Abstract
In this chapter, I wish to problematize the context of power relations and politics in WBL and especially the evolving nature of work-based methodologies. I use Foucault’s ideas on power/knowledge, ethics and subjectivity to show that a productive research ethic may be formulated in WBL. Current WBL interventions and WBL methodologies are a manifestation of particular discourses, often attached to the increased ‘need’ to view higher education as an industry, a commercial enterprise. I will attempt to interrupt some of these discourses and show that discourses in the service of ‘flexibility’ and ‘reform’ all too often are uttered to justify problematic practices. An important aspect of Foucault’s ideas is to astonish us and unsettle us by interrogating our ‘good intentions’.
Instead of espousing normalized WBL practices, an important role of the oppositional worker, employer and educator is to contest what is often arbitrarily mass manufactured and disseminated. Foucauldian views provide some useful ways of theorizing workplace learning that tolerate and recognize the productive potential of problematization and ambiguity while at the same time enabling an ethical practice of the worker’s subjectivity.
This is a revised version of the article ‘Work based-learning, power and subjectivity: creating space for a Foucauldian research ethic’ published in the Journal of Education and Work.
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Zembylas, M. (2013). Foucault and Work-Based Research Ethics: Revisiting Some Issues. In: Gibbs, P. (eds) Learning, Work and Practice: New Understandings. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4759-3_13
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