Michael A. Peters

Bio: Michael A. Peters is an academic researcher from Beijing Normal University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Philosophy of education & Knowledge economy. The author has an hindex of 51, co-authored 657 publications receiving 11966 citations. Previous affiliations of Michael A. Peters include Peking University & University of Zagreb.

Neoliberalism, higher education and the knowledge economy: from the free market to knowledge capitalism

Abstract: The ascendancy of neoliberalism and the associated discourses of ‘new public management’, during the 1980s and 1990s has produced a fundamental shift in the way universities and other institutions of higher education have defined and justified their institutional existence. The traditional professional culture of open intellectual enquiry and debate has been replaced with a institutional stress on performativity, as evidenced by the emergence of an emphasis on measured outputs: on strategic planning, performance indicators, quality assurance measures and academic audits. This paper traces the links between neoliberalism and globalization on the one hand, and neoliberalism and the knowledge economy on the other. It maintains that in a global neoliberal environment, the role of higher education for the economy is seen by governments as having greater importance to the extent that higher education has become the new star ship in the policy fleet for governments around the world. Universities are seen as a key driver in the knowledge economy and as a consequence higher education institutions have been encouraged to develop links with industry and business in a series of new venture partnerships. The recognition of economic importance of higher education and the necessity for economic viability has seen initiatives to promote greater entrepreneurial skills as well as the development of new performative measures to enhance output and to establish and achieve targets. This paper attempts to document these trends at the level of both political philosophy and economic theory.

Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology

Abstract: When Chris Dede from Harvard University visited the University of Illinois to deliver an address at the inauguration of the Ubiquitous Learning Institute [1] on 7 April 2010 [2], given that Dr Dede was a member of the National Education Technology Plan technical working group [3], we took the opportunity to plan a special issue of E-Learning and Digital Media devoted to a discussion of the national plan. To this end we invited contributions from a number of prominent scholars and invited Chris to organize a response from members of the working group to their comments and criticisms. As the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan notes in his letter to members of Congress that prefaces the report that America used to be the global leader in education completion rates for young people and now ranks ninth out of 36 developed nations. He argues it is essential therefore that it regains its leadership, enabling it to compete in the global economy. If anything, this message has become even more important in the intervening months as the effects of the recession have become widespread, with unemployment peaking at over 10% and a strong demand to control the burgeoning deficit through budget cuts to government services and welfare across the board. The Obama administration’s National Education Technology Plan, Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology, is presented as a means to ‘leverage the innovation and ingenuity’ required to improve student learning and to accelerate the adoption and use of effective technology practices in America’s schools. Duncan goes on to summarize the model of learning at the heart of the plan as follows:

The Origins and Status of Action Research

Abstract: Diverse claims have been made for and about action research in a variety of contexts. In this article, we first trace the origins of this approach to Kurt Lewin and provide a synopsis of his views. We then compare Lewin's views on action research with those of contemporary exponents. In the third section, we review and systematize the claims of 11 action researchers to determine the extent to which their claims constitute a shared conception. While most authors characterize action research as a methodology, a few also attempt to link action research to a particular interpretation or theory of social science. We build on this distinction in the final section and distinguish a weak from a strong version of action research, concluding that, at this time, neither version enjoys the status of a paradigm.

Education, Enterprise Culture and the Entrepreneurial Self: A Foucauldian Perspective

Abstract: The notion of ‘enterprise culture’ emerged in the United Kingdom as a central motif in political thought under Margaret Thatcher's administration. The notion represented a profound shift away from the Keynesian welfare state to a deliberate attempt at cultural restructuring and engineering based upon the neo-liberal model of the entrepreneurial self - a shift characterised as a moving from a ‘culture of dependency’ to one of ‘self-reliance’. In education this shift took the form of the ‘enterprise education’ and the ‘enterprise curriculum’. This paper, utilising the perspective of Michel Foucault, analyses the ‘generalization of an ‘enterprise form’ to all forms of conduct’ (Burchell) and the way in which the promotion of an enterprise culture has become a style of government characteristic of both neoliberalism and Third Way politics.

National education policy constructions of the 'knowledge economy': towards a critique

Abstract: A rediscovery of the economic importance of education has been fundamental to understanding the new global knowledge economy (Papadopoulos 1994). The Organisation for Economic and Cultural Development (OECD) and the World Bank have stressed the significance of education and training as keys to participation in the new global knowledge economy for the development of ‘human resources’; for upskilling and increasing the competencies of workers; and for the production of research and scientific knowledge. Drucker (1993) and Porter (1990) emphasise the importance of the economics and productivity of knowledge as the basis for national competition within the international marketplace. Thurow (1996, p 68) suggests that a technological shift to an era dominated by man-made brainpower industries is one of five economic tectonic plates that constitute a new game with new rules: ‘Today knowledge and skills now stand alone as the only source of comparative advantage. They have become the key ingredient in the late twentieth century’s location of economic activity’.

经验与教育 = Experience and education

Abstract: Experience and Educationis the best concise statement on education ever published by John Dewey, the man acknowledged to be the pre-eminent educational theorist of the twentieth century. Written more than two decades after Democracy and Education(Dewey's most comprehensive statement of his position in educational philosophy), this book demonstrates how Dewey reformulated his ideas as a result of his intervening experience with the progressive schools and in the light of the criticisms his theories had received. Analysing both "traditional" and "progressive" education, Dr. Dewey here insists that neither the old nor the new education is adequate and that each is miseducative because neither of them applies the principles of a carefully developed philosophy of experience. Many pages of this volume illustrate Dr. Dewey's ideas for a philosophy of experience and its relation to education. He particularly urges that all teachers and educators looking for a new movement in education should think in terms of the deeped and larger issues of education rather than in terms of some divisive "ism" about education, even such an "ism" as "progressivism." His philosophy, here expressed in its most essential, most readable form, predicates an American educational system that respects all sources of experience, on that offers a true learning situation that is both historical and social, both orderly and dynamic.

Organizational Learning: The Contributing Processes and the Literatures

Abstract: This paper differs from previous examinations of organizational learning in that it is broader in scope and more evaluative of the literatures. Four constructs related to organizational learning knowledge acquisition, information distribution, information interpretation, and organizational memory are articulated, and the literatures related to each are described and critiqued. The literature on knowledge acquisition is voluminous and multi-faceted, and so the knowledge acquisition construct is portrayed here as consisting of five subconstructs or subprocesses: 1 drawing on knowledge available at the organization's birth, 2 learning from experience, 3 learning by observing other organizations, 4 grafting on to itself components that possess knowledge needed but not possessed by the organization, and 5 noticing or searching for information about the organization's environment and performance. Examination of the related literatures indicates that much has been learned about learning from experience, but also that there is a lack of cumulative work and a lack of integration of work from different research groups. Similarly, much has been learned about organizational search, but there is a lack of conceptual work, and there is a lack of both cumulative work and syntheses with which to create a more mature literature. Congenital learning, vicarious learning, and grafting are information acquisition subprocesses about which relatively little has been learned. The literature concerning information distribution is rich and mature, but an aspect of information distribution that is central to an organization's benefitting from its learning, namely how units that possess information and units that need this information can find each other quickly and with a high likelihood, is unexplored. Information interpretation, as an organizational process, rather than an individual process, requires empirical work for further advancement. Organizational memory is much in need of systematic investigation, particularly by those whose special concerns are improving organizational learning and decision making.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

Abstract: How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The Production of Space

Abstract: ‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.