Understanding new hybrid professions: Bourdieu,illusio and the case of public service interpreters

Public spending reductions across the advanced capitalist world are creating new professions that have a ‘hybrid’ status and/or role. However, research on professional learning has paid little attention to them. This qualitative study of one such profession, public service interpreting (PSI), addresses that lacuna. The paper focuses on interpreters’ interactions with other professionals and with migrants using public services. It evokes Bourdieu’s important but neglected concept of illusio – the extent to which players invest commitment in the stakes of a field – to frame the analysis. This highlights the lack of autonomy for PSI, interpreters’ own ambiguous illusio, and their conflicts with the illusio of more powerful professions with which they must work. We conclude that there is a need for more research on the power relations between new hybrid professions and established professions, and that Bourdieu’s illusio is a potent analytical concept for this task.     

Transnational academic capitalism in the Arab Gulf: balancing global and local,and public and private,capitals

This article contributes to the emerging theoretical construct of what has been called ‘transnational academic capitalism’, characterised by the blurring of traditional boundaries between public, private, local, regional and international, and between market-driven and critically transformative higher education visions. Here we examine how these issues are reflected in higher education policy in the Arab Gulf, asking: what kinds of capital are being constructed and traded? By and for whom? What is the relationship between higher education competition, governance and the public good? We find contradictory trends, which we see as strategic ambivalence pointing to country-specific readings of similar regional markets and attempts to hedge bets between rival forms of apparent capital. The exploration offers a counterpoint to more widely cited examples, hereby helping to shape new paradigmatic ‘glocalised’ understandings of this field.     

Higher education privatisation,internationalisation and marketisation: Singaporean versus Malaysian models of Asian education hub policy

The metaphor of an ‘education hub’ was initially promoted as also a policy concept for reversing cross-border student flows to the West in both Malaysia and Singapore. The Singapore version of ‘Asian education hub policy’ represents a distinct economic policy model of higher education which has since also influenced the very Western contexts it was derived from. However, it appears the Singaporeans might have actually borrowed the policy concept from the Malaysians whose aspirations to reverse international student flows to the West was rather aligned to related national capacity development plans as still something of a public good. This paper will use a Malaysia-Singapore contrast to compare distinct developing country (national/regional) vs. developed country (globalised) conceptions of the Asian education hub model. On this exemplary basis, it will also outline an integrated framework to better make sense of the related yet also often conflicting imperatives of privatization, internationalization and marketization.     

Entangled in academic capitalism? A case-study on changing ideals and practices of university research

During recent years universities have engagedincreasingly in academic capitalism as aresponse to the decrease in budget funding andthe external push towards entrepreneurialactivities. This paper explores on the microlevel what impacts the changing fundingpatterns have on university research, how thechanges are responded to in different researchunits, and how researchers experience them.Based on focused interviews with seniorresearchers in three different types ofresearch settings in Finland, the paper arguesthat engaging in academic capitalism iseveryday reality in all units but takes adiversity of forms depending on how close ordistant the field is from the market. Inaddition the disciplinary and institutionalcultures shape the process of adaptation to thechanging environmental conditions. It isconcluded that increasing market-orientationdoes not displace traditional academicpractices, values and ideals as researchers tryto accommodate them to entrepreneurialactivities. However, especially due to thegrowth and intensification of project work onshort-term contracts, achieving a balancebetween the two value-sets is at present feltto be increasingly difficult, thus generating avariety of tensions in the daily work of theresearchers and even endangering the quality ofresearch.     

College re-culturing,marketisation and knowledge: the meaning of incorporation

The further education (FE) sector in England has experienced two decades of marketisation. This article takes as its focus the first five years of incorporation (1993–1998) for one case study college in a city (‘Coppleton’) in the West Midlands of England, five years that were dominated by a contract dispute. Data from interviews with trade unionists active in Coppleton College (anonymised name) and from a trade union archive are set against selected official College documents in a genealogical enquiry into the college's corporate identity as an educational institution and employer during this time. This article looks behind the ‘legibility’ of the incorporated college and its knowledge production practices and focuses on excluded narratives, specifically the experiences of union activists caught up in a new era of industrial relations. In analysing the data, theories of New Public Management and marketisation reveal that Coppleton College has features that make it culturally distinct from its unincorporated forebear. The corporation as an institutional model – it is argued – brought with it features including institutional self-interest, an authoritarian culture, the erosion of trust, and the stifling of dissent as part of an incorporated view of knowledge production that worked against staff and the public interest.     

OER and the value of openness: implications for the knowledge economy

The knowledge economy is marked by recent trends in technological advancement, globalisation and increasing knowledge intensity. Through new technologies like Open Educational Resources (OER), knowledge can be freely accessed by individuals around the world, blurring traditional notions of ownership and prompting a social transformation manifested through values based on open knowledge access. This paper examines the extent to which values of openness are at odds with the capitalist frameworks underlying the knowledge economy and considers whether the influence of openness is transitory or whether a new capitalism must evolve in order to support social forces based on these values.     

Praxis,educational development and the university sector in Australia

In this article, we utilise recent theorising on praxis and educational development to explore how academics in universities can foster public, institutional and more personal development, even as they are challenged by what are sometimes described as more ‘managerial’ and ‘neoliberal’ conditions. The research draws upon a variety of sources of data, including publicly available correspondence on the university sector in Australia, interviews with colleagues, and personal reflective journals. These data reflect three instances of educational praxis development in the Australian university context, and at three scales/levels: nationally; unit-wide (university/faculty/institute); and sub-unit/individually. The findings reveal such development in the form of: academics using mainstream media to inform the general public about the nature of university industrial relations and funding at a national level; junior and senior academics collaborating and engaging in mentoring practices to build institutional research capacity at a university/institutional level; and, individual academics meeting to develop individual teaching practice. Through explicating the characteristics and value of educational development for and as praxis, we provide resources for hope for better understanding how the work of universities, including their broader mission to inform the public, might be enacted more educationally.     

Who ‘owns’ the university? Institutional autonomy and academic freedom in an age of knowledge capitalism

The neoliberal reframing of universities as economic engines and the growing emphasis on ‘third stream’ commercial activities are global phenomena albeit with significant local variations. This article uses the concept of ‘ownership’ to examine how these processes are impacting on institutional self-understandings and academic–management relations. Drawing on ethnographic research from New Zealand, including recent disputes between academics and management, we ask, ‘who owns the modern university’? In conclusion, we show how debates over ownership provide a lens for examining wider tensions around institutional autonomy and academic freedom.     

Turning collegial governance on its head: symbolic violence,hegemony and the academic board

This article draws on Bourdieu’s theorisation of domination and Gramsci’s notions of hegemony within the context of a larger empirical study of Australian university academic governance, and of academic boards (also known as academic senates or faculty senates) in particular. Reporting data that suggest a continued but radically altered form of collegial governance in which hegemony is exercised by management rather than by the professor, it theorises the domination of academic boards within western democratic universities. However, traditional collegial governance is also dependent upon a community of scholars, a role historically played by the academic board. In view of the suggested transition in collegial governance and the resultant convergence of academic work and management, the article concludes with questions about whether academic boards can continue to serve as communities of scholars in future.     

Bourdieu,Practice and Change: Beyond the criticism of determinism

This article sets out to go beyond those criticisms that claim Bourdieu’s theory is structuralist determinism and identifies how change can be realized within a Bourdieusian framework. Starting with Bourdieu’s theory of practice, the first part of this article aims to develop an understanding of the interlocking relationship between capital, habitus and field. The review shows that the inability to anticipate change is arguably the most crucial weakness of the Bourdieusian framework. The second part examines Bourdieu’s attempts that seemingly challenge the determinist criticism: ‘reproduction strategy’, ‘reflexivity’ and ‘hysteresis effect’. By relocating these concepts in Bourdieu's grand social theory, it then becomes clear that change is attainable in Bourdieusian theory if we can successfully identify the ‘mismatch’ between the field and habitus that can trigger the awakening of consciousness, fully recognize the neglected, but equally important, methodical mode of habitus formation, which is ‘explicit pedagogy’, and strategically engage with an open system that provides new possibilities. By scrutinizing Bourdieu in his original texts, with an eye to finding the ‘hidden essence’, this article hopes to show the need to take a certain theoretical innovation, one that is clearly outside the habitual use of Bourdieu’s theory.     

Institutional hierarchies and research impact: new academic currencies,capital and position-taking in UK higher education

Abstract

Globally, performance-based research funding aims to support the most deserving academic institutions and researchers. However, overcoming entrenched assumptions about quality is a persistent challenge for higher education research policies worldwide; traditionally powerful institutions tend to maintain dominance. Research impact as a performance criterion presents an opportunity for position-taking through success according to non-academic criteria. Could impact-oriented research funding challenge institutional hierarchies? The UK university system presents an instructive case study for exploring this question. However, exposing the effects of such performance-based funding on institutional stratification requires focusing on the interface between institutions and disciplines. A Bourdieusian analysis of 53 cases of research-based impact on higher education policy/practice revealed the differential capital that researchers from more and less ‘prestigious’ universities mobilise when generating research impact. By uncovering how impact reinforces disparities in research power between UK institutions, the study contributes to understanding of sectoral reproduction through discipline-level mediation of research policy.     

Calculating student aspiration: Bourdieu,spatiality and the politics of recognition

This paper reports on a recent study of aspirations for higher education by secondary school students from disadvantaged backgrounds in regional Australia. At the same time, it goes in search of explanations that transcend a Bourdieuian account of aspirations as produced by and reproductive of cultural histories and dominance, given the apparent inadequacy of these accounts in redressing disadvantage. To this end the authors distinguish between historicising and spatialising aspirations, taking up Appadurai’s notion of navigational capacity as a way of advancing greater agency for disadvantaged groups. Data from the research inform the analysis, including the mediation of students’ desired futures by their perception of what is possible given their differentiated locations and access to resources. It is concluded that while this spatial turn in theorising aspiration has potential for changing the terms of recognition internal to disadvantaged communities, there remain structural limits on change ‘from below’.     

学习型社会与现代教育的发展

在知识经济时代,学习成为新的潮流,构建学习型社会已成为历史的必然趋势.学习型社会是发展知识经济的沃土,它能促进生产劳动智能化、创新活动普及化、决策科学化和经济环境文明化.     

The value and valuing of continuing professional development: current dilemmas,future directions and the case for action research

This paper explores and challenges the rationale for current, mainstream approaches to teachers’ continuing professional development (CPD) within schooling systems. Such approaches are significantly influenced by neoliberal and managerial pressures, evident in advocacy for generic, individualistic models of teacher learning, often focused on specific state-sanctioned domains. The paper draws upon a précis of recent action research literature, and empirical research from Sweden, to argue for an alternative paradigm, based on the practices and principles of participatory and collaborative action research. Action research is not presented as a simplistic ‘method’ which can be ‘applied’ regardless of context, but is explicitly focused on situated, specific, local sites. While more managerial and neoliberal practices can close down debates necessary for effecting real improvements in practice, evidence suggests action research, in its emancipatory iterations, enables a rich conception of educational practice which cannot be ‘managed’ into existence by a simplistic application of ‘what works.’     

Invasion,alienation, and imperialist nostalgia: Overcoming the necrophilous nature of neoliberal schools

Abstract

The authors present a materialist analysis of the effects of neoliberalism in education. Specifically, they contend that neoliberalism is a form of cultural invasion that begets necrophilia. Neoliberalism is necrophilous in promoting a cultural desire to fix fluid systems and processes. Such desire manufactures both individuals known and culturally felt experiences of alienation which are, it is argued, symptomatic of an imperialist nostalgia that permeates educational policy and practice. The authors point to ‘unschooling in schools’ as a mechanism for resisting the necrophilous tendencies of contemporary formations of education.     

Protecting academic freedom in changing times: the role of Heads of Departments

In changing times for higher education that are dominated by a neoliberal ideology, we set out to uncover how Heads of Departments (HoDs) perceive their role with respect to supporting their staff and their academic freedom. Freedom to pursue academic research is seen as key to the generation of new knowledge yet it is potentially constrained by funding regimes and university accountability systems. As HoDs operate at the interface between university systems and individual academic projects, how they perceive their role can have a profound influence on the working environment of their departmental staff. The research study is located in two successful departments in a research intensive university in England. The study shows that the HoDs were not captured by the neoliberal discourse and aimed to protect their staff so they could ‘get on with their work’. In so doing they interpreted university demands to the best advantage of their departments but were not active in challenging university driven changes, thus raising questions about the effects of accommodating to change, so risking incremental change, and of how less successful departments might be able to protect their staff and their academic freedom.     

New capitalism,educational modernisation and the new role of the professional student

Current times are witnessing multiple challenges in the economic, political and social domain, which modern citizens and professionals are required to address with an enterprising mindset. Young people have not been left intact by the spirit of new capitalism. In the face of ongoing educational changes on a European level, being a student transcends the boundaries of the school community. Young people thus oscillate between different identities: on the one hand, that of the child who lives in the here and now, and on the other hand, that of the pseudo-adult and in-the-make professional. In this light, the paper explores the new role of the professional student and discusses the implications of a neoliberal student model. It concludes by proposing a more humanistic understanding of the student role, which positions young people in a dynamic learning process and relationship with the world around them.     

Shifting occupational identity: doing,being, becoming and belonging in the academy

Becoming more scholarly can be challenging for many in the academy, including for those transitioning from professional roles. This paper presents the initial findings of an ongoing action research project that set out to explore and develop aspects of identity among a group of Australian occupational therapy academics. Thirteen participants committed to collaboratively address a personal desire to become more scholarly and an institutional demand to be more productive in relation to research and publication. Through this first phase of an action research process, participants explored and qualitatively defined issues impacting on their occupation. Emergent themes that were explored using an occupational lens incorporating: doing, being, becoming and belonging, highlight identity confusion and regression, mixed perceptions about the comfort and camouflage of teaching and participants' desires to become and be more scholarly. Taking an occupational lens adds to the identity conversation, illuminating how doing within a supportive group nurtures belonging, being and becoming. Our findings, of relevance to academics following non-traditional pathways into the academy, suggest optimism around using action research for the active cultivation of scholarship and occupational theory to understand how academic identity may be developed within a supportive group.