ABSTRACT
Against the pervasive and oppressive backdrop of the neoliberal post-academic environment and its managerial re-languaging of the academy in ways that undermine social responsibility and critical thinking, we propose a view of/on learning in higher education that accords a central place to the learner as a person, a self, and hence to learning as an interactive organisation of processes over time that involves the formation of learning selves. Such a view crucially involves a focus on the development of persons as temporally extended forms of process-organisation. Rather than passive information processors of inputs and outputs, students must actively constitute themselves as learning selves who are constantly evaluating, modulating, and monitoring their interactivity with the learning environment and its emergent “objects” of learning. Learning selves must learn to modulate their own (and others’) learning activity in the learning environment. The Introduction will introduce the chapters in the book in the ways set out in the general introduction to the special issue.
