1st Global Conference
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Monday 12th February - Wednesday 14th February
2007
Sydney, Australia
Conference Programme, Abstract and Papers
Session 5: Facets of Knowledge Production
Chair: Matthew Steen
Politics and the Knowledge Economy: The Role of the Tertiary Sector
Stephen
Healy
School of History and Philosophy, University of New South
Wales,
Sydney, NSW, Australia
The ‘knowledge economy’ involves not only an explicit commodification of knowledge but also the targeting of knowledge production to particular ends. This underlines, if only implicitly, the dependence of knowledge on context. The constructivist tradition explains this contextual dependence in terms of how human interests, and other contextual factors, shape knowledge but is poorly equipped to prescribe change because it retains a cognitivist view of knowledge. This paper argues that a prerequisite to the prescription of alternatives is the delineation and evaluation of the practices constituting knowledge. An epistemology of this form is described and applied to examine current changes in the Australian tertiary sector. Drawing upon Larner and Heron’s application of governmentality theory to New Zealand universities this paper analyses how analogous changes in Australia reflect broader political currents and, through changes in the practices of staff and students, are constitutive of changes to (using the currently fashionable lexicon) university ‘outputs’. These involve both the calculative practices – such as benchmarking, workload modelling and performance appraisals – central to Larner and Heron’s analysis, and a broader push to ‘corporatise’ the tertiary sector. The paper discusses the implications of these changes for contemporary academic life, the tertiary sector, and what is still commonly, but perhaps misleadingly, labelled knowledge.
The Anxiety of Making Academics Over: Resistance and Responsibility
in Academic Development
Tai
Peseta* and Catherine
Manathunga**
*Institute for Teaching and Learning,
The University of Sydney NSW, Australia
** Teaching Educational Development Institute,
The University of Queensland, Australia
Debates about the nature and
value of higher education have resulted in attempts to make academic
identities over. Part of that work
has been a renewed emphasis on the role of academics as teachers
and the importance of developing their students into critical knowledge
workers and consumers. As a result, there has been a rush to put in
place institutional systems, mechanisms and processes to improve
university teaching and learning. At the forefront of this movement
for change are academic/educational developers–charged with the
role and responsibility of leading university teaching and learning
change. This task of [re]making academic identities is particularly
fraught and as a result, the work of this group of academics often
comes under fire (Hayes, 2002; Shore & Wright, 2000).
This paper
offers a theoretical meditation on the scholarship and politics of
academic development and the work of academic/educational developers
in contemporary universities. In particular, as academic developers,
we are forced to grapple with fundamental questions such as to
whom are we loyal? Is it the institution, our academic colleagues,
students or some awkward combination of all three? How are we to engage
others ethically and with care in processes of change? In what ways
are we able to respond to those who resist making themselves into new
kinds of university teachers? In any process of change, there are always
new kinds of subjectivities to make appealing and new kinds of moral
commitment to invest in. This [re]making of academic identities
as teachers causes us some anxiety.
In part, this anxiety stems from
the scholarship of academic development itself–a field of study
now with its own nomenclature, set of thematics and like many disciplines,
a default canon. That canon–anchored
in traditions of effective student learning, frames the discourse of
the effective university teacher. To refuse the moral necessity of
that discourse is to be cast as an unscholarly teacher: one uninterested
in developing an evidence-based rationale for teaching and learning;
one who eschews the wealth of research about student learning together
with its improvements; and one who refuses to participate productively
in institutional teaching and learning change. In this paper, we want
to examine the shape and nature of that resistance. We explore a set
of conceptual frameworks for conceptualising and addressing ‘resistance’ to
teaching and learning development activities and to the idea of being ‘developed’ itself.
In so doing, we investigate how academic developers themselves are
positioned to make sense of manifestations and enactments of resistance.
We end with an argument that sees notions of resistance and refusal
as urgent additions to the scholarship of our academic development
practice.
Why Mainland China’s Students Study in Australian Higher Education
Molly
Yang
Faculty of Business & Informatics, Central Queensland University, Australia
This paper analyses the factors that influence Mainland Chinese students’ choice of Australia as their study destination. China is the main source of international students and is one of Australia’s leading export markets for education services but the study of international students is not in the mainstream of any discipline (Altbach, 1989). Two stages of studies were employed to this research. Stage one, a quantitative study using A MaxDiff (Maximum Difference) Scaling. A sample of 65 potential students was selected in China who were considering studying overseas. The respondents were asked to specify their “best” and “worst” choices from sets of four statements. This stage identified what factors influenced students’ choice of study abroad. Stage two, comprised a further investigation on why students choose Australia, 30 students were interviewed who are currently studying in Australia. The findings found that Australia has become popular with Chinese students, and is preferred to both the United States and United Kingdom. The most important factors motivating Chinese students to study in Australia are future migration opportunities after graduation, Australia’s high quality of education, and competitive lower tuition fees and cost of living. By understanding the underlying factors attracting Chinese students to Australia, education providers can focus on satisfying students’ needs and expectations and to assure students’ study experiences.