It’s a Profane Life: Giorgio Agamben on the freedom of im-potentiality in education

Abstract

In this article, I explore the importance of Giorgio Agamben’s theory of potentiality for rethinking education. While potentiality has been a long-standing concern for educational practitioners and theorists, Agamben’s work is unique in that it emphasizes how potentiality can only be thought of in relation to impotentiality. This moment of indistinction—what I refer to as im-potential—has important implications. First, I argue that if potentiality and impotentiality are separated from one another, the result is a stratified educational system where some students are commanded to actualize their potentiality in the form of standardized tests while others are abandoned by the system. Second, thinking im-potentiality enables us to move beyond problematic formulations of learning and rediscover the uniqueness of studying. Here, I offer a brief example of study through an analysis of ‘Tinkering Schools’, an alternative program founded by Gever Tulley in San Francisco. And finally, without a concept of im-potentiality, the discourse of the ‘child genius’ becomes commodified as a power to be harnessed and actualized in the name of neoliberal entrepreneurialism. Only through a return to im-potentiality can we reclaim Genius and its relationship to the question of educational freedom.     

Cow's milk as a post-exercise recovery drink: implications for performance and health

Abstract

Post-exercise recovery is a multi-facetted process that will vary depending on the nature of the exercise, the time between exercise sessions and the goals of the exerciser. From a nutritional perspective, the main considerations are: (1) optimisation of muscle protein turnover; (2) glycogen resynthesis; (3) rehydration; (4) management of muscle soreness; (5) appropriate management of energy balance. Milk is approximately isotonic (osmolality of 280–290?mosmol/kg), and the mixture of high quality protein, carbohydrate, water and micronutrients (particularly sodium) make it uniquely suitable as a post-exercise recovery drink in many exercise scenarios. Research has shown that ingestion of milk post-exercise has the potential to beneficially impact both acute recovery and chronic training adaptation. Milk augments post-exercise muscle protein synthesis and rehydration, can contribute to post-exercise glycogen resynthesis, and attenuates post-exercise muscle soreness/function losses. For these aspects of recovery, milk is at least comparable and often out performs most commercially available recovery drinks, but is available at a fraction of the cost, making it a cheap and easy option to facilitate post-exercise recovery. Milk ingestion post-exercise has also been shown to attenuate subsequent energy intake and may lead to more favourable body composition changes with exercise training. This means that those exercising for weight management purposes might be able to beneficially influence post-exercise recovery, whilst maintaining the energy deficit created by exercise.     

Accountability in higher education: The danger of unintended consequences

Higher education in Britain, which until recently had been allowed to conduct its affairs with minimal governmental direction, is now being subjected to increasing pressures resulting from governmental policy decisions, especially regarding public accountability. Such decisions have the effect of substantially changing social systems and frequently lead to unintended consequences, and a number of examples from higher education are given which illustrate this statement. These are analysed by means of a simple model of change. This model is then used to suggest a form of accountability based on a sharing of both power and responsibility between government and universities, which may be expected to reduce the probability of unintended consequences.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Ninth Forum of the European Association for Institutional Research, University of Twente, Enschede, August 1987.     

Robots, jetpacks and time machines: children's ideas of English in the future

This article describes children's views of what English will be like in ten years time. Children from year 2 (6–7 year olds) and year 6 (10–11 year olds) took part in a study which involved discussion, writing activities and interviews. It was found that, on the whole, these children saw English in the future as being a balance between traditional methods of teaching and learning and technological innovations and advancements. For these children, technology will become an essential part of their education and their lives outside school.     

Fathers’ influences on children’s development: The evidence from two-parent families

Although it is often assumed that men have an important influence on their children’s development, the supportive evidence can be difficult to locate and summarize. In this paper, we analyse the evidence with respect to four emergent themes. First, men often appear to interact with their children less sensitively than mothers do, and many children thus appear to form closer attachments to their mothers than to their fathers. Second, the data also indicate that fathers may play specific and important roles, with men in some cultures having clearly defined roles as playmates to their children. Third, paternal play styles predict later socio-emotional development while paternal involvement seems to predict adult adjustment better than maternal involvement does. Such evidence suggests, fourth, that we need appropriate measures of fatherhood that are not simply borrowed from the study of motherhood.     

Learning through transitions: The role of institutions

In this paper two models are proposed for analysing transitions in education. Firstly, transitions are the processes that follow ruptures perceived by people. They include learning, identity change, and meaning making processes. Secondly, processes of change are observed through a semiotic prism, articulating self-other-object-sense of the object for self, and located in a specific social frame. Transitions are thus analysed as reconfigurations of such semiotic prism. The paper proposes to highlight the role of institutions as social frames likely to facilitate, or constrain, such reconfigurations. The role of institutions in transitions is discussed through three case studies: the transition to vocational training, the transition out of a religious school, and the transition to work at war-time.     

Shaping the professional landscape through research,advocacy and education – an Australian perspective

This article is the first in a new series in this regular feature. The intention of the series is to look at important global developments in health science libraries. Librarians will be invited to share with HILJ readers key initiatives in their country or region. These articles should serve as a road map, describing the key changes in the field and exploring factors driving these changes. We initiate this series with an article by three Australian librarians who use research findings to depict the evolving professional landscape in their country. The starting point of their analysis is a report completed in 2011 which looked into likely future workforce and education requirements for health library professionals. The authors trace the achievements since then, most notably in the areas of research, advocacy and education. Clearly, a great deal has been achieved leading to a greater return on investment. The authors maintain that the key to shaping the profession and enhancing the status of librarians is ongoing professional development. To this end, Australia is promoting a systematic, competency based health specialist certification. Finally, they identify trends impacting on health librarianship, such as the growing importance of research data management and consumer health literacy. JM