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Time, Power and Education. Zeit, Macht und Bildung

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Frontiers in Time Research – Einführung in die interdisziplinäre Zeitforschung

Abstract

Situated at the intersection of time, power and education, we elaborate an argument for diffracting temporality to eschew the arrow of time, which promulgates pressure in modern societies. Risk adverse, neoliberal systems of education often invoke temporality as a reason not to provide genuine inclusive opportunities for diverse learners. Learning it would seem, comes at the cost of genuine inclusion. Drawing on the theoretical resources of chronopolitics, risk society and relational ontologies, we demonstrate that time is frequently put to work in the service of controlling and colonising education. Technology has come to dominate education—paradoxically saving time whilst permeating the membrane the professional and the personal for teachers and students. We deploy a methodological framework to diffract the temporal, fusing the past, together with present-future simultaneously, so as to re-imagine relational ontologies in the act of becoming. Temporality is demonstrably diffracted through the methodology, in an empirical project which is undertaken with pre-service teachers on a global education program in the South Pacific. The chapter concludes with a set of principles for explicitly drawing on time to inform wider applications of educational research.

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Acknowledgment

We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to Ms. Helen Weston, successive Global Experience Cohorts and the students and teachers of Port Villa and Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu for their contributions to the research we have drawn on in this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

    Matthew Krehl Edward Thomas & Ben Whitburn

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  1. Matthew Krehl Edward Thomas
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Correspondence to Matthew Krehl Edward Thomas .

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  1. HSPV NRW, Bielefeld, Germany

    Elisabeth Schilling

  2. University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

    Maggie O'Neill

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Thomas, M.K.E., Whitburn, B. (2020). Time, Power and Education. Zeit, Macht und Bildung. In: Schilling, E., O'Neill, M. (eds) Frontiers in Time Research – Einführung in die interdisziplinäre Zeitforschung. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-31252-7_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-31252-7_9

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