Higher Education Discourse Research Articles

English Medium Instruction and the potential of translanguaging practices in higher education

Abstract In the UAE, although Arabic is the first and official language (L1), English has become the medium of instruction and the language of discourse in higher education in most subject domains. The pedagogical implications of English Medium Instruction (EMI) in the specific context of higher education in the UAE are not well understood, and research is needed to establish what kinds of support speakers of English as a second or additional language (L2) might need to fully access content knowledge in English without burdening learning. Our empirical work hypothesizes that learning content through L2 may lead to more favourable results if the L1 is explicitly drawn upon as a resource in addition to the L2. This study provided undergraduate students with learning materials in three experimental conditions (Arabic-only, English-only, and dual language). Students’ performance was then assessed in three areas of linguistic competence, namely translation into Arabic of a list of English words and phrases, comprehension of an English written text, and translation into Arabic of English words and phrases in context. A series of one way ANOVAs and post-hoc comparisons were carried out to determine differences between the three conditions. The study confirms that overall, for students with an intermediate language level, the presentation of dual language reading materials has a greater impact on their outcomes in comparison with the presentation of reading materials in the L1 or L2 only. This highlights the critical need for raising awareness of translanguaging practices in EMI contexts.

The price of knowledge and the wisdom of innocence: A difficult journey through the employability discourse in higher education

Through the examination of knowledge artefacts, utilising an analytical metaphorical representation, the authors present an exploration of higher education. In this way, the exploration is depicted as a schizophrenic, dichotomic journey through the difficult discourse of knowledge, wisdom, and employability in higher education institutions. The article explores how the place and value of knowledge appear fractured in the higher education curriculum. Applying Root Cause Analysis, it is argued that the marketisation, commercialisation and commodification of higher education, with the resulting emphasis on economic value through the employability of graduates, has created unintended consequences in the sector. To insert employability initiatives, something has to give in the module structure so that everything can be fitted in. That ‘something’ is the sacrifice of wisdom within the deeper knowledge of a subject. The authors argue that the depth of knowledge has unintentionally been negatively affected by embedding employability. While some students position themselves strategically to use their education for their individual gain, others want to learn more deeply, and become anxious that they do not have the time to reflect on what they have learned. It is recommended that a deeper reflexive conversation must take place between all stakeholders in higher education if it is to have a future in economic terms.

Why the decolonisation of higher education without critique is not possible?

Undeniably the decolonisation of higher education on the African continent is a tenuous academic pursuit considering its entanglement with complexities, paradoxes and tensions (Zembylas, 2018). However, I do not wish to argue against the importance of decolonisation of higher education but instead use the notion of critique (decentring of the self) as an instance as to how and why higher education discourses in African universities are in dire need to decolonise.

The influence of teacher habitus on the university applications of moderately-attaining students

ABSTRACT Much of the research examining students’ university choosing in England focuses on rates of access to ‘elite’ universities for high-attaining state-educated students. By contrast, the experiences of students applying to ‘new’ universities remain under-researched. This paper considers moderately attaining 16–18 years olds as a discrete group and highlights how a combination of England’s Higher Education (HE) policy and school performance measures may influence levels of support for students’ university applications. Drawing on an ethnographic study of a London state school, it finds that support for students’ university applications was differentiated in ways which overwhelmingly disadvantaged moderate attainers. A competitive school market, combined with a policy focus on ‘fair access’ to ‘elite’ institutions, meant high attainers’ university applications were consistently prioritised. Some teachers were found who navigated dominant HE discourses, drawing on an ethical teacher habitus and their social and cultural capital to support students applying to less prestigious universities.

Editorial Advisory Board Members on Reimagining Higher Education Internationalization and Internationalization of the Curriculum

This research explores how editorial advisory board members across four highly ranked international higher education–focused journals understand higher education internationalization generally, and internationalization of the curriculum (IoC) specifically. Notionally, as gatekeepers, editorial advisory board members hold a powerful strategic position in the scholarly debates that characterize an active discipline, and can indirectly assert a strong influence over the academic direction of the field(s) to which they belong. All editorial advisory members for the journals Higher Education, Studies in Higher Education, Higher Education Research & Development, and the Journal of Studies in International Education were invited to contribute to this research with 25 ( N = 25, 30%) consenting to participate. Utilizing qualitative, semi-structured interviewing, participants discussed their views on higher education internationalization, IoC, and the importance of these in the contemporary university. Participants also discussed what dimensions of IoC need to be further addressed in higher education discourses and research, and opportunities and challenges they foresee concerning higher education internationalization now and into the future. Findings reveal, for participants, internationalization continues to be perceived as a multivocal, largely Anglo-European, and neoliberal enterprise which is at a crossroad, and needs to be reimagined for the betterment of all in society. Collectively, participants draw attention to a lack of criticality and problematization within higher education internationalization discourses, and highlighted the need for research, scholarship, and academic leaders to expand the focus of IoC to address future global challenges and needs.

“We Can Redefine Ourselves”: Enhancing Black College Men’s Persistence Through Counterspaces

Black college men are constantly repositioned in higher education discourse as problems and in crises. However, there is much to be learned from Black men’s engagement in college and the meanings they make from those experiences. In this qualitative study, we use the engagement experiences of 25 Black men at an historically white campus in the U.S. in order to reveal the value of counterspaces on campus. Our findings suggest that the Sankofa Scholars program created important opportunities for these Black men to get acclimated to college, enhance their awareness and development, and resist deficit framings about them. These findings demonstrate that male success initiatives can serve as a counterspace on campus and can play a critical role in empowering Black men’s persistence in college and strengthening their resilience.

You can't always get what you want! Desired and undesired impacts of a new career development policy

ABSTRACT Market rationality, neoliberal approaches and ever-increasing productivity objectives are widespread in higher education discourse and practice. Academic employment has become more uncertain as scholars are more commonly employed on non-tenured, fixed-term contracts. Research shows the resulting detrimental impact on staff well-being and health, which has led some universities to engage in policy initiatives aimed to counter the unwanted effects. Departing from an institutional logic perspective, this contribution investigates the new career policy for contractual scientific staff of a Flemish university. Effective since 2019, it mandates the switch to contracts of indefinite duration and supplementary pension rights for specific contractual scientific staff categories. An in-depth analysis of its implementation unveils its potential (un)intended ramifications – e.g., the perpetuation of employees’ job uncertainty, avoidance strategies, increasing detrimental pressures on research managers, tensions among research groups’ members, and changes in the recruitment process criteria.

Interdiscursivity and Promotional Discourse: A Corpus-Assisted Genre Analysis of About Us Texts on Chinese University Websites

Abstract The debate on the marketization of discourse in higher education has sparked and sustained interest among researchers in discourse and education studies across a diversity of contexts. While most research in this line has focused on marketized discourses such as advertisements, little attention has been paid to promotional discourse in public institutions such as the About us texts on Chinese university websites. The goal of the present study is twofold: first, to describe the generic features of the university About us texts in China; and second, to analyze how promotional discourse is interdiscursively incorporated in the discourse by referring to the broader socio-political context. Findings have indicated five main moves: giving an overview, stressing historical status, displaying strengths, pledging political and ideological allegiance, and communicating goals and visions. Move 3, displaying strengths, has the greatest amount of information and can be further divided into six sub-moves which presents information on campus facilities, faculty team, talent cultivation, disciplinary fields construction, academic research, and international exchange. The main linguistic and rhetorical strategies used in these moves are analyzed and discussed.

‘Flexible ongoing’: the young university student as homo promptus

ABSTRACT Drawing from a study of young university students in Australia, France and the U.K., homo promptus represents the authors’ effort to trace how young people are positioned within discourses of higher education and employment to provide a conceptual shape to emergent characteristics of their otherwise diverse lives. We suggest that homo promptus is: entrepreneurial and strategic; plans adaptively for the future while living life in the short-term; not tethered to a single place; permanently in ‘situational’ mode and lives in waithood. We also argue that overlaying the figure of homo promptus is a complex affective combination of optimism, pessimism and anxiety evident in our interviewees’ narratives. We then briefly attempt to reflexively locate ourselves as youth researchers in relation to the study from which this paper is drawn, outlining certain caveats and limitations of presenting another limited figure of youth, as discussed previously by Threadgold (2019) in this journal, but one which seeks to bring some clarity to the sometimes messy work of youth research.

Analyzing neoliberal discourse: An integrated dialectical-relational critical discourse analysis-discourse theory framework utilizing conceptual metaphor

AbstractAn integrated Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)-Discourse Theory (DT) framework is proposed that utilizes the Dialectical-Relational (DR) approach from CDA as its primary basis and incorporates DT concepts of articulation and nodal point to further develop DR and thus enhance descriptions and analyses of the complex, shifting and contingent nature of meaning making in discourses of late modernity that impact the construction of social realities (logic) and subjectivity. This paper argues that the addition of the above DT concepts enhances the description and analysis of the dynamics of meaning making by focusing on shifting and contingent meanings present in discourses operating within and between particular social contexts as a means to specifically and systematically capture the influence of context-specific ideologies. Furthermore, using DR allows for the inclusion of the relative permanence of social structures in dialectical relation with processes of meaning making which avoids the risk of a radical contingency that DT potentially entails. The framework is demonstrated using conceptual metaphors in the context of Singapore higher education discourse to show how neoliberalism as a seemingly hegemonic phenomenon operates as a variegated mobile technology adapting to its specific context by manifesting context-specific meanings, thus reflecting characteristics of complexity, non-permanence and contingency.

A philosophical defence of the university lecture

ABSTRACTAs a host of published books, journal articles and opinion pieces attest, the university lecture is now distinctly out of step with contemporary Higher Education discourse. Academics across university disciplines confidently proclaim the format’s obsolescence, arguing that only inertia and familiarity could satisfactorily account for the lecture’s survival. We propose in this paper to offer a philosophical revisiting of this most maligned of pedagogical forms. Drawing on the philosophy of Stanley Cavell, we argue for the lecture not as a mode of dissemination but as a mode of address. On this model, the lecture is to be understood as a special form of human encounter where the voice of one is modulated specifically for the hearing of another. Thus, we propose in this paper to offer a philosophical defence of traditional university teaching. We argue that this defence has particular relevance for teaching and learning in the Humanities.

Design review of MOOCs: application of e-learning design principles

The purpose of this study is to explore the pedagogical design of massive open online courses (MOOCs) using evidence-based e-learning principles. MOOCs have become an important part of discourse in higher education. However, there has been shared concern on the quality of MOOCs as learning systems for engaging learners as well as fulfilling their needs. The researchers conducted a design review of 40 computer science MOOCs from two major MOOC providers. The findings indicate a relatively low application of the principles in general, with the exception of those related to the organization and presentation of content. MOOC platforms and the difficulty level of MOOCs used the application of e-learning principles and guidelines differently. Implications for future research and design of MOOCs are discussed.

A co-creation of learning and teaching typology: What kind of co-creation are you planning or doing?

In higher education discourse, reference to co-creation, partnership, and student engagement (to name but a few of the commonly used terms), covers a very wide range of different research and practice. This variety can often be confusing. In response, I present a co-creation oflearning and teaching typology, which is a practical resource intended to support students and staff to reflect on, and discuss, their planned and current practice and to be able to identify what particular kind of co-creation they are planning or doing. The typology can be used individually, in small groups or at an institutional level. It has been designed to be adaptable and includes space for additional co-creation variables and responses to be added. Informal feedback from using the typology suggests it has the potential to be (a) a planning tool, (b) a reflective tool, and (c) a mapping tool.

Queering and diversifying gender in equality work at European higher education institutions

Against the background of recent changes to EU legislation to meet the demands and needs of LGBTIQ* communities, the authors seek to situate a queered and diversified understanding of gender firmly at the centre of the gender equality discourse in higher education (HE). Based on case examples, the legal and discursive status quo in German and Dutch HE institutions as well as actors’ motivations, challenges and opportunities are examined through a queer lens. The results highlight how differently EU legislation is transposed into national law. They also show that change is currently driven by highly motivated individual actors, be they students, gender equality and diversity officers, or individual institutions. We argue that queering and diversifying should be understood and used as modes to reflect on and analyse the processes that lead to heteronormative understandings of gender in HE and to develop strategies that take the complexities of gendered identities and discrimination into account.

Instruction and improvisation under neoliberalism

ABSTRACTBonnie Urciuoli has become a pioneer for her work on neoliberal discourses in higher education. We introduce this work as well as the articles gathered herein to honour it. The articles engage with Urciuoli’s work by considering neoliberal discourse in various institutional contexts. Important in all of the articles is a critique of the control neoliberalism would seem to offer.

Looking Back to Move Forward: Understanding Progressive Education in the 21st Century

In recent decades, pedagogical techniques reestablishing the relevance of higher education to communities, students, and potential employers—particularly those with an experiential or applied focus—are increasingly popular. Yet, the discourse in higher education seems to isolate pedagogic approaches, and subsequently, the concept of progressive education remains unclear. The purpose of this paper is to offer a thematic organizing framework for synthesizing pedagogies that characterize progressive education in the 21st century. The identification of five major themes of contemporary pedagogies bounds the many pedagogical approaches that exist in today’s educational landscape. Definitions of such pedagogical approaches will be included, and implications of the framework will be discussed.

Stakeholder perceptions of Clinical Legal Education within an employability context

The purpose of this paper is to examine how clinical legal education is perceived by current students, alumni, employers and clinic supervisors. The paper considers clinical legal education within the employability discourse in higher education and interrogates its place in the curriculum. With ever growing pressure on Higher Education providers to produce employable graduates in a challenging graduate marketplace this qualitative study seeks new insights into the role clinical legal education can play in preparing students for their transition from university into graduate careers.There has been little empirical research in this area and so this article explores the literature around the employability discourse, with particular focus on the impact of clinical legal education on employability before reporting on the findings from the focus groups and reaching conclusions about the implications of the impact of clinical legal education on employability.

Quality and Excellence in Higher Education and Metamorphosis: Changing Notions in Educational Discourses in India

As seen through the recommendations of University Education Commission (1949) and Education Commission (1964), till about National Policy on Education, 1986, as markers of educational discourses, the concern was to resist expansion, to guard against dilution of quality and standards of higher education and excellence and reputation of higher education institutions. Through 1980s, especially, during the post-1991 reform phase, the benchmarks in educational discourses shifted to survival in sub-optimal resources/facilities conditions in the context of progressive state retreat in funding higher education (HE). The private sector engagement in HE was hotly debated for and against in the discourses through the 1990s and after 2000; the concern was not just about the desirability, in the national bid for expansion and massification of HE, but about its regulation with respect to quality and standards. The Narayanamurthy Committee (Planning Commission, 2012) recommendations regarding corporate sector participation in HE turned out to be both a culmination of earlier trend and a forerunner of private sector’s domination in HE, with the cost burden shifting on to students, despite some strong advocacy in defence of public HE system, by Yashpal Committee (Department of Higher Education, 2009). The reality in the discourses of HE in India has been the drastic shifts of concerns for aspects and parameters of quality and standards of HE and HEIs to many emerging compulsions through the decades.

Key elements in the naturalisation of neoliberal discourse in higher education in Chile

ABSTRACT Neoliberal discourse has undergone substantial changes over the last years, taking a status as if it were a natural given. In this article we analyse the naturalisation of neoliberal discourse in higher education in post-dictatorship Chile. Based on discourse analysis of two Chilean higher education policy reports, we examine the reconfiguration of the dimensions of the public and the private and identify three discursive prerequisites for the naturalisation of neoliberalism in Chilean higher education: first, the silencing of the dictatorial origins of the system; second, the idea of neutrality as a means to present public and private higher education as if they were equal; and third, the role of social democracy in a 180 degrees’ inversion of meanings of the public and the private. We finally look into recent developments in Chilean society such as the Chilean students’ movement from 2011 that triggered the questioning of the naturalisation of neoliberal discourse.

Articulation and Continuities: First-Year Experience in Higher Education

Discussions around first-year experiences have been focused on student adjustment and inclusion into the culture and discourses of higher education. However, the issue is much broader and includes efforts of articulation of processes and continuity of experience. This guest-edited issue thus focuses on the wider issues and includes discussions on systemic articulation and ruptures in student experiences. Developmental shifts when entering higher education are experienced by students in a variety of ways. It is incumbent on higher education and the wider system to enable continuity of experience and articulation of systems in such a way that student success is at the centre. Thus, the core articles in this issue focus on systemic articulation, in and out of classroom experience and the operational and ontological engagement of students, beyond the first-year experience. Moreover, while discussions on university success are usually focused on higher education agency, it is essential that the silence around causality and influence of schooling and wider societal issues are recognised. The articles in this issue purposefully bring together such a wider perspective.