Academic perceptions of higher education assessment processes in neoliberal academia

Neoliberal higher education reforms in relation to quality assurance, managerialist practices, accountability and performativity are receiving increasing attention and criticism. In this article, I will address student assessment as part of the technologies that increasingly govern academics and their work in universities. I will draw on Foucault’s theories of governmentality and subjectification, and discourse analysis that have framed the research conducted with 16 academics in one university in the UK. While academics in the study expressed frustration with neoliberal reforms in general, and assessment policies in particular, they tended not to demonstrate overt resistance within their university systems. The reasons for this will be questioned and analysed in relation to a neoliberal mode of government where power relations shaping academic subjectivities are diffuse and pervasive. I will discuss the ways in which academics understand and act within these power relations, and I will also demonstrate a variety of covert practices that academics tend to apply when coping with the neoliberal technologies of government such as assessment.     

UK university part-time higher education: a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of undergraduate prospectuses

ABSTRACT

In the UK, higher education (HE) policy discourse over the past 60 years has advocated flexible part-time HE for social mobility, personal development, economic advantage and leisure. However, part-time undergraduate HE in the UK is in steep decline. Against this backdrop, we were interested in how universities promote, or fail to promote, part-time study options today. We built a corpus of 90 UK undergraduate prospectuses for 2018 entry (5,673,799 words). Using a corpus-assisted discourse analysis approach, we found significant mismatch between policy discourse and marketing discourse regarding part-time study. In particular, we found that UK university marketing discourse positions full-time study as the dominant mode of study and writes of part-time study as ‘second-best’. This discourse mismatch is particularly marked when it comes to the elite Russell Group of universities. Viewing the absence of strong promotional discourse relating to part-time study alongside other factors such as increased tuition fees and the rise of global online education platforms adds a new perspective to the decline of flexible part-time undergraduate HE at campus-based universities in the UK.     

Mediatizing higher education policies: discourses about quality education in the media

This article presents a critical–political discourse analysis of the media debate over quality assurance in higher education, which occurred in Chile after the 2011 student movement. Students criticized the privatization of higher education and the multiple flaws of this sector, which included corruption scandals during the process of quality assurance certification. After the end of the movement, the government announced a new quality assurance system, triggering public discussion over this issue in the media. The most influential newspapers and educational authorities participated actively in this debate. Through editorials and columns, these education agents constructed quality assurance discursively as a domain for experts, who have to design and administer quality standards for all educational institutions and actions. These procedures regulate and discipline educational practices, but professors and students are excluded from this debate. Thus, this quality assurance discussion reproduces the traditional neoliberal power relations in education and does not problematize the role of education in society.     

What the discourse tells us: Talk and indicators of high-level comprehension

The purpose of this study was to validate and extend the findings of an exhaustive literature search in Year 1 and a meta-analysis in Year 2 of a 3-year project in which nine (9) small-group discussion approaches were identified. Having identified parameters of discussion that were, to a greater or lesser extent, present in these nine discussion approaches, our goal in the study being reported in this paper, was to evaluate the nine discussion approaches on a common set of discourse features known to characterize ‘quality’ discussions. Although there is overlap among some studies in the nature of the measures used, the extant literature does not afford a uniform basis on which to evaluate student talk as an indicator of student understanding and critical thinking. In the present study, we identified features of classroom discourse that might serve as proximal indices of students’ learning and comprehension and we employed each of these proximal indices in analyzing and evaluating the discourse samples solicited from the proponents of the discussion approaches.     

系统功能语法理论指导下的商务英语听说语篇分析

系统功能语言学把商务英语听说语篇视作表达意义的系统和资源,认为其语篇、语言特点由其所要实现的功能决定的,商务英语听说语篇也有其三大纯理功能。实践证明,运用系统功能语言学理论来分析商务英语听说语篇有利于较好地揭示语篇特点并解释出现这些特点的原因。     

Trading quality across borders: colonial discourse and international quality assurance policies in higher education

Accountability and quality assurance have become central discourses in higher education policy throughout the world. However, accountability and quality assurance involve power and control. Practices and ideas about quality developed in the Global North are spreading rapidly across the Global South, leading to increased uniformity in the approaches to quality assurance. Given the significant asymmetries that divide the Global North and Global South, this article maps interdiscursive relations among key texts that influence policy development on international quality in higher education, and explores the applicability of colonial discourse as a perspective for understanding this increasing international convergence.     

It ain't just what you do and the way that you do it: why discourse matters in higher education communities of practice

A number of Australian universities have established and sponsored interdisciplinary communities of practice (CoPs) to develop teaching and learning. CoPs are popularly defined as groups of people who share a passion for something and, together, learn how to do it better. Without further specification, this definition is of limited use in understanding intentionally established CoPs in higher education settings. The term CoP is used and applied in a range of ways in higher education and has been accompanied by some scholarly debate about the meaning and relevance of CoPs to academe. The prevalent response to such debate has been to propose typologies. While typology can be useful, epistemology and discourse are also significant in understanding and developing higher education CoPs. In this paper I focus on discourse surrounding CoPs as a conceptual and developmental factor which has been insufficiently considered in the literature on higher education CoPs. I draw on findings from interviews with 33 CoP members and facilitators in three Australian universities. My findings indicate that discourse surrounding CoPs is significant in shaping notions of participatory value. Connecting with the literature, my findings also reveal a ‘big D’ Discourse of collegiality whereby CoPs offer social support and knowledge sharing to build capacity, as well as spaces in which a collegial academic identity can thrive. This coincides in complex and unpredictable ways with a Discourse of managerialism. I conclude that discourse should supplement typology and epistemology in adaptively shaping understandings of contemporary higher education CoPs and their future development.     

话语标记语在口语交际中的关联功能与语篇运用

本文以"话语标记语"为主题,探讨了其在口语交际中的语用功能。通过BEC口试语料分析,研究口语交际中话语标记语这一语言现象,探讨说话人是如何利用这种衔接的语言手段来减少听者处理话语的负担,以达到有效的沟通。     

Ideology,rationality and reproduction in education: a critical discourse analysis

In undertaking a critical discourse analysis of the professed aims and objectives of one of the most influential curricula in the teaching of thinking, this article foregrounds issues of power and ideology latent in curricular discourses of rationality. Specifically, it documents the subtle but powerful ways in which political and class commitments are (re-)produced in the forms of thinking that are valued in schools and societies. Through a nuanced analysis of the language features of the text and the social and political ideologies that underpin it, the article argues that such curricula engage in shaping our common-sense understandings of what thinking and rationality is and should be in instrumental forms that both connect to neoliberal prerogatives and that facilitate the social reproduction of a particular fraction of the middle class.     

话语标记在话语生成和理解中的作用

以关联理论为基础,从认知角度对话语标记和话语标记的语用功能进行了分析,指出话语的生成和理解是用最小的努力去获得最佳效果的动态过程,是增强认知共性和语境效果的最佳手段,减少人们对话语进行处理加工时所需付出的努力,从而使交际得以顺利进行     

A good student subject: a Foucauldian discourse analysis of an adolescent writer negotiating subject positions

In this article, we draw on the work of Michel Foucault to analyze one student’s subject development in an expository writing classroom. James, the participant, was embarking on the project of becoming a good student, as he understood it, after struggling and leaving school previously. Drawing on interviews, classroom observations and written artifacts, we use Foucauldian concepts and discourse analysis, along with one James Gee’s discourse analysis tools – the identities building tool – to conduct a microanalysis of James’s efforts to objectify himself as a good student subject. The data show how James acquiesced to the truths and practices of the regime of school, including how he mobilized truths of the regime through a process we call masked confession. That is, he negotiated his good student subject position by masking or silencing other subject positions. James’s masked confession was his way of negotiating the realm of ‘multiple truths,’ or multiple subject positions.     

Physical education for health and wellbeing: a discourse analysis of Scottish physical education curricular documentation

This paper provides an analysis of the discourses associated with physical education in Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence. We implement a poststructural perspective in order to identify the discourses that underpin the physical education sections of the Curriculum for Excellence ‘health and well-being’ documentation. Discourses related to physical activity and health are particularly prominent, along with a related concern with motor skill development. Our focus lies with the ways in which these discourses are likely to be taken up and deployed within Scottish educational establishments. The paper thus explores the ways in which these discourses might ‘work’ to produce specific effects on practitioners and pupils. This involves speculating about how practitioners and students might engage in specific practices relative to these discourses. We conclude that the discourses identified lend themselves to interpretation and negotiation in multiple ways in the context of Scottish physical education, with specific consequences for the experiences and subjectivities of practitioners and children.     

The policy discourse of networking and its effect on school autonomy: a Foucauldian interpretation

Policy discourse officially operates to distinctly influence public perception in an irrevocable and normalising manner. In a Maltese educational scenario of gradual decentralisation and increased accountability, I explore the ‘effects’ of both the global and the local policy discourse of networks and networking on the practising leaders, in addition to their reaction to the policy document mandating these multi-site school collaboratives, with a particular interest on their imposed nature and how this reform impinged on individual school autonomy. This research adopts a case study methodology, with data collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews; participant observation; and documentary analysis, interpreted via a Foucauldian theoretical framework through narrative analysis. The findings reveal an inherent tension among autonomy, centralisation, and decentralisation both within the policy discourse and the unfolding network leadership dynamics. This paper has particular philosophical implications for educational policy, practice, and theory in an educational scenario of school policy globalisation.     

Education and nationalism: the discourse of education policy in Scotland

The paper draws on critical discourse analysis to examine and discuss some of the key developments in the governing of education in Scotland since the election of the Scottish National Party (SNP) government in May 2007. It analyses these developments, drawing on a study of key policy texts and suggests that discourse analysis has much to contribute to the understanding of the governing strategy of the minority SNP administration as reflected in its education policy. We suggest that there is a self-conscious strategy of ‘crafting the narrative’ of government that seeks to discursively re-position ‘smarter Scotland’ alongside small, social democratic states within the wider context of transnational pressures for conformity with global policy agendas. Thus the paper connects to current debates on the relationship between an emergent global education policy ‘field’ and the capacity of ‘local’ contexts to develop and sustain particular, embedded assumptions and practices.     

A critical discourse analysis of sexuality education in the Australian curriculum

This article examines the sexuality education component of the national Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education (AC:HPE) with a focus on sexuality education discourses. A critical discourse analysis explored official AC:HPE documents in relation to sexuality education; the sexuality education discourses present within these documents; teacher roles and expectations associated with each discourse; and Australia’s broader social context in relation to education. Findings reveal that the AC:HPE emphasises a teacher-facilitated approach to sexuality education, which contrasts with teacher-centred work dominating the field prior to its release. This approach is in line with recent shifts in education towards strengths-based learning in which students are encouraged to think critically about issues. Despite these emphases, and while the AC:HPE is meant to be used flexibly as a guideline or framework, certain ambiguities within it may leave teachers’ roles open to interpretation and practices therefore unchanged or undisputed.     

To nail a pudding: metaphorical analysis of the social studies education discourse community on globalization

Despite the abundance of studies on globalization in educational research, globalization is often approached as a monolithic and standardized concept. Focusing on the social studies education in the USA, this study explores how the various metaphors through which globalization is framed embrace particular perspectives on how to conceive and educate about globalization. Specifically, this study discusses seven conceptual metaphors: the global as a place, time, container, spectacle, person, threat, and as a force of nature. In doing so, it illustrates how globalization is predominately rendered as an inclusive structure, a disembedded process, and as a permanent threat. The different metaphors, this paper argues, fulfill a twofold role. First, they define a domain of their own, the global domain, creating a distinctive global viewpoint on human agency and social change. Second, these metaphors also release a political imagination structured around particular expectations of what exactly the global means and does.     

语篇分析理论在英语阅读教学中的运用

阅读在英语教学中占有十分重要的地位。如何提高学习者的阅读能力,是每位阅读课教师及学习者特别关注的问题,更是教学改革需要探索的一个重要问题。文章就目前大学英语阅读教学的形势,借鉴语篇分析理论,提出运用语篇分析进行阅读教学的方法,以提高学生阅读理解的准确性,增强学生的语篇分析意识,培养学生的语篇分析能力,有效提高学生的阅读速度和理解能力。     

Interrogating an omission: the absence of a rights-based approach to education in World Bank policy discourse

This study provides a discursive analysis of World Bank policy documents in order to reveal the stark omission of a rights-based approach to education, while highlighting instead the support of an economic-instrumentalist approach. Plausible explanations are provided to shed light on this exclusion, including the feasibility critique of education as a right, and the Bank's limited institutional mandate. However, the rationales are presented as unsound and unacceptable justifications for the omission. By drawing on Amartya Sen's theoretical work on human rights and development policy frameworks, this study concludes by arguing for the Bank to integrate into their mandate a conception of education as a human right.     

Discourse analysis as theory,method, and epistemology in studies of education policy

ABSTRACT

Discourse has featured in studies of educational policy as an analytic and methodological tool, theoretical frame, realm of implication, and even a foundational definition of educational policy itself (e.g.) Despite the centrality of discourse as a frame for exploring educational policy and its implications, the ways that discourse is defined or operationalized in educational policy research are often left implicit which can lead to murky relations to larger onto-epistemological questions of how we construct findings from data as well as the nature of policy. In this interpretive analysis, we synthesize a corpus of 37 peer-reviewed journal articles that bring together educational policy and analyses of discourse from varying theoretical and methodological perspectives in order to better understand the breadth and scope of how discourse is defined and operationalized in studies of educational policy, including in ways that are sometimes incommensurate with authors' stated theoretical and methodological positions. After first laying the theoretical groundwork for analyses of discourse in the field of educational policy, we then illustrate how discourse analysis is used differently, and sometimes inconsistently, within contested paradigmatic landscapes. We conclude with an argument for discussions across theoretical frameworks and methodological paradigms about how the concept of discourse lends itself to different epistemological vantage points on educational policy.     

Identities of special needs education in the discourse of Finnish professors of the field

This article examines both the discourses upon which Finnish special needs education professors draw when speaking about their field, and the consequent identities for it. The research material consists of theme interviews with 10 professors of special needs education and is analysed from a socio-constructionist, discourse analytical perspective. The results show that the professors defined special needs education from two separate viewpoints: on the basis of their own personal views, or on the basis of the classical definitions of special needs education. The professors spoke about the field through five different discourses: professional, emancipatory, relativistic, autonomous and critical. The majority of these discourses constructed special needs education as an important part of the science field, although the relativistic discourse problematised its position as an independent discipline.