuuden tarpeisiin vastaajana ja toisaalta yritysten markkina-alustana, pyrin aineiston pohjalta tarkastelemaan sitä, millaisia sisältöjä yksityiset yritykset nuorten koulutukseen tuovat ja miten yritykset perustelevat toimintansa tarvetta osana koulutusta. Olen toteuttanut tämän pro-gradu -tutkielman osana Interrupting Future Trajectories of Precision Education Governance (FuturEd) - tutkimushanketta. Olen rajannut tutkimusaineiston tutkimusryhmän keväällä 2021 keräämästä aineistosta, joka piti sisällään 56 Edtech- yritystä ja muita nuorille aikuisille suunnattuja palveluita tarjoavia toimijoita. Valitsin alkuperäisestä aineistosta tutkielman aineisoksi 11 nuorten koulutukseen toimintansa suuntaavaa yksityistä yritystä. Aineiston lukutavassa ja analyysissä olen hyödyntänyt netnografiaa. Yksityisten yritysten toiminnan perustelut osana nuorten koulutusta näyttäytyvät tutkielman tulosten valossa oppimisen tehokkuuden lisäämisenä, nuorten hyvinvoinnin parantamisena ja tulevaisuuden työelämätaitojen vahvistamisena. Yritykset kertovat tekevänsä oppimisesta helppoa, sujuvaa ja kustannustehokasta. Oppimisesta ja hyvinvoinnista tehdään datan keräämisen avulla mitattavaa, jotta niihin voidaan puuttua ja kohdistaa opetuksen resursseja tehokkaammin. Samalla opettajan työnkuva muuttuu enemmän yritysvalmentajan suuntaan. Yritykset perustelevat toimintaansa myös vahvistamalla nuorilta puuttuvia tulevaisuuden työelämätaitoja, jotta nuorista tulisi työmarkkinoille suuntaavia, joustavia ja tehokkaita yksilöitä. Tutkielma herättää kysymyksiä nuorten koulutuksessa toimivien yksityisten yritysten asemasta yhteiskunnassa ja nuorten elämässä: koulutuksen sisällöt näyttävät aikaisempaan tutkimukseen peilaten lisäävän nuorten itsevastuullista asemaa koulutuksessa ja työelämään siirtymisessä.
... Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, some cognitive scientists have considered the close connection between brain science and research in computer science and psychology as a turning point in the development of the third generation of cognitive science [7]. In terms of theoretical foundations and practical applications, AI became a separate system in its own right and gradually evolved into a separate branch with the birth of AI-based learning science. ...
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The development and innovation of data mining, learning analysis, and artificial intelligence have brought new opportunities to promote the study of learning mechanism in the fields of neuroscience, learning engineering, and precision education. Although learning science has been studied for nearly 40 years, it has not been deeply integrated with artificial intelligence technology at present. The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the application research of artificial intelligence (AI)-based learning science. Taking the literature of empirical research of learning science from 2017 to 2022 as a sample, the descriptive results show that foreign researchers focus on using artificial intelligence technology to explore and analyze brain, psychology and biological data, and support the construction of learning environment and the development of personalized learning path. Finally, according to the research results, the article shows the future development trend of AI-based learning science, to provide reference for the construction and development of the research field of AI-based learning science.
... The development of non-cognitive skills in schools has received increasing attention in recent years (Williamson 2021). However, relatively little is known about how best to integrate non-cognitive skills into existing educational frameworks (García 2016;Pineiro 2021). ...
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Non-cognitive skills have increasingly been recognised as an important part of holistic education, but more research is needed on how best to ingrate them into existing educational frameworks. This study examined variables critical to the implementation of a non-cognitive skills programme in post-primary schools in Ireland. Teachers (N = 76) were recruited from both mainstream (N = 43) and high-support schools (N = 33) and assessed by means of a cross-sectional survey, on their Readiness, Willingness, and self-perceived Ability (RWA) to implement Ireland’s national ‘Wellbeing Guidelines’. Statistical analyses were conducted to assess the relationships between teachers’ perception of both leader and peer support, and their self-perceived readiness willingness, and ability to implement the wellbeing programme. Our findings suggest a useful optimised pathway – or an ‘RWA framework’ – to inform the implementation of non-cognitive programmes in post-primary schools in Ireland and elsewhere.
... • assess non-cognitive psycho-emotional behavior qualities, such as persistence and grit, initiative and adaptability etc., through ambient intelligence (Stark and Hoey, 2021;Williamson, 2021); and ...
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In a societal institution as fundamental as education, when teaching practitioners or researchers apply artificial intelligence in academic processes such as assessments, it is important to study the divide between what may be ethically permissible and not permissible. This study applied a systematic literature mapping methodology to scour extant research, so as to holistically structure the landscape into explicit topical research clusters. Through topic modelling and network analyses, research mapped ten key ethical principles to five research archetypical domains, and reviewed the contribution and intensity of these ethical principles in each thematic domain. The study extended this review, by mapping out ethics programs and activities that can be applied in practice, alongside their relevant underpinning theories. This study provides a comprehensive treatment of this subject matter to date. We hope the findings of this research can provide researchers and practitioners the insights into the application methods of AI in assessments, and in particular, in terms of their intertwined ethical challenges and how these challenges may be addressed, for follow up studies.
... Andreas Schleicher's comment about the 'first class humans' illustrates the current drive towards technology-enhanced learning, 'the collaboration between machines and humans' (OECD 2022), 2 and the emerging embrace of neuro-scientific and social and emotional learning by international organisations that takes the neoliberal individualised learner even further towards a 'robotic view' (Vickers 2022, 14). The above quote represents a post-humanist vision of a human who is forced to learn for survival, competing with robots in a society shaped by the rise of artificial intelligence and automation (Williamson 2021). The emerging post-humanist vision of the future is accompanied by a move towards neurosciences and digitisation, coupled with discourses of crisis, resilience and the 4 th industrial revolution, which represents a case of Orwellian 'doublespeak' as it embellishes the massive loss of jobs due to automation and artificial intelligence. ...
Article
This article argues that contemporary education policies promoted by UNESCO and the OECD are embracing two distinct post-humanist visions, which I call the ‘sustainable futures’ and the ‘techno-solutionist’ strand. I will relate these strands to two conflicting agendas of education after World War II: the humanistic-emancipatory perspective represented by UNESCO, and the ‘economics of education’ movement, which was dominant in the OECD. I argue that comparative education scholars would be well advised to draw on the humanistic and democratic traditions of the field in critically analysing the range of promissory visions and master narratives that have emerged recently which carry de-humanising tendencies and represent a challenge to democracy.
... In recent years, there has been accelerated development in the field of social-emotional learning (SEL) (Mahoney et al., 2020;Williamson, 2021), supporting the development of teachers and students worldwide (Loinaz, 2019;Malhotra et al., 2021;Waajid et al., 2013). The transition to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis led to intensive research in the field (Yang, 2021), regarding the processes involved in remote synchronous and asynchronous learning or a combination of the two (Moorhouse & Wong, 2022). ...
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The goal of this paper is to address the questions of how social-emotional learning [SEL] can be incorporated into online learning and what effect such integration can have on students. The COVID-19 outbreak significantly increased the use of online learning at all levels of education. However, research shows that the online learning experience may contribute to students’ feelings of distancing, alienation, and loneliness. The assumption underlying this study was that these negative feelings are not inherent to the online learning experience; rather, they can be avoided by using online-SEL (“O-SEL”) techniques that integrate SEL into online learning processes. This qualitative case study included 42 preservice teachers enrolled in a college of education in Israel, who participated in an online course that employed specific methods for integrating the SEL component. Analysis of students’ reactions to the course revealed that O-SEL not only improved students’ emotional experience but also enhanced their cognitive learning. These findings strongly suggest that models of online learning should include SEL. Additional research may confirm the positive O-SEL effects on students’ experience and achievements. In this context, the current study introduces the concept of “social emotional presence,” which is necessary for learning and development to take place online.
... The effects of education are determined by the characteristics of the individuals who are educated (Ganzach and Gotlibovski, 2014), such as their personalities (Williamson, 2021). Many studies emphasize the significance of personality in entrepreneurship (Ciavarella et al., 2004;Hisrich et al., 2007;Fairlie and Holleran, 2012;Basuki et al., 2021). ...
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This study investigates the impact of entrepreneurship education on college students’ entrepreneurial intentions, as well as the moderating effects of personality and family economic status on the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intention, respectively. We tested our hypotheses using a sample of college students in Tianjin, China, and analyzed the data of 326 questionnaires containing validated measures. The results show that entrepreneurship education has a positive impact on college students’ entrepreneurial intentions; proactive personality negatively moderates this relationship; and family economic status positively moderates it. However, the moderating effect of narcissistic personality has not been verified. This study is unique and innovative as it brings new insights to this stream of literature by introducing the roles of the personality and family economic status in the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intention. Our analysis provides important empirical evidence about the negative moderating effect of proactive personality and the positive moderating effect of family economic status on the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intention, introducing insights into the heterogeneity of the effect of entrepreneurship education.
... The OECD thus functions as an arena for policy debates and simultaneously enforces and pushes 'new' ways and new technologies for education with the hope of a better future through accumulating human capital (Centeno 2021;Hof and Bürgi 2021). By maintaining constant research, surveys, global comparisons and building new metrics to evaluate education outcomes and concepts such as wellbeing, the OECD has solidified a particular view of education and policy (Williamson 2021b;Williamson and Piattoeva 2019). This particular view builds upon the premise, where through imagining possible futures, and looking past actions and their consequences can be moulded into persuasive governance of present education polices (Lewis 2018;Decuypere and Simons 2020). ...
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The OECD has become a notable predictor of the future needs of society and education. In youth education, the OECD spearheads global strategies, initiatives and recommendations about the curriculum and goals for education. By evoking the sense of 'crisis' in 'traditional education' the OECD functions as a central node of precision education governance, in which so-called best practices of precise, flexible and highly individualised and personalised youth education are disseminated throughout its member states. In the most recent OECD youth strategies and education policy initiatives, we show how the present youth education is governed through evoking various future(s) of youth education. By analysing these predictions and visions discursively, we argue that the future of youth education is approached from both utopian and dystopian predictions by the OECD, and this works as a premise for arranging present and future youth education in a highly targeted and individualised manner. We argue, that the future visions drawn up by the OECD are an example of precision education governance, where the future education is hyper-individualised, arranged by cooperation of public and private sector, and where the goals and contents of education follow global recommendations and 'best practices'.
... In addition, physical therapy such as hypnosis and suggestion therapy are also available [21]. If the clinical symptoms are severe and persist without relief from severe suicidal behavior, twitch-free electroconvulsive therapy can be used [22]. ...
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In this paper, a semantic analysis approach to children’s emotional disorder intervention and education is thoroughly analyzed and discussed, and a corresponding educational system is designed for application in real life. This paper acquires video data by deploying a common camera acquisition and transforms, annotates, frames, and processes the data with the help of feature engineering methods. In addition, this paper proposes a fine-grained action decomposition strategy to solve the problem of extreme imbalance in the dataset to improve the performance of the model and proposes an iterative sampling data fusion strategy, which aims to integrate and fuse data from multiple sources to make them more effective and further improve the robustness and generalization ability of the model. Since it is difficult for families to improve the emotional management skills of migrant children, and it is also difficult to obtain professional help and support from the community or schools, it is important to take advantage of the professional strengths of social work to provide professional support for migrant children and their families. From the perspective of theoretical research, most of the existing studies focus on individual migrant children and cannot give global guidance from the perspective of the family system. The comparison results show that T-SVR trained using data from all subjects outperforms the inductive method based on individual training of trainees, validating the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive emotion recognition model. Therefore, from the perspective of system integration, it is important to explore social work interventions to improve the emotional management skills of migrant children. The system network structure design is determined according to the actual situation; then from the system requirements, the system is abstracted with the help of UML entity-relationship diagram, and the database table design is completed; so far, the overall system can be divided into independent functional modules, and the boundaries of each module and the participating roles are gradually clarified, and the detailed design within each functional module is illustrated by UML timing diagram and class diagram to clarify the classes used. Finally, the system is tested end-to-end to verify whether the results of the view layer meet the design guidelines, whether the system modules work together properly, and whether the functional development meets the requirements.
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This article historicizes the global education policy (GEP) field's developmentalism and the psychological and political inequalities that it naturalizes. Building upon de­ and postcolonial theory and science and technology studies, it illustrates how GEP studies tend to overlook the field's developmentalist premises, which naturalize the norms and values of 'the West' as universal outcomes. Through a self­ reflexive critique of the author's own research of transnational school reforms in Kenya, it historicizes the developmentalist premises that anticipate the kinds of individuals necessary for future growth and prosperity. Whereas in the past this developmentalism facilitated colonial governance by deferring the rights of the colonized, today it governs the present by correlating learning outcomes among marginalized populations with promises of increasing their political capacity. GEP studies can benefit from scrutinizing how developmentalism continues to condition political equality on the acquisition of psychological norms and values, as this forecloses alternatives to what education could and should be.
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Celem niniejszego artykułu jest teoretyzacja kategorii uczenia się w świetle teorii N. Eliasa. W pierwszej części interpretuję uczenie się jako proces społeczny kształtowany cywilizacyjnie, w którym splatają się tendencje cywilizacyjne i decywilizacyjne, w tym związane z panikami moralnymi wokół uczenia się. W kolejnej analizuję proces kształtowania podmiotowości uczącego w procesie cywilizacyjnym, zakładającym stopniowe powściąganie afektów oraz lęk jako czynnik dyscyplinujący. Ostatnia część to zakończenie, podsumowujące opisaną analizę.
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This chapter’s primary contribution lies in advancing our currently limited understanding of the ways in which the goals, purposes, and values of GCE are being re-oriented towards neurocentric ‘cortex without context’ (Vidal and Ortega 2017: 129) style explanations for global problems which conceal the social and material determinants of – and solutions to – social and global injustice. It argues that GCE’s increasing alignment with SEL – (described here as the selification of GCE) has a major depoliticizing effect on GCE. It considers these developments within a wider global educational governance landscape wherein humanistic understandings of education are being eroded and replaced with a neuroliberal imaginary, which operates primarily – if not exclusively – in the service of global corporations and big tech. In so doing, it interrogates the increasing co-articulation of GCE with SEL agenda which seeks to fulfil the needs of an increasingly digitized, ‘brain-based economy’ that places a premium on cerebral skills (Eyre et al. 2020).
Article
District School Boards across the Global North (which includes my own school board in Toronto, Canada) implement behaviour management policies that remain situated within discourses and practices of developmental and behavioural psychology. The ABC chart (Antecedent, Behaviour and Consequence) is one key aspect of these behaviour management policies as it aims to document the timing, frequency, intensity and duration of behaviour characterized as problematic or troublesome. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the ABC chart utilized by classroom teachers across K-12 school settings in order to document behaviour. Understood as a socio-cultural artifact and phenomenon of current neoliberal schooling practices, I seek to investigate the role of ABC charts in sustaining practices of conditional inclusion/exclusion for children and youth labeled as ‘problems.’ Using an interpretive methodology situated within critical disability studies and anti-colonial theories and practices, this paper will engage in the application of concepts such as being “out of sync” ( Knight, 2019 : p. 74) and “misfitting” ( Garland-Thomson, 2011 : p. 592) as they intersect with concepts such as “the ability line” ( Broderick and Leonardo, 2016 : p. 66). A key aim of this paper is to question the taken for granted assumptions regarding conceptions of linear time, developmental progress and, achieving the performance of normative behaviour. In examining the implicit power imbalances in practices of documenting behaviour, this paper also invites educators to engage in a critical dialogue in order to facilitate a transformation into more interdependent and socially just teaching and learning practices.
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In the context of globalization and continuous progress of the fourth industrial revolution, digital economic development has become an inevitable trend and urgent need. The digital economy not only creates new business and job opportunities but also enhances national competitiveness and promotes sustainable development. Recognizing this importance, the Vietnamese Government has implemented many policies and management methods to promote the building of a digital economy. According to a report by the Ministry of Information and Communications of Vietnam, the digital economy is expected to contribute 20-30% of GDP by 2030. To achieve this goal, the application of effective economic state management methods is a prerequisite. These methods include building an appropriate legal framework, deploying advanced digital infrastructure, developing high-quality human resources and promoting public-private cooperation in the field of information technology. Research on the use of state management methods to build a digital economy in Vietnam has high practical significance, helping to identify challenges and opportunities, thereby proposing specific solutions to promote effective and sustainable digital transformation.
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A recent study has identified the key factors that contribute to the themes explored in Jennifer Down's award-winning novel, Bodies of Light. The book has received literary criticism for its portrayal of human bondage, vulnerability, and social distinction, making these themes the primary focus of the study. By delving into the underlying themes and attributions within the novel, this analysis has provided valuable insights into the story. Notably, the study has shed light on the power dynamics between male characters, and the protagonist's struggle with pain, emotional trauma, and poignancy. Furthermore, previous research has highlighted the connections between the novel's exploration of existential crisis and identity. Keywords: Human Bondage, Emotional Investment, Vulnerability, Childhood Grief, Emotional Instability.
Chapter
This chapter focuses on the ways in which university teaching might impact universities’ social purposes. The chapter addresses social purposes that are already or may be enabled by universities’ teaching functions and also social change that may occur because some of the students who we teach lead the change or are directly involved in it, as well as change that may occur because all of the students who we teach accept the need for change at a societal or population level. We explore the types and characteristics of teaching that could achieve universities’ social purposes and describe current educational research about teaching to achieve the sustainable development goals, with a focus on social justice. The chapter draws inspiration from what is being achieved by and learned within institutions that have adopted specific social purposes.
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继侧重于认知领域的 PISA 之后,OECD 于 2018 年正式开展针对非认知领域的社会与情感技能研究(SSES)。面对长久以来学界对国际测评以单一标准评测多样文化的质疑,OECD针对 SSES的跨文化可比性进行了较为详细的合法性自证。然而,通过对 SSES 相关报告进行文本分析,并结合本土心理学的研究成果,本文指出,OECD 的跨文化可比性自证存在诸多问题。进一步的分析表明,SSES的测评框架所依据的西方大五人格模型难以准确测量包括中国人格在内的非西方人格结构,且心理测量与教育测评存在本质差异,后者根基于“何为好教育”的文化诠释和价值导向。对于我国而言,在充分理解和重视国际测评意义和优势的同时,应直面当前测评框架的跨文化局限性,以更加文化自觉的立场,进一步探索将具有普遍意义的中国价值融入国际教育测评体系的可能方式。
Chapter
This concluding chapter reiterates and ties together the key arguments from the previous chapters and expands our main findings by relating them to contemporary developments and initiatives pursued by UNESCO, the OECD and the World Bank, as well as to the main theoretical perspectives we have outlined in Chap. 1. The chapter also addresses contemporary shifts in the global governance of education, in particular the rising influence of the corporate sector and the shift from multilateralism to multistakeholderism. Finally, we offer some speculative reflections on its future trajectories, dynamics and agendas.
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The research aimed to develop e-lectures in light of social and emotional learning to enhance academic achievement, engagement in learning and reduce the sense of social isolation among graduate students. The sample included (21) students conducting the Master of Education Technology at Cairo University divided randomly into a control group of (10) students using distance learning through traditional e-lectures and an experimental one of (11) students using distance learning through e-lectures based on social and emotional learning through an e-learning platform at Cairo University. The research was applied in 2020/2021. The experimental treatment resulted in the design of a general framework of social and emotional learning for higher education in distance learning that developed e-lectures using educational and social strategies (active e-listening, e-sharing, empathy, e-choice and responsibility, e-warmth and support) The results showed that e-lectures based on social and emotional learning were effective in enhancing academic achievement, engagement in learning and reducing the sense of social isolation. The results were discussed in light of theories of social learning, behavioral change, control-value, and self-reporting. The research recommended a new approach to social and emotional learning implementation in distance learning that depends on teachers’ integration of a range of strategies into their daily educational interactions and practice with students in e-lectures. Keywords: Social and emotional learning, e-lectures, academic achievement, engagement in learning, social isolation
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Amidst intersecting sociopolitical conversations around social and emotional learning (SEL), it is crucial to foster a sense of self-reflexive awareness and discursive engagement among pre-service and in-service teachers. In what I describe as a sociopolitical literature review (i.e., addressing empirical literature and public dialogue), I consider SEL through the pedagogical metaphor of a “problem tree.” I contextualize SEL not only through its manifestations (“leaves”) but also its cultural and historical underpinnings (“roots”). I end with a call for discourse communities as a collaborative form of professional development that can help teachers grapple with complexities surrounding SEL and social justice.
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Emotional artificial intelligence (AI) is a narrow, weak form of an AI system that reads, classifies, and interacts with human emotions. This form of smart technology has become an integral layer of our digital and physical infrastructures and will radically transform how we live, learn, and work. Not only will emotional AI provide numerous benefits (i.e., increased attention and awareness, optimized productivity, stress management, etc.), but in sensing and interacting with our intimate emotions, it seeks to surreptitiously modify human behaviors. This study proposes to bring together the Technological Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Moral Foundation Theory to study determinants of emotional AI's acceptance under the analytical framework of the Three-pronged Approach (Contexts, Variables, and Statistical models). We argue that to quantitatively study the acceptance of new technologies, it is necessary to leverage two intuitions. The first is the degree of acceptance increases with how users of smart technology perceive its utilities and ease of use (formalized in the TAM). The second is the degree of acceptance decreases with the user's perception of threat or affirmation posed by the technology in relation to social norms and values (formalized in the Moral Foundation Theory). This study begins by mapping the ecology of current emotional AI use in various contexts such as workplace, education, healthcare, personal assistance, etc. It then provides a brief review and critique of current applications of the TAM and the Moral Foundation Theory in studying how humans judge smart technologies. Finally, we propose the Three-pronged Analytical Framework, offering recommendations on how future studies of technological acceptance could be conducted from the questionnaire design to building statistical models.
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Whilst technology may have been the ‘saviour’ of HE from the immediate challenges of the pandemic, the opportunistic dialogue emerging in response is imbued with notions of the pandemic as a catalyst for change. Empowered by the apparent success of technology’s deliverance, the door has been opened to unprecedented investment into a pervasive and data-driven paradigm of technology. Utilising a Critical Discourse Analysis of sector-orientated literature published in response to the pandemic, this paper examines the emergent rhetoric of technology and problematises taken for granted assumptions concerning its adoption in the imagined future of HE. This paper argues that such rhetoric is mediatory of neoliberal and consumerist ideologies, and that the portrayal of technology as a wholly beneficial enterprise obscures other issues and inequalities. By positioning educational technology in a uniquely political light, this paper offers a critical lens through which to view this new era of technological pervasion.
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This article explores how the concept of affective infrastructure might offer a productive vantage point from which to theorize the ways that affects condition education policy and politics in education. In particular, the article theorizes ‘affective infrastructure’ to discuss the potentialities that emerge in struggles to formulate and enact new political imaginaries for a more inclusive and equitable future in education. The analysis turns to recent literature in education policy in order to identify the extent to which the notion of ‘affective infrastructure’ is used, and emphasizes the political significance of ‘affective infrastructure’ in education policy. Finally, the article explicates a number of future research trajectories in education policy along two ‘sides’ of ‘affective infrastructure,’ namely, affects as products of infrastructures, and affective conditions as producers of infrastructures. It is argued that an affective infrastructural lens can offer new insights into education spaces, practices, and policies.
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An essay based on a lecture series of 'Futureducation'
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Rapid technological advances, particularly recent artificial intelligence (AI) revolutions such as digital assistants (e.g., Alexa, Siri), self-driving cars, and cobots and robots, have changed human lives and will continue to have even bigger impact on our future society. Some of those AI inventions already shocked people across the world by wielding their power of surpassing human intelligence and cognitive abilities; see, for example, the examples of Watson (IBM’s supercomputer) and AlphaGo (Google DeepMind’s AI program) beating the human champions of Jeopardy and Go games, respectively. Then many questions arise. How does AI affect human beings and the larger society? How should we educate our children in the AI age? What changes are necessary to help humans better adapt and flourish in the AI age? What are the key enablers of the AI revolution, such as big data and machine learning? What are the applications of AI in education and how do they work? Answering these critical questions requires interdisciplinary research. There is no shortage of research on AI per se, since it is a highly important and impactful research topic that cuts across many fields of science and technology. Nevertheless, there are no effective guidelines for educational researchers and practitioners that give quick summaries and references on this topic. Because the intersection of AI and education/learning is an emerging field of research, the literature is in flux and the jury is still out. Thus, our goal here is to give readers a quick introduction to this broad topic by drawing upon a limited selection of books, reports, and articles. This entry is organized into three major sections, where we present commentaries along with a list of annotated references on each of the following areas: (1) AI Impacts on the Society and Education; (2) AI Enablers: Big Data in Education and Machine Learning; and (3) Applications of AI in Education: Examples and Evidence.
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The paper summarises the main contributions to the 4th Symposium on Mindfulness in Education at the University of Vienna in January 2020. The conference was hosted by the project "Mindfulness in Teacher Education and Schools" led by Dr. Karlheinz Valtl.
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The new concept of Science for Education is proposed in this chapter, based on the 2D suggestion by Donald Stokes about the Pasteur’s quadrant as the golden standard for best efficacy of scientific research. In addition, we introduce and describe the effort to constitute a network of Brazilian leading scientists who perform research translatable to education. A description of the way this network was formed, as well as its proposals and activities are offered. It is expected that the adoption of translational research inspired by education will add virtuously to other policy measures designed to push Brazil and other countries to a more developed educational level.
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Assemblage thinking has exploded in policy research, especially among scholars working in the policy mobilities field who are seeking to harness the potential of an assemblage approach to understand how policies move, mutate and manifest in increasingly transnational contexts. The ubiquity of assemblage, however, does not always render it clear, with the concept being variously defined and sometimes lacking conceptual strength and explanatory power. This paper seeks to conceptualize and defend an assemblage approach to policy analysis. By synthesizing core threads from existing literature, it identifies three theoretical and conceptual foundations central to a ‘policy assemblage’ approach: (1) relations of exteriority and emergence; (2) heterogeneity, relationality and flux; and (3) attention to power, politics and agency. Together, these foundations signal a coherency to assemblage thinking and suggest an assemblage approach has powerful potential, allowing researchers to see and explain things in ways that many established traditions in policy research do not. By identifying foundations and offering examples of how each might be mobilized, the paper provides the beginnings of a framework for policy assemblage research not previously articulated in a systematic form, thus inviting further discussion about what it means to undertake policy assemblage research.
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New data-driven technologies appear to promise a new era of accuracy and objectivity in scientifically-informed educational policy and governance. The data-scientific objectivity sought by education policy, however, is the result of practices of standardization and quantification deployed to settle controversies about the definition and measurement of human qualities by rendering them as categories and numbers. Focusing on the emerging policy agenda of ‘social and emotional learning and skills,’ this paper examines the practices of ‘objectivity-making’ underpinning this new field. Objectivity-making depends on three translations of (1) scientific expertise into standardized and enumerable definitions, (2) standardization into measurement technologies, and (3) the data produced through measurement technologies into objective policy-relevant knowledge, which consolidates a market in SEL technologies. The paper sheds light on knowledge-making practices in the era of big data and policy science, and their enduring reliance on the precarious construction of objectivity as a key legitimator of policy-relevant scientific knowledge and ‘evidence-based’ education governance.
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This paper examines how datafication is creating new topologies of education policy. Specifically, we analyse how the creation of data infrastructures that enable the generation, communication and representation of digital data are changing relations of power, including both centralised and dispersed forms, and space in education. The paper uses conceptual resources from cultural topology and infrastructure studies to provide a framework for analysing spatial relations between educational data, discourses, policies and practices in new governance configurations. The paper outlines a case study of an emergent data infrastructure in Australian schooling, the National Schools Interoperability Program, to provide empirical evidence of the movement, connection and enactment of digital data across policy spaces. Key aspects of this case include the ways that data infrastructure is: (i) enabling new private and public connections across policy topologies; (ii) creating a new role for technical standards in education policy and (iii) changing the topological spaces of education governance.
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Neurotechnology is an advancing field of research and development with significant implications for education. As ‘postdigital’ hybrids of biological and informational codes, novel neurotechnologies combine neuroscience insights into the human brain with advanced technical development in brain imaging, brain-computer interfaces, neurofeedback platforms, brain stimulation and other neuroenhancement applications. Merging neurobiological knowledge about human life with computational technologies, neurotechnology exemplifies how postdigital science will play a significant role in societies and education in decades to come. As neurotechnology developments are being extended to education, they present potential for businesses and governments to enact new techniques of ‘neurogovernance’ by ‘scanning’ the brain, ‘scraping’ it for data and then ‘sculpting’ the brain toward particular capacities. The aim of this article is to critically review neurotechnology developments and implications for education. It examines the purposes to which neurotechnology development is being put in education, interrogating the commercial and governmental objectives associated with it and the neuroscientific concepts and expertise that underpin it. Finally, the article raises significant ethical and governance issues related to neurotechnology development and postdigital science that require concerted attention from education researchers.
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What happens when media technologies are able to interpret our feelings, emotions, moods, and intentions? In this cutting edge new book, Andrew McStay explores that very question and argues that these abilities result in a form of technological empathy. Offering a balanced and incisive overview of the issues raised by ‘Emotional AI’, this book: - Provides a clear account of the social benefits and drawbacks of new media trends and technologies such as emoji, wearables and chatbots - Demonstrates through empirical research how ‘empathic media’ have been developed and introduced both by start-ups and global tech corporations such as Facebook - Helps readers understand the potential implications on everyday life and social relations through examples such as video-gaming, facial coding, virtual reality and cities - Calls for a more critical approach to the rollout of emotional AI in public and private spheres Combining established theory with original analysis, this book will change the way students view, use and interact with new technologies. It should be required reading for students and researchers in media, communications, the social sciences and beyond.
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A ‘Behavioural Insights’ movement has emerged within governments. This movement infuses policymaking with behavioural scientific insights into the rationally bounded nature of human behaviour, hoping to make more effective and cost-efficient policies without being too obtrusive. Alongside sustained admirations of some, others see in Behavioural Insights the threatening revival of technocracy, and more particularly a ‘psychocracy’: a mode of public decision-making that wrongfully reduces the world of policymaking to a rational-instrumental and top-down affair dictated by psychological expertise. This article argues, however, that the claims of technocracy and psychocracy are overgeneralizations, emanating from a frontstage-focused debate that ignores a vast backwater of emerging behavioural policy practices. Grounded in four case studies on behavioural policymaking in Dutch governance, it will be demonstrated that at least part of this backwater is neither so technocratic nor so psychocratic as the critics claim.
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The ongoing trend towards educational globalisation has brought about various dynamics of education policy ‘rescaling’, resulting in a growing number of governmental arrangements, which are operating across traditional scales, levels or sectors of policy. This contribution takes up the conceptual frameworks of topological spatialisation and assemblage theory to better understand the pivotal role of new information technologies, data infrastructures and also the increasing power of ‘centers of calculation’ within education policy reforms that have been implemented in Germany after the launch of the Programme for International Student Assessment. To cite this article: Sigrid Hartong (2018): Towards a topological re-assemblage of education policy? Observing the implementation of performance data infrastructures and ‘centers of calculation’ in Germany, Globalisation, Societies and Education, 16:1, 134-150, DOI: 10.1080/14767724.2017.1390665
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This meta-analysis reviewed 82 school-based, universal social and emotional learning (SEL) interventions involving 97,406 kindergarten to high school students (Mage = 11.09 years; mean percent low socioeconomic status = 41.1; mean percent students of color = 45.9). Thirty-eight interventions took place outside the United States. Follow-up outcomes (collected 6 months to 18 years postintervention) demonstrate SEL's enhancement of positive youth development. Participants fared significantly better than controls in social-emotional skills, attitudes, and indicators of well-being. Benefits were similar regardless of students’ race, socioeconomic background, or school location. Postintervention social-emotional skill development was the strongest predictor of well-being at follow-up. Infrequently assessed but notable outcomes (e.g., graduation and safe sexual behaviors) illustrate SEL's improvement of critical aspects of students’ developmental trajectories.
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This chapter summarizes the results of nearly 100 years of research on school-based social and emotional learning (SEL). The SEL field has grown out of research in many fields and subfields with which educators, researchers, and policymakers are familiar, including the promotion of social competence, bullying prevention, prevention of drug use and abuse, civic and character education, emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, social skills training, and 21st-century skills. The chapter begins with a historical summary of theoretical movements and research trends that have led to today’s inclusion of SEL as part of many schools’ curricula, policies, and practices. Contemporary approaches that represent current policy and societal concerns are discussed in comparative terms. Based on the converging research evidence, this chapter identifies design elements and implementation quality characteristics of effective approaches to SEL. Recommendations for future practice, policy, and research are provided.
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This edited volume advances existing research on the production and use of expert knowledge by international bureaucracies. Given the complexity, technicality and apparent apolitical character of the issues dealt with in global governance arenas, ‘evidence-based’ policy-making has imposed itself as the best way to evaluate the risks and consequences of political action in global arenas. In the absence of alternative, democratic modes of legitimation, international organizations have adopted this approach to policy-making. By treating international bureaucracies as strategic actors, this volume address novel questions: why and how do international bureaucrats deploy knowledge in policy-making? Where does the knowledge they use come from, and how can we retrace pathways between the origins of certain ideas and their adoption by international administrations? What kind of evidence do international bureaucrats resort to, and with what implications? Which types of knowledge are seen as authoritative, and why? This volume makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of the way global policy agendas are shaped and propagated. It will be of great interest to scholars, policy-makers and practitioners in the fields of public policy, international relations, global governance and international organizations. © 2017 selection and editorial material, Annabelle Littoz-Monnet; individual chapters, the contributors.
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There is a growing body of research emphasizing the advantages of teaching students social and emotional (SE) skills in school. Here we examine the economic value of these skills within a benefit-cost analysis (BCA) framework. Our examination has three parts. First, we describe how the current method of BCA must be expanded to adequately evaluate SE skills, and we identify important decisions analysts must make. Second, we review the evidence on the benefits of SE skills, again noting key methodological issues with respect to shadow pricing. Finally, we perform BCA of four selected social and emotional learning (SEL) interventions: 4Rs; Second Step, Life Skills Training; and Responsive Classroom. These analyses illustrate both methodological and empirical challenges in estimating net present values for these interventions. Even with these challenges, we find that the benefits of these interventions substantially outweigh the costs. We highlight promising areas of research for improving the application of BCA to SEL.
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Three studies were conducted to develop and validate the Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2), a major revision of the Big Five Inventory (BFI). Study 1 specified a hierarchical model of personality structure with 15 facet traits nested within the Big Five domains, and developed a preliminary item pool to measure this structure. Study 2 used conceptual and empirical criteria to construct the BFI-2 domain and facet scales from the preliminary item pool. Study 3 used data from 2 validation samples to evaluate the BFI-2’s measurement properties and substantive relations with self-reported and peer-reported criteria. The results of these studies indicate that the BFI-2 is a reliable and valid personality measure, and an important advance over the original BFI. Specifically, the BFI-2 introduces a robust hierarchical structure, controls for individual differences in acquiescent responding, and provides greater bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power than the original BFI, while still retaining the original measure’s conceptual focus, brevity, and ease of understanding. The BFI-2 therefore offers valuable new opportunities for research examining the structure, assessment, development, and life outcomes of personality traits.
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This paper critically examines the ways in which ClassDojo is altering the disciplinary landscape in schools through the datafication of discipline and student behaviour. ClassDojo is one of the most popular and successful educational technologies and is used internationally. It is a school-based social media platform that incorporates a gamified behaviour-shaping function, providing school communities with a centralised digital network in which to interact. We argue that ClassDojo’s datafying system of school discipline intensifies and normalises the surveillance of students. Furthermore, it creates a culture of performativity and serves as a mechanism for behaviour control. Free link to full-text: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/P446cBEmgrX8pNNy4eCP/full?target=10.1080/17439884.2018.1558237
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Over the past decade, a growing body of scholarship in media studies and other cognate disciplines has focused our attention on the social, material, cultural, and political dimensions of the infrastructures that undergird and sustain media and communication networks and cultures across the world. This infrastructural turn assumes greater significance in relation to digital media and in particular, the influence that digital platforms have come to wield. Having “disrupted” many sectors of social, political, and economic life, many of the most widely used digital platforms now seem to operate as infrastructures themselves. This special issue explores how an infrastructural perspective reframes the study of digital platforms and allows us to pose questions of scale, labor, industry logics, policy and regulation, state power, cultural practices, and citizenship in relation to the routine, everyday uses of digital platforms. In this opening article, we offer a critical overview of media infrastructure studies and situate the study of digital infrastructures and platforms within broader scholarly and public debates on the history and political economy of media infrastructures. We also draw on the study of media industries and production cultures to make the case for an inter-medial and inter-sectoral approach to understanding the entanglements of digital platforms and infrastructures.
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Recent public controversies, ranging from the 2014 Facebook ‘emotional contagion’ study to psychographic data profiling by Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 American presidential election, Brexit referendum and elsewhere, signal watershed moments in which the intersecting trajectories of psychology and computer science have become matters of public concern. The entangled history of these two fields grounds the application of applied psychological techniques to digital technologies, and an investment in applying calculability to human subjectivity. Today, a quantifiable psychological subject position has been translated, via ‘big data’ sets and algorithmic analysis, into a model subject amenable to classification through digital media platforms. I term this position the ‘scalable subject’, arguing it has been shaped and made legible by algorithmic psychometrics – a broad set of affordances in digital platforms shaped by psychology and the behavioral sciences. In describing the contours of this ‘scalable subject’, this paper highlights the urgent need for renewed attention from STS scholars on the psy sciences, and on a computational politics attentive to psychology, emotional expression, and sociality via digital media.
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This article offers a critical discursive reading of the 2014 Character and Resilience Manifesto (hereafter the Manifesto), focusing on the sources and legitimation strategies supporting its claims. As an All Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility document, the Manifesto traces both old and new discursive tropes framing policy strategy on education and social care, extending into current political agendas around mental health and well-being and even child safeguarding and securitisation. While the Manifesto’s supposed evidence-based claims draw extensively on a specifically commissioned literature review undertaken by Gutman and Schoon, problems are identified with how this is represented in the Manifesto, including significant omissions and slippages within Gutman and Schoon’s text and between this and the Manifesto. Analysis highlights exaggerations of the claims made in Gutman and Schoon’s review in the Manifesto while important conceptual clarifications (between resilience and coping and the non-generalisability of resilience) are overlooked. Commentators’ cautions over the evaluation and comparability of current programmes also fail to appear. Beyond such asymmetries, a common narrative identified across both texts reformulates emotions away from their ‘soft’, culturally feminised, associations to become ‘hard and tough’, and abstracted from relationship and (sociopolitical) context. Clearly, such gendering of emotions can be situated in relation to wider discourses of feminisation, alongside others de-emphasising classed and racialised inequalities. Overall, the Manifesto performs its own rhetoric, manifesting its own buoyancy to resist critical engagement and further the contemporary moral doctrine of inciting voluntarist optimistic subjects, devoid of attention to class, gender or racialised inequalities.
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This book addresses the wave of innovation and reforms that has been called the nudge or behavioural public policy agenda, which has emerged in many countries since the mid-2000s. Nudge involves developing behavioural insights to solve complex policy problems, such as unemployment, obesity and the environment, as well as improving the delivery of policies by reforming standard operating procedures. It reviews the changes that have taken place, in particular the greater use of randomised evaluations, and discusses how far nudge can be used more generally in the policy process. The book argues that nudge has a radical future if it develops a more bottom up approach involving greater feedback and more engagement with citizens.
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Mind-sets (aka implicit theories) are beliefs about the nature of human attributes (e.g., intelligence). The theory holds that individuals with growth mind-sets (beliefs that attributes are malleable with effort) enjoy many positive outcomes—including higher academic achievement—while their peers who have fixed mind-sets experience negative outcomes. Given this relationship, interventions designed to increase students’ growth mind-sets—thereby increasing their academic achievement—have been implemented in schools around the world. In our first meta-analysis (k = 273, N = 365,915), we examined the strength of the relationship between mind-set and academic achievement and potential moderating factors. In our second meta-analysis (k = 43, N = 57,155), we examined the effectiveness of mind-set interventions on academic achievement and potential moderating factors. Overall effects were weak for both meta-analyses. However, some results supported specific tenets of the theory, namely, that students with low socioeconomic status or who are academically at risk might benefit from mind-set interventions.
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A behavioural insights community has emerged within a growing number of governments. While this community helps to make policies more behavioural science based, its frontstage role models tend to assume a straightforward, instrumental and apolitical view of the science–policy relationship that seems unrealistic. This article therefore examines what goes on backstage in this community, based on an ethnographic study of behaviour experts in Dutch central government. The article argues that their work consists of a complex palette of practices (that is, choice architecture; analysis; capacity building). Because these practices resemble typical knowledge brokerage work, the article pushes for an envisaging of ‘behaviour experts as knowledge brokers’.
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This paper investigates the commercialisation of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) in Australian schools. Specifically, it focuses on understanding why teachers value commercial resources, and how they enact these in their classrooms. Theorising around teacher agency suggests teachers are now choosing to use a range of commercial resources and view these as important additions to their pedagogical toolbox. Teachers want high quality resources, and they prefer resources that are easy to import, scaffold and modify according to their specific needs. Teachers did not readily see the benefit of a prescriptive SEL program. Instead, they wanted multiple resources that they could pick and choose the best bits from. Our data suggests that teachers are not being seduced by commercialisation and the ‘easy fix’ it promises, but are in fact presenting as agentic professionals who care deeply about students’ social and emotional wellbeing and are working to tailor bespoke learning experiences to meet the needs of their students within their specific school contexts. We argue that it is worth nuancing the critique about commercialisation offered in the literature to date, and suggest that commercialisation is not inherently bad, rather it is the ‘intensity’ of commercialisation that needs to be regulated and further investigated.
Book
Edu.net builds upon, and extends, a series of research studies of education policy networks and global policy mobilities. It draws on comprehensive data resulting from a Leverhulme Trust research study focused on Africa, and a study funded by the British Academy focused on India, which explored the wayin which global actors and organisations bring policy ideas to bear and are joined up in a global education policy network. This timely and cutting-edge new work develops concepts, analyses and methods deployed in Education Plc (2008), Networks, New Governance and Education (2012) and Global Education Inc. (2012). The research is framed by an elaboration of Network Ethnography, an innovative method of policy research. Edu.net presents the substantive findings of the authors’ research by focusing on various kinds of policy movement - people, ideas, practices, methods, money. The book is about both global education policy and ways of researching policy in a global setting. It is an essential read for policy analysts, educational academic researchers and postgraduate education students alike.
Book
Many governments in the developed world can now best be described as ʼneuroliberal’: having a combination of neoliberal principles with policy initiatives derived from insights in the behavioural sciences. Neuroliberalism presents the results of the first critical global study of the impacts of the behavioural sciences on public policy and government actions, including behavioural economics, behavioural psychology and neuroeconomics. Drawing on interviews with leading behaviour change experts, organizations and policy-makers, and discussed in alignment with a series of international case studies, this volume provides a critical analysis of the ethical, economic, political and constitutional implications of behaviourally oriented government. It explores the impacts of the behavioural sciences on everyday life through a series of themes, including: understandings of the human subject; interpretations of freedom; the changing form and function of the state; the changing role of the corporation in society; and the design of everyday environments and technologies. The research presented in this volume reveals a diverse set of neuroliberal approaches to government that offer policy-makers and behaviour change professionals a real choice in relation to the systems of behavioural government they can implement. This book also argues that the behavioural sciences have the potential to support much more effective systems of government, but also generate new ethical concerns that policy-makers should be aware of. © 2018 Mark Whitehead, Rhys Jones, Rachel Lilley, Jessica Pykett and Rachel Howell.
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This paper examines the development of data infrastructure in Australian schooling with a specific focus on interoperability standards that help to make new markets for education data. The conceptual framework combines insights from studies of infrastructure, economic markets and digital data. The case of the Australian National Schools Interoperability Program is analysed, drawing on a corpus of web-based technical and promotional documents and supporting interviews. The paper shows that Australia has well-developed data infrastructure in schooling that is creating new relations between schools, school systems and commercial vendors within network markets for data-driven educational technologies.
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From drugging kids into attention and reviving behaviorism to biometric measurements of teaching and learning Scripted Bodies exposes a brave new world of education in the age of repression. Scripted Bodies examines how corporeal control has expanded in education, how it impacts the mind and thinking, and the ways that new technologies are integral to the expansion of control. Scripted Bodies contends that this rise in repression must be understood in relation to the broader economic, political, and cultural forces that have produced an increasingly authoritarian society. This book details how these new forms of corporeal control shut down the possibility of public schools developing as places where thinking becomes the organizing principle needed to contribute to a more equal, just, and democratic society.
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My response to Humphry begins with some reflections upon why it is that after more than a century, psychometrics still lacks plausible substantive theories underwriting its claims to measure mental attributes and I explore the possibility that it is more myth-based technology than science. Historically, psychometrics has lacked any interest in coming to grips scientifically with the logical commitments of the presumption, implicit in the theories it does have (e.g., its Item Response Theories), that the attributes it aspires to measure are continuous quantities. This lack of interest might also explain Humphry’s misunderstanding of what is involved in the measurement theory axiom of continuity and his curious claim to have located a paradox therein. However, his attempt to rule the entire corpus of measurement theory as irrelevant to the enterprise of constructing and investigating substantive, psychometric theories betrays a failure to recognise that the form of substantive, quantitative theories also raises issues requiring empirical investigation.
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Educational environments are increasingly using online technologies that aim to identify and manage students through affect. These forms of monitoring can be understood as a method of approaching students through the lens of positive psychology. Clearly, the relationship between schools, technology, and affect is not straightforward or benign. Yet, despite recent attention to the educational benefits of social and emotional intelligence, most educational discussions pay little critical attention to affect in terms of external interests regulating the behaviours and dispositions of students. This paper examines how student subjectivities are managed by the modulation of affect through online platforms in/for school. It is separated into three broad sections that capture the themes emerging as central to the relations between student populations and techniques of affectivity: sensation, intensity, and value. The paper concludes with a consideration of the implications that arise from how online technologies are used to mediate student subjectivities in secondary school.
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The last 20 years has witnessed the spread of corporatism in education on a global scale. In England, this trend is characterised by new structural and cultural approaches to education found in the ‘academies’ programme and the adoption of private sector management styles. The corporate re-imagining of schools has also led to the introduction into the curriculum of particular forms of character education aimed at managing the ‘emotional labour’ of children. This paper argues that character education rests on a fallacy that the development of desirable character traits in children can be engineered by mimicking certain behaviours from the adult world. The weaknesses in the corporate approach to managing ‘emotional labour’ are illustrated with empirical data from two primary schools. An alternative paradigm is presented which locates the ‘emotional labour’ of children within a ‘holding environment’ that places children’s well-being at its core.
Article
Apocalyptic crisis discourses of mental health problems and psycho-emotional dysfunction are integral to behaviour change agendas across seemingly different policy arenas. Bringing these agendas together opens up new theoretical and empirical lines of enquiry about the symbioses and contradictions surrounding the human subjects they target. The paper explores the relationship between behaviour change policy, enduring philosophical and political scepticism about the viability of the rational, autonomous subject of liberal and neoliberal governance, and the contemporary cultural privileging of its vulnerable, anxious and stressed counterpart. Weber’s accounts of authority illuminate dangers arising from an ad hoc, shifting, unaccountable state-sponsored intervention market that targets the vulnerable subject, proselytised by new types of ‘therapeutic entrepreneurs’. Using an education-based example of statutory legislation for counter-terrorism in schools and universities, the Prevent strategy, the ...
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This article gives an account of the use of knowledges from emerging scientific fields in education and youth policy making under the Coalition government (2010–15) in the UK. We identify a common process of ‘translation’ and offer three illustrations of policy-making in the UK that utilise diverse knowledges produced in academic fields (neuroscience, network theory and well-being). This production of ‘new knowledges’ in policy contexts allows for the identification of sites of policy intervention. This process of translation underlies a series of diverse revisions of the rational subject of policy. Collectively, these revisions amount to a change in policy-making and the emergence of a different subject of neoliberal policy. This subject is not an excluded alterity to an included rational subject of neoliberalism, but a ‘plastic subject’ characterised by its multiplicity. The plastic subject does not contradict the rational subject as central to neoliberal policy-making, but diversifies it.