Tensions Between Practice and Praxis in Academia: Adult Education, Neoliberalism, Professional Training, and Militarism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56105/cjsae.v26i2%20SI.3025Abstract
In education, there is a tension between exploring practice (focusing on the practicalities of an educator's daily work) and critical praxis (problematizing positionality as relates to pedagogies and engaging in a societal critique). I do not set this up as a duality, a dichotomy, or a continuum, but as a skewed Venn diagram, where there is a pull between foci as a result of educational paradigms and intersecting forces such as neoliberalism, corporatism, commodification of learning, and even militarism. These pressures have fueled an emphasis on practice and measurement, frequently at the expense of exploration and analysis, with particular implications for the field of adult education. In this article, I build on my own experiences as an advocate of adult education in an exploration of how education/learning is often framed in faculties of education and post-secondary institutions; the challenges and opportunities of merging adult education (and graduate and undergraduate courses) with other programs in faculties of education; and, the educational and societal implications of these framings and changes.
References
Alexander, J. (2004). Control, alt, delete? Feminist pedagogy and the digital academy. In M. Reimer (Ed.), Inside corporate U: Women in the academy speak out (pp. 286-307). Toronto: Sumach Press.
Apple, M. W. (2006). What does it mean to be a public intellectual? The story of an intellectual "creep." Journal of Curriculum & Pedagogy, 3(1), 65-69.
Bill 92. Comprehensive public sector compensation freeze act. (2012). Legislative Assembly of Ontario.
Bill 115. Putting students first act. (2012). Legislative Assembly of Ontario.
Bondy, R. (2011). Women's studies: Is it time to change course? Herizons: Women's news + feminist views. Available from http://www.herizons.ca/node/439
Brock University. (2013a). Brock University to erect landmark sculpture. Available from
http://www.brocku.ca/brock-news/?p=22885
Brock University. (2013b). Spring convocation. Brock University.
Brule, E. (2004). Going to market: Neo-liberalism and the social construction of the university student as an autonomous consumer. In Reimer, M. (Ed.), Inside corporate U: Women in the academy speak out (pp. 247-264). Toronto: Sumach Press.
Burghardt, D.A., & Colbeck, C.L. (2005). Women’s Studies Faculty at the intersection of institutional power and feminist values. The Journal of Higher Education, 76(3), 301-330.
Butler, J. (1999) Gender trouble. New York: Routledge.
CAUT. (2013a). CAUT: Canadian Association of University Teachers. Available from
http://www.caut.ca/home.asp?page=432
CAUT. (2013b). Get science r!ght. Available from
http://getscienceright.ca/take-action/posters-and-campaign-material/
Daniel, J. (2012). Dual-mode universities in higher education: Way station or final destination? Open Learning, 27(1), 89-95.
Dobbie, D., & Robinson, I. (2008). Reorganizing higher education in the United States and Canada. Labour Studies Journal, 33(2), 117-140.
Enloe, C. (2000). Manoeuvers: The international politics of militarizing women's lives. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Enloe, C. (2007). Globalization & militarism: Feminists make the link. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Enloe, C. (2010). The risks of scholarly militarization: A feminist analysis. Perspectives on Politics, 8(4), 1107-1111.
Fournier, G., Loughridge, J., Macdonald, K.., Sperduti,V., Tsimicalis, E., & Taber, N. (2012). Learning to commemorate: Challenging prescribed collective memories of war. Social Alternatives, 31(2), 41-45.
Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed: 30th anniversary edition. New York: Continuum.
Drummond, D. (2012). Commission on the reform of Ontario's public services. Queen's Printer for Ontario.
Giroux, H. (2009). Education and the crisis of youth: Schooling and the promise of democracy. Educational Forum, 73(1), 8-18.
Giroux, H. (2011). The politics of militarization and corporatization in higher education war colleges. CounterPunch, June 29, 2011. Available from http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/06/29/war-colleges/print
Herod, D. (2011, December 9). If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you a...monument? The Standard, pp. A1, A4.
HEQCO. (2013). Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario: An agency of the government of Ontario. Available from http://www.heqco.ca/en-CA/Pages/Home.aspx
Hobbs, M., & Rice, C. (2011). Rethinking women's studies: Curriculum, pedagogy, and the introductory course. Atlantis, 35(2), 139-149.
Hornosty, J. (2004). Corporate challenges to academic freedom and gender equity. In M. Reimer (Ed.), Inside corporate U: Women in the academy speak out (pp. 43-66). Toronto: Sumach Press.
Holloway, S., & Gouthro, P. (2011). Teaching resistance novice educators to be critically reflective. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 32(1), 29-41.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.
Hyslop-Margison, E., & Leonard, H. (2012). Post neo-liberalism and the humanities: What the repressive state apparatus means for universities. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 42(2), 1-12.
Kahnert, P. (2013, March 11). "Right to work" is a lie. Rabble.ca. Available from http://rabble.ca/news/2013/03/right-work-lie
Lightstone, J. (2013a). President's Report to Senate - May 2013. Office of the President.
Lightstone, J. (2013b, June 28). The need for a program review. Available from http://www.brocku.ca/president/program-review
Linnitt, C. (2013). Harper's attack on science: No science, no evidence, no truth, no democracy. Academic Matters: OCUFA's Journal of Higher Education, May 3-7.
Luxton, M., & Mossman, M. J. (2012). (Eds.). Reconsidering knowledge: Feminism and the academy. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.
McKay, I., & Swift, J. (2012). Warrior nation: Rebranding Canada in an age of anxiety. Toronto: Between the Lines.
Nesbit, T. (2013). Canadian adult education: A critical tradition. In T. Nesbit, S. Brigham, N. Taber, & T. Gibb (Eds.), Building on critical traditions: Adult education and learning in Canada (pp. ix - xxiii). Toronto: Thompson Publishing.
Newson, J. (2012). The university-on-the-ground: Reflections on the Canadian experience. In M.
Luxton & M.J. Mossman (Eds.), Reconsidering knowledge: Feminism and the academy. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.
Orwin, P. (2012, August 17). There's no online substitute for a real university. The Globe and Mail. Available from
Paechter, C. (2003). Masculinities and femininities as communities of practice. Women's Studies International Forum, 26(1), 69-77.
Paul, L. (2004). The untenured female academic in the corporate university. In M. Reimer (Ed.), Inside corporate U: Women in the academy speak out (pp. 226-244). Toronto: Sumach Press.
Plumb, D., & Welton, M. (2001). Theory building in adult education: Questioning our grasp of the obvious. In Poonwassie, D. H. & Poonwassie, A. (Eds.), Fundamentals of adult education: Foundations, practice, issues (pp. 63-75). Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing Inc.
Reimer, M. (Ed.). (2004). Inside corporate U: Women in the academy speak out. Toronto: Sumach Press.
Ritzer, G. (2002). Enchanting McUniversity: Toward a spectacularly irrational university quotidian. In D. Hayes & R. Wynyard (Eds.), The McDonaldization of higher education (pp.19-32). Westport: Bergin & Garvey.
Robinson, K. (2001). Mind the gap: The creative conundrum. Critical Quarterly, 43(1), 41-45.
Rost, S. (2013, June 6). Brock unveils plan for $1M commemoration project. Niagara this week, 10(8), pp. 1-16.
Servage, L. (2009). The scholarship of teaching and learning and the neo-liberalization of higher education: Constructing the "entrepreneurial learner." Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 39(2), 25-44.
Simpson, J. S. (2010). I’m more afraid of the four of you than I am of the terrorists: Agency, dissent, and the challenges of democratic hope. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 32(2), 177- 205.
Taber, N. (2009). Exploring the interconnections between adult education, militarism, and gender: Implications for our field. Studies in Continuing Education, 31(2), 189-196.
Taber, N. (2011). Critiquing war in the classroom: Problematizing the normalization of gendered militarism. Proceedings (S. Carpenter, S. Dossa, & B. Osborne. Eds.) of Canadian Association for Studies in Adult Education (CASAE)/Adult Education Research Conference (AERC), 2011 Joint Conference. Toronto: Ontario Institute for the Study of Education, University of Toronto.
Taber, N. (2011b). “You better not get pregnant while you’re here”: Tensions between masculinities and femininities in military communities of practice. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 30(3), 331-348.
Taber, N. (2013). Learning war through gender: Masculinities, femininities, and militarism. In T. Nesbit, S. Brigham, N. Taber, & T. Gibb. (Eds.), Building on critical traditions: Adult education and learning in Canada (pp. 139-148). Toronto: Thompson Publishing.
Taber, N. (in press). Generals, colonels, and captains: Discourses of militarism, higher education, and learning in the Canadian university context. Canadian Journal of Higher Education.
Thornton, M. (2012). Universities upside down: The impact of the new knowledge economy, In M. Luxton & M.J. Mossman (Eds.), Reconsidering knowledge: Feminism and the academy. (pp. 76-95). Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.
Webber, M. (2005). "Don't be so feminist": Exploring student resistance to feminist approaches in a Canadian university. Women's Studies International Forum, 28(2/3), 181-194.
Webber, M. (2006). Transgressive pedagogies? Exploring the difficult realities of enacting feminist pedagogies in undergraduate classrooms in a Canadian university. Studies in Higher Education, 31(4), 453-467.
Webber, M. (2008). Miss congeniality meets the new managerialism: Feminism, contingent labour, and the new university. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 38(3), 37-56.
Welton, M. (2013). Adult education in Canada: Unearthing Canada’s hidden past. Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishers.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors of manuscripts accepted for publication will be required to assign copyright to the Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education/L’Association canadienne pour l’étude de l’éducation des adultes (CJSAE). CJSAE requests that, as the creator(s)/author(s) of the manuscript your are submitting assign certain rights to the manuscript to the CJSAE in exchange for undertaking to publish the article in print and electronic form and, in general, to pursue its dissemination throughout the world. The rights the CJSAE requests are:
- The right to publish the article in print and electronic form or in any other form it may choose that is in keeping with its role as a scholarly journal with the goal of disseminating the work as widely as possible;
- The right to be the sole publisher of the article for a period of 12 months;
- The right to make the article available to the public within a period of not more than 24 months, as determined by relevant journal staff of the CJSAE;
- The right to grant republication rights to itself or others in print, electronic, or any other form, with any revenues accrued to be shared equally between the author(s) and the journal;
- The right to administer permission to use portions of the article as requested by others, seeking recompense when the CJSAE sees it as warrented;
- The right to seek or take advantage of opportunities to have the article included in a database aimed at increasing awareness of it;
- As the author(s), the CJSAE wishes you to retain the right to republish the article, with acknowledgement of the CJSAE as the original publisher, in whole or in part, in any other pbulication of your own, including any anthology that you might edit with up to three others;
- As the author(s), the CJSAE withes you to retain the right to place the article on your personal Web page or that of your university or institution. The CJSAE askes that you include this notice: A fully edited, peer-reviewed version of this article was first published by the Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education, <Year>, <Volume>, <Issue>, <Page Numbers>.
BY AGREEING TO THE FOREGOING, YOU CONFIRM THAT THE MANUSCRIPT YOU ARE SUBMITTING HAS NOT BEEN PUBLISHED ELSEWHERE IN WHOLE OR IN PART, AND THAT NO AGREEMENT TO PUBLISH IS OUTSTANDING.
SHOULD THE ARTICLE CONTAIN MATERIAL WHICH REQUIRES WRITTEN PERMISSION FOR INCLUSION, YOU AGREE THAT IT IS YOUR OBLIGATION IN LAW TO IDENTIFY SUCH MATERIAL TO THE EDITOR OF THE CJSAE AND TO OBTAIN SUCH PERMISSION. THE CJSAE WILL NOT PAY ANY PERMISSION FEES. SHOULD THE CJSAE BE OF THE OPINION THAT SUCH PERMISSION IS NECESSARY, IT WILL REQUIRE YOU TO PURSUE SHUCH PERMISSSION PRIOR TO PUBLICATION.
AS AUTHOR(S), YOU WARRANT THAT THE ARTICLE BEING SUBMITTED IS ORIGINAL TO YOU.
Provided the foregoing terms are satisfactory, and that you are in agreement with them, please indicate your acceptance by checking the appropriate box and proceed with your submission.
This copyright agreement was extracted with permission from the "Best practices guide to scholarly journal publishing" (2007), produced by the Canadian Association of Learned Journals (CALJ).
