Abstract
Using the lens of Foucault's ideas about heterotopias, this paper discusses the Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETLs) which were teaching and learning projects funded between 2005 and 2010 by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). The paper explores the 'location' of the CETLs in different kinds of real, social and imagined space. This enables an examination of the ways in which CETLs were both 'within' and 'without' their institution, both reflecting the institutional culture which created them and yet were also necessarily 'other'. The paper concludes with some speculation on some characteristics of funded teaching and learning projects in general which are illuminated by the issues the CETLs faced about their location, their place, and their identity.
Highlights
It might seem to be far-fetched, even outrageous, to suggest that teaching and learning projects have anything in common with brothels, cemeteries, the boarding school, military service for young men, ships, oriental gardens, museums and libraries. The latter are all examples of what Michel Foucault calls „heterotopias‟ which are real places, but which are „like counter-sites‟, where „reality‟ is „simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted‟
This paper seeks to exploit Foucault‟s insights about „heterotopias‟ to explore some persistent issues which impact on the character and location of externally funded and time-limited teaching and learning projects
Brief note on the case study and the research context Following the launch of Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)‟s Invitation to Bid in 2004, Gosling and Hannan (2007b; 2007) initiated a longitudinal study which sought to investigate the experiences of bidwriters, educational developers and university managers as they lived through the initiative
Summary
It might seem to be far-fetched, even outrageous, to suggest that teaching and learning projects have anything in common with brothels, cemeteries, the boarding school (in its nineteenth-century form), military service for young men, ships, oriental gardens, museums and libraries. Projects are teleological (i.e. purposeful) and convergent (have defined aims): the goals/ aims of the project have to be pre-specified in the bidding process and as a result projects expect convergence of behaviour by specified agents or groups of agents to achieve the project‟s aims These characteristics have consequences for their character and institutional location, as we will consider, using data gathered from a sample of CETLs. Brief note on the case study and the research context Following the launch of HEFCE‟s Invitation to Bid in 2004, Gosling and Hannan (2007b; 2007) initiated a longitudinal study which sought to investigate the experiences of bidwriters, educational developers and university managers as they lived through the initiative. I argue that, by considering particular aspects of some CETLs we can find examples of „enacted utopias‟, „crisis heterotopias‟, heterotopias of deviation‟, „spaces of illusion‟ and „heterotopias of compensation‟
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