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      Marx's Ghost in the Shell: Troubling Techno-Solutionism in Post-Secondary Education and Training Policy Imaginaries

      research-article
      Education as Change
      Unisa Press
      higher education, open learning, critical technology studies, discourse analysis, policy

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          Abstract

          Post-secondary South African education policy is pinning its hopes of increased access to education on technological changes, especially in light of increased demand for education while persisting with fiscal austerity. This article examines one policy text-the Open Learning Policy Framework-that exemplifies this techno-solutionist policy logic in the post-secondary education and training sector. Structured around the triad of "context-text-consequences", the article conducts a critical discourse analysis of the Open Learning Policy Framework, positing that techno-solutionism performs an under-labouring role for other more commonly critiqued logics such as new managerialism, social justice as equality and/or equity, and human capital theory. It further troubles the Open Learning Policy Framework's definition of "open learning", examining it as a truth/power regimen that constructs the object it espouses to describe. Finally the article considers some of the consequences of such a pivot in education, including the invisible transformation of relations in pedagogic labour, and the subjectivity of students engaged in "open learning" as individualistic neoliberal "lifelong (l)earners". The article attempts to "raise awareness" of such relations and their constraints on imagination, with the aim of provoking alternative imaginings about how technology and education might produce humanising and emancipatory education.

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          Most cited references60

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          A Brief History of Neoliberalism

          Neoliberalism--the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action--has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Writing for a wide audience, David Harvey, author of The New Imperialism and The Condition of Postmodernity, here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. Through critical engagement with this history, he constructs a framework, not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for the more socially just alternatives being advocated by many oppositional movements.
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            Platform capitalism

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              Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison.

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                eac
                Education as Change
                Educ. as change
                Unisa Press (Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa )
                1682-3206
                1947-9417
                2022
                : 26
                : 1
                : 1-23
                Affiliations
                [01] orgnameUniversity of Johannesburg orgdiv1King's College London South Africa sara.black@ 123456kcl.ac.uk
                Article
                S1947-94172022000100023 S1947-9417(22)02600100023
                10.25159/1947-9417/11188
                a4467abd-df9b-4cc3-a06e-65947bcc86b0

                This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

                History
                Page count
                Figures: 0, Tables: 0, Equations: 0, References: 61, Pages: 23
                Product

                SciELO South Africa

                Categories
                Themed Section 4

                discourse analysis,policy,higher education,open learning,critical technology studies

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