Methodology, Fake Learning, and Emotional Performativity

Abstract

Purpose: Academics are at the forefront of criticisms about so-called “fake news” considered to undermine evidence-based approaches to the understanding of complex social, political, and economic issues. However, universities contribute to the production of fake news through the legitimization of measures that promote student performativity rewarding their academic non-achievements. This conceptual article will seek to illustrate how this can occur via the writing of methodology chapters by postgraduate students. Design/Approach/Methods: This article provides a critical analysis of the writing of methodology chapters in dissertations and theses in postgraduate education in the social sciences. In so doing, it applies the concept of performativity to student learning. Findings: It is argued that the pressures on students to comply with the requirements of emotional performativity in respect to ideology and method in close-up, qualitative research can lead to fake learning. This phenomenon may be exemplified by reference to a number of practices, namely, phony positionality, methodolatry, ethical cleansing, participatory posturing, and symbolic citation. Originality/Value: This article provides an illustration of the concept of student performativity. It demonstrates that emotional performativity plays a significant role in the way in which students are required to comply with expectations that give rise to inauthenticity in learning.

What Makes Writing Academic

“…(Bhaskar, 1989, p. 2) In what follows, I propose to move beyond the skills versus practice binaries presented in Chapter 1, because, as we have seen, neither fully captures the complexity of what makes a text academic: skills and their associated mechanistic approaches are unsatisfactory because they reduce the academicness of texts to its forms, namely formal features of grammar, lexis and genre. This foments a culture of performativity (Macfarlane, 2021b) that can encourage academic writers to display language at the expense of deep knowledge engagement and creativity. This kind of performativity would allow hoaxes and IELTS essays to count as 'academic' , further compounding the 'Western' imaginary of what and whose standards of literacy are acceptable.…”

“…Why do I never receive emails offering an opportunity to 'understand' the economic, social and pedagogic conditions that have led to such a 'growing team' of plagiarism police in the first place or on the extent to which there may be links between cheating and assessment design and breakdowns in trust, including disenchantment, between students and the institution (Bretag, 2018;Harper et al, 2019;Peters, 2018)? The 'plagiarism declaration' forms students are required to sign after they have either self-declaredly admitted to reading university guidance on avoiding plagiarism or to having had sufficient 'training' on what is a highly complex issue amount to the same kind of performativity denounced by Macfarlane (2021b). Plagiarism software tools are far more likely to 'detect' (another policing metaphor) writing that exhibits mechanistic performativity which in turn leads to an ever-ending spiral in which savvy writers become increasingly adept at gaming the system in order to not be caught (e.g.…”

Data, Methods and Writing

“…Lippert & Mewes instance, the case of ethnography discussed by Fine, 1993). Yet, graduate school method writing training can effect students to fake the qualities of qualitative research -such as when phony positionalities or qualities of collaboration are performed (Macfarlane, 2021). In societies reconsidering the status of sciences and humanities (not least reacting to so-called 'alternative facts'), an empirically informed understanding of our social scientific methods can be helpful in multiple ways, as outlined above.…”

“…This awareness is to be concerned with the researcher's method configuration and its performative relation to what the research attempts to empirically relate to. Yet, that reflexivity is hard to practice as it is so deeply discursively shaped, to be framed in a mass of relevant conceptual considerations and critical introspection, but inter-dependent with collective intellectual practice (see Campbell, 2004;Macfarlane, 2021). The writing of reflexive, compelling, but not too compelling, accounts is fittingly of significant concern in STS and beyond, e.g.…”

Empowering Student Learning in Higher Education: Pathways to Possibility

“…In the sixth article, Macfarlane (2022) conducted a critical conceptual analysis of the risk of “fake learning” in universities due to the legitimization of measures that promote student performativity rewarding their academic non-achievements. He illustrated how this can happen via the writing of methodology chapters in dissertations and theses by postgraduate students.…”