In this paper, we ‘play’ with several ideas: ‘Fast knowledge’ (epistemology) in the higher education context ‘performance’ Introduction to current economic thinking on ‘fast-food’ and McDonaldization We consider what this means for higher education

1. 1
The Theatre of
Fast Knowledge:
Performative
Epistemologies in
Higher Education
Tina Besley & Michael A. Peters
Faculty of Education
University of Glasgow

2. 2
Contents of the paper
 In this paper, we ‘play’ with several
ideas:
 ‘Fast knowledge’ (epistemology) in
the higher education context
 ‘performance’
 Introduction to current economic
thinking on ‘fast-food’ and
McDonaldization
 We consider what this means for
higher education

3. 3
Structure of the paper
 1st
section: Introduction: The New
Economy and “Fast” Capitalism
 2nd
section: Fast Capitalism, Fast
Knowledge and the ‘McDonaldization’
of Education
 3rd
section: Managing Fast Knowledge
Performance
 Conclusion

4. 4
Introduction: The New
Economy and “Fast”
Capitalism
 We choose meanings of ‘fast’,
associated with speed, to theorise “fast
knowledge” as part of “fast capitalism” in
the new economy. See the journal - Fast
Capitalism – Editor, Ben Agger.
 ‘Fast capitalism’: an emergent new
generic form of capitalism based
increasingly on forms of symbolic capital
associated with the rise of global finance
and associated with new information and
communication technologies.

5. 5
Introduction cont’d
 ‘knowledge capitalism’:
the digitalization of knowledge production
processes and the way in which all
phases of knowledge production
—its creation or generation, its storage and
retrieval, its formal and informal
acquisition and transmission, and its
distribution or circulation—
have been speeded up, with significant
consequences not only for knowledge
production but also, for learning,
education, and culture.

6. 6
Fast Capitalism, Fast
Knowledge and the
‘McDonaldization’ of
Education
 George Ritzer - The McDonaldization of
Society – critiques the ‘irrationality of
rationality’
 4 principles of McDonaldization as
applied to education:
 1. efficiency
 2. calculability
 3. predictability
 4. control through technology

7. 7
McDonaldization cont’d
 1. Efficiency - streamlining the process,
simplifying the product and putting
customers (students) to work
e.g. through use of technologies - machine-
graded, multi-choice examinations;
customized textbooks; manuals /texts
/sets of questions; e-publishing of
courses
Critique: homogeneity, ‘dumbing-down’; de-
skilling & anti-professionalisation
because teachers have limited
opportunities to adapt a courses (the
McUniversity; academic ‘factory’;
digitized diploma mill)

8. 8
McDonaldization cont’d
 2. Calculability - emphasis on quantity
rather than the quality - an illusion that
quantity=quality and a process that
reduces production and service to
numbers.
e.g. standardization of grades, scores,
ratings, rankings; league tables; teaching
assessment exercise; “credentialization”;
student evaluations
i.e. intrusion of quantitative measures not
only in teaching but also research e.g.
RAE publications counted, journals
ranked & citation analysis has become a
new methodology for plotting academic
reputation.

9. 9
McDonaldization cont’d
 3. Predictability - creating
predictable settings, employee
behavior, creating predictable
products and processes; scripting
interaction with customers
e.g. “cookie-cutter textbooks”;
McMovieworld

10. 10
McDonaldization cont’d
 4. Control - of employees and
customers, as well as the process
and the product e.g.academics are
controlled through various
management techniques -
appraisal systems, workload
assessments, student and peer
evaluations etc.

11. 11
Managing Fast
Knowledge Performance
 McKenzie theorizes performance as a
formation of power and knowledge, and
so warns us of the growing objectification
and alienation of human labor
 Performance needs an audience
i.e. a presentation, lesson, lecture, tutorial,
seminar, conference paper etc, where
the performer must consider skills and
styles (dress, oratory, visual style, multi-
media tools depending on the context)
that involve both the professional and the
personal aspects of oneself.

12. 12
Managing Fast
Knowledge Performance
cont’d
 PM - measurement systems first
developed by the performance
indicator movement and later
under New Public Management
that drew on principal-agency
theory and transactional cost
analysis.

13. 13
Managing Fast
Knowledge Performance
cont’d
 economic, technical and cultural
types of performative power
intersect in HE, especially when
framed by knowledge economy
policies i.e. a sign economy no
longer based on raw materials but
rather on the transformation of
ideas and symbolic resources by
means of intellectual, human and
social capital.

14. 14
Managing Fast
Knowledge Performance
cont’d
 the knowledge manager aims to
extract knowledge from people’s
heads (often tacit knowledge that
is difficult to codify) and to embed it
in intellectual systems or
processes - intellectual property as
copyright, patent or international
trade law and putting it into
commercial service to make a
profit.

15. 15
Managing Fast
Knowledge Performance
cont’d
 PM utilizes – ‘soft’ psychotherapeutic
technologies alongside traditional peer
review mechanisms and collegial
exchange, and in combination with
simple counts, computer and/or
accounting methodologies (including the
weighting and the arithmeticization of
soft variables like “reputation”) to
produce departmental, faculty, and
institutional performance “profiles”,
institutional, national & international
league tables.

16. 16
Conclusion/questions
 As “performative epistemologies” we
specifically draw out the aspect of “the
theatre of fast knowledge” by focusing on
the management of “performance” and
the relation of performance management
to “fast knowledge”.
 performance has become the dominant
model of social evaluation in knowledge
capitalism, where fast capitalism
demands us to “perform or else”!

17. 17
Conclusion/questions
 Questions for education:
(1) identify the ways in which education
has become a consumption good, the
ways in which students, parents and
(even) teachers and employees have
become consumers;
(2) analyze the ways in which the
institutional and structures of education
have revolutionized the structures and
institutions of educational consumption.

18. 18
Conclusion/questions
(3) Is fast knowledge just a further
rationalization of industrial
educational processes or
something fundamentally new,
perhaps even a generically new
form of capitalism?