De-coding or de-colonising the technocratic university? Rural students’ digital transitions to South African higher education

ABSTRACT

Despite wide-ranging policies and practices intended to address historical inequalities in South African higher education, and calls for decolonisation to include more local relevance, little attention has been paid to the experiences of rural students, especially their digital participation once at university. Previous research has highlighted limitations in technological access in rural areas and the importance of mobile phones for transitions. Whilst universities offer wide-ranging digital support, there remains a tendency towards universalist mechanisms. Drawing on a longitudinal study across three universities, and employing Holland’s theory of figured worlds, we highlight rural students’ experiences of digital transitions across different cultural worlds, prior to university and once they arrive, including the bewildering technocratic systems and practices and resulting conflicts and positionings encountered. We show how students improvise to decode the digital university and figure out new practices. Decolonisation of universities involves rethinking the ‘technocratic consciousness’ (both colonialist and neoliberal) and its apparatus including digital systems and structures. For rural students to become successful digital practitioners in higher education, universities should acknowledge prior digital experience and forms of knowledge and focus on expanding individual and collective agency in supporting transitions, as mechanisms for shaping a decolonised digital education.     

Administrative practices as institutional identity: bureaucratic impediments to HE ‘internationalisation’ policy in Japan

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how bureaucracy impedes the implementation of higher education (HE) policy at Japanese universities. Administrative systems employ Weberian legal-rational bureaucratic practices that are central to the institutional identity of a university. Rather than the means to internationalisation and reform in general, these systems themselves become the end, usually in direct opposition to not only innovation and change but, indeed, the university mission itself. After first outlining the macro-level processes and policies of the internationalisation of Japanese HE, I take an ethnographic approach to illustrate the micro-level administrative practices and assumptions at the university, framing them within the social theory of bureaucracy to allow for comparison with HE in other parts of East Asia and worldwide. As a way forward, I propose we borrow theories on social entrepreneurship to potentially resolve the challenge of embedded administrative practices and static institutional identities, a bureaucratic ‘utopia of rules’ [Graeber, D. 2015. The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy. New York: Melville House].     

Disrupting metaphors of coloniality to mediate social inclusion in the global South

ABSTRACT

New voices emerging in the global South are contesting the academy’s elitist and exclusionary ethos by disrupting the normalcy of coloniality. Concerns raised by the student protests of 2015 and 2016 have challenged the higher education sector to rethink its traditional teaching, learning, and assessment practices in response to student calls for decolonised and transformative curricula. This paper explores the ‘voice’ of the marginalised, who dare to ‘speak’ in authentic and provocative ways to call the university to action. We pose the questions: are alternative voices enough to inspire institutional change if traditional hierarchies of power remain intact? What does this mean for the collective project of re-imagining a university that carries a promise of social inclusion and social justice? What are the implications for academic development (AD) work, which finds itself on the margins, in service of mainstream (and dominant) epistemic and pedagogic practices? Using reflective narratives, and drawing on decolonial scholarship, this study explores a group process involved in curriculum change work at a university in South Africa. It raises challenges for AD and its role in the current context of change.     

Power landscapes within Chinese universities: a three-dimensional discourse analysis of university statutes

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the power landscapes within Chinese universities, against the larger backdrop of China’s attempt to build modern university governance systems for developing world-class universities. Drawing upon Fairclough’s three-dimensional conceptions of discourse and informed by Pierre Bourdieu’s key conceptual notions of field and capital, the paper provides a critical discourse analysis of statutes of 10 top Chinese universities in terms of their texts, discursive practices and social practices and thus analyses existing power relations. The statute texts construct a hierarchical field of power by wording the ‘core’ stakeholder Party Committee as the leadership, using content sequence as a measure of power ranking, and including only limited stakeholders in the joint governance mechanism. Regarding discursive practices, faculty members’ participation in the formulation and distribution of university statutes is insufficient. The social practices identify with statute texts in terms of power relationships between Party Committee members, administrators and academics.     

Bilingual Vine making: problematizing oppressive discourses in a secondary Chicanx/Latinx studies course

ABSTRACT

This article presents the critical digital literacy practices of Latinx bilingual youth in the United States enrolled in a secondary ethnic studies course. Despite the expansion of digital tools in classrooms, empirical studies on the pedagogical affordances of such tools, and how they enhance youth’s critical digital literacies and understandings of themselves remain scarce. The author relies on participant observation, interviews, and the analysis of writing within a unit that incorporated students’ twenty-first century language and literacy practices via Vine’s social media platform to explore issues of power and privilege within an exacerbated sociopolitical climate. Findings reveal the ways in which students drew on a range of fluid linguistic and literate practices to make meaning of themselves, problematize oppressive dominant discourses, and negotiate more desired identities and literacies. Attention to young people’s translanguaging and multimodal codemeshing practices on social media platforms can harvest critical insight about what constitutes twenty-first century critical digital literacies.     

Reading with technology: the new normal

ABSTRACT

Widespread changes in communication associated with new technologies have led to a growing interest in digital literacy. Although the concept of digital literacy suffers from a lack of agreed definition, this paper suggests that reading and writing with technology remains a key point of concern. The written word, a central feature of evolving patterns of communication, is now used in new ways and often in combination with different media as new devices and physical practices are recruited to the task of meaning making. The influence of different ways of thinking about these new communicative practices has led to the development of the diverse body of research outlined here. Tracing these strands in current research and writing about digital practice is used in order to identify how literacy has both expanded and diversified. Because it is now a significant aspect of full participation in social and cultural life, reading with technology raises important questions for education. This paper suggests that in England policy in this area is poorly articulated and argues that there is a pressing need for more focused classroom research to develop practices that support digital literacy.     

Social,Innovative and Deep: Exploring Digital Literacies in a Year 9 English Classroom

ABSTRACT

How are teachers who identify as “digital literacy trailblazers’ exploring and experimenting with digital tools in their English classrooms? Based on a study of English teaching with digital tools, this paper draws on the case of one secondary school teacher and her year 9 class as they read Diary of a Young Girl (Anne Frank) and engage with three digital applications in their learning about historical context, literary language and narrative voice. The case is presented in order to discuss digital literacy practices in the context of English curriculum and pedagogy.     

Being in Authority,Being an Authority: Disrupting students'/teachers' practices in literacy education

This is the second case study situated within my teaching of two undergraduate courses in the college of education of a large American university. It interrogates social forms that construct pedagogic and literate authority relations between preservice English education students and their teachers. It illustrates how teachers and students can negotiate engagement in critical literacy practice by constructing instructional circumstances that allow preservice teachers to question the kinds of practices that thwart the various aims of critical literacy and pedagogy. This study narrates a "critical incident" as a form of "practice-as-inquiry research", using field-notes, tape recordings, and interviews to describe four moments within the span of an activity that takes its historical antecedent in the work of I.A. Richards. The interpretation and analysis is informed by Pierre Bourdieu's reflexive sociology. The paper argues that teachers' disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge should not be undervalued or denied because with this knowledge comes an ethical responsibility to shape educative experiences for students that open them up to reflection and critique.     

The prison is another country: incarcerated students and (im)mobility in Australian prisons

ABSTRACT

Space, time and movement have particular meanings and significance for Australian prisoners attempting higher education while incarcerated. In a sense, the prison is another ‘world’ or ‘country’ with its own spatial and temporal arrangements and constraints for incarcerated university students. The contemporary digital university typically presupposes a level of mobility and access to mobile communication technologies which most Australian prisoners cannot access. This article examines the immobility of incarcerated students and their attempts to complete tertiary and pre-tertiary distance education courses without direct internet access. Drawing on critical mobilities theory, this article also explores attempts to address this digital disconnection of incarcerated students and where such interventions have been frustrated by movement issues within the prison. Prison focus group data suggest the use of modified digital learning technologies in prisons needs to be informed by a critical approach to the institutional processes and practices of this unique and challenging learning environment. This article also highlights the limitations and contradictions of painful immobilisation as a core strategy of Australia’s modern, expanding penal state, which encourages rehabilitation through education, while effectively cutting prisoners off from the wider digital world.     

The social value of anonymity on campus: a study of the decline of Yik Yak

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the social value of anonymity in online university student communities, through the presentation of research which tracked the final year of life of the social media application Yik Yak. Yik Yak was an anonymous, geosocial mobile application launched in 2013 which, at its peak in 2014, was used by around two million students in the US and UK. The research we report here is significant as a mixed method study tracing the final year of the life of this app in a large UK university between 2016 and 2017. The paper uses computational and ethnographic methods to understand what might be at stake in the loss of anonymity within university student communities in a datafied society. Countering the most common argument made against online anonymity – its association with hate speech and victimisation – the paper draws on recent conceptual work on the social value of anonymity to argue that anonymity online in this context had significant value for the communities that use it. This study of a now-lost social network constitutes a valuable portrait by which we might better understand our current predicament in relation to anonymity, its perceived value and its growing impossibility.     

Unsettling equity frames in Australian universities to embrace people seeking asylum

ABSTRACT

Transnational migration, especially the growth of forced migration is unsettling the literature on widening access to university education. Equity definitions and understandings that frame social inclusion have presumed stable domestic populations within nations and targeted redressing historic internal social inequalities. Refugees and people seeking asylum have high aspirations to access to university education to gain recognition or update qualifications. University access for refugees and people seeking asylum is hampered by restricted funding entitlements that privilege citizens and admissions criteria that position them in the international student market and favour language and cultural requirements that reflect the dominant national culture. A qualitative narrative-based case-study of the admissions practices in one university in Australia explored the opportunities and blockages experienced by those seeking access and the dilemmas recognised by the admissions’ gatekeepers. Employing organisational theory and Scott’s three pillars of a neo-institutional framework, the regulative, the normative and the cultural-cognitive pillars, the article argues that homogenised institutional policies and practices to assess applications construct norms of access and equity, which create new exclusions for forced migrants. In revealing how some gatekeepers sought to ‘workaround’ these practices of exclusion, the article provides hope that informal learning within organisations can lead to organisational change.     

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.     

Digital sketching. Aesthetic practices and technological entanglements

ABSTRACT

This article explores the ways aesthetic practices and emerging digital technologies are entangled in the practices of industrial designers. Despite the increased interest in the socio-materiality of aesthetic practices, the conception of the materiality and historicity of digital artefacts remains an open issue. It is suggested that the concept of operational form provides an integrative perspective on the technical development and practical enactment of digital technologies. Drawing on an ethnographic case study on the appropriation of a digital sketching application, it is shown how the aesthetic practices and qualities of the digital technologies are reflexively coupled. The study points to the fact that digital technologies are inherently reductive in that they have to abstract from the particularities and richness of concrete aesthetic practices.     

Just Google it! Digital literacy and the epistemology of ignorance

ABSTRACT

In this paper we examine digital literacy and explicate how it relates to the philosophical study of ignorance. Using data from a study which explores the knowledge producing work of undergraduate students as they wrote course assignments, we argue that a social practice approach to digital literacy can help explain how epistemologies of ignorance may be sustained. If students are restricted in what they can know because they are unaware of exogenous actors (e.g. algorithms), and how they guide choices and shape experiences online, then a key issue with which theorists of digital literacy should contend is how to educate students to be critically aware of how power operates in online spaces. The challenge for Higher Education is twofold: to understand how particular digital literacy practices pave the way for the construction of ignorance, and to develop approaches to counter it.     

Accountability through access,authenticity and advocacy when researching with young children

ABSTRACT

Research with children involving their use of digital and mobile technologies either as a methodological tool or in relation to their learning foregrounds emerging ethical issues and practices. This paper explores some of the ethical and practical challenges we faced in studies involving the recruitment of young children as research participants, and where the integrity of these research collaborations was critical. We propose an ethical framework to foreground these challenges that is shaped by a view of children as social actors and experts on their own lives, information and communication technologies as ubiquitous in children’s lives, and ethics as a situated and multifaceted responsibility. This framework has three aspects: access, authenticity and advocacy. We draw on examples from different research projects and use ethically important moments to illustrate how notions of access, authenticity and advocacy can foreground the ethical challenges in teaching–learning research contexts to better consider and offer children greater agency in research collaborations.     

Narrowing the distance: Using There are no children here in the classroom

This paper describes a pedagogical process used in an introductory criminal justice class to challenge typical university students' preconceptions and beliefs about the personal and neighborhood factors that most often characterize crime and criminals. Students were asked to respond to the similarities and differences between themselves and the characters in Alex Kotlowitz's (1991) book There Are No Children Here. They also were asked to relate the book conceptually to issues discussed in the classroom. In contrast to their earlier expressions of ideological narrowness, the students' response papers reflected consistent themes of injustice, powerlessness, unfair police or court practices, and racism. The students were able to stop distancing themselves from “criminals” and to examine how social disorganization and social institutions shape individuals' hopes and opportunities.     

Engaging students as digital citizens

ABSTRACT

Learning and teaching on physical university campuses have been enhanced by digital technology both in formally scheduled learning and teaching events and in the less formal spaces in which the higher education experience unfolds. The digital skills and know-how with which students arrive at university will arguably develop throughout the academic journey, though the extent to which they will underpin students’ growth into digital citizens, that is, confident and competent participants in a broader range of digitally enhanced social and professional communities, is likely to vary. The present article is the outcome of a research project which explored how students experience learning, teaching and communicating through digital technologies on a range of undergraduate courses at a UK university. Focus groups with fifty-five students in different years of study across twenty-three undergraduate courses revealed a nuanced understanding of the notion of ‘digital native’, yet a lack of readiness to link participation in digital spaces to digital citizenship and to articulate attributes of an effective participant in digital communities. The focus groups highlighted inconsistent alignment between personal, academic and professional digital spaces. They clearly signalled a need to explore further the commonalities and points of intersection between the three, moving beyond a skills mindset, and paying particular attention to the way in which participants in higher education construct and take up virtual identities, how they negotiate access to digital environments, the degree of control they are able and ready to exercise over digital spaces, and the contribution that universities can make to facilitate the complex developmental journeys towards digital citizenship.     

Educators’ Perceptions of Student Digital Citizenship Practices

Abstract

Digital citizenship, defined as exhibiting appropriate and responsible behavior with digital technology use, is an essential component of technology education. The purpose of this study was to examine K-12 educators’ perceptions of their students' digital citizenship knowledge and practices as they relate to cyberbullying, digital footprint, digital privacy, digital netiquette, and digital identity. One hundred and seven educators responded to a survey on digital citizenship practices. Based on the educators' perceptions, student understanding and practice of digital citizenship were rated as not well for most of the items on the survey. While educators' perceptions of their students' digital citizenship practices did not vary among school levels or based on their roles as teachers or technology coaches, educators who taught digital citizenship had higher perceptions of their students' digital citizenship practices.     

Criticality's affective entanglements: rethinking emotion and critical thinking in higher education

ABSTRACT

Critical thinking is often understood as a set of tangible, transferrable and measurable skills and competencies. Yet, it is also an intensely affective experience that is complex, contingent and contextualised. Using interview, focus group and observation data conducted with 15 first-year undergraduate social science students at a UK research-intensive university, this paper explores how students negotiate the complex knowledge practices that constitute critical thinking, particularly the affects of being and becoming critical. The theoretical tools offered by Karen Barad and Sara Ahmed allow a conceptualisation of critical thinking as a complex phenomenon of socio-material and affective practices. This paper turns to Barad and Ahmed to explore the potential of their clashing theorisations for thinking through the affective territories of critical thinking. It will argue that acknowledging the way(s) critical thinking feels (as well as what it is and what it is for) opens up new imaginaries for feminist scholarship about criticality.