Moving beyond face value: re-envisioning higher education evaluation as a generator of professional knowledge

Conventional student-led evaluation is now an orthodox feature of the North American, UK and Australian higher education landscape. Increasingly, it is guiding major institutional decisions around educational quality, academic promotion and more recently institutional funding by government. Yet significant research around student-led evaluation has demonstrated that this form of student opinion-based evaluation remains highly fragile and susceptible to multiple forms of influence. This paper argues that student-led evaluation of itself is not sufficiently robust to appropriately inform notions of educational quality or pedagogical capability of academics. An alternative approach to evaluation in higher education is proposed, broadly drawing on the conception of fourth generation evaluation. The model foregrounds academic collaboration in shaping a professional evaluative framework at an activity level (i.e. programme or sub-discipline level) based on an ongoing dialogue between peers and with students, as well as qualitative evaluation of student learning. The model attempts to make tensions and conflicts in the teaching and learning context more explicit and the active focus of evaluative efforts to devise appropriate and sustainable responses to improve the quality of learning and professional practice. This paper presents some preliminary research on the effectiveness of this model in its initial piloting in postgraduate programmes in an Australian university.     

Awareness instruction for sexual harassment: findings from an experiential learning process at a higher education institute in Israel

This article describes a process undergone by M.B.A. students in a graduate level course focusing on the subject of sexual harassment. As part of the assignments of the course the students conducted more than 200 interviews on this issue and wrote of their experiences and impressions gained from the process. The findings of the interviews are presented, with a special emphasis on the educational outcome and its impact on the participant students. The paper includes background research on the extent of the phenomenon and recommendations for required academic and professional preventive training.     

Signing up for the status quo? Semiological analyses of sexual harassment in higher education—a Swedish example

This article explores the effects of certain discourses as they relate to sexual harassment in a Swedish higher education setting. Using a semiological perspective, the author analyzes notions of existence, range, prevention, and stability in order to demonstrate the way they aim at signifying a limited and, from a bureaucratic point of view, legitimate reality of sexual harassment. The empirical material consists partly of material drawn from public policies, legal documents, and research reports on sexual harassment in higher education, and partly of fourteen semi‐structured interviews with equal opportunity practitioners responsible for implementing equality legislation at a Swedish university. A semiological view on the construction of sexual harassment in public texts and ordinary speech is given through an analysis of the use of language and the internal and external relations of signs. By focusing simultaneously on the stable and variable aspects of the sign, interpretations of the specific notions of limitation, variability, and experience are put forward as critical tools aimed at changing normative views of sexual harassment.     

以印度高等教育发展为借鉴推进河北省高等教育的全面发展

如何在高等教育规模快速增长的同时,使高等学校保持优质的办学质量和良好的办学效益,使高等教育保持健康协调发展,是需要我们思索和解决的问题。而印度20世纪50年代至70年代高等教育的大发展,给我们一些启迪的同时,其发展过程中的失误,造成办学质量的下降,也为我们提供了有益的参考和借鉴。     

The dilemma of change in Indian higher education

India has been trying to reform its higher education system for more than a half-century but the results in terms of systemic change have been minimal. The universities have expanded dramatically to meet the demands of an increasingly powerful middle class although resources have not been adequate to ensure the maintenance of standards. In India's bureaucratic environment, political will to change the universities has been inadequate. For these and other reasons, the mainstream of Indian higher education, now including 7,000 colleges and 150 universities serving more than 4 million students, suffers from deteriorating standards, occasional unrest and inadequate resources. However, at the margins of this seemingly unmovable system have been a variety of significant changes and reforms. The Indian Institutes of Technology, for example, provide high quality post-secondary education. Even within the traditional universities and colleges, some interesting reforms in curriculum have been successful in limited areas. This analysis points to the factors inhibiting reform and change as well as some examples of limited successes.     

Moving beyond homophobia,harassment and intolerance: gay male university students’ alternative narratives

This paper draws on a small-scale qualitative study of the lived experiences of gay male students in their final year of undergraduate study at a UK university. In contrast to the narratives almost universally reported in academic literature, anti-gay victimisation and harassment were not experienced or framed as dominant discourses in the stories of the six participants. I discuss how despite heterosexuality being the assumed, expected and compulsory discourse at university, the participants made positive sense of their experiences, and how through careful negotiation they were able to address, explore and engage with their (homo)sexual identities and orientation. I challenge the common and (mostly) unquestioned practices of defining gay students solely on the basis of their negative accounts of their experiences, labelling them all as victims, and locating the entire population within a pathologised framework. Instead I advocate a nuanced and balanced perspective which acknowledges the alternate and non-victimised accounts of gay students to provide a more inclusive, comprehensive, fuller and richer understanding of their lived experiences at university.     

Moving beyond Mozert: Toward a democratic theory of education

Most liberal political theorists of education argue that it is better to teach students to tolerate diversity, than to protect the potentially illiberal commitments of some members of the political communities. In fact, neither approach is wholly satisfying, yet they remain the focus of much political theorizing about education. This article suggests that this misguided focus is, in part, a consequence of a focus, by liberal political theorists of education, upon the 1987 Mozert v. Hawkins court case. Mozert raised serious questions about the nature of toleration in liberal society, but from an educational standpoint, the Mozert case led political theorists to consider what curricular content is appropriate for liberal political education, rather than on the practices that democratic citizens must cultivate. I turn to Hannah Arendt to offer a critical account of the liberal responses to Mozert and then call for a theory of democratic education that fosters practices of democratic decision-making and has, as its aim, not merely to foster respect for diversity, but to allow future citizens to practice critical engagement with diversity.     

Private higher education: challenges for Australia and beyond

Among the chief characteristics of the post‐industrial society are ambiguity and paradox. In Australian higher education, as in other sectors of Australian Society, these have found expression in individualism, private initiative and entrepreneuship.

The ‘privatization’ of higher education now includes the imposition on enrolment charges, the re‐introduction of ‘full cost’ fees, especially for private overseas students, moves towards the deregulation of salaries and conditions of employment of academic staff and the establishment of new ‘self‐contained’ and ‘hybrid’ private higher education institutions.

In response to these developments, debate has tended to centre upon a number of mythologies which inter alia assert that private higher education is new to Australia, that it is foreign to the Western academic tradition and that such education avoids the employment of public funds. Moreover, it is claimed that while private higher education is ipso facto elitist, it will, through competition, result in a more effective and efficient public sector.

The above mythologies are examined in the light of past, present and proposed developments in Australian higher education, with particular note being taken of the establishment of the Bond University in Queensland.     

Innovation and change in higher education: Managing multiple polarities

Just who are ‘administrators’ in UK higher education? The definition of administrators is explored and it is argued that it has changed to become looser. Administrative roles are now much more diverse. Technological changes have created new roles and opportunities with progression opportunities for some staff. The statistical evidence from the Higher Education Statistics Agency is considered. This shows that a large percentage of support staff work in academic cost centres and changes in the numbers and type of staff working in different areas are considered.     

Moving out of their comfort zones: enhancing teaching practice in transnational education

This paper investigates the development of teaching practice of the multinational staff delivering UK programmes in a higher education institution in Oman hosting these programmes. It presents a tool to evaluate the teaching practice, and points to those elements of an academic development framework that were found to be most useful in supporting staff in moving towards a student-centred, learning-focused teaching approach. The majority of the lecturers made this shift. We therefore conclude by arguing for long-term CPD aimed at enhancing teaching quality to be part and parcel of a partnership.     

Moving beyond disproportionality: the role of culturally responsive teaching in special education

For over 30 years the field of special education has grappled with the problem of disproportionality. The discourse around this issue has predominately focused on possible causes, and yet the problem persists. This paper will provide an overview of the research on disproportionality and multicultural special education. In addition, the authors will examine the extent to which culturally responsive teaching has been implemented in special education and will propose future directions for research and practice.     

Managing collaboration across further and higher education: a case in practice

The Dearing Report highlighted the need for HE programmes to enhance students' basic skills, and one of these is numeracy skill. There is a history of low confidence and negative attitudes to learning about numbers and 'maths anxiety' in undergraduates which means that delivering 'numerate graduates' may be something of a challenge to HE institutions. This college surveyed attitudes to numeracy and learning about numbers in all first-year students (over 1000 students). Over 40% of students returned their questionnaires. This survey found considerable negative attitudes and low confidence among respondents as a whole (25% of those who returned the questionnaire), and anxiety was highest (over 40%) in students taking a Humanities programme. This raises considerable concern about how we can deliver numeracy to students in HE. The findings of the survey, gender issues and the individualised concept of 'maths anxiety' are discussed in relation to the social and cultural construction of attitudes to maths and maths confidence as empowerment (Benn, 1997). The main conclusion is that HE institutions need to consider carefully how to provide good educational opportunities for individuals with low motivation to engage in maths-related activity. There is also an urgent need to challenge cultural myths and stereotyping relating to maths learning if we want the next generation of graduates to have more confidence in their maths skills.     

Moving beyond: narratives of higher educational aspirations among descendants of immigrants in vocational training

Abstract

While the scholarly work on the second generation of immigrants has scrutinised both high educational achievers and marginalised groups, less attention has been paid to those in between and their aspirations. In this article, we draw on interviews with 35 adolescents pursuing vocational education in Norway. Our analysis takes as its point of departure a seemingly recurring paradox throughout the interviews. While all the interviewees are in their second year of vocational training, the majority express aspirations of moving beyond vocational occupations and attaining higher education. Building on the scholarship on class and moral worth, we argue that classificatory struggles about value represent an important but often overlooked context of integration. When the students position themselves as individuals who will move on to higher education, their aspirations can be understood as acts of self-constitution and moral boundary work.     

Managing differentiation of higher education system in Japan: connecting excellence and diversity

This article presents recent reform processes in Japanese higher education, concerning the tensions emerging within the system regarding ‘excellence’ and ‘diversity’. The article particularly focuses on how Japanese universities have reacted to the recent ‘competition’ and ‘differentiation’ policy promoted by the government, drawing on recent survey results conducted with academic managers at Japanese universities. It is interesting to examine the case of Japan, a historically diversified and differentiated national system, which has been changing rapidly with recent national ‘top-down’ policy reforms, followed by more recent and new bottom-up institutional initiatives. The study shows that universities are trying to achieve excellence, fulfilling different functions at the same time, aspiring to be excellent in teaching, research and social contribution without having institutional capacity to meet these expectations. Appropriate internal governance and external mediation mechanisms need to be created at the institutional level to manage diversification of the higher education system as a whole.