You are warmly invited to the next DMU IEF (Institute for Education Futures) Research Seminar

Title: Immanence in learning

Researcher: Jason Eyre

Date: 18th January 2017, 4.00 – 5.00pm

Location: Hawthorn Building, Room 0.07

Immanence in learning

This paper represents a work in progress. It seeks to present an account of learning which places the emphasis not on the content of what is learned, but rather on the context in which that learning takes place – the when, where and who. Taking a philosophical approach, the paper will argue that the goal of a marketised higher education sector has largely been achieved. However, conceptualising higher education as a commodity requires a stable and predictable ‘product’ that can be standardised and measured to enable its marketing, sale and consumption. Higher learning, by contrast, is highly contested with the various actors (institutions, disciplines, learners) all approaching the learning process with their own motivations and values.

What emerges is an educational milieu characterised by the interplay of forces (Nietzsche), each of which enters into relation with the others based on its own genealogical context (its past), and with an anticipation of its own telos (its future). The domain in which these forces come into relation with one another is the here and now, a spatio-temporal present that constitutes an ever-emerging plane of immanence (Deleuze). We can thereby begin to understand learning in higher education not as the simple transfer and accumulation of knowledge or know-how, but rather as a perpetual negotiation of what emerges as the present. This conceptual shift in turn may permit new and potentially fruitful ways of engaging with the idea of learning in the contemporary university.