Unpacking ontological security: A decolonial reading of scholarly impact

Despite the growing debate about scholarly impact, an analysis of the onto-epistemic grammar underlying impact has remained absent. By taking a different analytical approach to examining impact, we interrogate the concept through the lens of decolonial thought. We offer an empathetic review of the impact scholarship and illuminate the limits of the modern imaginary that circumscribe critiques of impact in the literature, making visible the Eurocentric and provincial horizons of modern reason underlying these critiques and impact in general. Drawing on ?ūnyatā ontological perspective, we seek to articulate from modernity imaginary’s edges and suggest imagining and being otherwise. We argue that the question of scholarly impact is intimately structured by and connected to the modern subject’s desire for ontological security.     

‘Will I learn what I want to learn?’ Usable representations, ‘students’ and OECD assessment production

Amid growing debates around international assessment tools in educational policy, few have critically examined how students themselves are cast in policy tool production processes and discourse. Drawing on Stuart Hall's concept of representation, we show how higher education (HE) ‘students’ are constructed, fixed and normalized by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) initiative. Based on an analysis of AHELO texts, we argue that the OECD, during the early stages of test production, fixes and circulates the meaning of ‘students’ as represented objects. We identify and analyze two distinct representational practices at work in AHELO texts: classifying and organizing, and marking. We posit that by fixing images of the student as an object of learning and as a consumer–investor subject, the OECD creates ‘usable’ representations of ‘students’ to claim jurisdiction over teaching and learning in HE and to justify intervention through standardized testing.     

Modernizing Bangladesh public administration through e-governance: Benefits and challenges

More and more public administration emphasizes how Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can be used to support transformational change in governmental functions globally to achieve efficiency and cost-effective service delivery to citizens. Bangladesh public administration employs energies to achieve this goal. Experience in some developing countries has shown that e-governance can improve transparency which leads to, among other things, corruption control and poverty reduction. This article examines the role that e-governance can play in the modernization of public administration for efficient and effective service delivery to the citizens of Bangladesh, as well as its potential to control corruption and reduce poverty. Based on the lessons learned from successful practices in developing countries and literature review, it suggests that e-governance can play a significant role for corruption control and poverty reduction, and thus offers opportunities to cost-effective service delivery to the citizens in Bangladesh.     

Global competition,coloniality, and the geopolitics of knowledge in higher education

While scholars have analyzed global higher education (HE) competition, they have largely failed to address how global spaces of equivalence are tied both to coloniality and to competition. Using the OECD’s International Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) as a case study and drawing on concepts from coloniality including Fanon’s zone of being/non-being and Mignolo’s geopolitics of knowledge, we reveal how coloniality underpins the desire for global spaces of equivalence through: the desire for opportunity and belonging; and the desire for recognition and pride. We illuminate how the nature of global competition is not simply tied to market-based economic or political rationalities, but also operates under psychosocial dimensions interlinked with belonging in the international community. We argue that AHELO represents the mediation and internalization of a HE competition focused on teaching and learning, which reproduces coloniality by valuing characteristics of the enterprising, globally competitive institution.     

Globalizing whiteness? Visually re/presenting students in global university rankings websites

ABSTRACT

Amid debates about the role and impact of global university rankings (GURs), very few have closely examined how GURs media outlets construct meanings of higher education (HE) in their visual representations. We critically examine publicly available visual media of students in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and US News and World Report websites. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s heuristics of representation and attending to visual grammars, we argue whiteness maintains its racial hegemony in GURs’ student imagery through its flexibility and in/visbility. Furthermore, whiteness is entangled with other systems of oppression, particularly patriarchy, homonormativity, and heterosexuality. We suggest that GURs rankings media are not simply constructing and informing us about the quality and excellence of HE, but simultaneously teaching us how to view students, often reproducing oppressive racialized and gendered ideologies. We end with methodological implications of visual cultural studies in comparative education.