Exploring women faculty's experiences and perceptions in higher education: the effects of feminism?

This study analyses women faculty's discourse about feminism, themselves, and their professional experiences as scholars in the North American university context. This case study pushes at the boundaries of what we believe we know about ‘the gender question' in the academy, opening a discursive space for scholars to examine university policies and practices. Poststructuralist emphasis on the complexity and changing nature of power relations offer a framework that makes sense of the ways in which women are simultaneously affected by power relations and engage in power relations. I use feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis to analyse women's talk about their experiences in order to carve a path for moving beyond the deconstruction of discourse in order to unpack how it marginalises and silences women, even within and to themselves.     

OBE,RPL and adult education: good bedfellows in higher education in South Africa?

As its title suggests, this paper explores the compatibility of outcomes-based education (OBE), the recognition of prior learning (RPL) and adult education in higher education in South Africa. OBE and RPL entered the consciousness of South African educators in the 1990s, when policymakers, responding to economic and political imperatives to develop a more skilled and flexible workforce, turned to overseas models of integrated education and training systems. OBE and RPL are often described as ‘learner-centred practices’, meaning that learning goals, teaching and assessment processes, content and pace of learning are mutually determined by the tutor and student. Such practices are grounded in a humanistic approach to adult education which places emphasis on the person as a holistic being and allows for considerable differences which characterize mature adult learners. The paper explores the relationship between OBE, RPL and the andragogical model of adult education proposed by Malcolm Knowles, whose theories have acquired the status of established doctrine in South Africa. The paper points to areas of compatibility and difference between OBE, RPL and adult education, and concludes that problems which arise in introducing OBE and RPL in higher education have more to do with features of the context, and the processes of design and implementation, than with inherent defects in the theories underpinning them.     

Concepts and practices of education and adult education: obstacles to lifelong education and lifelong learning?

Over the last half century, in varying degrees and under various names, there has been much interest in learning throughout life for everybody. Although what has been written has stressed its necessity and feasibility, little has been achieved. As is common to all things educational, it has lagged behind the times. Little considered and highly resistant among the obstacles to it are the current concepts, institutions and practices of education. The widespread, systematic study of education in the 19th century grew out of the need to train teachers required by the introduction of universal primary schooling. Concentration by teacher trainers on this task, and their struggle to establish their subject as a coherent discipline to be taught in institutions of higher education was such that the prevailing view of education came to be restricted not merely mainly, as hitherto, but only, to the upbringing of children and young people. Rejecting this view of necessity, adult educationalists have sought for their own field academic recognition as a discipline, emphasizing their differences from initial education. Study of current educational writings from many countries shows that the reconciliation of these two positions, necessary to lifelong education, has not gone very far. Consideration of what might be done to create a process and a habit of lifelong learning for all on the basis of current practice and theory of initial education and adult education, of which lifelong education can only be a contributory element, will require fundamental changes in both. There are few signs so far of the political will and the sense of urgency that will apparently be required.     

Capital,agency, family and the Diaspora: an exploration of boys’ aspirations towards higher education in urban Jamaica

The paper discusses factors impacting on boys’ educational aspirations at two case-study schools in urban Jamaica. It focuses on boys’ experience of their educational environment in relation to social, cultural and economic factors, which shapes the nature of their aspirations towards higher education. The study utilised Bourdieu’s notion of ‘capital’ grounded in a critical realist meta-theoretical framework, the narratives of the participants and the researcher’s experiential understanding as a participant observer to explore boys’ aspirations over a 12-month period. The findings from the study suggested that boys’ educational aspirations are complex and affected by their level of capital in relation to persistent narratives from family and the Jamaican Diaspora within high-income countries like the UK, the USA and Canada.     

Roma women’s higher education participation: whose responsibility?

There are striking gaps between Roma and non-Roma higher education (HE) participation rates, with less than 1% of Roma possessing a tertiary-level qualification [United Nations Development Programme, World Bank and European Commission. 2011a. “The Situation of Roma in 11 EU Member States.” Accessed 3 April 2015. http://issuu.com/undp_in_europe_cis/docs/_roma_at_a_glance_web/1#download]. As the Decade of Roma Inclusion (2005–2015) closes, this renders the present a salient moment to reflect on Roma students’ HE experiences. Widening educational access for marginalised groups raises specific questions about where responsibility for doing so lies – with tensions between individualised articulations of raising aspiration and notions of collective responsibility framed in a social justice agenda. Drawing on interviews with five Roma women students, this paper unpacks the contradictions between desiring access to HE for individual self-betterment and concurrent pulls towards educating for the wider benefit of ‘improving’ Roma communities. Using Ahmed’s [2012. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press] work on institutional belonging, we explore the specifically gendered nature of these narratives in how ‘doubly’ marginalised bodies are positioned as outsiders, in receipt of an educational gift.     

Korean mature women students’ various subjectivities in relation to their motivation for higher education: generational differences amongst women

This qualitative case study attempts to conceptualize certain ‘patterns’ and ‘processes’ of which 28 mature women undergraduates give meanings to their motivation for higher education in their life contexts. Particular attention has been paid to include diverse groups of women according to their age, prior educational background, marital and occupational status. This was to seek for possibilities of differences amongst the mature women undergraduates, which is a scholarly neglected issue in the existing literature. Life history interviews were conducted with individual participants aged 25–75. Based on a combination of grounded theory approach and feminist post-structuralist theory, three types of learners were identified primarily in different generation—an age cohort that shares certain experiences in common. They are younger ‘careerist learners’, ‘personal growth learners’ and older ‘vicarious living learners’. Although the motivations for these three types of learners overlap to some extent, they disclose distinct gendered subjectivities. The analysis suggests that this partly reflects the historical dynamics of gender relations in Korean society. Drawing on empirical findings, this paper argues that more attention needs to be paid to diversities among mature women students and to socio-historical contexts under which those learners’ motivations and perspectives are constructed.     

Gender structure and women’s agency: toward greater theoretical understanding of education for transformation

Under the research radar, and yet highly influential in transformation of practices concerning the social understanding and enactment of gender, are women-led non-governmental organizations (WNGOs). Their continued efforts to reconfigure gender identities and their impact on public policy formation have expanded notions of citizenship and democracy as well as moved social justice to greater levels of concreteness. This article seeks to contribute to the literature by probing the role of WNGOs as educational institutions that both create and disseminate knowledge about gender inequalities and gender justice and, in so doing, foster the formation of assertive individual and collective identities that subsequently influence the public arena through their advocacy of measures to reduce inequalities between women and men. The work by these WNGOs confirms the theoretical premise that to effect social change, new knowledge must be created by the very groups that seek to alter the disadvantageous conditions that confront them.     

Spatializing higher education: Emirati women learners’ hot and cold spaces

This article is concerned with the types of lived spaces that emerged from exploring Emirati women learners’ spatial experiences in higher education. By conducting an ethnographic qualitative inquiry and by utilizing Lefebvre’s triad of the perceived, conceived and lived space and rhythmanalysis as a theoretical framework, two distinctive categories of the lived space emerged: ‘Hot’ and ‘Cold’ spaces, with their sub-categorizations. These emergent spaces reveal and reflect Emirati women learners’ spatial needs and experiences as manifested through their spatial appropriation and unique rhythms on campus. The findings also extend our understanding and utilization of Lefebvre’s abstract triad, specifically the lived space, and confirm how space is neither abstract nor static, but socially constructed, dynamic as well as culturally and contextually bound. The spatial focus of this study offers a novel way of thinking about women’s experiences and needs in higher education, thus extending the scholarly work on spatializing education.     

Vocational education and the binary higher education system in the Netherlands: higher education symbiosis or vocational education dichotomy?

The Netherlands has a binary higher education system in which academic education and higher professional education at EQF levels 5–8 co-exist. There is also secondary vocational education at EQF levels 1 up to 4. In this paper, I analyse policy documents resulting from the Bologna Process and argue that under neo-liberal conditions, higher professional education brings opportunities for both students and employers, but also creates a socio-economic tension in terms of employability. The gap between higher professional education and secondary vocational education adds to the formation of a labour market in which higher professional education graduates are prepared to an international labour market but employability pressure is being put on lower skilled employees, creating unequal employability opportunities for vocational education graduates.     

?Between rationality and politics?: autobiographical portraits of adult education programme planning

Using the author's experience as the coordinator of the Canadian Agriculture Lifetime Leadership programme as a case study, this article provides an interpretive essay about programme planning in adult education. Two conceptual frameworks are used to structure narratives of the programme planning process. The first asserts that programme planning is the rational application of a six-step decision-making model. The second claims that programme planning is the political negotiation of personal and organizational interests. Through two autobiographical narratives, this article explores how technical-rational and political models of programme planning further our understanding of adult education practises. In addition to contributing a detailed case study to the literature on programme planning, the article speaks to contemporary empirical and normative debates in adult education.     

Diversification? Trends and explanations of the shape and size of higher education

Debates and policies in Europe as regards the diversity of higher education institutions and programmes have changed substantially over the years. When expansion of the rate of new entry students was expected to grow beyond 10%, diversification between types of higher education institutions became the most popular option, whereas no consensus emerged as far as the extent of diversity and the most desirable classifications are concerned. In the 1980s, attention shifted gradually towards “vertical” differences among institutions of formally the same type. Since the 1990s, more extreme modes of vertical diversity were more frequently advocated as options to embark into world-wide competition for “world-class university”. The concurrent popular debates are criticized as blaming moderate vertical inter-institutional diversity, emphasis on intra-institutional diversity, efforts to put prime emphasis on a variety of profiles of any model other than extreme vertical diversity as counteracting “quality”, although evidence for the superiority of the model praised is feeble.     

The construction of early career teachers’ identities: coping or managing?

This paper examines how early career teachers cope with or manage the challenges that they experience during the transition from pre-service to the first and then the second year of teaching as they seek to establish stable, positive, professional identities and teach effectively in various school and policy contexts. Findings from three waves of interviews conducted with six elementary and secondary school teachers showed that, for these teachers in the early years of teaching, the construction of positive or negative, stable or unstable professional identities was closely related to whether they coped with or managed various tensions and to their perceived effectiveness. The findings also revealed that their ability to cope or manage was not only influenced by the relative strength of commitment with which they entered teaching, but also by the kinds of school-level support which they experienced.     

Critical moments and second-chance education constructing socially excluded women’s stories of career success

This study narrates the role of education/training in the career success stories of twelve women on an Irish active labour market programme, Community Employment (CE). All from lower socio-economic groups, having early school-leaving backgrounds, and, prior to CE, were long-term unemployed. CE enhances the employability of the long-term unemployed by offering job opportunities and providing education/training. Using narrative inquiry, it understands how the women (re)construct their interpretations of their career success following critical moments of change in their lives. The study narrates the stories on a case-by-case basis according to the category of critical moment that each participant experienced and then views the chronicles via the lens of social class as mediated through the educational structure. It, therefore, specifically recognises the micro-individual and macro-social aspects of a person’s interpretation of his/her career and education/training experiences. To understand the change process inherent in the stories, a theoretical construct, Giddens’ (1991) fateful moment, is operationalised by examining how the critical moments evolve in to fateful moments facilitated by the structural influence of the education/training provided by the expert system of CE. The study concludes by proposing three categories of career success for this sample to take account of their altered career structures.     

Barriers to and facilitators of female Deans’ career advancement in higher education: an exploratory study in Vietnam

Although the slow progress of female academics compared to their male colleagues and the challenges that female academic leaders have to face in taking leadership roles have been well-documented, very little is known about female academic leaders and managers’ career advancement in developing countries like Vietnam. This paper reports on an exploratory study of a research project funded by the Cambridge—Viet Nam Women Leadership Programme, which aims to advance an understanding of the status of, and identify strategies to empower, female academic managers in Vietnamese higher education. The focus of this paper is on university leaders and female Deans’ perceptions of the barriers to female academic Deanship and female Deans’ reflections on the facilitators for their career advancement. The study found that the main barriers are strong family obligations, negative gender stereotypes regarding females as leaders, and female academics’ unwillingness to take management positions. The major facilitators of female Deans’ career advancement are self-effort, strong family support, and, what is perceived to be, a favourable or ‘lucky’ selection context. The paper provides empirical evidence to support the view that family support is a crucial factor for female academic career advancement in Vietnam. Women are both an agent and an object of change in empowering female academic leadership.     

Who aspires to higher education? Axes of inequality,values of education and higher education aspirations in secondary schools in Luxembourg and the Swiss Canton of Bern

This article reports a study that investigated secondary school students’ higher education aspirations (towards university studies, ISCED 6 and above) and how these differ between student groups as well as how these are impacted by values of education. Panel data of more than 300 secondary school students in two countries, Luxembourg and Switzerland (the Swiss Canton of Bern) was analysed. Schools are structured differently in the education systems of Luxembourg and the Swiss Canton of Bern. The results of our analysis show that students in the Luxembourgish sample more often aspire to higher education than in the Swiss sample. Disparities in higher education aspirations were also more pronounced in the Luxembourgish sample, boys and students from families of low socio‐economic status (SES) were less likely to aspire to higher education. While the effects of values of education are generally scarce, stimulation in terms of anticipated enjoyment and interest derived from participation in higher education seems to have a positive effect on higher education aspirations.     

What does class origin and education mean for the capabilities of agency and voice?

This article investigates the relationship between class origin, educational attainment, and the capabilities of agency and voice. The main objectives are to investigate how class origin and educational attainment interact and to consider whether higher education reduces any structural inequalities in the social aspects of life. A longitudinal approach is applied, using a national survey of 1058 Swedish young people, controlling for baseline values of agency and voice. The empirical analysis reveals an association between class origin and agency and voice. University education proves to be of central importance for the capabilities of agency and voice; however, this varied for young people with different class origin. Young people from manual working-class backgrounds benefit from higher education, while no significant result was found for young people with white-collar parents. The results indicate that higher education reduces structural differences in capabilities central for social participation.     

Self-concept of students in higher education: are there differences by faculty and gender?

Many studies examine student self-concept during compulsory schooling but few have explored the self-concept of students in higher educational settings. The current study examined self-concept by faculty and gender among higher education students in New Zealand. Participants were 929 undergraduate students from a large New Zealand university. The results showed some differences in verbal and maths self-concept by faculty. Generally, students in faculties teaching subjects more reliant on maths skills had higher maths self-concept than those in faculties where facility in verbal skills was important. The opposite results were found for verbal self-concept. No overall gender differences were found for general, academic, verbal and maths self-concept although a statistically significant difference was found for problem-solving self-concept. This finding suggests students’ choice of faculty may be based on perceptions of their skills and capabilities in the various fields, irrespective of gender.     

Talking about gendered headship: how do women and men working in schools conceive and articulate notions of gender?

In this paper I explore how a woman secondary school headteacher and her colleagues talk about her gendered headship. To facilitate and contextualise the semi-structured interviews, participants were asked to categorise a range of attributes and qualities that have been seen as 'masculine' or 'feminine'. They attempted to plot their perceptions of her gendered headship on a continuum from 'extremely masculine' to 'extremely feminine' in relation to her appearance and interactions in various contexts. Their talk, as they explained and illustrated their thinking, reveals that even from a dualist starting point many have an understanding of the fluid nature of complex, subjective, gendered identities. The rejection of binary notions of gender by some participants disrupts the perpetuation of gender as a dualist concept. In particular, the headteacher forces open a space in which to consider the complexity of her own gendered headship.