Open international lecture series FUTURE TRAJECTORIES OF EDUCATION AND THE EMERGENCE OF PRECISION EDUCATION GOVERNANCE

Open international lecture series

FUTURE TRAJECTORIES OF EDUCATION AND THE EMERGENCE OF PRECISION EDUCATION GOVERNANCE

University of Helsinki, Education & Society –research community

Chairs: Professors Kristiina Brunila and Janne Varjo

FuturEducation is an open international lecture series meant for everyone interested in deepening their knowledge about the future trajectories of education and wanting to understand some of the most crucial questions of changing education governance that are shaping education. The lecture series provides a conceptual and more comprehensive understanding of future education governance with eminent and internationally recognized speakers and provides essential knowledge for all stakeholders in the field of education. All detailed, up-to-date information about the lecture series can be found on our website: https://blogs.helsinki.fi/futureducation/

The lecture series is available to 20 doctoral students as a five-credit course. Learn more about completing the course here: https://blogs.helsinki.fi/futureducation/course-for-doctoral-students/

Lectures and Timetable:

Thursday, September 9th, 2021 at 14:15-15:45 (UTC+3) Professor Malin Ideland from Malmö University:“Problem-solving, future-making and a source of joy. A look on the bright side of neoliberalized education.”

Thursday, October 7th, 2021 at 10:15-11:45 (UTC+3): Dr Sam Sellar from Manchester Metropolitan University: “Synthetic governance: The emergence of new cognitive infrastructures in education policy”

Monday, November 1st, 2021 at 14:15-15:45 (UTC+2): Professor Gita Steiner-Khamsi from Teachers College, Columbia University, New York (fall semesters) and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva (spring semesters): “What does the surplus of data do to policy making?”

November/December 2021 (UTC+2): Professor Deborah Youdell from the University of Birmingham. Date, time and lecture details will be updated on our website soon.

December 2021 (UTC+2): Panel discussion “Future of Education – to whom and for what”, focusing on topical questions about the future trajectories of education in Finnish context with four brilliant scholars from Finnish universities. Date, time and panellists will be updated on our website soon.

Zoom link to all lectures:

https://helsinki.zoom.us/j/64842664857?pwd=ZUNUS3g5elYwUjlRa0tOS1VjZG5ZQT09

Meeting ID: 648 4266 4857

Passcode: 556857

Background

The lecture series is founded on the urgent need to analyse the future of education governance with new concepts and broader social science perspectives, as the contemporary concepts of education governance are not sufficient in analytically describing all the concurrent changes that are affecting education today and in the future. Additionally, so far, these changes have been researched separately and through different research paradigms.

With the help and interference of life and behavioural sciences, as well as managerial reasoning and business initiatives, education governance is shifting towards more individually and personally tailored governance. Datafication and digitalization are used as tools to pre-empt futures in order to manage the present, with a variety of stakeholders joining forces through transnational networks to operationalize such ideas, quite often appealing to marketization and privatization in education. Managing the present requires a fabrication of a specific type of future-oriented learning subjectivities, in which structural problems, such as inequalities or lack of resources, tend to be considered as products of innate and quantifiable differences in behaviour, affects, skills, and competences, justified by behavioral and life sciences. Furthermore, the simultaneous occurrence of these changes on different scales (global, national, and local) entails even tighter economically driven governance with far-reaching implications.

Objective

By utilising, applying, and further developing the concept of precision education governance (PEG), developed in the Education & Society –research community and in its on-going Interrupting Future Trajectories of the Precision Education Governance–research project at the University of Helsinki, the lecture series looks into the future education governance by scrutinizing some of the key changes and outcomes in education through three interlinked lines of research:

  1. a) The strengthening of global and local governance of education
  2. b) The marketization, privatization, digitalization and datafication of education
  3. c) Replacing educational science research knowledge with behavioural and life sciences

The lecture series provides a conceptual and more comprehensive understanding of future education governance with eminent and internationally recognized speakers. As these changes will continue to have historically significant consequences for education and society, this lecture series provides essential knowledge for all stakeholders in the field of education.

Warm welcome

On behalf of the FuturEducation project

Inka Tähkä

Project Coordinator of FuturEducation – Future Education and the Emergence of Precision Education Governance
https://blogs.helsinki.fi/futureducation/