MLE as non-place

Abstract

The modern learning environment (MLE) is a particular technology that serves to create an environment that will best cultivate a moral self in line with state bureaucratic needs. This chapter uncovers the genealogy of the MLE and interprets its meaning from the perspective of the classroom teacher. The emergence of the MLE demands critical inspection. This chapter compares the new school architecture and new teacher for twenty-first-century learning with their antecedents. This process of analysis will critically analyse subjectivity and bureaucracy in the changing educational landscape. Theorists who work in the tradition of genealogical study established by Foucault: Jan Masschelein, Maarten Simons, and architectural critic, Kenneth Frampton who share Foucault's understanding of the fusion of knowledge and power, are considered. Of particular interest is the scholarship of Ian Hunter who studied the twin origins of the compulsory school in bureaucratic technologies and in pastoral technologies of the self. In this context, attention is drawn to the MLE's perpetuation of pastoral technologies in a contemporary context. A focus in this study will be the role of the OECD in these changes of the educational landscape and the implications thereof. The history of school architecture as representative of schools' fusion of subjectivity and bureaucracy is analysed in concert with the work of Marc Augé, to determine the extent to which the MLE with its emphasis on connections, change, and flexibility is, in fact, a non-place.