Mid-career academic women and the prestige economy

Drawing on 30 semi-structured interviews with women academics based in London higher education institutions in the UK, this paper investigates the gendered nature of the prestige economy in academia. We explore how mid-career academic women strategise their career development and the opportunities and barriers they perceive, particularly in relation to the accrual of academic esteem. Concept maps were used to facilitate dialogue about career plans and provided an artefact from the interviewee’s own perspective. The analysis draws on the concept of prestige, or the indicators of esteem that help advance academic careers, against the backdrop of a higher education context which increasingly relies on quantitative data to make judgements about academic excellence. The interviews indicated that women generally feel that men access status and indicators of esteem more easily than they do. Many women also had ambivalent feelings about gaining recognition through prestige: they understood the importance of status and knew the ‘rules of the game’, but were critical of these rules and sometimes reluctant to overtly pursue prestige. The findings are valuable for understanding how women’s slow access to the highest levels of higher education institutions is shaped by the value that organisations place on individual status.     

高校学业考试现状与高校教学质量保障的基本途径分析

学业考试是高校教学质量保障的重要手段和基本途径。学业评价能够体现特定课程的教学理念,检验教学过程设计的正确性和教学活动的有效性。我国高校长期以来不重视学业考试的改革和职能发挥,教学中存在考试内容陈旧、考试形式与方法单一、考试后无反馈等问题。为此,应把提高教师评价学生学业的水平与质量作为提高教学质量的突破口,进而通过提高高校学业考试的科学性促进教师提升其教学水平,完善我国高校教学质量保障体系。     

Argumentative and trustworthy scholars: the construction of academic staff at research-intensive universities

Research-intensive universities, such as the Russell Group in the UK, the Ivy League Colleges in the USA and the Sandstone Universities in Australia, enjoy particular status in the higher education landscape. They are, however, also often associated with social elitism and selectivity, and this has led to critique as higher education systems seek to widen access. This article looks at how academic staff are discursively constructed in five such institutions in South Africa through an analysis of documentation submitted as part of a national review. Three interrelated discourses are identified: a discourse of ‘staff as scholars’ whereby research is privileged over teaching, a discourse of ‘academic argumentation’ whereby a critical disposition is valued and is called upon by academics to resist development initiatives and a discourse of ‘trust’ whereby it is assumed that academics share a value system and should thus be trusted to undertake quality teaching without interference.     

Re-examining and developing the notion of academic citizenship: A critical literature review

The notion of academic citizenship has been largely associated with the service role which is a part of academic work seen as additional to teaching and research. The changing landscapes of higher education and the increasing diversity of academic work have prompted debates on what academic citizenship means. This paper challenges the conventional association of academic citizenship with the service role and presents a critical review of the key themes and issues explored in extant literature on the subject. Drawing upon the general view of citizenship as practice, it proposes that the different dimensions of academic work be seen integratively, with academic citizenship reframed beyond the service role. We argue that academic citizenship needs to be conceptualised as a practice of enactment, that is, by the values, processes and means by which it is enacted and asserted as academics draw on freedoms, autonomy and individual motivations.     

论大学组织学术权力生成的逻辑

作为学术组织的大学,学术权力在其内部管理权力结构中占有重要地位。无论考察大学组织的历史渊源、社会功能、大学基层学科组织的规训,还是审视大学组织内学科评价标准等学术活动,都可以发现无法离开学术权力。学术自由、教授治校、大学自主是学术权力的基本特征。     

Predicting the academic achievement of students bridging to engineering: the role of academic background variables and diagnostic testing

Abstract

Although the number of engineering students is increasing, dropout rates remain high. This problem is also present in the Faculty of Engineering Technology (FET) at KU Leuven, Belgium, which resulted in the need for an in-depth analysis of the academic achievement of the bridging students there. This study examines the contribution of a range of predictors, both cognitive and non-cognitive. The examined predictors are: general characteristics, academic background variables and variables tested in a diagnostic test. A multiple linear regression model for the 2015–2016 chohort accounted for an explained variance of 36% of the students’ academic achievement. After combining three cohorts, we managed to explain 43% of the variance in students’ academic achievement. As expected, the academic background variables are the most important predictors. The diagnostic tests are less predictive but their role is important, since they encourage students to participate in associated interventions.     

Landmarks in the professional and academic development of mid-career teacher educators

This paper focuses on the professional and academic development of mid-career teacher educators from two universities in England. The objectives of the study were to analyse and compare the career experiences of teacher educators; in particular, to identify stages of development, landmark events and contextual factors affecting professional learning and academic identities. In-depth biographical interviews were carried out with 12 teacher educators, together with living graphs of their career paths. Clear landmarks were identified in both contexts, with development in teaching seen as largely positive, while research development was much more varied. Teacher educators who were further on in their careers saw research development as transformative personally as well as academically. In analysing the findings within a sociocultural learning framework, the authors draw in particular on Swennen et al.’s model of teacher educators’ sub-identities, Akerlind’s categorisation of an academic identity and Eraut’s contextual and learning factors.     

Constituting collective consciousness: Information literacy in university curricula

Information literacy, encompassing the ability to access, evaluate and use information in contemporary ICT environments, today has a place on the graduate profiles of many Australian universities. Growing recognition of the importance of information literacy at national and institutional levels, raises the fundamental question of how to raise the awareness of a university community about this significant issue in order to make it a focal point in learning design and support. In 1999 the Australian Catholic University (ACU) tackled this question and responded by conceiving a university-wide teaching and learning enhancement project that targeted staff at all levels of the university, across all campuses and all disciplines. In reporting this project, Bowden and Marton's (1998) framework of depicting learning as changing awareness at the individual and collective level is adopted. Key features of the project are discussed, including our developing interest in influencing the ACU collective consciousness, key strategies for bringing information literacy into focus, the learning that occurred at a collective level, and ways of continuing to thematize information literacy. We conclude with some reflections on the collective consciousness framework in relation to the academic development context.     

学术分工视野中的大学教师角色分析

现代大学制度建立以后，大学教师作为知识分子的代表被认为是真理的化身、道德的榜样和社会的良心，而学术自由理念及其制度是大学教师形塑其角色行为的基础。随着学术分工制度的发展，大学教师的传统角色受到质疑，并正在发生角色的转换。     

A qualitative study of the UK academic role: positive features,negative aspects and associated stressors in a mainly teaching-focused university

The literature demonstrates that stress in the working life of academics has increased over recent years. However, qualitative research on how academics cope with this is very scarce. Using online interviewing with thematic analysis, this paper examines how 31 academics in a post-92 predominantly teaching-focused UK university cope with the stressors of work. An innovation was to ask about both positive and negative experiences at work unlike most stress research which focuses only on negatives. Six themes emerged from the data; administrative loads, coping with stress at work, task preferences, the academic role, and positive and negative feelings around research/scholarship and thoughts around leaving academia. Increases in student numbers, being able to spend less time with students, heavy workloads, increasing administration, poor management, funding cuts and government initiatives threatening the future of education, obtaining research funding, and increasing insecurity of academic posts were all stressors. Positives identified included satisfaction gained from teaching students, support from colleagues, relative autonomy at work and the ability to manage their time more effectively were perceived as factors that can moderate some of the negative consequences of work stress. Overall, academics reported being happy at work because of the satisfaction gained from teaching and research.     

The distinction between academic standards and quality: implications for transnational higher education

Although the conceptual distinction between academic standards and the quality of learning opportunities is fundamental to an understanding of the role of quality assurance in higher education, the distinction, and its implications, have not always been well understood in the case of transnational higher education. This paper explores both the source of academic standards and the criteria by which the quality of learning opportunities can be judged. It is argued that the distinction is of particular importance in the context of transnational education, because whilst judgements about quality may legitimately be susceptible to a degree of cultural influence, the same is not true of judgements about academic standards. It is suggested that a lack of attention to the logical distinction between standards and quality has hampered efforts by regulatory régimes around the world to develop coherent policies with respect to hosting transnational higher education provision.     

Governing the academic subject: Foucault,governmentality and the performing university

Drawing on research conducted at National University of Ireland, Galway, this paper explores how senior managers at an Irish university are seeking to measure and facilitate academic performance in the context of national and global competitiveness and a higher education landscape that appears firmly inflected by neoliberal ideas of rankings, benchmarking and productivity. I draw upon Michel Foucault’s writings on governmentality and biopolitics, in particular, and I utilise findings from a range of in-depth interviews with central university managers, with a view to critically interrogating the envisioning of what is undoubtedly a new academic subjectivity in the Irish higher education sector—a subjectivity that is being progressively planned for and regulated.     

学术活动的反思与大学制度的重建

现行大学制度的功利导向、行政泛化,是导致学者"以学术为生"并使其异化的诱因。大学制度的重建首先是价值的重构。大学只有从自身的学术使命出发,确立对学术本体的追求,才能完善教师管理制度,引导教师逐渐达到"以学术为业"的境界,实现"为大学"和"为教师"的双赢。     

The Development and Validation of an Instrument to Assess Institutional-Level Environment in Universities

This study reports the development and validation of an instrument to assess institutional or university-level environment in universities. Using a sample of 489 academics from 52 departments in 28 Australian universities, an instrument called the University-Level Environment Questionnaire (ULEQ) was field-tested and validated. The final form of the ULEQ consists of 42 items assigned to seven scales: Academic Freedom, Concern for Undergraduate Learning, Concern for Research and Scholarship, Empowerment, Affiliation, Mission Consensus, and Work Pressure. Validation data showed that the ULEQ has sound structural characteristics, thus suggesting that it should prove to be an important research tool for individual academics, departments, and universities interested in improving their learning environments. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

美国大学教师的学术自由权利:历史的视角

美国大学教师的学术自由权利经历了"学院时代"与"大学时代"两大历史时期的发展。美国大学教师学术自由权利的争取过程,同时也是赋予学术自由权利以认识论和政治论意义的过程。历史证明,学术自由权利是保障大学教师从事知识创新与探索活动的基本权利,是保护教学与研究工作免受各种不合理干扰和限制的必要权利,是赋予大学教师适当社会地位和必要经济保障的重要权利,也是一项与学术责任相伴生的有限权利。     

我国高校学术自主权变迁的实证研究

近20年来我国高校学术自主权的下放总体上呈先快后慢的上升趋势,但高校学术事务的管理权还远远不能达到自主的程度,政府仍然掌握着大部分的学术事务管理权。具体来说,涉及教学的学术事务决策权大部分下放了,而涉及学科发展的自主权基本没有下放。在高校内部,存在行政力量对学术力量综合影响程度减弱的趋势,但关系高校重大发展的资源配置决策权,仍由行政力量主导。对于不涉及重大资源配置的学术事务,学术力量已经在起主导作用。     

Against the corrosive language of Corpspeak in the contemporary university

Many universities today are businesses, embracing the priorities and values of any other consumerist enterprise. There is an argument that, insofar as the phenomenon of marketisation is a function of what (Michaels, F. [2011]. Monoculture: How one story is changing everything. Red Clover Press) terms a global economic ‘monoculture’, these developments are inevitable. Nevertheless, this article argues against such rhetoric that embraces the neoliberal principle of unrestrained growth and that has public universities adopting a business model, applying managerialist approaches, measuring and – most importantly in the context of this article – expressing worth and purpose in corporate terms, as these prioritise commerce over the cultivation of creative and critical thought essential to healthy social functioning. It argues for an educational environment that enables multiple ways of seeing, thinking and living to flourish. The particular focus is on the deleterious effects of corporatising language within universities. I reflect upon how this language is used to express notions of value and to shape identity. In (Fairclough, N. [2004]. Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. London: Routledge) phrasing, texts ‘have causal effects upon, and contribute to changes in, people?…?actions, social relations, and the material world’; thus, I examine language-based conceptual inadequacies, misrepresentations, and what Bourdieu terms ‘unconscious inclusions’ – within many contemporary universities. I then consider what style of language, what other attitudes and approaches, actually support the university as a learning place with a specific cultural role, rather than presenting it as another ‘multi-output organisation’.     

Performing support in higher education: negotiating conflicting agendas in academic language and learning advisory work

ABSTRACT

This article critically explores neoliberal administrative priorities and the ways in which they shape and constrain academic language and learning (ALL) advisory practice in the Australian higher education sector. Drawing on semi-structured interview data collected from in-service ALL advisors working in Australian universities, we highlight a disjuncture between the participants’ understandings of effective practice and the institutional framing of ALL advisory work as a mechanism to improve accessibility of higher study and retention of diversifying student cohorts. The data indicate the potential for institutional priorities to generate dilemmas in advisors’ daily practice as they are tasked with performing support via formats considered antithetical to meeting students’ needs and fostering productive approaches to study. Under these circumstances, participants characterised collaboration between advisors and content specialists in the pursuit of more embedded approaches as dependent on individual endeavours and stymied by a lack of institutional support. We call for renewed consideration of the formats and affordances with which advisors work in order to better align ALL advisory practice with the holistic development of students’ academic literacy skills.     

Audit cultures and quality assurance mechanisms in England: a study of their perceived impact on the work of academics

Abstract

Acceptance of the legitimacy of post‐modern theories on education implies a need to reconceptualise the professional development of graduates in the area of educational leadership. This paper reports on the first year of an innovative professional doctorate programme focusing on educational leadership at the Queensland University of Technology. A problem‐based learning approach was integrated with and underpinned by post‐modern imperatives such as the valuing of the self‐empowerment of students, the acceptance of multiple realities as reality, and a view of knowledge as arising out of interdependence and contextualised by discontinuous change. The focus of this paper is on students’ and teachers’ views of the development of individual empowerment, processual competencies and interdependence in the first cohort of students.

     

学术自由的实现与现代大学制度的建构

学术自由的实现既包括“外在自由”的实现又包括“内心自由”的实现 ,故学术自由的实现有内外两种尺度 :外在的尺度主要体现为保障学术自由的政策法规在多大程度上得到完善 ,内在的尺度则表现为学术自由作为一种理念在多大程度上得到认同。学术自由的实现与现代大学制度的建构密切相关。我国建构现代大学制度 ,既要完善旨在保护学术自由的外在制度 ,又要培育以学术自由精神为核心的内在制度