Entrepreneurialism and critical pedagogy: reinventing the higher education curriculum

This paper presents an analysis of the ways in which UK higher education (HE) has become increasingly commercialised and commodified in the post-1980s. It critiques the strategies adopted by successive UK governments to reinvigorate the relationship between educational and economic life, and to facilitate a more corporate and entrepreneurial spirit within the academy in line with the pressures of a ‘knowledge-based economy’. Arguing for a more critical exploration of teaching and learning within HE, the paper presents evidence from work carried out by the Reinvention Centre for Undergraduate Research, a Centre for Excellence in Teaching in Learning (CETL) which adopts a research-based learning approach to teaching and learning at undergraduate level.1 1. The Reinvention Centre for Undergraduate Research is a collaborative Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) based between the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick and the School for the Built Environment at Oxford Brookes University. In 2005 the Centre was awarded £500,000 recurrent over five years, and £800,000 capital funding. The recurrent funding covers staff and running costs. Capital expenditure has covered the design and development of new social teaching and learning spaces at both Warwick and Oxford Brookes. Further information on the Reinvention Centre is available at www.warwick.ac.uk/go/reinvention/. The Reinvention centre covers a range of progressive pedagogies. This article represents the specific views of the authors. Within the context of ongoing debates surrounding the relationship between teaching, learning and research in UK HE, the paper advocates a reinvention of curriculum design through an engagement with the broader principles of critical pedagogy, and in so doing, presents a critical engagement with the commercialisation of HE.     

Ethics across the curriculum: Detecting and describing emergent trends in ethics education

This paper presents an inclusive and emergent approach to identifying ethics courses and revealing their pedagogical methods and goals. It outlines a two-year study of undergraduate and professional courses at a private university addressing ethical themes. The study began with three assumptions: 1) ethics education occurs across the curriculum; 2) instructors are master practitioners with learning theories and goals that are often implicit; and 3) education contributes to three domains of human development: existential, civic, and vocational. These principles informed the development of a method for describing ethics education based on instructor reports of what and how they teach. Results of an application of this method are presented, and implications for ethics teaching and assessment in higher education are discussed.     

Non-traditional students in tertiary education: inter-disciplinary collaboration in curriculum and pedagogy in community services education in Australia

Education policy in Australia has accelerated its aim to increase participation of under-represented groups in tertiary education including students who are culturally and linguistically diverse and have low socio-economic status. These students generally have not had prior access to privileged academic discourse, which can further disadvantage them in their participation and progress in tertiary education. In this article, we outline a cross-discipline curriculum initiative and pedagogy that draws on critical literacy and the metaphor of discourse community to integrate language and academic skills into community services qualifications. We argue that this – supports the genuine participation of under-represented (non-traditional) students. It aspires to not only support students’ entry into the new academic terrain, but to enable students to adopt a critical stance to the discourses in which they are learning to participate. This we argue is crucial, when expertise is not just a way of meeting its ostensible purposes, but is also a way of exercising power. Although we report on the application of this initiative to entry level curricula (Diploma), we suggest that it has relevance and application to Bachelor levels in a range of disciplines, both in supporting pedagogy and for transition to Bachelor level study.     

Content of curriculum in physical education teacher education: expectations of undergraduate physical education students

This study explored the perceptions of university physical education students of the importance of physical education curriculum content areas and how those perceptions related to the reasons for course choice and motivation. Physical education degree students (n = 188) completed measures of their perceptions of physical education content areas, attractors to physical education, and motivation. Strong reasons for course choice were sport and physical activity-related. Instruction of movement skills, health education, games, motor development, and physical education identity were perceived as more important, whereas sports and socio-critical perspectives were perceived as less important. Perceived importance of all content areas was positively related to the choice of course for confident interpersonal service, sport and physical activity, and role model reasons, as well as to intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Physical education programmes should consider what content is delivered and how to effectively integrate practical and theoretical content.     

Desiring silence: Gender,race and pedagogy in education

In my work with white teachers, predominantly female, I assert that ‘desire’ is functioning to produce silent discourses that serve to perpetuate a continuation of white privilege. Based on a qualitative research study exploring the nature of silences in teacher education classrooms, this paper seeks to explore how desire is functioning to produce such silences and how they can be productively understood. Using the concept of desire as presented by Deleuze, this paper engages a notion of desire that is not spawned from lack but a desire that is generative and seeking, resulting in the production of privilege, power and voice.     

Decolonial pedagogy and the ethics of the global

An ethical and democratic globality, and the kind of education that would contribute to it, are only possible in the context of a recognition of the relations of power that have shaped history, and in particular the political, cultural, economic, and epistemological processes of domination that have characterized colonialism and Eurocentrism. Imagining an ethics of the global in this context means articulating a decolonial perspective. Starting from recent work in philosophy and cultural studies, this paper describes key principles of such an orientation to globality, and develops a reconceptualization of education in the context of this framework. The article proposes in particular a curriculum against domination, oriented against the epistemic and cultural violence of Eurocentrism that underlies the politics of content and knowledge in education, and a pedagogy of lovingness, committed to building global solidarity based on non-dominative principles of coexistence and kindredness.     

Power,pedagogy and the personal: feminist ethics in facilitating a doctoral writing group

The paper explores questions of power arising from feminist facilitators running a doctoral writing group at a UK university. Butler’s [2014. Re-thinking Vulnerability and Resistance. [Online]. Accessed September 12, 2017. http://www.institutofranklin.net/sites/default/files/files/Rethinking%20Vulnerability%20and%20Resistance%20Judith%20Butler.pdf] theorisation of precarity and vulnerability inspired us to re-think normative constructions of research writing and the academic identities and subjectivities this presupposed. Our doctoral writing group was imagined as a space to think collectively and reflexively about the thesis, the multi-faceted power-dynamics at work in its production, and our relations to the text as both writer and audience. This paper antagonises some of the pedagogic consequences of inviting seemingly ‘personal’ matters into the space of the writing space and, subsequently, the doctoral text itself. We speak back to discourses that position doctoral writing as always and only an individual, and individualising endeavour, that eschews encounters with the personal and relational. Indeed, we recognise that configurations and spaces for research writing are always ‘political’.     

Teacher education: Partnerships in pedagogy?

Initial training partnerships between schools and universities can appear to be driven by the demands of external accountability. Resultant managerial models of partnership support simplistic interpretations of application of subject knowledge: competence-based assessments and reflective practice in initial teacher training. A consequent focus on “performativity” (Ball, 1994) seems to militate against an emphasis on how student teachers best learn. A Neo-Vygotskian model which incorporates understandings of teaching and learning is offered as a possible framework for initial training partnership. Data collected from an early years teaching school-university partnership programme illustrate discussion of the framework. The complexity of roles and responsibilities in training partnerships is emphasized.     

Catastrophe,commemoration and education: On the concept of memory pedagogy

Abstract

Dealing with memories of catastrophes is undoubtedly important for education. Yet, how is such an education possible? On which theoretical basis can we describe it? In this article, I build a bridge between ‘Memory Studies’ and educational studies with regard to the topic of ‘catastrophe’ and thus present a provisional general theory of education, such as ‘Memory Pedagogy’ in analogy to ‘Memory Studies’. After describing the category ‘catastrophe’, I outline the basic differentiation between ‘communicative memory’ and ‘cultural memory’ in the field of Memory Studies. I will demonstrate how this basic differentiation can be connected to education through the concept of ‘Bildung’ in German philosophy. On the basis of these preliminary remarks, I highlight the potential of Memory Pedagogy by interpreting a case of catastrophe education, the project ‘Picture of Atomic Bomb’ (PAB). Based on the analysis of the PAB project, I insist that functions as a generator of communicative memory concerning catastrophes through education. Additionally, I point out that the transition from communicative memory (kommunikatives Gedächtnis) to cultural memory (kulturelles Gedächtnis) in the meaning of Jan and Aleida Asmann can also be observed in the PAB project.