Webb, P Taylor

Research Interests

Research Supervision Interests

• Educational governance, policy, and politics, including:

• • • Globalisation and international policy influence (e.g., International Monetary Fund (IMF), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and   Development (OECD), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), World Bank, etc.)

• • • Neoliberal education governance (e.g., homo economicus, financializations), and advanced-liberal education policy (populist authoritarianisms, proto-fascisms)

• • • Disciplinary and control societies, including network and anticipatory governance, ‘governing by numbers’, accountability policy, and surveillance studies (e.g., rankings)

• • • Computation and algorithmic studies (e.g., artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, emerging or ‘fourth industrial’ technologies)

• • • Studies in subjectivity or ‘micropolitics’, including governmentalities, biopolitics, and raciologies  (e.g., ‘care of the self’; folds and foldings; becomings)

• • • Continental / philosophical studies in educational politics, particularly Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze (e.g., power; force; control; desire; de/re/ex/territorializations)

Bio

Dr. Webb’s fields of interest include contemporary Continental theories in relation to conceptions and practices of education governance. He uses Continental philosophy to examine formations of power and force in education, often manifest through ideas of policy and subjectivity. He is concerned with how education rationalizes and produces ‘governable subjects’ within liberal and neoliberal normative architectures, including emerging ‘fourth industrial’ technologies (i.e., artificial intelligence, neuroscience, robotics, automation). His research has been identified as a significant reason for the development of educational policy studies and governance over the past two decades.

Dr. Webb received his BA in philosophy (minor in film studies/poetry) at the University of California, Berkeley; MA in curriculum studies at the University of Colorado, Denver; and PhD in educational policy studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. Prior to coming to UBC, Dr. Webb taught at the University of Washington, Bothell.

Dr. Webb’s book Teacher Assemblage won the Critics’ Choice Book Award from the American Educational Studies Association in 2009 (AESA), and won the Outstanding Book Award from the Qualitative Research SIG of the American Educational Research Association in 2010 (AERA).

Dr. Webb serves as the Associate Regional Editor – Americas for the Journal of Education Policy and as an Associate Editor for the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory. From 2016 to 2020, Dr. Webb served as an Associate Editor for the journal Critical Studies in Education (CSE), and continues to serve on the Editorial Advisory Panel of CSE. 

At UBC, Dr. Webb offers graduate courses on educational governance (EDST 531), educational neoliberalism (EDST 596A), and (post) qualitative (and posthuman) methodologies. He regularly teaches the departmental PhD course on critical social theory (EDST 601A) and in the teacher education program where he assists beginning teachers to examine the political contexts of schooling (EDST 401).

---

Education

Awards

Research Projects

Selected Publications

Books

Algorithms of education: How datafication and artificial intelligence shape policy. University of Minnesota (2022).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Education policy and racial biopolitics in the multicultural city. University of Chicago (2017).

Policy geophilosophy and education. Sense (2015).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teacher assemblage. Sense (2009).

• Outstanding Book Award, Qualitative Research SIG, American Educational Research Association, 2010
• Critics’ Choice Book Award, American Educational Studies Association, 2009

Selected Recent Articles & Chapters

• Webb, P. T. (forthcoming). Refusing education: Vivacide and the economies of dissipation. In P. Mikulan & M. Zemblyas (Eds.), Refusal: An ethics and praxis for decolonizing higher education. Routledge.
• Webb, P. T. & Mikulan, P. (2022). Decolonizing racial bioinformatics: Governing education in contagion and dehiscence. In M. A. Peters, P. Jandrić, & S. Hayes (Eds.), Bioinformational Philosophy and Postdigital Knowledge Ecologies (pp. 255-276). Switzerland: Springer.
• Webb, P. T. & Mikulan, P. (2021). Escape education. Educational Philosophy and Theory.
• Webb, P. T., Sellar, S., & Gulson, K. N. (2020). Anticipating education: Governing habits, memories and policy-futures. Learning, Media and Technology, 45(3), 284-297.

Selected Invited Talks

• Webb, P. T. (2020, October 29). All education is artificial.
  • Manifold Laboratory for Biosocial, Eco-Sensory and Digital Studies of Learning and Behaviour. Manchester Metropolitan University. Manchester, UK.
• Webb, P. T. (2018, May). Considerations for implementing neuroscience in educational practice: A policy perspective.
  • Educational Neuroscience Research Cluster, Vice President Research + Innovation (VPRI), University of British Columbia.
• Webb, P. T. (2018, April). Quina és la política educativa? (What is education policy?)
  • Invited presentation at the Facultat d’Educació, Traducció i Ciències Humanes (Faculty of Education, Translation, and Human Sciences), University of Vic, Spain (UVIC).
• Webb, P. T. (2018, April). La política educativa, les biologies i la política de la pròpia vida. (Education policy, biologies, and the politics of life itself).
  • Invited presentation at the Centre d’Història de la Ciència (CEHIC), Facultat de Medicina (Center for the History of Science, Faculty of Medicine) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). Barcelona, Spain.
• Webb, P. T. (2018, April). Leadership in 2030: A brief history of tomorrow. Neuroplasticity.
  • Keynote talk at uLead: Visionary leadership for today’s learner. The Alberta Teachers’ Association. Banff, Alberta.

---

Students Supervised

Representative projects

Postdoctoral

• The problematic of life in education: Theorizing the implications of the recent advancements in life sciences for education policy.
  • Dr. Petra Mikulan
  • SSHRC and UBC Killam Postdoctoral Recipient, 2018-2021.

Doctoral

• Enacting the NCLEX-RN® exam in a Canadian nursing context:  A critical policy analysis.
  • Rampersaud, Patricia, PhD, 2022
• Minor videos and becoming-Japanese : Problematizing [co][existence] and envisioning alternative futures of young migrants’ lives in Japan.
  • Masayuki Iwase, PhD, 2022
• Chinese international students’ engagement with democratic discourses and practices in Canada and the United States.
  • Gang Li, PhD, 2020.
• Subjectivity in the folds: Education, media practices and environmental activism amongst more-than-human pleats.
  • Marcelina Piotrowski, PhD, 2019. 
  • SSHRC Postdoctoral recipient
  • https://www.marcelinapiotrowski.com

Magistral

• Examining the OECD’s perspective on AI in education policy: A critical analysis of language and structure in the ‘AI and the Future of Skills’ (AIFS) document and its implications for higher education.
  • Kentaro Hasa, MA, 2023.
• Exacerbation, concealment, and co-option: Neoliberalism’s effect on educational, gendered inequalities and feminism.
  • Natasha Green, MEd, 2019.
• Otherworlds: High school teachers’ experiences of power vis-a-vis accountability policies in South Carolina.
  • Mary Cartee Adkins, MA, 2014.
• (De/re)-Constructing teachers and their work: A discourse analysis of British Columbia’s 21st-century policy agenda.
  • Cory (Tobey) Steeves, MA, 2012.
  • “Highly Commended” Award, Teachers’ Work/Teacher Unions SIG 127 of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) (2013).

Courses taught

• EDST 401: Education, School, and Social Institutions (Teacher Education Program)
• EDST 531: The Politics of Education Governance
• EDST 596: Philosophy and Education Policy: Neoliberalism
• EDST 601A: Critical Social Theory in Education (EDST PhD Program)

---

Community Work

 

Journal Reviewer

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education
• Critical Studies in Education
• Canadian Journal of Education
• Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education
• Educational Policy Analysis Archives
• European Educational Research Journal
• Evaluation
• International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education
• Learning, Media, and Technology
• McGill Journal of Education / Revue des sciences de l’éducation de McGill
• Qualitative Research

---