Teaching in the knowledge society: education in the age of insecurity

This paper argues that Foucault’s conception of governmentality provides a powerful tool for understanding learning and education and links the organisation of learning to both politics and economics in developed Western societies. What is offered by Foucault’s conception, I will argue, is a new version of superstructural sociology, which provides a means of understanding how educational and economic practices mutually condition and adapt to each other while avoiding the excesses that plagued Marxist analyses in the later 20th century, which represented such processes as the outcome of a necessary determination. Lifelong learning will be identified as a specifically neoliberal form of state reason in terms of its conception, emergence and development. Although it has manifested a uniformly consistent – albeit not exclusive – concern of serving dominant economic interests, the prospects for moving beyond it depend, I argue, on whether the structures of learning created can be harnessed for other ends; that...

http://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/9050879.pdf

Understanding the mechanisms of neoliberal control: lifelong learning, flexibility and knowledge capitalism

Food and nutrition: Customs and culture, Paul Fieldhouse. Croom-Helm (1986), £8·95

Does a companion always enhance the shopping experience

The increasing importance of children as consumers has focused attention on ‘pester power’: children’s influence over adult purchasing through requests and demands for certain products. Many concerns are expressed about pester power, including that it increases parent-child conflict. In the contested area of food marketing, an additional and particularly potent criticism of pester power is that it can undermine parents’ attempts to feed their children a healthy diet. Results from a systematic review of international evidence find that food advertising does cause ‘pestering’ by children and results in parents buying less healthy products that are associated with obesity. This undermines industry arguments that pester power is just a legitimate way for children to express their growing autonomy as consumers. Policy implications for marketers and government are discussed.

International food advertising, pester power and its effects

Today the family is seen as a unit for food choice and consumption. The influence of family members on food choice comprises several stages that can be carried out both in the private home and in the public sphere, such as the grocery store. This makes the grocery store a context in which ordinary family life can be observed. The aim was to study families and the interaction between children and adults in the grocery store, focusing on young people's involvement in food shopping. Hidden observation and family interview methods were used. A total of 338 people were observed in seven different grocery stores in Stockholm during the summer and autumn of 2003. Seven family interviews, involving a total of 29 persons, were conducted in Uppsala in the spring of 2003. In the interviews, parents reported avoiding shopping for food together with children as they experienced it as stressful and exhausting. The observations showed that family life in the grocery store comprises not only the food purchase, but also bringing up children and consumer education. Young people's involvement in the food purchase varied depending on their age and the specific product. The different behaviour observed may be interpreted as reflecting the variation in ways of bringing up children at home. Another conclusion is that a public place such the grocery store facilitates pedagogical situations and can work as a tool for informal education.

Family life in grocery stores – a study of interaction between adults and children

The ‘learning society’ expresses principles of a universal humanity and a promise of progress that seem to transcend the nation. The paper indicates how this society is governed in the name of a cosmopolitan ideal that despite its universal pretensions embodies particular inclusions and exclusions. These occur through inscribing distinctions and differentiations between the characteristics of those who embody a cosmopolitan reason that brings social progress and personal fulfilment and those who do not embody the cosmopolitan principles of civility and normalcy. Mapping the circulation of the notion of the ‘learning society’ in arenas of Swedish health and criminal justice, and Swedish and US school reforms is to examine the mode of life of the citizen of this society, the learner, as an ‘unfinished cosmopolitanism’ and also directs attention to its ‘other(s)’—those that are outside.

The Learning Society, the Unfinished Cosmopolitan, and Governing Education, Public Health and Crime Prevention at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century.

To evaluate the impact of demographic and psychosocial background factors and psychiatric and functional status before and at admission on the patients' satisfaction with care (PSC) among first-episode psychosis (FEP) patients. One year after entering the Parachute Project, 134 FEP patients completed a patient satisfaction questionnaire. The association with demographic and psychosocial background factors, together with psychiatric and functional status before and after admission, was analysed. Twenty-nine per cent of the variance of PSC was explained by factors such as educational level, social network, duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) and Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) the year prior to onset. Negative symptoms and lack of hope at admission were also predictors of PSC. The strongest predictor was DUP. Affecting the public knowledge in psychiatric problems and psychiatric treatment, together with early intervention strategies aiming to decrease the prodromal and DUP period among FEP patients, can positively influence the patients' experience of given care. By increasing the knowledge of available psychiatric treatment, the sense of powerlessness might decrease among the affected persons, and the possibility of early help seeking might increase.

Background factors as determinants of satisfaction with care among first-episode psychosis patients

Objective: To evaluate the impact of demographic and psychosocial background factors and psychiatric and functional status before and at admission on the patients' satisfaction with care (PSC) among, first-episode psychosis (FEP) patients. Method: One year after entering the Parachute Project, 134 FEP patients completed a patient satisfaction questionnaire. Results Twenty-nine per cent of the variance of PSC was explained by factors such as educational level, social network, duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) and Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) the year prior to onset. Conclusion: Affecting the public knowledge in psychiatric problems and psychiatric treatment, together with early intervention strategies aiming to decrease the prodromal and DUP period among FEP patients, can positively influence the pa:ients' experience of given care. By increasing the cnowledge of available psychiatric treatment, the sense of powerlessness might decrease among the affected persons, and the possibility of early help seeking might increase.

Background factors as determinants of satisfaction with care Background factors as determinants of satisfaction with care among first-episode psychosis patients.

This article reveals how templates that emerge from opaque albeit often inclusive policy processes in transnational forums (EU, OECD & the Bologna Process) affect education reform policy in Scandinavian countries, such as Denmark and Sweden. The open method of coordination is the mother template of the political technologies (standards, performance indicators, scorecards, best practices) that are instrumental in fashioning reforms. This template commits countries in consensus-making ways to comparison, and normalizes the competitive incentive of mutual peer pressure. The authors draw on post-Foucauldian governmentality-studies to scrutinize policy documents and literature on policy reform to display the forces make up reforms, which to date have not figured prominently in national debates.

Ulf Olsson

Papers

Family life in grocery stores – a study of interaction between adults and children

The Learning Society, the Unfinished Cosmopolitan, and Governing Education, Public Health and Crime Prevention at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century.

Background factors as determinants of satisfaction with care among first-episode psychosis patients

Background factors as determinants of satisfaction with care Background factors as determinants of satisfaction with care among first-episode psychosis patients.

The transnational grip on Scandinavian education reforms - The open method of coordination challenging national policy-making