One track - many paths: toward a critique of educating for the knowledge economy

Abstract

In this thesis the role of education and learning in the so-called knowledge economy is examined in the light of existing and emerging, essentially different ways of perceiving and understanding the world. The study finds evidence that education is becoming ideologically and practically central to the propagation and implementation of the knowledge economy. Educating for the knowledge economy concerns not only the preparation of ideal economic citizens, it is also regarded as a valuable economic commodity in its own right. My hypothesis, however, is that educating for the knowledge economy, while claiming to afford global social transformation, remains grounded in the modern worldview that is being critically challenged by postmodern views and understandings of the world. This is not to say that a modern worldview is 'incorrect', rather, it is to say that there are postmodern alternatives to carefully consider. I distinguish 'postmodern' within three positions, each with a different perspective about knowledge: one is power-based, another anti-power-based, and yet another ecologically-based. I argue that there is a modern worldview and postmodern positions with different worldviews, giving rise to incommensurabilities between the respective understandings of the world each position has. To navigate between these understandings I have engaged with the theory of enactivism. Enactivism enfolds the exploring and performing of learning and teaching theories that embody ecological and complex postmodern characteristics. The many paths of variety and diversity these characteristics reveal are contrasted with modern educational characteristics, before each is compared to consider the merits, or otherwise, of going down the track of educating for the knowledge economy.