Disciplinary cultures in an Australian college of advanced education

Abstract

Recently scholars have called for more detailed historical study of the teaching lives of academics across countries, systems and institutions. This article contributes to the research on the professoriate in its widest sense. The article focuses on the disciplinary perspectives and cultures of academic staff employed in one of Australia’s oldest colleges of advanced education during the period 1965–1982. It examines official beliefs, slogans, and truisms, which formed part of these perspectives. Disciplinary perspectives include the academics’ views of the subject, the important problems for the subject, and the criteria of utility of the subject. Australia’s Commonwealth Advisory Committee on Advanced Education saw colleges of advanced education compared to universities enrolling students with different interests, stressing part‐time studies, concentrating on applied courses rather than humanities, being closely attuned to the labour market and workforce needs and being principally teaching institutions. They were to be equal but different to universities, but came to be viewed as equal but cheaper. A crucial issue is the extent to which the disciplinary perspectives of college of advanced education academics matched those that the legislators envisaged.