The global citizenship agenda and the generation of cosmopolitan capital in British higher education

Cosmopolitanism has been cast by some in recent years as a form of cultural capital, disproportionately available to students on elite educational pathways. This article tests this supposition, by comparing the enactment of global citizenship education reforms at two high-status and two low-status universities in the United Kingdom. These enactments have indeed differed, as some students are being encouraged to cultivate a sophisticated cosmopolitan disposition for positions of leadership, while other students are not – even if they are being encouraged to learn more about the world, or to develop social tolerance. Comparing the practices and meanings attributed to the global citizenship agenda among universities in different positions in the higher education field, this article illuminates dynamics related to the creation, legitimation, and differentiation of cosmopolitan capital among different groups of students. The article also extends understanding of how the institutional hierarchy of higher education provision positions students for the global economy unequally.     

The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and researching education policy

Bourdieu did not write anything explicitly about education policy. Despite this neglect, we agree with van Zanten that his theoretical concepts and methodological approaches can contribute to researching and understanding education policy in the context of globalisation and the economising of it. In applying Bourdieu’s theory and methodology to research in education policy, we focus on developing his work to understand what we call ‘cross‐field effects’ and for exploring the emergence of a ‘global education policy field’. These concepts are derived from some of our recent research concerning globalisation and mediatisation of education policy. The paper considers three separate issues. The first deals with Bourdieu’s primary ‘thinking tools’, namely practice, habitus, capitals and fields and their application to policy studies. The second and third sections consider two additions to Bourdieu’s thinking tools, as a way to reconceptualise the functioning of policy if considered as a social field. More specifically, the second section develops an argument around cross‐field effects, as a way to group together, research and describe policy effects. The third section develops an argument about an emergent global education policy field, and considers ways that such a field affects national education policy fields.     

基于场域理论的高校三维权力结构分析

布迪厄把社会场域里竞争的资本划分为社会资本、文化资本、经济资本,三者在场域中为争夺制度高位和权力资本不断进行博弈和竞争,在高校这一特殊场域中社会资本与行政权力、文化资本与学术权力、经济资本与市场权力的相互转化与竞争最终将形成象征性资本,象征性资本则是行政权力、学术权力和市场权力的合力.     

How Bourdieu bites back: recognising misrecognition in education and educational research

Having noted that some use of Bourdieusian concepts in educational research is superficial, this paper offers a view of the distinctiveness of Bourdieu’s concepts via the example of misrecognition, which is differentiated from the concept with the same name in Fraser’s work. An account is given of a recent research project on white middle-class identity and school choice, which suggests that whilst parents avoided a common misrecognition (regarding school quality), they were nevertheless reliant on other forms of misrecognition (regarding the qualities of their children) that are equally important in the relationship between social class and educational inequalities. Finally, the paper suggests that educational understandings, including some educational research, are predisposed to misrecognise Bourdieusian concepts, and four areas of tension are identified. The paper argues against ‘light usage’ of Bourdieu whilst acknowledging that the approach can produce a pessimistic account that is at odds with some educational values.     

Ecopedagogy and Citizenship in the Age of Globalisation: connections between environmental and global citizenship education to save the planet

Teaching the connections between environmentally-harmful acts and social conflict is essential but is often ignored in education. This article presents two ways in which these are not taught because of the policies of those who benefit from the ignorance of these connections: first, the avoidance of teaching global-local connectivity and second, the devaluing of non-dominant cultures. Ecopedagogy is a democratic, transformative pedagogy centred on increasing justice by critically teaching the politics of environmental issues. I argue that global citizenship education (GCE) must be an element of ecopedagogy to contextually learn globalisation's effects upon local communities. In addition, GCE's goal is to increase students' understanding of diverse cultures to respect them. Ecopedagogy is also essential to GCE to fully teach social conflicts resulting from environmentally harmful acts. I offer policy and pedagogical changes to disrupt reproductive environmental pedagogies that help to sustain environmental ills for ecopedagogy-GCE models to emerge.     

The public/private divide in higher education: A global revision

Our common understandings of the public/private distinction in higher education are drawn from neo-classical economics and/or statist political philosophy. However, the development of competition and markets at the national level, and the new potentials for private and public goods created by globalisation in higher education, have exposed weaknesses in the traditional notions of public/private. For example, (1) the statist notion that higher education is always/already a public good blinds us to its role in producing scarce positional private goods, even in free systems; (2) because there is no global state, both statists and neo-liberals model the global higher education environment simply as a trading environment without grasping the potential for global public goods in education – goods that are subject to non-rivalry or non-excludability, and broadly available across populations, on a global scale. Yet higher education in one nation has the potential to create positive and negative externalities in another; and all higher education systems and institutions can benefit from collective systems e.g. that facilitate cross-border recognition and mobility. The paper sets out to revise public/private in higher education. Rather than defining public/private in terms of legal ownership, it focuses on the social character of the goods. It argues that public/private goods are not always zero sum and under certain conditions provide conditions of possibility for each other. It proposes (a) units in national government that focus specifically on cross-border effects; (b) global policy spaces – taking in state agencies, individual universities, NGOs and commercial agents – to consider the augmentation, distribution of and payment for global public goods. This paper has been adapted from a keynote address to the Conference of Higher Education Researchers (CHER), University of Twente, Enschede, 19 September 2004. The CHER conference was focused on the public/private question. Warm thanks to Erik Beerkens, Jurgen Enders, Marijk van Wende, Ben Jongbloed, Guy Neave, other colleagues who took part in discussion at the CHER conference, and the reviewers for Higher Education.     

Participatory capital: Bourdieu and citizenship education in diverse school communities

A priority toward creating ‘active’ citizens has been a feature of curricula reforms in many income-rich nations in recent years. However, the normative, one-size-fits-all conceptions of citizenship often presented within such curricula obscure the significant differences in how some young people experience and express citizenship. This paper reports on research that explored the citizenship perceptions and practices of New Zealand social studies teachers and students from four diverse geographic and socio-economic school communities. Attention was drawn to the scale of their citizenship orientations and participation (local/global). Drawing on Bourdieu’s conceptual triad and his species of capital in particular, the author posits that the differences observed between school communities can be usefully explained by a concept of participatory capital. The paper concludes with some reflections on the implications for young people who fail to access the ‘symbolic’ global participatory capital associated with much contemporary citizenship education.     

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.     

Reconsidering regionalisation in global higher education: student mobility spaces of the European Higher Education Area

This paper examines international student mobility between member states of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), a group of 47 countries that committed to reforming their higher education systems to improve the comparability and compatibility of degrees. While increased student mobility is a key goal in its official documents, little research has empirically investigated student mobility patterns in respect to the EHEA. The analysis employs multivariate techniques to identify trends in student mobility between 1999 and 2009, using a spatial approach to visualise the relationships between member states as constituted through student mobility flows. Results show that within the analysis timeframe student flows in the EHEA became more even in their distribution, but that in terms of the relationships between states, the EHEA became more centralised and segmented, meaning that key actors mediated exchanges between peripheral states and the region was more easily divided into self-contained clusters. These trends indicate a need to critically reconsider the nature of the EHEA and its role in the globalisation of higher education.     

Chinese education and Pierre Bourdieu: Power of reproduction and potential for change

Abstract

In the edited book “Bourdieu and Chinese Education”, a group of scholars in China, Australia, Canada, and the USA engage in a dialogue with Bourdieu and raise persistent questions not only about issues of equity, competition, and change in Chinese education, but also about the value, venture, and violence in using established Western intellectual frameworks for analysing Chinese education. In response to these questions, this special issue analyses and discusses Chinese rural education, teacher education, language education, health and physical education, and transnational education; and proposes a series of new conceptualisations, for example, regression- and network-based field analysis, Bourdieu-Chinese philosophy encounter, field of mediation, localised pedagogical capital, and new Chinese habituses (e.g., contemptuous habitus, diasporic cosmopolitan habitus, habitus (re)structuring). Such collective effort responds to the strident, and sometimes misleading, castigation of Bourdieu for determinism; and also disputes the non-reflexive, celebratory tone that consecrates the French sociologist and his canonical theorem, and hence reproduces the symbolic violence in the doxic academia. In this vein, the special issue is respectful for, but not restricted to, Bourdieu’s sociology, showing no timidity in questioning and contesting the framework of the famed thinker when research problems and findings demand so.     

Engaging Bourdieu’s habitus with Chinese understandings of embodiment: Knowledge flows in Health and Physical Education in higher education in Hong Kong

Abstract

This paper begins with a question: can concepts generated in the Chinese context in the sociocultural relations of the periphery contribute to the development of the social sciences in the field of Health and Physical Education (HPE) that have their roots in the metropole? Setting the scene in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), a postcolonial city reverted to the rule of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1997, this paper aims to develop a critical sociology of HPE by having a dialogue among Continental philosophies (e.g., Bourdieu) and Chinese philosophies around embodiment concepts. Although HKSAR is a complex meeting point of Eastern and Western ideologies, the current HPE field tends to focus on Western and ‘scientific’ ways of knowing, such as the measurement of health and physical fitness, and often at the expense of sociocultural perspectives, social justice and diversity and inclusion in HPE. In other words, the (post) positivistic research paradigm underpins the HPE field. This paper argues that in order to reap the benefits of a more holistic health education for academics and students in HPE, it is vital to de-imperialise the positivistic ways of teaching and being in HPE. In doing so, this paper creates a space for Bourdieu’s habitus to meet Chinese perspectives on embodiment to engage in a dialogue for knowledge production that extends the current knowledge base in HPE.     

The writing on the wall: responses of Australian public universities to competition in global higher education

Australian public universities are struggling to maintain parity with international counterparts in an environment that is becoming increasingly competitive globally. While most universities are now heeding calls from sector leaders to become more competitive, any strategies that they implement to effect change in this regard might be too late to save some. A systematic content analysis of published strategic plans of Australian public universities, undertaken during 2005–2007, indicates that universities were not taking the threat of rapidly intensifying competition seriously enough at a time when foreign competitors were making inroads into their markets and when deregulation and new communication technologies were spawning rivals in many new forms. This research has three principal implications: all Australian public universities need to re‐examine their strategic planning processes to determine whether (1) adequate attention is being paid to rapid intensification of competition; (2) strategies already implemented in response to increasing competition are appropriate; and (3) more can be done to develop better models to guide competitive behaviour in a university sector with unique characteristics.     

Collaboration and contestation in further and higher education partnerships in England: a Bourdieusian field analysis

Internationally, ‘College for All’ policies are creating new forms of vocational higher education (HE), and shifting relationships between HE and further education (FE) institutions. In this paper, we consider the way in which this is being implemented in England, drawing on a detailed qualitative case study of a regional HE–FE partnership to widen participation. We focus on the complex mix of collaboration and contestation that arose within it, and how these affected socially differentiated groups of students following high- and low-status routes through its provision. We outline Bourdieu’s concept of ‘field’ as a framework for our analysis and interpretation, including its theoretical ambiguities regarding the definition and scale of fields. Through hermeneutic dialogue between data and theory, we tentatively suggest that such partnerships represent bridges between HE and FE. These bridges are strong between higher-status institutions, but highly contested between lower-status institutions competing closely for distinction. We conclude that the trajectories and outcomes for socially disadvantaged students require attention and collective action to address the inequalities they face, and that our theoretical approach may have wider international relevance beyond the English case.     

Four stories: confronting contemporary ideas about globalisation and internationalisation in higher education

There is a common distinction between globalisation and internationalisation in higher education scholarship. Globalisation is seen as an over‐arching social and economic process where as internatinalisation is understood as the ways in which institutions of higher education respond to globalisation. This conceptual distinction has also worked its way into the practice of university administration around the world. Drawing on the theoretical work of Foucault and Giddiness, this conception the consequences of the globalisation / internationalisation distinction are analysed through four of higher accounts education strategies.     

Field theory and educational practice: Bourdieu and the pedagogic qualities of local field positions in educational contexts

Bourdieu’s version of field theory has had an impressive impact on the ways that sociologists of education conceptualize educational practices. These accounts tend to focus on the varying levels of ontological complicity established between students’ cultural dispositions and educational institutions. In this paper, the wisdom of these accounts is acknowledged but it is also suggested that Bourdieu’s field theory does not go far enough to detail the ways that positions in local educational fields embody pedagogic qualities and action trajectories. Drawing on insights from social psychology and relational sociology, a field theory for local educational action is outlined that more adequately accounts for the ways that students and educators directly experience and act upon curricular and pedagogic qualities in educational settings. An empirical example is then offered of the authors’ claims within the context of curricular tracking/streaming, and the article concludes by considering the practical and political consequences of this theoretical shift.     

Estranged students in higher education: navigating social and economic capitals

ABSTRACT

Family is widely regarded as a cornerstone of student support. When family support exist as an essential form of social capital making, rupture of family ties places students in a disadvantageous position. This paper focuses on estranged students’ accounts of their experiences of higher education, highlighting how capital dynamics shape their academic trajectories. Based on interviews with 21 estranged students, our research uncovers different dimensions of estranged students’ struggles and successes as they move through academia. This paper explores the social imagination that surrounds the university student, or ‘student experience’, as resting upon family support. The authors propose that widening participation policies and practices need to be more attuned to the realities that mark estranged students’ experiences, as they are not only impacted by the scarcity of either economic or social capital, but also by the instability of interrelated capitals that contribute to precarious and volatile experiences.     

Global Citizenship and Global Universities. The Age of Global Interdependence and Cosmopolitanism

This article focuses on the role of global universities and globalisations in an age of global interdependence and cosmopolitanism. Competing agendas that result from actions and reactions to multiple globalisations are considered in relation to global citizenship education. These agendas are crucial in understanding dilemmas of the local and the global in relation to education. Key emerging agendas are highlighted, including those of the hyperglobalisers, skeptics and transformationists. Three themes are central for this conversation, namely a) how multiple globalisations are impacting global life and academics, b) how networks have become privileged sites for global education, and c) the implications of globalisation and networks for global citizenship and global universities.     

Eduscapes: interpreting transnational flows of higher education

‘Knowledge society’ and ‘knowledge economy’ are current buzzwords in the visions of the future made by nations, regions and federations on a global scale. A concrete outcome of this is the globalisation and intensification of higher education and research. The visions based on a knowledge component should be treated as expressions of an ideology. In this article we use the notion of ‘eduscapes’ and ‘imaginaries’ as analytics for an understanding of such visions as these are expressed by individuals and institutional actors involved in educational landscapes. The argument is made that this notion is less ideological and more apt for an analysis of globalisation of higher education.     

Work and leisure in higher education

Higher education is commonly described as offering combinations of work and leisure, but the implied relationship is often limited. Different conceptions of leisure, especially leisure as pleasurable experience, raise new possibilities for seeing academic activity itself as leisure in several important senses. The importance of identifying pleasure as a necessary component of work and politics is discussed. Several more specific approaches to try to understand such pleasures are reviewed: Cultural Studies approaches, the work of Bourdieu on taste, and some recent work in the Sociology of Leisure.     

Conceptualising transitions from vocational to higher education: bringing together Bourdieu and Bernstein

Abstract

In this paper we provide a framework for conceptualising transitions from Vocational Education and Training (VET) programmes to Higher Education (HE), by bringing together Bourdieu’s and Bernstein’s theoretical approaches with the view to attend to the often side-lined epistemic and pedagogical parameters. We utilise the Bourdieusian tools of field, habitus and capital to capture the relational, material and cultural aspects of HE transitions. In using a Bernsteinian lens we shed further light into how social agents acquire differentially structured and valorised knowledges and develop a sense of themselves as hierarchically positioned knowers. The metaphor of transitional frictions is utilised to capture the ongoing struggles that students with a VET background experience as they make the transition to HE. We argue for the need of widening epistemic access and putting in place enabling pedagogies that can ease these transitional frictions, thereby potentially increasing the chances of successful HE participation and completion.