Differenz(en) statt Kompetenz. Anmerkungen zu einer dekonstruktiven pädagogischen Professionalität

In a "new culture of learning", external control should be replaced by radical self-control, where learners are only given support or advising at their own request. But does this actually imply being free from the influence of power relations? Or does the topos of a rational, self-dependent and reflexive subject remain an illusion? If one looks at the discourse about lifelong competence-oriented leaning from the perspective introduced by Foucault, it can be read as a totalising regime that puts into place new forms of power through its radical orientation towards the subject. If external control is reduced in favour of self-realisation, this leads to a transformation and not to an abolishment of power relations within teaching and learning processes. Is this a case of a deception? In this article, the author follows the complex path of de-deception to its end, where new opportunities for professional action in adult and continuing education are examined. She develops an entirely new theory of learning that focuses on difference and is based on poststructuralist assumptions. Learning therefore becomes a structuring action - like all human practices - which brings about difference or normality rules that nevertheless have to remain relational and incomplete, contingent and undefined.