Continuity and Change: The Academic Teacher-Student Relationships in the Discourse on the Higher Education Reform in Poland

Abstract

The article presents the results of research on the discursive models of academic relationships that come to the fore in the academic discourse on the reform of higher education in Poland. The aim of the research was to capture the ways of formulating knowledge about the reform of science and higher education and its subjects (i.e., academic teachers and students). The research material comprised 17 Polish academic monographs published in the years 2011-2014 (immediately after the introduction of the higher education reform in Poland). The direction of the analyses was emergent and inductive and was in line with the assumptions of post-Foucauldian discourse analysis. The theoretical basis was determined by the set of categories that constitute the phenomenon of the “formation of knowledge.” The main research problem was expressed by the question about what "truths" about the reform of science and higher education, its main subjects (academic teachers and students), and the relationships between them emerge from the analysed discourse. The research has led to the reconstruction of discursive models of academic teachers (traditional professor, docile workhorse, and hopeless practitioner) and students (student sensu stricto, client, disobedient citizen).