Taylor borrows the terms "centre", "periphery" and "border" from Brown and Duiguid (1994) as a means of avoiding an uncritical approach to the use of technology in open learning/de-centralized education (63). Centre and periphery are used to signal a fluid, shifting set of social AND material relationships, social conventions and objects, that are constantly changing (what is central in one situation may not be in another). The border is where the centre and the periphery meet. None of these can be pre-determined, "...borders arise through social practices, and the elements of centre and periphery arise only in a particular interpretive context" (65). Borders also exist to maintain authority (66), and Taylor uses the example of the teacher being an authority in the classroom mostly because of social convention, and not due to the affordances of the classroom setting.
I see "border issues" popping up with the addition of certain types of technologies to the classroom, especially social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. For example, when Facebook first came out, it seems like there was a wave of early adopters who were pretty keen about the whole thing. As more people joined the site, the waters started to get a bit muddy and it was difficult to figure out (just by looking at your news feed) what was actually appropriate for Facebook, and what was over the line. In some people's rush to participate in this new technology, they may have over-shared, either in terms of too much information, or with too many people. I remember having to draw the line with my own Facebook friends list when one of my fellow undergrads went on to become a 4th grade teacher, and happily allowed all her students to add her on Facebook without limiting her profile in any way. In this rush to adopt a new technology, the critical moment of reflection can be lost and suddenly if this over zealous 4th grade teacher decides to roll everything back, is it too late? Or has that boundary been forever perforated?
It is Taylor's discussion of "mass education" that struck a chord with me (and my group when we were having our Skype discussion about the paper). I recently completed the Doctoral Seminar required as part of the PhD in Education at York University. This year it was taught by two professors who specialize in psychoanalytic theory, so (understandably) psychoanalysis was a theme running through the entire seminar. One particular topic that seemed to keep cropping up is the traumatic nature of what it means to become educated. This came up first with Frankenstein, where with the monster's education also carried a loss of innocence (and understanding of the unfairness of humanity). The monster's education was a one way street -- he could never unknow what he had learned. In his learning he became isolated, and when Victor declined to make him a partner, there was no choice but to die. Bleak? Yes.
This thread of learning being traumatic returned again later in the semester, when the professors were doing their mid-semester check in to make sure all was well... And it seemed like things weren't. I remember looking around the room and seeing a lot of shell-shocked faces. It was a part-time member of my cohort who actually vocalized nir discomfort, to put it on the table for the rest of the class to analyze and discuss their own misgivings about graduate school by proxy. Ne was concerned that nirs education was alienating them from their family. Perhaps if your partner is a graduate student, they will understand that you are particularly busy around midterms. Grandparents, not so much. This student was so traumatized by their experience in the PhD program to date, that ne wanted to switch nirs dissertation topic to be about exactly that: how does graduate education alienate one from their surroundings?
I have been at York for a year now, and I have been a TA for one undergraduate class. York is different from my previous university experiences because never before have I interacted with so many undergraduates who are the first of their family to go to university. This is something that doesn't seem to get acknowledged in many discussions of mass education -- you can't just say "okay now everyone is going to have access to post-secondary education", waive a wand and then be done with it. Poof! An educated populous! Not going to happen. Instead, what is much more likely is that an increasing number of people in each subsequent generation will go on to post-secondary studies, when their parents did not. I feel like at York, I am seeing a shift between these two demographics, parents (who did not go to university) are seeing their children go to university. And there are growing pains. These growing pains are not something that should be ignored, but they probably are because they are icky and don't have easy answers, and it is easier to pretend they don't exist.
In terms of my own degree, I think the easiest way to apply massification to my own situation is the sheer number of PhDs being granted each year. I feel like there is this sort of mythical fair tale that gets told about "back then" where every PhD student had a job lined up by the time they were ABD, that they would defend their dissertation and immediately go off to their new life as a professor. But I find this a bleak view of my future. Rather than viewing my cohort as competition, I'd rather view them as colleagues. Part of doing a PhD is creating that new piece of human knowledge, so (theoretically) we should all be doing something different. Maybe a job will pop up in my area of interest, maybe a job will pop up in ECE. Academia is one of those weird places where you can't really plan for the future. You just have to wait and see what happens next.
I will however, add with a quick rant about MRPs and course-based Master's programs. I don't like them. Or really, I don't like that someone who took 7 courses gets the same degree that I earned by writing a 200 page MA thesis. In my Master's institution, there was a "industry-based" Master's degree that basically existed for financial reasons. It attracted a large number of international students (who were paying international student fees) and despite the faculty not being able to teach the types of courses that would be appropriate for an applied, industry-focused degree, students were admitted year after year. It was a part-time program so it wasn't unheard of someone to be in their 4th or 5th year of this degree. Very few students seemed to finish, they would just burn out, their credits would expire, and then they would fade away. To me, this seems like the degree continued to stick around solely for financial reasons (perhaps maybe, how part-time unfunded PhDs can be seen as financing my own funded full-time degree?). This is the ugly side of massification -- people are willing to pay to get a degree if they feel it will help them in their goals. And it seems like cash-strapped universities will certainly be happy to cash their cheques, enroll them in a few classes, and (maybe) send them on their way with a trademarked degree. /rant over.
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