English-medium instruction in law and the humanities in higher education: the role of teacher identity

ABSTRACT

Recent research on English-medium instruction (EMI) has examined university instructors’ professional identities in science and social science rather than in the humanities. To fill the gap, this qualitative case study explores the ways in which 13 university instructors in law and the humanities in Taiwan perceived their identity and exercised their agency as teachers. The findings indicated that these instructors had three ideal teacher identities, including educators in global and local contexts, subject matter instructors, and EMI instructors. Each determined teachers’ choice, design, and enactment of EMI practices, as well as their notions of language use and objectives. This study highlights the primacy of preferred teacher identities in the manifestation of teacher agency, identifies enabling and constraining effects of teacher agency, and emphasizes the significant roles of discipline-specific communities and ethnicity and nationality in EMI practices. As such, teacher identities should be taken into consideration in professional development to empower instructors to take actions that maintain their commitments to EMI.     

Thinking/acting locally/globally: Western science and environmental education in a global knowledge economy

This paper critically appraises a number of approaches to 'thinking globally' in environmental education, with particular reference to popular assumptions about the universal applicability of Western science. Although the transnational character of many environmental issues demands that we 'think globally', I argue that the contribution of Western science to understanding and resolving environmental problems might be enhanced by seeing it as one among many local knowledge traditions. The production of a 'global knowledge economy' in/for environmental education can then be understood as creating transnational 'spaces' in which local knowledge traditions can be performed together, rather than as creating a 'common market' in which representations of local knowledge must be translated into (or exchanged for) the terms of a universal discourse.     

Working an Academically Rigorous,Multicultural Program

In 1997 the California State University Monterey Bay Master of Arts in Education program began accepting students with the explicit intent of offering an academically challenging curriculum that grounds teacher-leaders in multicultural social justice education. By 2003, the program had successfully attracted and graduated a student population that is as racially and ethnically diverse as the state of California. As eight faculty members who designed and implemented this program, writing from a position of “insider knowledge” regarding how it functioned on a day-to-day basis, we show how culturally and linguistically diverse students, many of whom have been underprepared for rigorous academic work, can attain high levels of academic excellence in a challenging and supportive context. In addition, we explore the tensions and realities of doing this work, especially in a state university context that is experiencing decreased funding that jeopardizes programs such as this one. We write so that our work is not forgotten but rather narrates what is possible.     

The university of the future: Stiegler after Derrida

Abstract

Higher education has not been spared from the effects of the disruptive aspects of technology. MOOCs, teach bots, virtual learning platforms, and Wikipedia are among technics marking a digital transformation of knowledge. The question of the university, the foundation of its authority and purpose is more than timely; it is urgent to any future philosophy of higher education. Will the university survive in the future and if so, for what purpose? We examine two philosophers, Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, who take on this challenge. Derrida, writing at ‘the scene of teaching’, proposes new humanities for a university ‘without condition’, one with increasing autonomy to democratize it further. Stiegler takes issue with him on the conditions of the university of the future. Stiegler offers not an ‘anti-Derridian discourse’ but a ‘deconstruction of a deconstruction’ of Derrida. Stiegler’s critique of Derrida on the role of the professoriate and the university of the future expand the fissure between them. In this article, we argue that Stiegler’s reading of Derrida points to the university not as an anachronistic way of knowing displaced by the digital revolution but as vital to a politics of the spirit in a democratic future.     

The influence of causal knowledge on the willingness to change attitude towards climate change: results from an empirical study

ABSTRACT

Climate change is one of the significant global challenges currently facing humanity. Even though its seriousness seems to be common knowledge among the public, the reaction of individuals to it has been slow and uncertain. Many studies assert that simply knowing about climate change is not enough to generate people’s behavioural response. They claim, indeed, that in some cases scientific literacy can even obstruct behavioural response instead. However, recent surveys show a rather poor understanding of climate dynamics and argue that lack of knowledge about causal relationships within climate dynamics can hinder behavioural response, since the individual is not able to understand his/her role as causal agent and therefore doesn’t know how to take proper action. This study starts from the hypothesis that scientific knowledge focused on clarifying climate dynamics can make people understand not only dynamics themselves, but also their interactive relationship with the environment. Teaching materials on climate change based on such considerations were designed and implemented in a course for secondary-school students with the aim of investigating whether this kind of knowledge had an influence on students’ willingness to adopt pro-environmental behaviours. Questionnaires were delivered for testing the effect of the teaching experience on knowledge and behaviour.     

Linkedin,platforming labour,and the new employability mandate for universities

ABSTRACT

Students, academics and university administrators are increasingly using and producing digital platforms, including social media. This paper focuses on LinkedIn to start tackling the question of the effects on higher education as a sector, its actors and the established social practices. It argues that LinkedIn moves beyond the passivity of advertising to its users towards actively structuring digital labour markets, in which it strategically includes universities and its constituents. By introducing the term ‘qualification altmetrics’, the paper suggests that LinkedIn is building a global marketplace for skills to run in parallel to, or instead of university degrees. Qualification altmetrics might challenge the established practices of knowledge production and valuation.     

Understanding the world today: the roles of knowledge and knowing in higher education

ABSTRACT

This article argues that knowledge is not a passive product of learning that can be possessed, but rather that it represents an active engagement with ideas, arguments and the world in which they reside. This engagement requires a state of ‘knowing’ – a complex, integrative, reciprocal process that unites the knower with the to-be-known. Exploring the notion of knowledge, this paper considers the roles of truth and belief in knowledge production, the relationship between knowledge and the disciplines, and knowledge as a social and cultural product. These ideas are contextualized in higher education practice with an example of a course designed to help science and engineering students develop criticality and a sense of ‘knowing’ about the world. The students are challenged to consider what it requires to turn facts and information into knowledge, and to unite their knowing with their own personal experiences and ideas about the world.     

Exploring the efficacy of training and development for liaison librarians at Deakin University,Australia

ABSTRACT

Australian universities are operating in a complex, dynamic and competitive global market. Increasingly university administrations are seeking the competitive edge over rival institutions. In order to support their institution’s strategic agenda and maintain their relevance to their institution, libraries will need staff who are highly skilled and able to adapt to the rapidly changing digital world. At Deakin University Library, senior librarians understand the imperative of developing liaison librarians’ capabilities in order to meet the information needs of teaching and research academics. A scaffolded training program (the Program) was developed and a Training Needs Analysis was administered prior and post training programs to determine training priorities. Exploring the Program through the lens of self-determination theory provided an opportunity to critique the Program at a deeper level and situate the Program within a broader context of emerging skill and knowledge capabilities required by all who undertake knowledge-intensive work.     

The School in Question: a comment

Abstract

In Germany the tradition of university autonomy goes back to Humboldt's reform rather than the privileged corporations of the middle ages. Humboldt's concept of the university is still fertile as a model and a method for today's universities. The social significance of science in the modern world, increased expenditure on higher education, and the academisation of a growing number of professions seem to undermine the traditional legitimation of university autonomy. On the other hand good new reasons for autonomy can be derived precisely from scepticism with regard to a naive belief in the progress of science and to an all‐too‐narrow professionalisation of university education. The ever closer interconnection between ‘academic’ and ‘public’ functions of the universities has led to the replacement of the traditional ‘dualistic administrative structure’ by a ‘unified'one under a rector/president. The dualism of functions has, however, reappeared in the distinction between ‘legal’ and ‘more extended’ supervision by ministers. For the future a more precise distinction between global regulations legitimately claimed by the state and self‐government within the framework thus set should be aimed at.     

Recapturing the Universal in the University

The idea of ‘the university’ has stood for universal themes—of knowing, of truthfulness, of learning, of human development, and of critical reason. Through its affirming and sustaining of such themes, the university came itself to stand for universality in at least two senses: the university was neither partial (in its truth criteria) nor local in its significance (at least, the university was an institution of the nation state and even had global significance). Now, this universalism has been shot down: on the one hand, universal themes have been impugned as passé in a postmodern age; in the ‘knowledge society’, knowledge with a capital ‘K’ is giving way to multiple and even local knowledges (plural). On the other hand, the very process of globalization has been accused of being a new process of colonization. Global universities, accordingly, may be seen as a vehicle for the imposition of Western modes of reason (often suspected in turn of being no more than Western economic reason at that). Diversity is the new watchword, a term that—we may note—has come to be part of the framing of the contemporary policy agenda for higher education.

Accordingly, in such a situation of multiple meanings, both within and across institutions, the university becomes an institutional means for developing the capacities—at both the personal and the societal levels—to live with ‘strangeness’: perhaps here lies a new universal for the university? But, then, if that is the case, if strangeness is the new universal for the university, some large challenges await those who would claim to lead and manage universities.     

Different universities,different temporalities: placing the acceleration of academic life in context

ABSTRACT

A growing body of literature is encouraging academics to slow down their academic work as a way of managing the acceleration of university life. Little attention, however, has been paid to the important differences in temporalities among different sorts of higher education institutions, and the effect this is likely to have upon the sense of acceleration and, crucially, the capacity to resist it. This article discusses interview data with academics at a particularly ‘fast’ academic site, drawn from a broader comparative study of three very different sorts of institution. It argues that the culture at this university is fundamentally structured around the principle of rapid change, in marked contrast to both more research-intensive and more teaching-intensive institutions. Any advice about the management of change must, I argue, take into account the specifics of institutional situations as well as broader structural causes of institutional difference, if it is to prove effective.     

University students’ meta-modelling knowledge

Background: As one part of scientific meta-knowledge, students’ meta-modelling knowledge should be promoted on different educational levels such as primary school, secondary school and university. This study focuses on the assessment of university students’ meta-modelling knowledge using a paper–pencil questionnaire.

Purpose: The general purpose of this study was to assess and to describe university students’ meta-modelling knowledge. More specifically, it was analysed to what extent the meta-modelling knowledge, as expressed in a questionnaire, depends on the scientific discipline to which university students relate their answer and the concrete model to which they refer while answering.

Sample: N = 184 students from one German university voluntarily participated in this study.

Design and methods: The questionnaire was developed based on a theoretical framework for model competence and includes constructed response items asking about the purpose of models, ways for testing models and reasons for changing models. Students written answers were first analysed qualitatively based on the theoretical framework to decide whether they expressed advanced understandings or not. Further analyses then were conducted quantitatively.

Results: Findings suggest that only few university students possess an advanced meta-modelling knowledge. However, significant more students who relate their answers to the STEM-disciplines expressed advanced understandings than those who referred to social sciences or linguistics/philology. Furthermore, university students who expressed an advanced meta-modelling knowledge referred to rather abstract kinds of models in order to explain their view.

Conclusions: The present study supports the assumption that meta-modelling knowledge may be situated and contextualised. Both the scientific discipline and the concrete model to which university students refer seem to be relevant item features influencing university students’ expressed meta-modelling knowledge. Implications for assessment and teaching are discussed in the article.     

Sticky and slippery destinations for academic mobility: the case of Singapore

This article seeks to contribute to the existing scholarship on academic mobility in two ways. First, it brings together insights on academic mobility (aspirations, desperations) and higher education internationalisation to show how we may analytically organise these insights to shed light on the shifting global higher education landscape from an experiential perspective. Second, it provides fresh data on the ‘lived experiences’ of mobile faculty members based in an attractive academic destination outside of the traditional knowledge cores—Singapore. As a city state without any natural resources, Singapore has successfully transformed its economy into one that is knowledge-intensive based on combined efforts from grooming locals to recruiting foreign talents to shore up skilled manpower needs. These efforts are reflected in the university sector where Singapore’s comprehensive universities have consistently ranked high across many global university rankings. Using survey and interview data, I show how the mobility and immobility experiences of faculty based in Singapore have contributed to its making as a ‘sticky’ and ‘slippery’ academic destination. My contributions point to the need to integrate individual-level factors underpinning academic mobility decisions with systemic developments to better understand the changing global higher education landscape today.

     

With or without U? Assemblage theory and (de)territorialising the university

ABSTRACT

Contemporary changes in the domain of knowledge production are usually seen as posing significant challenges to ‘the University’. This paper argues against the framing of the university as an ideal-type, and considers epistemic gains from treating universities as assemblages (e.g. DeLanda, M. 2016. Assemblage Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press) of different functions, actors and relations. It contrasts this with the concept of ‘unbundling’, using two recent cases of controversies around academics’ engagement on social media to show how, rather than having clearly delineated limits, social entities become ‘territorialised’ through boundary disputes. The conclusion extends this discussion to the production of knowledge about social objects in general.     

‘Profitable for the country’. An Australian historical perspective of the contested purpose of public universities

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the social contract formulated between state and university, in the period 1850–1930. Using contemporary records – for example, legislation, parliamentary debates, university acts, newspaper articles, senate and professorial board minutes, and similar – this article examines how Australia’s early scholarly community contested and negotiated what it believed to be the purpose of higher education, with a sometimes-conflicting view held by the state. The analysis indicates that, from the outset, certain paradoxes have inscribed into these foundational negotiations. Conflicting narratives of opportunity and privilege positioned universities, simultaneously, as agents for social inclusion and maintainers of social privilege. The purpose of knowledge as either/both pure and practical has been another point of contestation. Consequently, universities vacillate between acts of social conservatism and progressivism. These tensions remain apparent in the modern purpose of higher education institutions.     

Student views regarding online freshmen physics courses

Background: Nationally, many public universities have started to move into the online course and program market that was previously associated with for-profit institutions of higher education. Public university administrators state that students seek the flexibility of online courses. But do students want to take courses online, especially freshmen-level science courses perceived to be difficult?

Purpose: This study investigated student views related to the potential of a physics course they were currently enrolled in being offered online.

Sample: This study took place at a large, public, mid-western university and involved students enrolled in either the first or second semester of a face-to-face flipped physics course for engineering technology majors.

Design and methods: Discussions with students during the semester about their online course experiences and expectations were used to develop the concourse and subsequently the Q sample to perform a Q methodology study about students’ views regarding taking physics courses online. Additional statements for the concourse and Q sample were taken from communications with administrators at the university. In this way, the statements sorted by the students included those from students and those from administrators. Factor analysis of the Q sorts resulted in three factors, each representing a unique perspective. Interpretations of these perspectives included the analyses of the Q sorts, the researcher’s interactions with students and administrators, and students’ written responses regarding their previous online course experiences and their sorting decisions.

Results: Three unique student views emerged were named: keeping it real and face-to-face, Online could be ok depending upon the course and instructor, and Online not for STEM classes. Consensus among the views is also discussed.

Conclusions: Overall, students’ views are negative concerning having physics courses, including labs, online and those views conflict with statements expressed by administrators regarding students’ desires for online courses at the university.     

Competition,innovation and diversity in higher education: dominant discourses,paradoxes and resistance

Abstract

This article explores the powerful yet contradictory role of neoliberalism, its competitive mechanisms and emotional logics. Theoretically, it reviews the shifting state-higher education-market nexus through the lens of a critical cultural political economy paradigm. Conceptually, it closely examines Davies’ work on the ‘logic of competition’ (2014) and Naidoo’s idea of ‘competition fetish’ (2011, 2015, 2018) to expose the material and discursive dispositifs through which nation-states, institutions and individual actors mobilize universities to position themselves in the global knowledge economy. The discussion is informed and supported by empirical evidence drawn from a doctoral project (2013–2014). The article aims to contribute to the extant critique of (higher) education by introducing the paradox of ‘polarized convergence’ as an instance of differentiation without diversity in the contemporary English university. Such paradox urges the re-visitation and broadening of the idea and practice of the entrepreneurial university to reinvigorate the link between competition, innovation and diversity.     

Reviews and Update

Jonathan Long suggests that current interpretations of values education are dominated by a number of ideas that appear to make attempts to achieve clarity and consensus extremely difficult. He argues that ‘essential to the successful development and promotion of values in a secular state educational system is a shifting of emphasis which enables us to see the context as an opportunity rather than a problem’. He goes on to suggest that schools should focus on what he describes as the ‘roots’ of values. In his view, these roots involve the questions ‘What is it to be human?’ and ‘What counts as human flourishing?’. Thus, schools must engage with issues of identity and direction.     

Cosmopolitan nationalism in the cases of South Korea,Israel and the U.S

Abstract

In this essay we develop the concept of ‘cosmopolitan nationalism’, offering a working definition and suggesting ways sociologists of education might draw on it in their future work. We show how it is a useful analytical lens through which to examine contemporary policies and practices that navigate global processes (ranking systems, mobility of people, expectations for futures) but also take account of nationalistic tendencies, as well as local and national attempts to challenge persistent inequalities within education systems. By using policy examples from three countries (South Korea, Israel and the US), we illuminate how cosmopolitan nationalism is evident across various initiatives in these countries, and the varied implications this has for education systems in terms of equality, access and quality.