Session Information
23 SES 04 C, Globalization, Europeanization and Higher Education Reforms
Paper Session
Contribution
The internationalisation of higher education in the European Education Space is a complex project evolving in the last decades from a regionalisation strategy to an “externally oriented, market driven and globalising strategy” (Robertson, 2009, pg.75), marking a shift in discourses on education and education reform towards the dominance of economic values and practices. A number of projects have been developed under the auspices of the EU oriented towards the creation and consolidation of a European Higher Education Area, assumed to be attained through transnational flows and activities. Projects such as the Erasmus initiative lure or challenge national higher education (HE) systems to introduce reforms, and in this sense function as “technologies” of Governance deployed to promote change (Foucault,1980; Ball, 2008; Ozga, 2009). The introduction of globally travelling ideas for reform within national education systems, however, depends on policy-making decisions, and call for the involvement of key agents for the translation of policy texts (Ball et al.2012) and the actual implementation of policies at national and local levels. Within higher education institutions (HEIs), academics as key actors, have been confronted with ‘top-down’ reform processes, that affect deeply their everyday practices and professional identities.
Our focus in this presentation is the responses of Greek academics working in the Greek HE sector to trends and pressures initiated by national legislation frameworks and dominant discourses on the modernisation of higher education within the European/global Education space. Aligned with the existing international literature on new forms of governance (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010; Lawn and Grek, 2012; Robertson, 2010) and the role of knowledge in these (Bernstein, 2000; Singh, 2015;), we are exploring the new forms of power and knowledge which create the spaces within which education/research practices are reshaped and academic identities are calibrated. We aim to reveal the means by which shifts occurring in the forms of knowledge and in relations of power in the context of Europeanisation and globalisation are “articulated” through processes of recontextualisation at the institutional level, and how they are reflected in academics’ pedagogic practices and professional aspirations and activities. More specifically, we focus our attention on the academics’ understandings of internationalisation and mobility policies and their actions within their local sites. At the same time, we are exploring the links of such processes to English language-competency issues - the lingua franca of our times- as they emerge in the European/global spheres and demand from academics to reconstruct their academic work and professional practices.
Our theoretical framework is grounded in Foucault’s notions of discourse and governmentality (Foucault, 1991) and Bernstein’s theory on pedagogic discourse (Bernstein, 2000). The former draws attention to the “regimes of truth and knowledge”, produced by the dominant discourses of governance and higher education reform, which are the means through which educational professionals govern themselves and others (Ball, 1994). We argue about the importance of exploring the processes through which academics, in affirming, challenging or interrupting such truth regimes, negotiate their own subjectivities. Bernstein’s theory of the “pedagogic device”, referring to the rules of distribution, recontextualisation and evaluation of knowledge in pedagogic contexts (Bernstein, 2000; Singh, 2002) offers us a language for a rigorous description of the educational practices in the local sites of higher education institutions.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Ball, S.J. (1994) Education reform. A critical and post-structural approach. Buckingham: Open University Press. Ball, S.J. (2008) The education debate. Bristol: The Policy Press. Ball, S.J., Maguire, M., and Braun, A. (2012) How schools do policy. London:Routledge Bernstein, B. (2000) Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity. Theory, research, critique. Revised edition, New York, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Foucault, M. (1980) Power/Knowledge. Selected interviews and other writings 1972-1977 by Michel Foucault. C. Gordon (ed). New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Foucault, M. (1991) Governmentality. In: G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and P. Miller (eds) The Foucault effect. Studies in Governmentality. Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 87-104. Henkel, M. (2005) Academic identity and autonomy in a changing policy environment. Higher Education 48,(1), 155-176. Jørgensen, M. & Phillips, L. (2002) Discourse analysis as theory and method. London: Sage Lawn, M. & Grek,S. (2012) Europeanizing Education. Governing a new policy space. Oxford: Symposium Books. Ozga, J. (2009) Governing education through data in England: from regulation to self -evaluation. Journal of education policy, 24 (2), 149–162. Rizvi, F. & Lingard, B. (2010) Globalizing Education Policy. London & New York: Routledge. Robertson,S. (2009) Europe, Competitiveness and Higher Education. In R. Dale & S. Robertson (eds) Globalisation & Europeanisation in Education. Oxford: Symposium books, 65-83. Robertson, S. (2010) The EU, ‘regulatory state regionalism’ and new modes of higher education governance. Globalisation, Societies and Education 8 (1), 23-37. Sarakinioti, A. (2014) The practices of evaluation for quality assurance in Greek public universities: knowledge recontextualisations and academic identities Paper presented at the EERA Conference,Porto,2-September.http://www.eera-ecer.de/ecer-programmes/conference/19/contribution/32622 (Accessed 10-01-16). Singh, P. (2002) Pedagogising knowledge: Bernstein’s theory of the pedagogic device. British journal of sociology of education, 23 (4), 571-582. Singh,P. (2015) Performativity and Pedagogizing Knowledge:Globalizing Educational Policy Formation, Dissemination, and Enactment. Journal of Education Policy, 30(3), 363-384. Tsatsaroni, A., Sifakakis, P. & Sarakinioti, A., (2015). Transformations in the field of symbolic control and their implications for the Greek educational administration. European Educational Research Journal 14(6):508–530 Vogopoulou, A., Sarakinioti, A. & Tsatsaroni, A. (2015) Globalisation, Internationalisation and the English Language in Greek HE. Paper presented at the EERA Conference, Budapest, 7-11 September. http://www.eera-ecer.de/ecer-programmes/conference/20/contribution/35491/ (Accessed 14-01-16). Ylijoki, O. & Ursin, J. (2013) The construction of academic identity in the changes of Finnish higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 38 (8), 1135-1149.
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