ABSTRACT
Although educational careers tend to take longer, there is an increasingly strict temporal regime of organizing the individual phases of learning and training. Frank-Olaf Radtke, German education researcher, argues that this regime is heavily influenced by a new output-oriented terminology, the so-called 'political arithmetic', which is transforming the education system down to the level of pedagogical work. Young people are being overburdened with stressful time-management at a younger and younger age, which is having a dramatic impact on their well-being. The system of acknowledgement that is prevalent in the education system is based on the principle of shaming and humiliating those who are unable to follow this very narrow learning path. Motivation evolves and is reworked by practice, and it needs frameworks of social acknowledgement, which are partly organized within these practices. Motivation should be understood in terms of agency and performativity, which is related to acknowledgement and biographical relevance.
