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Publication Juggling competing activities: academic staff as doctoral candidates(Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2019-11-11) Smith, Jan; Billot, Jennie; Clouder, Lynn; King, VirginiaThis article explores the experiences of a group of established academic staff in New Zealand and the UK, as they undertake a doctorate in their home institutions. Our interest is in how individuals negotiate this dual status from a cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) stance that explores how rules, tools, community and divisions of labour, and interacting activity systems, shape doctoral experiences. The focus in this article, having analysed their detailed narrative accounts, is on how academics experience three interdependent activity systems: those surrounding the thesis, the institutional context, and the home-life spheres. Issues related to time, workload and supervision issues, variability in collegial support and impact on personal priorities and time emerged. There is a range of particularities – from easy access to resources/supervisors to inflexible institutional regulations – applicable to this group of doctoral candidates. Negotiating life as an academic with concurrent doctoral candidature provides positive outcomes in terms of teaching, research confidence and general personal and professional development. However, a range of difficulties can also be encountered, particularly in relation to personal and professional relationships, and workload management.Publication Reflections on teaching research ethics in education for international postgraduate students in the UK(Taylor & Francis, 2015-11-25) Smith, JanResearch ethics in education is a challenging topic to teach and to learn. As the staff and student body in UK higher education and elsewhere diversifies, the challenges increase as shared reference points diminish. My teaching reflections focus on a key tension explored in this article: how the imperative of internationalising the curriculum conflicts with hegemonic codes of conduct regarding research ethics that seem resistant to change. The framework of threshold concepts is applied to the teaching and learning of research ethics in education not, as is usual, to identify such concepts, but to draw attention to the critical role of the intersection between learner and curriculum and how institutional expectations need to be re-appraised.Publication ‘Homeliness meant having the fucking vacuum cleaner out’: the gendered labour of maintaining conference communities(Taylor & Francis, 2019-10-24) Burford, James; Bosanquet, Agnes; Smith, Jan; Research Institute for Higher Education, University of Hiroshima, JapanThis article extends examinations of the gendered nature of care and service in academia, with a particular focus on the labour of maintaining conference communities. Utilising empirical data from a cultural history of the International Academic Identities Conference, we draw on interviews with 32 conference organisers, keynote speakers and participants to explore the gendered dynamics of reproducing conference communities. While some participants experienced exclusions, most participants described a conference that felt caring, welcoming and like ‘home’. Following this discussion, we interrogate the idea of the conference as ‘home’, asking questions about the gendered division of ‘academic housekeeping’ practices that underpin such home-making. Engaging with feminist theorising of emotional labour, we argue that academic women undertook significant, and often hidden, care and service labour to maintain a homely conference community.Publication A module on learning technologies for teachers in higher education(Istituto per le Tecnologie Didattiche and Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche ITDCNR, 2018-03-06) Flynn, SharonThis paper describes a 10 European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS ) module in Learning Technologies which forms part of a Post Graduate Diploma in Academic Practice, part of a professional development framework for academic staff. The module, which is taught through seven themed workshops over one semester, is research-informed and practice-based. Assessment is on a pass/fail basis and includes three aspects supporting reflection, technical competency and the implementation of a technology-based project. Throughout the module, technology is used as a showcase for the module content itself. The intention is to integrate the use of technology to support the pedagogy, without over-using technology for its own sake. Through surveying past participants on the module there is evidence to suggest that good practice in the use of technology is being embedded in teaching and learning activities across the university.Publication A careful approach to digital scholarship(Hybrid Pedagogy, 2015-07-14) Gogia, Laura; Warren, Simon; |~|For a lot of reasons, the types of learning and knowledge valued in our world are diversifying. Networked participatory scholarship, which is increasingly carried out on social media platforms such as Twitter, provides opportunities for alternative forms of academic expression: those that do not necessarily fit traditional academic criteria but fulfil professional and personal needs of faculty, students, and researchers anyway. The Twitter Journal Club (#TJC15), an open, unstructured, academic reading group found on Twitter, provides meaningful learning experiences while embracing the holistic and messy nature of learning. Within this space, we Laura (the group s creator) and Simon (a frequent participant-observer) have found room to breathe as well as opportunities to care, in terms of emotional and intellectual engrossment, relational and personal interest, and kindness and mutual respect. As such, we find this alternative, digital approach to academic reading one that engages its participants in uniquely creative, playful, and human ways of learning even as it augments and challenges traditional academic practice.Publication Trust schools and the politics of persuasion and the mobilisation of interest(Taylor & Francis, 2011-06-21) Warren, Simon; Webb, Darren; Franklin, Anita; Bowers-Brown, Julian; |~|This paper sets out the theoretical and methodological approach of a study of the politics of persuasion and the mobilisation of interest in relation to the Trust schools initiative in England. Drawing on the discourse theoretical approach of Laclau and Mouffe the paper argues that the politics of consensus associated with New Labour reconfigures the field of politics, closing down legitimate democratic space. Building on this approach and that of policy sociology the paper outlines how the researchers seeks to address the following questions if the space for legitimate democratic debate is so severely constrained then how does a social democratic government deal with the kind of opposition that Labour faced in relation to Trust schools? How do governments persuade dissident citizens to support unpopular policies? How are citizens mobilised to support such policies? This also raises questions about how, in such a restricted political space, do those questioning or resisting such policies, engage in the politics of persuasion and the mobilisation of interests? The reconfiguration of the field of politics and what this means for the constitution of legitimate democratic debate is the object of study of the research.Publication Openness and praxis: exploring the use of open educational practices in higher education(Athabasca University Press, 2017-08) Cronin, Catherine; |~|Open educational practices (OEP) is a broad descriptor of practices that include the creation, use and reuse of open educational resources (OER) as well as open pedagogies and open sharing of teaching practices. As compared with OER, there has been little empirical research on individual educators use of OEP for teaching in higher education. This research study addresses that gap, exploring the digital and pedagogical strategies of a diverse group of university educators, focusing on whether, why and how they use OEP for teaching. The study was conducted at one Irish university; semi-structured interviews were carried out with educators across multiple disciplines. Only a minority of educators used OEP. Using constructivist grounded theory, a model of the concept Using OEP for teaching was constructed showing four dimensions shared by open educators: balancing privacy and openness, developing digital literacies, valuing social learning, and challenging traditional teaching role expectations. The use of OEP by educators is complex, personal and contextual; it is also continuously negotiated. These findings suggest that research-informed policies and collaborative and critical approaches to openness are required to support staff, students and learning in an increasingly complex higher education environment.Publication Struggling for visibility in higher education: caught between neoliberalism 'out there' and 'in here' - an autoethnographic account(Taylor & Francis, 2016-11-01) Warren, Simon; |~|What happens when neoliberalism as a structural and structuring force is taken up within institutions of higher education, and works upon academics in higher education individually? Employing a critical authoethnographic approach, this paper explores the way technologies of research performance management, specifically, work to produce academics (and academic managers) as particular kinds of neoliberal subject. The struggle to make oneself visible is seen to occur under the gaze of academic normativity the norms of academic practice that include both locally negotiated practices and the performative demands of auditing and metrics that characterise the neoliberal university. The paper indicates how the dual process of being worked upon and working upon ourselves can produce personally harmful effects. The result is a process of systemic violence. This paper invites higher education workers and policy-makers to think higher education otherwise and to reconsider our personal and collective complicity in the processes shaping higher education.Publication The trouble of ‘living with others’: language, community and the politics of belonging(SAGE Journals, 2016) Warren, Simon; |~|In this article I ask myself the following question: ‘Rather than try to escape the seemingly awful choice between the private and the public, between the particular and universal, or between justice and freedom, I ask if I simply have the option to enact democracy and see ‘what follows?’. To reach that question I engage with an empirical problem, namely the struggle over the legitimacy of the Irish language as a public good, and more specifically as the medium for education in an Irish secondary school. In response to this I analyse the situation in terms of a politics of belonging. However, I then flip my reasoning, questioning its tendency towards ‘master explication’ and the privileged position of the theorist, and instead explore the possibilities offered by an anarchic approach. This latter orientation involves a reading against myself through a dialogue with the work of Gert Biesta as he engages with Jacques Rancière’s concept of subjectification. And so, instead of trying to escape (to master?) the awful choice between justice OR freedom, I am led towards the openness of ‘what follows?’.Publication The making of Irish-speaking Ireland: The cultural politics of belonging, diversity and power(2012) Warren, Simon; |~|This paper is about linguistic justice issues in the post-colonial context of an Irish-speaking region in the south-west of Ireland, drawing on a study of political mobilization around the Irish-medium education policy of the region s secondary school. I explore how the incip- ient Irish state was involved in a nationalizing project of developing strategies to consti- tute the Irish polity into a particular nation bound by an language of archaic belonging . I then examine how this nationalizing project was disrupted by structural shifts in the economic and demographic basis for the Irish-speaking communities on the Irish western seaboard. It is in this historical context that the Irish language emerges as a necessary nodal point around which political identity is formed. Local linguistic struggles are con- ceived as attempts to impose particular kinds of order on a field of meaning.Publication Challenging lifelong learning policy discourse: Where is structure in agency in narrative-based research?(2007) Warren, Simon; Webb, Sue; |~|Can adult educational research on learning and identity counter the individualising of neoliberal government policy that seeks to constrain educational choices to those that contribute to government economic agendas? This article notes the recent move within post-compulsory education research towards an engagement with Bourdieu because of perceived limitations in the research and analysis of learner identities. In particular, Bourdieu is drawn upon as a conceptual resource in order adequately to account for the influence of social structure as well as agency. We contextualise our exploration of this conceptual move by outlining the way hegemonic policy discourses work to economise the field of UK education and training, specifically the cultivation of particular dispositions towards learning the responsible learner . We focus on a strand of work that has engaged with Bourdieu s conceptual framework in order to pro- vide a social-structural account of learner experiences. We do this through a brief exploration of the development of the concepts of learning career and learning culture . We ask to what extent the concepts of learning career and culture have worked, and argue that analysis of social structure deployed through these concepts, particularly the immanence of structure in the practices of adult learners, is less well developed. The article concludes with an outline of some new research questions to understand how adults engage with formal learning, specifically whether or not they are responsible learners and reflexive agents and what are the forms and meanings of these notions of responsibility and reflexivity. In setting out this research agenda we hope to contribute to furthering counter-hegemonic research on adults learning in a context of social and economic structural change, and to avoid being captured by the discourse .Publication Theorizing Progress: Women in Science, Engineering, and Technology in Higher Education(Wiley, 1999-08) Cronin, Catherine; Scottish Higher Education Funding CouncilA conceptual framework of positions on women in Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) was developed, showing a chronological progression of the main approaches to women's underrepresentation in SET during the past 20 years. Numerous initiatives have been advocated to address women's underrepresentation in SET in higher education. This article arose out of one such initiative, Winning Women, which was intended to help higher education in Scotland move toward good practice in this field. Two members of the project team describe their key findings and experiences. They illustrate how the underrepresentation of women in SET continues to be both progressive and persistent (using a SET parity index). The conceptual framework was conceived and developed from a metaanalysis of feminist theories of the gendered politics of science and technology.Publication The Galway Symposium on Design for Learning: curriculum and assessment in higher education (Review Essay)(Taylor & Francis, 2010-06-14) Coate, Kelly; Tooher, Michelle; |~|The higher education (HE) system in Ireland, in common with many systems around the world, is facing a period of uncertainty. In the current economic climate, the seven universities in Ireland - plus the approximately 20 other HE institutions - are coming under much scrutiny. Echoing some of the attacks that Margaret Thatcher's government made on UK HE in the 1980s, the Irish government is raising questions around efficiency and accountability while at the same time cutting budgets. The pared down system that will emerge after this economic downturn may precipitate a somewhat gloomy period for academic staff. Before that happens, we would like to use this occasion to review some of the developments in teaching and learning in Ireland which we think call for some recognition.Publication Creativity in Education: challenging the assumptions(Taylor & Francis, 2012-06-25) Coate, K; Boulos, A.; |~|The creative process is mysterious, intriguing and elusive. The above quote from celebrated Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami evokes an other-wordliness, a dream-like state, an escape from reality that many other creative individuals through the years have described in similar terms. It is perhaps this type of artistic creativity - with its allusion to an enhanced or altered mental state which generates something original and beautiful - that appeals to so many people who have researched creative processes and promoted the benefits of creativity for society.Publication An ethical commitment: responsibility, cosmopolitanism and care in the internationalised university(Routledge, 2013-10) Coate, Kelly; |~|The internationalization of higher education has decisively moved from being a scholarly tradition of mobility across borders to an almost purely economic concern. This is a trend that is most pronounced in countries such as England, Australia and the US in particular, who have become the dominant exporters of the higher education business or, as Allan Luke suggests, the global ¿edubusiness¿ (Luke 2010). Alongside the growth of this edubusiness has developed a growing literature theorizing the implications of the shift to the student as consumer model of higher education (e.g. Kuo 2007; Lambert et al. 2007; Maringe 2011). For those of us working in international classrooms, particularly in the developed countries that are the main exporters of higher education globally, our relationships with international students are formed against a backdrop of an increasingly predominant consumerist model of higher education. In this chapter we will take a critical view of the shift towards a consumerist model of internationalized higher education, through a consideration of how this shift has eroded the moral basis for relationships with international students. However, there are signs of hope, and in the second part of the chapter we will be offering a philosophical approach based around the concepts of care, responsibility, and cosmopolitanism. We will argue these commitments, taken together, have the potential to re-establish an ethical commitment to students.Publication The Contradictions of Policy and Practice: Creativity in Higher Education(London Review of Education (Taylor & Francis), 2012-07) MacLaren, IainWhilst much of the rhetoric of current educational policy champions creativity and innovation, structural reforms and new management practices in higher education run counter to the known conditions under which creativity flourishes. As a review of recent literature suggests, surveillance, performativity, the end of tenure and rising levels of workplace stress are all closing off the space for real creative endeavour, characterised as it is by risk-taking, collaborative exploration and autonomy. Innovation, as conceived in this policy context, is narrow in scope and leaves little room for critical re-examination of the nature of education itself or radical reconceptions of curriculum, raising the question as to whether such are more likely to arise extra mural, from new forms of organisation.Publication Forum Critical Thinking: Symposium on the Future of Universities: Introduction(Sage, 2010) Coate, KellyThis introduction is for a special forum with contributions from the Galway Symposium on Critical Thinking: the Future of Universities.Publication Irish Higher Education and the Knowledge Economy(Routledge, 2009)Publication Exploring the Unknown: Levinas and International Students in English Higher Education(Taylor and Francis, 2009) Coate, KellyThis article will start with a description of a small, pedagogic event: a snippet of conversation recorded in a classroom as part of a research project on working in groups with postgraduate students. I will use these few minutes of data to illustrate several of the arguments I wish to make about the policy of increased international student recruitment in English higher education. More specifically, the recorded conversation will act as a springboard into some reflections on the ways in which international students are positioned within the higher education system in England, in terms of policies, pedagogic practices and the research literature on international students. The argument will centre on the idea that English higher education institutions are on ethically dubious grounds in terms of their relations with international students, and that these flawed relations are reflected in pedagogical practices in the classroom. These reflections will draw from the writings of Levinas to explore the current failure of staff and students in sharing responsibility towards the experiences of the `other¿.