‘But is it really research?’ mentoring students as theorists in the era of cybernetic capitalism

As Michael Peters notes (2017, 2018), in this age of ‘cybernetic capitalism’, the global knowledge infrastructure is dominated by trillion-dollar multinationals. These forces are reshaping what counts as valuable knowledge, interpreting academic significance in terms of the capacity of research to directly lead to neoliberal market-oriented economic growth. An outgrowth of the rise of the age of cybernetic capitalism is the increased valuation and appreciation of big data over other kinds of evidence and bases for knowledge. As Kenneth Neil Cukier and Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger (2013) have noted, the subsequent rise of big data as the most valued currency can be characterised by ‘the ability to render into data many aspects of the world that have never been quantified before’. To neoliberal institutions and nation-states, which provide public and private information infrastructure, such data is of tremendous use and power. Ordinary academics in this environment have tended to conform to capitalistic frameworks of value in this case, working to gather and analyse data in ways that benefit dominant social institutions and political economic actors. Some may assume there is a mutual benefit, as more funding will be granted, and greater significance ascribed, to researchers gathering data that is of more value under neoliberal growth models and agendas.

Educational researchers are far from immune to these pressures and these seductions. Major associations for educational research such as the American Educational Research Association celebrate their connections with government funders such as the National Science Foundation, which specifically funds ‘scientific’ research that aims to have an impact. By ‘impact’, it is implied that the research must agree broadly with the goals of institutions and the value of forwarding them, without major critique or investigation. By ‘scientific’, there is an emphasis on data. While one might say, following Peter Roberts (2018), that all research is informed by data, as it is ‘generated through human experience’, in competitive environments in the age of cybernetic capitalism ‘more data’ is regarded as better data. Quantitative data becomes better than qualitative data, and so on.

There is perhaps no more vital task of educational theorists in this age than to understand and examine how economic growth models are shaping knowledge production agendas, as well as economic and information distribution, normally to benefit the visions of leading players in the age of cybernetic capitalism (Peters, 2017). Yet in this context, it would appear that academics researchers are more constrained than ever before by these political-economic forces when it comes to producing research, to be accountable to higher educational institutions and other funding bodies which follow the lead of multinational giants. Rather than setting agendas, most are complying, seeing little recourse and indeed lacking tools that have become devalued by, or may even now be regarded as inherently threatening to, the architects of neoliberal structures that frame information production agendas today.

In the context of ordinary higher education and research institutions, with the ability to gather more data has come greater possibilities for quantitative research. In education, as in other fields, quantitative research has retained a favoured status over qualitative and philosophical approaches for decades. Maths and sciences are still seen as the ‘hard’ and ‘tough’ sciences and fields, over the ‘softer’ arts. That this is senseless binary, particularly in education, has been argued by many philosophers of education (Pring, 2007). Qualitative researchers are not immune to the significance of numbers, and quantitative researchers should not be looking at numbers to the neglect of everything else. Yet today, one can see that this binary clearly does have a logic: to divide and differentiate research according to its value within the orientation to the world undergirding cybernetic capitalism. In this framing, educational theory, with its focus on ideas, is even more of a loser than qualitative research, not even deemed as research by some due to its lack of big data—and lack of neoliberal priorities.

This is just the latest challenge educational theorists have faced in defending their position in the academy, given the way their work does not tend to fit perfectly with traditional conceptions of educational research, or of applied philosophy (Roberts, 2018). Philosophers of education have expressed for a long time a sense of a minority status in teacher education institutions as well, which are normally focused mostly on educational practice, and on training students in qualitative and quantitative research methods. Philosophers and theorists may be feel further crunched today, in education and other fields, as the datafication era aligns with the push for competitive large-scale grants in higher education, which also makes empirical and quantitative research appeal more than ever before.

In this context, educational theorists can do more than simply try to conform, in vain. Instead, they can take responsibility to question neoliberal assumptions about value and significance, interrogate contemporary political-economic influences on academic research and social life, and provide alternative accounts of what is good, significant, and ‘productive’. As Roberts (2018) writes, they can also resist ‘some of the demands of a performance-driven world’, for instance by taking time to pay attention to what is happening in their institutions and in the field today: not to be pragmatic or ‘relevant’ for the sake of developing neoliberal ‘impact’, but to reconsider the way their values and ideas do and do not align with the processes and value orientations experienced in the world around them. Additionally, they can train fellow researchers to focus on these issues to a greater extent than they had been focused on in the past. This can also entail cultivating communities which are dialogic and supportive of alternative visions in research and social life.

Admittedly, one does have to face a forceful tide to critically question the normalised neoliberal agenda in education today. Educational theorists may get the sense they are the only ones not working to forward capitalist and state political-economic interests in education faculties dominated by the competitive binary of quantitative and qualitative. Like many, I have had to go to pains at times to explain my research as research to some colleagues. They may not be aware of theoretical approaches to educational scholarship, depending on where they were trained. Philosophers of education also may grapple to explain the practical relevance of their research, for example, to knowledge exchange or knowledge transfer capacities of higher education institutions. They may find their work categorised in some institutions as ‘blue sky’ or ‘basic research’, which often gets funded in more limited ways than ‘applied’ scholarship. These challenges can be unsettling, as one discovers their work is not regarded as valuable in a larger community due to contrasting visions of value.

Students have a great potential in this context, in pushing the field forward and understanding and critically examining new developments in society and in education. Ideally, with mentoring professors and supervisors, they can learn to understand the historical backdrop to current trends, while adapting more traditional philosophical and other techniques to identifying and examining serious challenges to informational and material equity and justice today. However, it is not always easy to work with students in this way. Many educational theorists may find their work is also misunderstood or unappreciated by their students, as ‘not really research’.

Most of my doctoral students arrive to my university with an interest in educational philosophy and theory. Yet inevitably, after a year or so of socialisation into my institution, with other students, and in classes on ‘qualitative and qualitative research methods’, they come to discuss their research plans with me, and their newly discovered need to gather data—and the more, the better. Their methodology teacher (reportedly) said nothing to them about philosophical methods as educational research. The other students are not aware of any education students who ever received a doctorate, or had their proposal confirmed, without gathering and analysing data, by which they mean something cold and detached, yet connected to the values and interests of particular social and political institutions. Their initial proposals adopt an apologetic tone for not relying upon quantitative methods. They apparently learned in their courses that quantitative research can have statistical validity and reliability, while qualitative research lacks them. They develop a deficit view of theory, as not reliable, as not transparent, not valid, not replicable, not generalisable, significant, and on and on. They develop a view of philosophy of education as deficient and lacking in the context of the great power of big data.

These students are not pushovers. They often have provocative observations about equity and social justice issues, and strong analysis skills. When I am the only person they know who is not gathering ‘cold, hard’ data—and the more, the better—they are not unwise to critically question my advice, which seems contrary to what everyone else says.

Over time, I have refined my approach to handling this concern. First, I try to interact at an institutional level to increase awareness of philosophical and theoretical methods of educational research among colleagues and students. When tasked with reviewing, reforming, and updating curriculum, I make small and large strides to see my methods included. A small stride is adding phrases about ‘analytic methods’, ‘documentary analysis’, ‘theoretical approaches’, and the like to student guidebooks and curriculum documents, which previously presented a binary approach to educational research, as either qualitative or quantitative.

A larger effort can be made by offering new courses or sessions on philosophical approaches and related topics in educational research, which emphasise how philosophical tools can enhance research within and beyond the field of educational theory. Most education doctoral theses in my institution include some discussion of conceptual or theoretical framing, and most students have social justice or related interests in mind in conducting educational research. At the same time, all students must engage in processes of getting ethical clearance to do their research. All of these characteristics of their research process invoke philosophies, for conducting research, and for understanding knowledge claims and methods of argumentation and other aspects of what is categorised as ‘good’ research.

These observations undergird my work to introduce more philosophical ways of thinking and knowing into my institution’s practices for training educational researchers. Particularly when it comes to research ethics, the subject matter has been alienated from its original purposes in mainstream neoliberal educational organisations, so that ethical approval is more about protecting universities and researchers than about developing ethical research approaches, aims, and projects. The need to bring ethics back to educational research ethics in higher education is thus one particular area where educational theorists can play a role, highlighting the value of ethical reflection in the conduct of research, beyond matters of participant consent, or lack thereof.

In relation, there is a need for more classes for students at all levels which are oriented toward critically evaluating and understanding, rather than conforming to, agendas of big players in cybernetic capitalism, such as the multinational companies shaping the global knowledge infrastructure and state information capitalism. In this context, most classes on globalisation and education tend to paint a neutral picture of recent developments in neoliberal education and cybernetic capitalism, if not an outright positive one. Typically, educators are encouraged to ‘stay neutral’ in teaching such classes. Meanwhile, the orientation of higher education toward neoliberalism and supporting cybernetic capitalism undergirds the rest of the curriculum, hidden and explicit. In this context, to give a critical analysis of these trends can be seen as provocative and deviant, while classes that celebrate neoliberalism and big data in conformance with institutional priorities are expected. Here, there is little hope that students can learn to value philosophical approaches which are simply cast in neoliberal organisations as leisurely and unproductive. Thus, curricula should be reoriented toward providing critical analyses and not just complementary ones in examining the rise of neoliberalism in higher education and state information capitalism. This background should also be reflected upon by educational theorists who hope to understand and act effectively within contemporary higher education institutions, anticipating misunderstanding and misrepresentation of their ideas, and the related possibility that they will be considered as deviant for questioning that which has been systematically not questioned in mainstream curriculum for many years.

Another strategy for introducing students to theory in light of the pressures faced is to direct them toward critiques of educational research framings that exclude or dismiss theoretical approaches. I share with students that assessments of research indicate that philosophical research is certainly capable of ‘rigour’, originality, and significance. This is true within research assessment exercises, although these frameworks should not be regarded as having a monopoly on conceptions of importance and other research values. In relation, they can learn more about how educational research faces challenges as a field, because often in empirical educational studies ‘“what works” doesn’t work’ (Smeyers & Depaepe, 2006). Beyond these observations, one can point further to the works of many educational philosophers who have more fully and compellingly defended the field in the era of datafication, who can be cited and shared with students (for example, Davis, 1999; Smeyers & Burbules, 2011; Smeyers, De Ruyter, Waghid, & Strand, 2014).

And I appeal to students with an observation about educational research more generally: All educational research wishes to deal with a problem or challenge, and usually it is social nature. Each of my students come to the field of education with a sense of wanting to make things better, or to understand processes related to education to enhance things. Sadly, I see this motivation being stamped out of students, due to pressures to conform in the process of becoming academic researchers. Intrinsic motivation dies in the face of extrinsic motivation to pass administrative hurdles, get ethical clearance, and conduct research using model best practices. As a result of the intensified pressures to conform, many students feel alienated from their own work and voice over time. They see their desire to understand minority experiences translated into the modification of psychological instruments to test for anomie, or to generalise about changes in happiness or flourishing. Doing something unique or critically reflective seem more costly and risky than conforming. Here, neoliberal agendas in higher education can be seen to work actively on students, as they must perform apologies for not collecting big data, and compromise what matters to them to conform to environments which handle ethics, significance, and other issues in narrow, often problematic, ways.

Philosophy of education has been described as a dying field in the era of datafication. Anecdotes and worst case scenarios of philosophers and theorists being replaced with big data scholars suggest to some people that it may be unethical even to continue to train philosophical students, when ‘the jobs may not be there’. In such a context, it imperative to train new educational theorists in ways that can provide for their flourishing in this environment: not to hide from ideas of our time by looking backwards longingly, but to engage in the real world in critical, thoughtful ways (Roberts, 2009). This may also include developing intellectual kinship, and supporting communities of inquiry within and outside institutions where ideas are and can be valued and appreciated.

One thing is certain in this context. It is no use for educational researchers to put their heads in the sand. Staying versed in and thoughtful regarding what constitutes good educational research is important for theorists of education. Philosophical thinkers must not only be defensive about the value of what they do, but active in constructing discourses about what is valuable, significant, rigorous, impactful, and relevant scholarship. Without members of faculty taking leadership in this era, cultivating good work in fields which are theoretical or ‘arty’ is bound to face more and more hurdles. Among these hurdles are decreasing capacities for funding, recruiting, and training of future theorists and philosophers. Fortunately, in this context it is often easier to influence students than colleagues. Students are not inherently anti-philosophical, although they can become anti-philosophy over time, in circumstances which systematically devalue work which is seen as threatening to status quo and agendas of multinational corporations and other arsenal of cybernetic capitalism. Educating students that theory really is research may feel like an uphill battle, but it is one worth engaging in if one aspires to see the field, not to mention the world, flourish in the future.

Liz Jackson
University of Hong Kong
[email protected]